New Delhi: When US President Donald Trump made a Greenland-Iceland gaffe at Davos, one of the first to take a stinging dig was the Iceland Cricket Association.
“The orange one says Iceland has already cost the US a lot of money. But we have peace, gender equality, and cricketers who play for the love of the game. We have no need to seize any overseas players in the interests of our batting security,” they wrote quite patriotically on their X handle. And the world was in splits.
They followed up with a savage geography lesson and a generous dose of cold North Atlantic sarcasm—Iceland is a “volcanic rock in the north Atlantic surrounded by insignificant islands that don’t play cricket”.
They similarly chimed in during Pakistan T20 boycott drama. As India’s neighbour dilly-dallied, the ICA hilariously announced they “aren’t available to replace Pakistan” in the T20 World Cup, one of the reasons being that their “captain, a professional baker, needs to attend to his oven”.
From world politics to cricket to the Northern Lights (or “cheap floodlights over Reykjavík”, check their latest X post), ICA has delighted social media users with their deadpan delivery, spiffy swipes, and self-deprecating humour.
We leave you for today with more evening shots of cheap floodlights over Reykjavík. pic.twitter.com/Zj0uDR02Ue
— Iceland Cricket (@icelandcricket) February 11, 2026
But who is the face behind their X handle? He’s not just a genius at putting a witty spin on words. It’s David Cook, secretary of the Icelandic Cricket Association and a spin bowler on the country’s national team.
“We are the only association which is trying to be funny, deliberately. Icelandic humour is quite dark and sarcastic,” Cook tells ThePrint in a Zoom interaction, explaining how half a year of darkness in Iceland has shaped the team’s distinctive online voice.
“We spend almost half the year in darkness, a lot of darkness. So the Icelandic mindset is one of sarcasm.”
Originally from England, Cook moved to Iceland 15 years ago to pursue higher studies in environmental natural resources and is now an Icelandic citizen. His cricket-related jobs are side hustles, he has a PhD, and specialises in renewable energy and sustainability and environment economics.
Behind the viral humour, lies a deliberate strategy. Iceland Cricket has caught the attention of the global cricketing community in the past few years, but does not yet hold ICC Associate status.
Cook openly acknowledges that their sarcasm has done more to put Iceland Cricket on the map than their performances on the field. Although the long-term goal is to secure ICC recognition by around 2030, the team has no intention of toning down its trademark humour.
“People are more interested in our opinions than our cricket and in the fact that we say things other boards wouldn’t dare to,” says Cook, who took over the X handle four-and-a-half years ago, when it had around 20,000 followers. Today, that number has crossed 1.67 lakh.
Cook says they aren’t afraid of speaking their mind. After all, as he puts it, they are “a long way from everyone else on a remote volcanic rock in the North Atlantic”.
“We have nothing to lose,” he adds, explaining that Iceland is taking an unconventional route, “We’re doing it the other way around, first building a fan base, and then building the team.”
‘A little disappointed’ with Pakistan
Cook says he was definitely “a little disappointed” when Pakistan agreed to play against India because Iceland could have got a chance to make their ICC debut. According to him, Pakistan were always going to play India in Colombo, hence, he called their U-turn “unforfeiture”.
“Whenever India and Pakistan meet, it becomes as much a geopolitical event as a sporting contest. The controversy has taken attention away from the cricket itself,” he says.
As a fan, Cook adds that he would much rather see the two nations playing regular bilateral ODI (one-day international) and Test series.
“That would be fantastic for cricket,” he says, though admitting that such contests currently seem possible only at World Cups, and even that is challenging. For now, he believes, “the storm has passed”.
Had things played in their favour, Cook says it would have been interesting to just see the reaction of cricket fans to an India vs Iceland clash. “How much attention would we have gotten if we had replaced Pakistan? Would all those people, who bought tickets, turned up?”
Cook is realistic in ranking Iceland’s performance. He said that currently, Iceland would rank somewhere between 75-80, and it’s largely because their batting lets them down. Bowling and fielding, according to him, are their area of expertise.
When asked to pick his favourite between India and Pakistan in Sunday’s clash, Cook, contrary to his not-so-diplomatic X posts, takes a completely neutral stand. “May the worst team lose.” However, he says a final between India and England would be his ideal pick.
Addressing Iceland Cricket’s viral offer to step in as replacement for Pakistan when the latter had initially threatened to boycott matches against India, Cook maintains that they were, in their own way, suggesting themselves as a viable alternative.
Since Scotland were chosen to replace Bangladesh based on rankings, Cook jokes that Iceland should have been next in line, at least by their own metric of having the most X followers among teams ranked after Scotland.
But reality quickly intervened. Getting a squad to Colombo at short notice is no simple task when every player has a full-time job.
Iceland’s skipper Dushan Bandara, is a professional baker. The squad also includes taxi drivers, restaurant workers, university staff, investment professionals and entertainers. In that sense, Iceland are no different from other emerging teams like the USA and Italy, where players juggle professions like pizza delivery or corporate jobs alongside cricket.
Notably, around half the players in the Iceland squad are of Indian origin. It also features individuals from Sri Lanka, South Africa, England, West Indies, Australia and other cricketing nations. In the early days, one of the biggest challenges was bringing together players accustomed to different formats and traditions of the game.
“People are all used to all different forms of cricket. When I was in England, it was Sunday and Saturday cricket, 40-50 overs a side,” he says.
Iceland opted primarily for T20 cricket, a shorter format that fits around players’ full-time jobs.
Serious work behind social media comedy
Iceland’s cricketing journey has been steady but far from easy. Cricket began to take more formal shape around 2014-15, when a growing expatriate population helped establish structured clubs. Today, the country has five clubs and a national team, modest numbers by global standards, but significant for a nation of Iceland’s size.
All five clubs organise their own training sessions, especially during the long winter months when outdoor cricket is impossible. With temperatures hovering around zero degrees, players train indoors in sports halls.
Cook himself trains three hours every Sunday just to stay match-ready. Once summer arrives, preparations only intensify. The national side holds regular training sessions and practice matches, with key tournaments such as the Euro Cup in Poland lined up.
This year also marks what Cook calls Iceland’s “biggest-ever cricket event”, a visit from the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC), custodians of the Laws of Cricket.
The MCC will play three matches in Iceland, a T20, a 50-over and a 40-over game, and Cook says hosting a team of that stature is a major milestone.
Asked whether Iceland would like to host India, he says, laughing, that they would happily welcome even India’s “1000th best team”, though seeing players like Virat Kohli, Rishabh Pant or Jasprit Bumrah, whom he called his favourite this season, in Iceland would be extraordinary.
He even recalled that Sachin Tendulkar once visited Iceland 16 years ago to play golf, at a time when hardly anyone there recognised him, long before cricket had begun to take root in the country. “It’s a shame,” he says.
That said, finances are a big issue for Iceland Cricket. They are still not an ICC Associate member, hence, receive no funding, despite gradually meeting the required criteria. Cook believes the process would move much faster if the ICC offered incremental support, funding nations as they tick off individual requirements.
“This will help in developing women’s cricket and youth cricket competitions, which is what we have to do to get the ICC Associate membership. So that part we feel is quite unfair. However, we deal with it,” he says.
Cook highlighted that the council shouldn’t forget its responsibility to make the sport grow across the world, not just in some countries, therefore their support to smaller nations is crucial. He later added that the ICC needs more of their “tweet therapy”.
Dear @ICC,
It is with a heavy heart that we now announce our unavailability to replace Pakistan in the upcoming T20 World Cup. Regardless of whether they now withdraw, the short timescales ensure it is impossible for our squad to prepare in the professional manner necessary to…
— Iceland Cricket (@icelandcricket) January 29, 2026
“We should take over their account one day. Things will change,” he says.
For now, they rely on their own fundraising efforts. Their X account has become an effective promotional tool, and they have even secured a sponsor for the Islensk Premier League, Iceland’s domestic T20 competition.
Infrastructure remains another big hurdle. The outdoor season lasts barely three to four months a year, and cricket must compete with more established sports in what is already a sports-obsessed nation.
Securing domestic grants for youth development is an ongoing effort, but building better facilities, dedicated grounds, improved pitches and netting infrastructure, continues to be the association’s most pressing and persistent challenge.
“So, for all the comedy, we do actually do things seriously behind the scenes,” Cook adds.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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