Exclusive: Sourav Ganguly interview

Doosra interviewed Sourav Ganguly at Eden Gardens soon after he became the CAB president.

As his wont, dada was two hours late for the interview but he sort of made up with his frank views on Bengal and Indian cricket.

He chewed his nails throughout the interview until he was sufficiently manicured.

The tangled mass of assorted chains and lockets also made an appearance as he undid the first two buttons of his shirt which he, despite occasional provocations, did not take off or swirl.

We produce the interview verbatim below:

Doosra: Ah, here you are. We thought you won’t turn up at all.
Sourav Ganguly: Sorry, I’m late but don’t you think you should have got used to it by now? Bhagwan ke ghar der hain andher nahi. And you forgot they called me God of the off-side?

Doosra: Well, you have a point there, and a gully as well. Anyway, how does it feel to be the boss of Bengal cricket?
SG: Long ago, I asked “aapne dada ko bhule to nahin?” They proved they have not. I thank them for making me CAB boss though, honestly, I expected to lead ICC if not the UN. Anyway, CAB is a good launchpad I guess.

Doosra: So what are your plans for Bengal cricket?
SG: I promise a swift turnaround in Bengal cricket. They won’t have to wait for it like Steve Waugh had to wait for me at toss (bursts into laughter).

Doosra: Many expect you to identify youngsters who would form the nucleus of the future Bengal team, just as you did as Team India captain.
SG: I’m glad you asked this question. Well, I have decided Sehwag, Yuvraj, Kaif, Bhajji and Zaheer will form the core of the future Bengal team.

Doosra: What! But they are nearly done with competitive cricket and they play for other states!
SG: Sorry, I meant Sehwag junior, Yuvraj junior, Bhajji junior...See, it’s an ambitious, unprecedented project. Sehwag is so pissed off with Delhi that he won’t mind even if his son plays for Andaman Nicobar in Ranji Trophy. We have convinced Bhajji to get married soon and talks are on with Yuvraj as well to graduate from pie-chucker to bachelorhood-chucker. These are the baby steps for revival of Bengal cricket, if you know what I mean (winks).

Doosra: Quite radical, one must say.
SG: Yes, and if the plan materialises, it would rob other states of their own talents and enrich Bengal. So you can say I’m killing two Dickie Birds with one Sharon Stone -- I picked it from Sidhu, by the way.

Doosra: Hope you realise that cricket administration is not going to be a bed of roses. There will be people resisting every step. How do you plan to tackle them?
SG: Chappal se nahi, Chappell se maarunga. I will treat them like I used to treat left-arm spinners. You don’t worry about that.

Doosra: And what about Shah Rukh Khan?
SG: What about him?

Doosra: I mean he treated you badly at KKR, stripping you of captaincy then kicking you out of the team. Are we going to see him being banned at Eden Gardens just like he was at Wankhede?
SG: Don’t be silly. We are grown up men. I have put the entire KKR episode behind me. However, other members decided Shah Rukh will have to walk on his hands every time he wants to enter Eden Gardens, balancing an egg on a spoon in his mouth and two lighted candles on his soles. Well, I can’t always ignore majority view, you see. (winks)

Doosra: What are the reforms you have in mind for Bengal cricket?
SG: To improve our running between-the-wicket, we plan to abolish it altogether. We want our future generation batsmen to score only with 4s and 6s. We commissioned a study that suggests taking singles and twos significantly impedes a batsman’s ability to hit 4s and 6s in the same over, apart from greatly enhancing run-out risks. I agree, it’s not worth the risk.

Doosra: There is a rumour that your wife would be roped in as the team’s batting consultant. That’s not true for sure?
SG: What’s wrong with that? Dona will help our batsmen get their footwork right. Against the spinners, they need to come dancing down the track and who better than a professional dancer to teach them how to do it? Also she gets bored at home knitting sweater for me and the kids.

Doosra: And why did CAB choose Salman Khan, of all people, as the brand ambassador?
SG: I suspect you’re not aware of it but taking off shirt is universally recognized as a cathartic exercise, and my experience is no different. Modern cricket is much more stressful and the players need an outlet for their pent-up angst. Look at Salman, he has got into all sorts of troubles and still remains sane because he frequently goes topless. Besides, we wanted to tap into his hit-and-run experience. (winks)

Doosra: What is your immediate target as CAB chief?
SG: To get Ashok Dinda back down to earth. Poor lad, has leapt so high since his last delivery that got awkwardly stuck in one of the trees in maidan. Fire Brigade guys have reached there with ladder etc. Maybe we need to fill his boots with stones to keep him grounded or tether him to the stumps.

Doosra: And what’s your long-term target as the boss of Bengal cricket?
SG: To lead Bengal to a position where BCCI and eventually ICC will beg for CAB membership.

7 Reasons Why Doosra Did Not Win

As you can make out from the conspicuous silence, Doosra did not win at #WIN15.

We did a post-mortem of the debacle and below are the seven reasons why we did not win.

1. We did not win largely because we lost;

2. We lost because we got the vastu of our blog totally wrong;

3. We did not win as our efforts to manipulate the voting system did not work;

4. We lost as we were 'outbribed' by the eventual winner;

5. We did not win because Blue Dart delayed in delivering the ransom letter to jury chairman whose son we had kidnapped;

6. We lost because the chap who won the prize was in possession of an explosive MMS with the jury chairman featuring prominently in it;

finally

7. Doosra doesn't run after awards. We merely walk briskly.

Doosra in Top 5 but...

Bit of comedy. Doosra has made it to the Top 5 in ‪#‎Win15‬ but it's in 'Sports' category even though we nominated it in Humour & Satire section.

On second thought, maybe humour is a new sport and we did not notice when the change was made.

The award will be announced on Sunday. The payment has been made to the jury chairman but to be on the safe side, Doosra has also arranged to get his son kidnapped just to preempt any attempt to outbribe us.

Not being complacent but you can safely say we have covered all the bases.

Leander-Paes-is-older-than-tennis-itself and other startling facts about him

Something significant happened last week in the limestone tunnels in a cave outside Johannesburg.

A group of cavers discovered Homo naledi, a new species of human ancestor.

More significantly – remember you read it here first -- the geologists have discovered that Leander Paes, who won yet another grand slam last week, is older than tennis itself.

Exactly how old is Leander Paes?

Tennis archeologists Doosra spoke to completely dismissed Leander’s claim that he is merely 42. They call it a thousand times bigger scam than Shahid Afridi’s birth certificate.

“He could be a Homo naledi himself,” a geologist said on condition of anonymity, since nobody knows him anyway.

“To give you an idea how old he is, our team in Egypt recently unearthed this set of hieroglyphs. It doesn’t mention the precise time but clearly states that after winning his first grand slam, Leander got a camel, a hunk of gold and spices as prize, as the concept of money was not born yet.”

Leander’s early coach, a Neanderthal interviewed over planchette, could not confirm the player’s actual age but confirmed he was pretty ancient.

“Leander is the only human being to have spotted a dinosaur. He would brag about it to his younger teammates who naturally thought he was nuts. Leander, if my memory serves me right, in fact started tennis playing with the egg of a tyrannosaurus,” he scribbled on the Ouija board.

“Separately, could you please tell Leander he still owes me a bison as training fee? Thanks.”

A timekeeping enthusiast was not so sure about Leander’s age but confirmed a 17th century tennis match featuring the Indian and the nephew of Pope Urban VIII was suspended in unique circumstances.

“It was cloudy, so the sundial was of no use. But official reports must mention set and match timings of a tennis match. So they suspended the match and waited until Galileo came up with the idea of pendulum that would lead to manufacturing of pendulum clock.”

In such a remarkably lengthy career, Leander naturally partnered a significantly large number of people to win those doubles titles.

“According to a moderate estimate, if all his men’s doubles partners form a human chain, they would twice circle Mars,” said a tennis historian.

“And placed end-to-end, his mixed doubles partners would reach the moon and back twice,” he added.

A retired ATP official shared an interesting Leander anecdote.

“In the 1970s, an airline misplaced Leander’s luggage but he simply borrowed a mandolin from the local crowd and went on to win a three-setter,” he said.

“His opponent did complain about the noise when ball struck strings, saying it was far from music to his ears. But the officials said with formidable grunters like Maria Sharapova and the Williams sisters ready to swarm the game, Tennis better got used to such noise.”

Asked why there was no record of it in ATP books, he said: "Rats abounded in our storeroom and a particular rodent, feeling unwell after swallowing a rancid piece of cheese at dinner tore and downed this particular page of ATP records to see if it made him feel better.”

Meanwhile, a physicist at the ISRO explained Leander’s split with long-time doubles partner Mahesh Bhupathi.

“The real reason behind the split is not ego clash but laws of physics,” he said, stuffing his nostrils with radioactive snuff.

“Remember how they used to celebrate? Yes, chest-bumping. Once they bumped with so much force that the velocity sent them flying in opposite directions, putting between them so large a distance that they could never come together.”

Doosra is not in a position to independently verify these claims and only a chump would allow facts kill a good story.

No Nobel yet, Doosra nominated for BlogAdda ‪Blogging Award instead

Dear fellow Oxygen guzzlers,

Doosra has been nominated for the BlogAdda ‪‎Blogging Award in the Humour & Satire category, though I expected Nobel in Literature, to be honest.

In an ideal world, I would have simply stuffed the jury's pocket and walked away with the award. But, like most of you, I don't keep small change.

The other option was to kidnap the 11 other bloggers who have been shortlisted and demand in ransom that they shut down their blogs. There is significant fun in it, I'm told, but the lack of kidnapping experience leaves me severely handicapped.

Meanwhile, since you can't cook Maggi anymore and wondering what to do with those spare two minutes, here is a gilt-edged opportunity for you to do what you've been anyway doing all along -- liking Doosra.

Apparently they will combine jury and public votes before giving the award to the jury chairman's nephew.


Regards

10 Predictions

* Every Indian village will get its own CCD by 2019;

* Investigation will eventually reveal Indrani Mukherjee was born after she married herself;

* Agencies supplying freelance hunger strikers will soon be a reality;

* India and Pakistan will fight the next war not over Kashmir but over Rameez Raja -- each insisting the other keeps him;

* People who begin sentence with "Basically" would be doubly taxed;

* India's cricket clout will grow so much that ICC will have to apply for BCCI membership;

* iPhone will emerge as a new monotheistic religion;

* People who use "Password" as their password will be publicly shamed;

* Launching satellites through ISRO will be cheaper than travelling from Gurgaon to Noida by Uber/Ola;

* Audrey Hepburn will return from the dead to tell us that all the black-and-white photographs of hers flooding social media are fake.

(Here are "15 Predictions")

(Here are "15 More Predictions")