SCOOP: International Cricket-Stricken Animals’ Conclave

While the chumps in the mainstream media sedulously twiddled their thumbs in the comfort of their air-conditioned offices, Doosra risked life to get you an exclusive.

An agitated herd of angry animals recently had a clandestine meeting where they blasted cricket and cricketers for making their life miserable.

Here are exclusive excerpts from the Inaugural International Cricket-Stricken Animals' Conclave:

1. Crocodile (S Africa): Guys, as you all know, one can't ignore hygiene these days. After you had a sumptuous deer for lunch, all you want is to muse open-mouthed, while those birds clean your teeth. But peace is never on us. Before you know what is what, you suddenly find yourself in a tangle with Dale Steyn, who insists this is the best way to prepare for a series against Australia. I feel like crying but can't because you'd say I'm shedding crocodile tears.

2. Cat (England): Well, I would say physical pain is bearable but what about mental agony? By the way, I’m Max and I die hundred deaths every time I say Graeme Swann owns me. Cops caught the bugger drink-driving and you know what the !@#$%^&* told them? He said he was tight but had to drive to buy a screwdriver and get me out of a trap! Trap my foot, have you heard a sillier excuse?

3. Mosquito(Sri Lanka): I can sympathise with you. Frankly speaking, I've lost my faith in humanity as a whole. I bit Yuvraj Singh the other day and gifted Virat Kohli a place in the playing XI. Well, one does not expect a drop of blood but a word of acknowledgment would surely not have been amiss? But what you get in the pre-match interview? Not a single word of gratitude from Kohli! This new generation, just taking things for granted.

4. Cricket: I seriously feel you guys are overreacting. All you whine about is one-off incident. What about the daily humiliation we go through? Our grasshopper cousins have already started making fun of us. A small cricket is ridiculed as T20, a bigger one called a Test…I wonder what the world is coming to!

5. Cockroach (Mohali): See, I'm not the Paris Hilton type, always publicity-hungry. Apart from occasionally appearing from nowhere to scare the hell out of the girls, we are a self-effacing community. Once I mistaken trod on Chris Broad's food and he made such a hue and cry, mentioning it in the ICC Match Referee's report. It brought so much of unwanted publicity that I had to kiss my private life goodbye.

6. Donkey (Pakistan): Don't you guys think that all these sound simple whining when compared to the treatment we were subjected to? Butt, Asif and Aamer filled their boots and we were pelted! We have been around for donkey’s years but I can tell you we never had to go through such mental agony and physical pain put together.

7. Calf (Ranchi): I can tell you the life of a calf is not an easy one when you live in Ranchi. Do you have any idea how starvation death looms large over our community? And all because Dhoni has got this silly idea in his fat head that he has to guzzle four litter milk a day to stay fit! I hope you don't mind but all these talk of mental agony and unwanted publicity is pure gibberish when the very existence of me and my cousins is at stake.

7 Flintoff tit-bits

1. Here is a scoop! In his Test swansong at Oval, wonky Flintoff is toying with the idea of going Sohail Tanvir, i.e. bowling off the wrong, if that helps his case! England think-tank has already okayed it, saying it's upto Flintoff to put his foot down, whichever he prefers. They said as a team, England doesn't want to put a foot wrong and hence it's imperative that Flintoff puts his best, and fitter, foot forward. Well, the bottomline is -- Australia should be wrong-footed in Oval.

2. Flintoff believes NASA is an overrated dud. At best, it's America's answer to the Sivakasi firework factories. The Game Ready Wrap, which allegedly uses NASA spacesuit technology, proved an outright lemon and could not heal Flintoff's ankle. It was such a junk that even Flintoff's dog rejected it, spitting it out after a thorough chewing failed to excite its gastric juices;

3. Flintoff does not Twitter a la Phillip Hughes, Graeme Swann or James 'a bit of a pussy' Anderson. In all likelihood, he doesn't Facebook or Orkut either. Else, his Headingley axing would have been in the public domain long before;

4. Sifting the CVs, Flintoff didn't go beyond the name before appointing Chubby Chandler his agent;

5. Part-fit Flintoff, Flintoff basically, owes his Edgebaston selection to the met office. Torrential rain was predicted for Edgebaston and England think-tank could not afford to ignore Freddie, the lone England cricketer around with a decent experience of rowing pedalos;

6. England and Wales Cricket Board is so worried about his fragile knee that they believe even a figurative knee-jerk reaction on Flintoff's part may aggravate the injury;

7. On the home front, a cautious ECB has urged Freddie's kids to understand the gravity of the situation and learn the multiplication tables strictly at their mother's knee.

Pix: Getty Images

Ashes: Food for thought

So England has a Cook (of mascara fame), Onions, a Swan with an extra N and Collingwood for firewood.

Their head chef Andy Flower is a worried man after told that it sounds like a perfect recipe for disaster.

Australia, on their part, has arrived in England with an entire McDonald!

I have never tasted Ashes but this one promises to be a finger-licking one!

Dyscalculia hits cricket!

ICC surely can't afford to bury its head into the Dubai desert. An unprecedented outbreak of Dyscalculia has already hit Australia and England and unless drastic steps are taken, it might reach Matthew Hayden's Third World as well!

For the uninitiated, Dyscalculia implies mathematical reasoning difficulties as well as troubles with arithmetic operations.

If I always felt cricket is the last resort of the mathematically retarded, I simply have no reason to believe otherwise.

Sample these:

1. Doug Bollinger (Aus): "If I happen to play I'll put in 150,000 percent."

# Observation: Acute case of Dyscalculia, beyond treatment.

2. Andrew Strauss (Eng): "I have no doubt that he (Pietersen) will go to the West Indies and get millions of runs."

# Observation: Considering that the Poms will play 4 Tests and 5 ODIs in the West Indies, medics believe though it has reached alarming stage in Strauss' case, all hopes are not lost yet. Sustained therapy might help him come out of it. Frankly speaking, England captaincy has done worse to others.

3. Graeme Swann: "I'm convinced he's (Pietersen) going to score thousands (of runs) on this (West Indies) trip."

# Observation: Early symptoms, fair chance of recovery. Treatment should start at once. One more thing. Swann clearly does not hold KP in as high esteem as Strauss does. Note how millions became thousands.

P.S. Talking about Dyscalculia, this one from Yogi Berra is my all-time favourite: "Baseball is 90 percent mental, the other half is physical." Alas, cricket is yet to get its Yogi Berra. And for God’s sake, Sidhuism is no match to Yogiism. Once asked why he no longer visited a popular restaurant, the Yankees legend said "Nobody goes there no more; it's too crowded!" But then the same guy told us "It isn’t over till it’s over."

Pix