Australia sparks nostalgia with video game themed squad announcement

The Australian cricketing summer is set to take off with a Test series against Pakistan starting from December 14. On Sunday, Cricket Australia announced the squad, but the men's team's official Facebook page took a creative swing at the announcement post with a nostalgic touch.

Fans of older cricket video games, especially EA's Cricket 2005, Cricket 2007, or Ashes Cricket 2009, will remember how licensing issues led to instances of strange and funny spellings of the names of many famous cricketers.

For instance, Indian stars Anil Kumble, VVS Laxman, and MS Dhoni were known in the game by the names J Krumble, V Lexington, and D Dhenier.

From Pakistan, Shara Aphred and Shadid Akhti represented Shahid Afridi and Shoaib Akhtar. Bangladeshi legends Mashrafe Bin Mortaza and Mushfiqur Rahim were in the game as well, with the monikers of Mashef Mortaz and Mustafa Rahmin.

On the Facebook page "Australian Men's Cricket Team", which is officially managed by Cricket Australia, the squad announcement was made on an overlay of an old-looking cricket video game, and retro-style graphics contained the list of supposed Australian cricketers who will be in the squad for the first Test against Pakistan.

P Goings, who is the captain of the side, can only be an "unlicensed" version of Pat Cummins, Australia's World Cup-winning captain. Other hilarious names include T Cranium (Travis Head), M Loosebuschange (Marnus Labuschagne), J Sandalwood (Josh Hazelwood), A Scary (Alex Carey) and N Tyger (Nathan Lyon). Andrew McDonald, the Australian coach, was named as A McChicken.

Fans reacted favourably to the hilarious post, especially those who made the connection to some of the most popular cricket video games that came out during the early and mid 2000s. Nowadays, however, licensing issues can be easily circumvented for newer games using mods and patches that are freely available on the internet.