Yusuf-erman!

As mild-mannered as Clarke Kent, as lethal as Kent’s more famous persona!

Y would be the man his wise captain would send to rescue his girl friend and Y would return with the girl unscathed.

Like Superman, Y’s got flight, when he’s bowling. Like Superman, he’s vulnerable only to magic but then Y has the chief sorcerer on his side, as his captain!

Y has got x-ray vision and can see through a bowler’s mind, worse than being seen through garments.

His telescopic view tells him the bowler’s grip. The super-speed of the wood he wields can launch any hunk of leather in an orbit somewhere in the solar system.

Witnesses vouch, at times he stays static in the crease and his sheer will power does it for him!

RP Singh rolled up his jersey to flash his ugly hairy chest. Had Y done so, nobody would have missed a stylized Y shield on his chest.

He can walk on water, split sea and halve an atom. Possibly he can usher us out of recession too.

Superman is passé. Hail Yusuf-er Man.

Even better, he doesn’t wear his undies outside!

Pix: AFP Photo

In pursuit of the Fake IPL Player

At times, you have to shrug off inertia, wriggle yourself out of the comfort of your lair and even if reluctantly, respond to the call of the world.

And this was no fiddle-faddle after all.

The hitherto unflappable Barack Obama had grown fidgety; passer byes vouched there was a blood-curdling upheaval in Jade Goody’s grave in the Epping Forest; and even the stony Tiger Woods had started waggling!

It was as if the sky had dropped, hanging like a glass ceiling just above the head of a claustrophobe world which is struggling to breath in an air thick with suspense.

Who is this Fake IPL Player raking all the KKR muck?

My first suspect was Aamir Khan’s dog, which apparently shares its name with Shah Rukh Khan. Maybe spurred by its owner, the canine was out to deface...I mean defame...his namesake.

Dog running blog!

Well, YouTube is infested with videos of dogs using iPods. Trust me, some of them are more techno-savvy than most of us.

And there is a plausible explanation of the dog’s access to KKR dressing room dopes as well. Possibly it was his Colonial Cousin in SA, that same black mongrel which interrupted CSK-MI match, which is supplying him the fodder for thought!

So I ventured to get it from the horse’s...I mean dog’s...mouth but was stopped at the gate by Aamir himself.

“Have you voted? Show me your finger. Hey, what do you think of yourself, Greg Chappell? This is no Kolkata either. Show me the other one.”

Satisfied, he let me in and I politely asked the canine “Are you the Fake IPL Player?”

“Grrrrrrrrr.”

I asked Aamir to decode it but the Dr Dolittle did little other than leaving me with a muddier mind.

“From the angle of his erect ears and tail and the thickness of the saliva dripping from his quadrilateral tongue and considering the fact that he has been starving for the last three days...”

Before he had finished, I showed him a clean pair of heels and was back on the road, panting and gasping.

“It’s P Chidambaram, silly”. I heard the whisper but couldn’t see anyone in my eyeshot.

Well, not an impossibility altogether. In fact some felt it was PC who straight-drove IPL out of the country.

I sought and surprisingly got an appointment with him! Well, election time is the only time when you have access to the politicians. But his secretary made me do an MF Hussain and take my shoes off before letting me in and PC’s corrugated forehead smoothened only after he had inspected my feet.

“Sir, are you the Fake IPL Player?” I asked timidly.

“Don’t be silly. I’m too busy with election duty. Well, if you suspect someone in the cabinet, it could be Dr Ramadoss.”

Now that was an eye-opener! Indeed, every time SRK smoked, Ramadoss fumed!

“Hello, Dr Ramadoss?”

“Yes, speaking.”

“Sir, are you the Fake IPL Player writing all those dirty stuff about SRK?”

“You nitwit, I would use a log rather than a blog when dealing with that *&%$#@,” he hung up.

Well, I know it doesn't augur well for the world bu I’m afraid, Obama will continue to fidget for some more time.

Pix: Jess Bucchino, ‘The Wizard of Draws’

7 reasons why Bangalore Royal Challengers won’t win IPL II

1. Spirit is volatile and it doesn’t last the whole nine yards;

2. Vijay Mallya has got the right men but in wrong places. For instance, Adrian Sutil spins more than Anil Kumble, while Rahul Dravid drives better than Giancarlo Fisichella;

3. You don’t open a cola bottle with Praveen Kumar but BRC can open their batting with him!

4. Ray Jennings has complained to Mallya that Jesse Ryder has not attended a single net session and is often spotted flirting with a particular Mischief Gal;

5. BRC looked a Test team in IPL I and resembles an ODI outfit in IPL II. In other words, the T20 metamorphosis is still some distance away;

6. Virat Kohli has an ego problem with spinning balls;

7. Business magnates have a penchant for bouncing cricketers’ WAGs on their knees – medics call it Stanford Syndrome -- and that explains the hurry of the BRC players to return to the pavilion.

Crystal ball gazing: Strategy Breaks in IPL II

Purists have already booked their preferred burial place but the thing ticking inside Lalit Modi’s skull can't wait to put them to sleep. Cricket luddites can go and fly a kite, Strategy Breaks are here to stay! At least till May 24.

Fuhrer Modi decrees there will be a seven-and-half minute break after every 10 overs so that Virender Sehwag can pop on your screen with a wig, MS Dhoni peddle a pesticide in bottle and Sachin Tendulkar try to convince about a bank that you just can't bank on.

Crystal ball gazing can be as much a puerile pleasure as cricket ball gazing and Doosra predicts how the following seven players would use the Strategy Breaks during IPL II:

1. Rahul Dravid: Having hit a miscued six before the break, he would shrink apologetically in his boots and shudder at the very thought of looking at himself in the mirror after this felony;

2. Harbhajan Singh: Banished to the solitude of deep third man, Bhajji would chase terrified teammates and empty his pocket to convince them that he has no hit-list this year;

3. MS Dhoni: Will rush to the coiffeur waiting just outside the rope for a new haircut resembling his wagon wheel;

4. Andrew Flintoff: Will inform Vijay Mallya about his readiness to join Bangalore Royal Challengers provided he is offered the blind-tasting job at any of his breweries for the rest of the year.

5. Ashok Dinda: Will be frogmarched off the ground for scratching all four of his quibbling Knight Riders captains;

6. Sourav Ganguly: Of them all, only Dada would be strategizing. He will tell L R Shukla, Wriddhiman Saha and Debabrata Das exactly how much they would get for switching off the dressing room light and putting a sack over John Buchanan’s head so that he can bean the Aussie.

7. Shane Warne: Would fish out his cell and frantically type a series of lewd text messages for plump British nurses before pressing the wrong button and sending it instead to his estranged wife Simone.

EXCLUSIVE: Benched players complain to BCCI against Dhoni!

Doosra can safely reveal to its readers that things are rather rummy and not chummy in Team India camp. Just home after getting two huge monkeys off his back, poor Midas Singh Dhoni is blissfully unaware of the storm that has been brewing right under his nose since the Test series in New Zealand.

Insiders said the otherwise quiet quartet of L Balaji, Dhawal Kulkarni, Amit Mishra and Murali Vijay are signatory to a note of dissent that has reached BCCI President Shashank Manohar.

In the letter, the Fuming Four have accused Dhoni of usurping credits and inquired if a privilege motion could be introduced in the next parliament session against MSD for misleading the gullible nation.

Sources confirmed that the miffed foursome took the snub in NZ in their stride and was happy twiddling thumb, flirting with the same hotel receptionist, bargaining at the nearest fixed price showroom and playing Sudoku to maintain fitness in case of an emergency that might required them back in the field.

But what eventually ticked them off is Dhoni's unabashed bragging about how he and his team set a new benchmark in New Zealand.

"Factually speaking, it’s a shameless act of hijacking credits on Dhoni’s part while the whole world knows it was the four of us, who set the actual benchmarks. All we did in New Zealand was to warm the bench till there was obvious marks on it and here you have Dhoni making outrageous claims about setting the benchmark!" the irate players scribbled.

"As testimonials, we are separately parceling you chunks of the benches from Hamilton, Napier and Wellington bearing the marks of our posteriors and we encourage you to summon all four of us and Dhoni and find out who those benchmarks belong to," the letter read.

BCCI sources reckon both Dhoni and the miffed foursome are in for some dressing down soon.

Pix: Caricature by Harini

Revealed: English selectors can’t think out of the boxers!

As if we needed evidence, England selectors proved they can’t think out of the box and boxers as well. Considering Claire Taylor's rich vein of success vis-à-vis the men team's vulgar World Cup record, they actually needed her most in the other T20 side and here's why:

1. She is more masculine than say, Stuart Broad;

2. Her T20 strike rate is better than Ian Bell’s;

3. She is fitter than Samit Patel, keeps better than Matt ‘Mint-With-the-Hole’ Prior and doesn’t get homesick like Steve Harmison;

4. When you can deal with players from Essex, Sussex, even Middlesex and Godknowswhatsex, why can't accommodate the opposite sex?

5. When and if Alastair Cook returns to the side, he can borrow Taylor’s mascara;

6. Claire has studied maths at Oxford which would not only come handy during the Duckworth-Lewis mumbo-jumbo but also can be a safeguard against John Dyson’s calculia if Dyson takes over as England coach; and finally

7. Unlike Pietersen the Peacock, she won’t seek leave midway through a tournament to see her spouse dance on telly;
Pix: Getty Images

Bored Member Meeting on Apr 3 @ Defence Colony

April 3 meant we were two days too late. Still it was well nigh an achievement when five shadowy figures walked into a Defence Colony bar, in bits and pieces, to fret about cricket and blogging.

The Gaurav-Pankaj alter-ego had been joined by golf's own Quisling Nikhil and subsequently the most harmless of the lot, yours truly.

If Argus had eyes all over his body in Greek mythology, Gaurav had hands all over his. It seemed hundreds of spooky fielders were running around to catch a skier with only their raised arms visible to the eyes.

It was somewhere in between unreal and surreal, man!

Pankaj sat in a snug black shirt, modelling his own product, I reckoned. He confided that he has already emotionally blackmailed his toddling daughter and armtwisted the office oddjobber to contribute to his blog. He said he has plans to widen the dragnet, which basically means no one is safe anymore in Delhi.

Nikhil sat across, in a white T-shirt, all along trying to convince us that the caricature in his chest was MS Dhoni. To our credit, we eventually relented.

Like tradition-bound Bollywood heroes, John's was a delayed entry. But then you have to make concessions for someone who lent his name to John Abraham. Soon the spirit of the other John – Lenon -- possessed him for a while and he hummed a few lines, which unfortunately sunk in the surrounding din before reaching out ears. John dazzled in a shirt with bold stripes, apparently the same ones he has earned as a legal eagle.

In between, John and Pankaj vanished, which I initially mistook for a token walk-out to protest a Bored member’s obsession with mango juice. Later it transpired, they had gone out to get Anbumani Ramadoss’ goat, which was grazing outside.

Gaurav made a highly motivating speech, John provided insightful inputs, Pankaj the technical know-how and Nikhil pledged his absolute loyalty.

And all along, I kept nodding my head till it threatened to come off my shoulder. We finally dispersed just when the meeting threatened to spill over to the next day, thoroughly convinced that cricket's biggest revolution was just one post away.

IPL fantasy becomes a rewarding exercise!

Post-IPL, I often wondered what if Andrew Flintoff joined Kolkata Knight Riders. Would he and Sourav Ganguly relive the Lancashire dressing room drama, going shirty and possibly shirtless too? Or is it actually Shah Rukh Khan who would eventually lose his shirt in such a possibility?

Similarly, I wonder how many, if at all, teeth John Buchanan would have retained had he been the Rajasthan Royals coach and popped the multiple-captain theory to Shane Warne!

Wait before you dub me a loony. Let me tell you I’m not the only one to indulge in IPL fantasy. Evidences suggest it’s a systematic disorder which is spreading like a rash among those smitten by the T20 format of the game.

Those who goes by my track record and steadfastly refuses to believe me, sample Fantasy Cricket (FC). And no, it is in no way linked to Kentucky Fried Chicken. Fortunately at FC, you don’t need to be either a liquor baron, or a Forbes-rated magnate, or a Bollywood actor or at least her boyfriend to own a team. Just create a profile, get a budget, pick a squad and pit your brain against fellow T20 lunatics.

If winning weekly IPL team jerseys doesn’t appeal to you, the grand prize of ticket for two to the ICC T20 World Cup might. And the guys running the league apparently won’t object if your partner is Geoff Boycott’s mother, Ian Botham’s mother-in-law, the girl friend of your best friend, daughter of your landlord or even your maid servant!

And those who consider T20 as a disgrace to humanity and would rather spend the time reading about Andrew Symonds’ fishing, Kevin Pietersen’s wife or Suzie Bates’ diet, can anyway home in on Cricket News here.