A group of smartly dressed young men in dark blue tracksuits congregate in  the departure lounge. They are all dusky dark skinned with shocks of black hair and trimmed beards.  I assume, as this in an Emirates flight, that they are from the Gulf States. I pluck up the courage to chat to a very sweet sexy young man who is all of 56Kg and a few inches under 5 feet tall. I ask if they are all members of a soccer team? They look look like they should be football (soccer)  players as they are all so trim and thin in a youthful muscular sense. I knew intuitively that they were not members of a ballet corp – sadly. I wondered if they have a national ballet company  in the UAE? Perhaps this dusky fellow traveller is the Prince in Swan Lake?

No he explains in perfect Oxford english they are members of a cricket team and not just any cricket team, but the World Cup Bangladesh squad!  I am seated next to the wicket keeper ( I could  quite happily let my balls go through to him). My hopes are dashed when he asks if I would give up my seat for his wife, who is seated in the next compartment. Negotiations take place between the cabin crew and the rest of the team as we taxi for take off. “Arming the doors and cross checking ” moves down a few boxes on the pre take off check list, relative to ensuring that the wicket keepers wife is safely buckled up next to her beau. So I give up my seat and am placed next to one of the batsmen. It is all sorted out amicably  The team manager gives me a quaint giggle,  a nudge and wink and explains that “the men like to sit next to their wifes”. Well they might in Bangladesh. Many australian men prefer not to sit next to their wifes, or even leave them at the airport.

He (the batsman) has, he assures me in an endearingly adolescent way, made a few centuries. I think twice about asking him about “ducks” in case he misconstrues an innocent question above the roar of the Rolls Royce Trent engines. 

The team are all in Business Class and are weighed down with carry on luggage, trinkets and souvenirs, but no alcohol. Once the frenetic stuffing of carry on luggage is complete, they all settle down, take off shoes, rug up, power up the inflight entertinment, and to a man, tune into the latest Sylvester Stallone shoot up “Expendable 3”. Only the americans can churn out this genre of movie and only the americans can even seriously consider making a sequel. Not just one sequel but a third! It seems rather obvious, even I suspect to our Prime Minister not overly endowed with intellect, that if you make a movie in which the heros are all expendable, the very title has an extreme sense of finality, so there surely can only be one film on the subject?

The coach or manager, who had nudged and winked me into moving to a different seat, was not as trim or taunt as his national eleven. Indeed give him a few years and he will be well onto the way to the Metabolic X sydrome ( that’s the medical term for fat ). He had the seat on the aisle opposite me and did not make even as far as the opening title of “Expendable 3” as he promptly fell asleep in the sitting position and stirred an hour later for dinner, only to fall asleep as he spooned the lentil soup literally into his mouth! Saved by his seat belt from drowning. I suspect he had severe sleep apnoea, rather than Narcolepsy.

I remember vividly my first patient with Narcolepsy who had such a short sleep latency, (the hallmark of Narcolepsy) , that she did exactly  the same thing, most disconcerting at a dinner party.   

Finally one may ask why would the Bangladesh world cup cricket team travel all the way to Dubai then wait 8 hours to catch a flight to Dakah  thus backtracking a few thousand kilometres? An excellent question that crossed my mind too and the answer is that  Emirates sponsored them. So that they all fly with Emirates and Business Class to boot.