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 things since my last post

1. MS Dhoni lost his bachelorhood and -- I want you to follow me here closely -- felt it was not safe enough for his wife to travel to Sri Lanka in the same flight with his teammates;

2. Surprisingly none of the bar brawl reports had any mention of Yuvraj Singh;

3. ICC President Sharad Pawar finally took over as India's Agriculture Minister. Well, it maybe the other way round, I'm told;

4. Spat at, Suleiman Benn refused to exchange saliva with Dale Steyn, preferring the rather dull method of gatecrashing in the dressing room and alluding to the female members of Steyn's family;

5. Muralitharan has promised to stop scaring kids with his eyeball-popping antics, at least in Tests. Of the current lot, he said, only Harbhajan can make his eyes spring out of socket like that, to which Bhajji said it was very kind of him to say so;

6. It's for sons to follow in their father's footsteps but Geoff Marsh did it other way round when he joined IPL as Pune Warrior's coach. Now only the pet dog of the Marsh family remains unemployed but IPL governing council assured they would right that wrong soon;

7. Ajantha Mendis was axed from Lankan team for his indifferent attitudes to teammates. He flunked the how-much-you-know-your-teammate test where he was asked to write Chanaka Welegedara's full name and he came up with this lame excuse of running out of ink. For the uninitiated, Welegedara's full name is Uda Walawwe Mahim Bandaralage Chanaka Asanga Welegedara.

(P.S. Tried my hand at Diski dance, played a soccer match as part of world’s first Indian-Argentine-SAfrican MIXED team, watched Germany-Argentina game on a giant screen at St George’s Park, met Port Elizabeth’s Mother Teresa and returned home without being mugged. That sums up my FIFA World Cup experience in Port Elizabeth.)

IPL, a lexicographer’s perspective

Had Samuel Johnson or Noah Webster been around, it would have spared me the trouble. Since they are not, I guess someone has to step in, spit on his palms and get on with the job.

So here are seven IPL words which Doosra believes should straightaway be in the lexicons.
 

1. Laliterature (la-lit-ray-chur): any text rich with recurring phrases like ‘multi-million-dollar deal’, ‘tender’, ‘rights’, ‘franchise’ etc. (e.g. The eunuchs who came to listen to Pranab Mukherjee’s budget were disappointed, admitting they could not make heads or tails of the Finance Minister’s laliterature.)
 

2. Yusuffering (yu-suff-ring): See-saw, yo-yoing. (e.g. Elin Nordegren finally handed Tiger Woods his hat, saying the golfer’s yusuffering fidelity was to be blamed for their parting.)
 

3. Mandiraxed (man-di-raxd): Dumped unceremoniously. (e.g. Sarah Palin says she is clueless why Barack Obama mandiraxed her and fell for that Chicago lamppost called Michelle.)
 

4. Yuvinile (yuv-nael): Excessive penchant for nightlife. (e.g. ‘Shoaib Akhtar had all the ingredients to be a great bowler but for his yuvinile indiscretions,’ rued Imran Khan.)
 

5. Shilparasites (shil-para-saets): gatecrashing relatives of your lady boss. (e.g. I had invited only my boss in my anniversary but she turned up with hordes of her freeloading shilparasites.)
 

6. Gangulyse (gang-u-lies): revive, mend. (e.g. John Terry’s tormented wife today made it clear that no amount of counseling can gangulyse her relation with her Casanova husband.)
 

7. Sehwagon Wheel: A wagon wheel where 4s and 6s far outnumber 1s and 2s. (e.g. Arjun Tendulkar’s Sehwagon Wheel reassured us that the youngster is following in his father’s footsteps.)

Why you need to think twice before getting chummy with Yuvi

What do you do on your birthday?

Majority of the populace tends to throw a party in the evening. Blowing some timid candles here, cutting an innocuous cake there, if you know what I mean.

And then you realise that the fiends who run the local bakery have sold you down the river and gift-wrapped what is essentially glorified cow dung, the mass consumption of which is liable to invite hardball genocide charges.

Too late to pencil in a substitute, you figure out the lone purpose that the crystalised bovine excreta can serve under the circumstances. So you astutely declare open the face-smudging ceremony, a microcosm of the dog-eat-dog world we live in.

Eggs all over face – for that is supposed to be the binding agent in a cake – everyone is out to deface every map in circulation and you grope in vain for that elusive face-saver.

From fitness point of view, it's quite a calorie-combusting exercise and the verve and vim of the frolic party nosedive once they have completed the gamut of faces on offer.

This is invariably followed by generous knocking back of the liquor on offer and benevolent wolfing down of the munchables around.

A clandestine stocktaking of the gifts and a formal vote of thanks precede the dropping of the curtain and that is by and large how an average birthday party goes.

But then some people have other ideas.

For instance, Yuvi is not content just being the pie-chucker, as Kevin Pietersen had once classified him.

History witness, Yuvi takes his birthday bash quite seriously, and literally as well.

On his 25th birthday party, Yuvi bashed one of the frolickers, apparently because he had the guts and gall to be his namesake.

On his 28th, Yuvi bashed a Lankan side which had at least two of his Kings XI Punjab pals in it.

Well, lack of data on his other birthday bashes sort of undermine the credibility of this study but since prevention is often better than cure, think twice before you gate matey with him.

For it comes with that 'at-your-own-peril' tag.

Introducing Tendulkar, the grandpa!

First he was boy wonder who looked skywards in search of his deceased father whenever he hit a ton. Then he fathered Arjun and Sara and announced on telly "Mai bhi ek pitaa hun" (I'm also a father).

Doosra knows he is a godfather as well, to some of his younger teammates. But what we did not know, till last night, is that he is a grandfather too, at the tender age of 36!

Yuvraj Singh let the cat out of the bag.

"We have started calling him grandfather," Yuvraj said.

"He is an amazing man and I don't think any other player can go on to play for 20 years or more likle he has," Yuvraj gushed.

7 Reasons why India lost Champions Trophy

1. Two overs and a wicket. Let's face it, MS Dhoni underbowled himself;

2. The tackiness of the trophy didn't tinkle Dhoni's sense of aesthetics;

3. Lalit Modi had warned Dhoni & Co of dire consequences if they overdid things in Champions Trophy and picked up injuries that would jeopardise their Champions League participation;

4. The sight of IPL teammates in rival camps left Dhoni's men with the same dilemma that had crippled Arjuna in Kurukshetra. Alas, there was no Krishna to talk the Indians out of their predicament;

5. Virat Kohli's batting isn't as formidable as his visa office contacts which make him an obvious substitute whenever a teammate twists ankle or hurts groin;

6. Continuing with the Kohli factor, he replaced Gautam Gambhir (now vice captain) in Sri Lanka and Yuvraj Singh (original vice captain) in South Africa. At this rate, he would replace Dhoni against Australia and this very threat perception explains Dhoni's dud bat in South Africa;

7. Finally, Gary Kirsten may believe otherwise but compulsory reading of abridged Kama Sutra is not among the 100 Ways To Win A Cricket Tournament.

The Seven...hic...Samurai

Let's give the dude his due. Andrew Symonds is a blogger's delight. An English-born Australian cricketer with West Indian roots with follies of all three ethnicities stuffed inside the 1.87m frame.

Now beat that.

So much so that I don’t mind trading Sachin Tendulkar for Symonds.

Come on, Tendulkar can’t be a debater’s delight. He evokes awe, not argument. He is too polite to polarize and I’ve always been intrigued more by the horn of the devil than the halo of the saint.

Once again, Symonds provided me the fodder for thought and here goes a list of seven cricketers who, I suspect, could have been wine bottle labels in their previous birth.

1. Andrew Symonds: The undisputed Baron of Booze, the Lord of Liquor, the al-Khalifa of al-cohol. There was not a rehab strong enough to bottle up his high spirit;

2. David Boon: His incredible feat of guzzling 52 cans of beer on a flight from Sydney to London is still intact. Pity that Symonds had to go when Boon is part of Australia’s selection panel. Smacks of lack of fellow-feeling somewhere.

3. Andrew Flintoff: Cork high and bottle deep, Flintoff discovered the alcoholic properties of the Caribbean Sea during 2007 World Cup and was about to drain it before sentries came to the sea’s rescue and an environmental disaster was averted.

4. Jesse Ryder: A firm believer that Bacchus airdropped him on dry earth with a specific purpose. Takes the opener’s job seriously even outside the field. Royal Challengers stats suggest no one opened more cans and bottles than Ryder in IPL II.

5. Herschelle Gibbs: Another rehab-proof alcoholic. One of his neighbours once refused his offer to donate blood fearing it might make him tipsy.

6. Praveen Kumar: Proudly carrying the tri-colour. To his credit, he doesn’t get into drunken brawl unless the other guy is a doctor.

7. Yuvraj Singh: When intoxicated, has a peculiar penchant of attacking his namesake, a tendency that can be traced to the sheer self-detest cemented in his subconscious.

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