Prime ministers are never supposed to miss an opportunity, and so it proved with Anthony Albanese on Sunday when he had the Australian and South African teams around to Kirribilli House for some backyard cricket.
As the players arrived at the PM’s swish Sydney digs, there was plenty of shiacking with David Warner and his family about which rugby league team they should support.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese attempts to convert Roosters fan and cricket star David Warner by giving him a Rabbitohs cap.Credit:Jessica Hromas
Warner is a diehard Sydney Roosters fan while his wife Candice, like the prime minister, supports the South Sydney Rabbitohs.
“As long as it has nothing to do with the Rabbitohs,” Warner joked after Albanese suggested with equal humour that Warner should change his allegiance.
So as Warner was playing cricket with his three daughters in a backyard with remarkable harbour views and an Australian Federal Police boat hovering at deep mid-wicket, presumably to recover the ball after any big hits, the PM darted out of Kirribilli House with a Rabbitohs cap and tried to plant it on Warner’s head.
Still sharp from his career-defining double century during the Boxing Day Test in Melbourne, Warner was too quick for the PM, but they stopped for a good-hearted chinwag as Candice took over bowling to her daughters, who are split between their loyalty to the Roosters and the Rabbitohs.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese proves himself a more accomplished bowler than John Howard.Credit:Jessica Hromas
“We first met in Melbourne after my 200 and he was trying to get me to follow the Rabbitohs then,” Warner said later with a smile. “No chance!”
Given that eight-year-old Ivy Mae, the eldest of the daughters, belongs to a batting star and an iron woman, it was no surprise to see her lofting balls deep into what would have been the outfield. She hit one ball beyond the grassed area onto rocks, and it was last seen heading for the water, surely six and out in the PM’s local backyard rules.
Albanese was clearly a more accomplished bowler than a previous prime minister, John Howard, sending down gentle off-breaks for the Warner kids to whack. Unlike Howard in Pakistan during 2005, all of the deliveries landed closer to the batter than the bowler, and none of them bounced multiple times.
Highlighting the maturing nature of the Australian team, there were children everywhere. All those old enough to sit on the grass were remarkably well-behaved, as the PM noted with some admiration.
“There is a birthing firm going on quite clearly in the Australian cricket team. It’s a bit like my caucus,” he observed.
Albanese will be at the Sydney Test, starting on Wednesday, and will be a guest of the Indian prime minister during Australia’s tour of India in February and March.
“I’ll be there with Narendra Modi, who has invited us to the fourth Test in his home state of Gujarat, and we’ll be taking an Australian business delegation over as well [to talk] about how we can expand the economic opportunities for Australia in India,” he said.
“That is one of the things about cricket. It brings people together across different cultures, across different societies. And it helps to build global harmony.”
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