Madeira’s most famous son is Cristiano Ronaldo, and the island changed the name of its airport in honour of the Portuguese football star.<\/p>\n
Henriques joked he “might get a helicopter pad” named after him, if he is able to skipper Portugal to the World Cup.<\/p>\n
Portugal, ranked 37th in the world, will first have to come through the 10-team tournament in Finland, where they have drawn Czech Republic, Germany, Greece and Israel in Group B.<\/p>\n
Should they progress, the next stage will be a European final regional qualifier with Scotland, Jersey and Denmark next year.<\/p>\n
Henriques said while earning a Baggy Green will take some beating, the feeling of pulling on a Portugal shirt, and captaining the country, will be something special.<\/p>\n
“I went back to Madeira last year and it was the first time I’d been back, but I felt really connected to the place,” Henriques said.<\/p>\n
“When I played for Australia, my family also felt I was representing them as well. I’m representing the motherland, so to speak, and it’s going to feel somewhat similar.<\/p>\n
“Hopefully we can make a positive impact trying to grow the sport in Portugal and probably Europe more broadly as well.”<\/p>\n
Henriques, who will also play for Glasgow Cosmic in the inaugural European T20 Premier League following the qualifier, is not the only player in Portugal’s squad to have played professionally.<\/p>\n
Batter Cameron Shekleton, 26, has played first-class cricket in South Africa and appeared for the Proteas A side.<\/p>\n
Former New Zealand Under-19 captain Craig Cachopa, 34, represented Sussex, Auckland and Wellington.<\/p>\n
“I was quietly and pleasantly surprised with the quality of cricketers that we’ve got in the team,” Henriques said.<\/p>\n
“There’s a lot of high-level cricketers going around, which I probably wasn’t expecting a few years ago when I first started entertaining the thought of playing.”<\/p>\n
One challenge that Henriques will face at the qualifier in Finland is playing on an artificial pitch for the first time in a few decades.<\/p>\n
“It would be 25 years since I’ve actually played a game of cricket on a synthetic wicket,” added the former Sydney Sixers skipper.<\/p>\n
“I’m coming out of back surgery about five months ago so the biggest challenge bowling will be landing on a synthetic wicket on coming off a full run-up.<\/p>\n
“Obviously we train a lot indoors on synthetic wickets so hopefully I can make the adjustment.”<\/p>\n
Listen to the full interview with Moises Henriques on the BBC Stumped podcast.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Madeira’s most famous son is Cristiano Ronaldo, and the island changed the name of its airport in honour…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":853895,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,85],"class_list":["post-854158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cricket","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/854158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=854158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/854158\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/853895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=854158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=854158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=854158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}