Like our last year’s All Fools’ Day story, this year’s one that appeared in our April 1 issue, raised laughs and guffaws around the world – but not before causing a flurry of excited emails, phone calls and animated conversations about the reported $100 million cricket facility to be built by world cricket superstars in New Zealand.
From Mumbai and London to Sydney and Auckland along with other cricket loving centres thrown in between, people asked after the “academy”, before discovering it was all an April Fool’s Day joke and then having a good laugh.
Pictured here is Prime Minister John Key enjoying the joke that was this year’s cover story at a private dinner on the evening of April 1, the day our edition also hit the stands. Other distinguished guests at the dinner, who were also initially taken in by the story and who wondered how they hadn’t heard about such a big project also had a great big laugh on discovering the joke.
Our last year’s joke about a super cheap airline, the fictional Pacific Asia Airways, which was to connect Auckland with Indian cities at super cheap fares, however, turned out to have had a ring of truth. Flights with unbelievably cheap fares were indeed launched by an Asia based airline this year.
Will this year’s joke of a multi-million dollar cricket academy prove a prediction as well? All we’ll say is watch this space.
Read the story here