Anaconda bites Warne: 5 Conspiracy Theories

One hears that Shane Warne, bored with retirement, has gone ahead and got his head bitten by an anaconda on a reality show.

While people behind "I’m A Celebrity...Get Me Out Of Here!" are laughing all the way to the bank, here are the 5 Conspiracy Theories currently doing the rounds:

1. Steve Waugh strategically placed the rogue anaconda in that box;

2. An aspiring leggie itself, the anaconda was trying to pick Warne's brain, literally;

3. John Buchanan called Cricket Australia after the incident, to inquire if the snake was out of danger;

4. Warne was celebrating Nag Panchami when things went wrong;

5. Warne heard anaconda's venom is an excellent hair growth agent.

Who killed the golden goose?

Shahid Afridi can be heedless but he surely is not headless. The Mad Max of Pakistan cricket says he’s sick and tired of too many Indo-Pak encounters which, he feels, is killing the charm.

Indeed, a bilateral series involving two separated-at-birth nations had all the ingredients to outshine the biennial dull, drab Anglo-Australian mismatch called Ashes. It would have been the blockbuster, and Ashes the bagatelle… Oscar and the Manikchand Gutkha.

But unfortunately, someone, somewhere forgot to use discretion.

After the sluice gates were flung open in 2004, greedy administrators could not wait to split open the stomach of the golden goose and suddenly India were playing Pakistan in Mohali, Multan and Mombasa.

No wonder, mandarins at the ECB and Cricket Australia are sporting a smug smile as Ashes’ stature as the most celebrated rivalry remains unaltered.

Personally, I loath this pointless Australian ego-massaging exercise and feel the Gordon Brown government should immediately ban the farce for the next one decade if they don’t want to see Britain’s next generation crippled by an inferiority complex.

But at least they got the scheduling right.

Here, money-minting BCCI and crumb-seeking PCB just did not leave enough space for any build-up. There was simply no room for the action-thirsty fans to wait and yearn as one after another series was shoved down their throat.

No wonder, after gorging on it every other day, the Biryani does not excite your taste buds anymore.

Australia to reschedule calendar around IPL

So, BCCI has set the cat among pigeons and cricket boards are scurrying for extra cover.

The Indian Premier League (IPL) is ticking like a hand grenade about to explode after BCCI has removed the safety pin. And cricket is the obvious casualty-in-waiting.

Shane Warne (see previous post) may have earned his stripe as the fastest-finger-on-cell-keyboard but he also owns the copyright of the idea that IPL should be incorporated in the ICC calendar.

And now realising the futility of waging an already lost war against the cash-awash Twenty20 extravaganza, Cricket Australia (CA) is all set to dance to the IPL tune and reschedule its Future Tours Program, outlined till 2012, and fit it around the Indian league.

In a sense, this was inevitable. Whatever they may claim, cricket’s real stars, fortunately, are its practitioners and not the rulers and, cricketers should have the last word.

“There is a little bit of the whore in all of us, gentlemen. What is your price?” when Kerry Packer was asking the question to the Australian cricket board officials back in 1976, he was just stating the obvious -- that money talks, and sings too as people dance to its tune.

Already, Neil Maxwell, who manages Brett Lee and Mike Hussey, has warned that players might ditch their national team to take the IPL plunge if CA does not listen to their demand. That left CA hardly with any second option.

Suddenly, no one is talking about burnout. The same players who felt being flogged by a demanding schedule, are merrily queuing up to sign their IPL contract. Men of honour, who swore by the national colours, stood shoulder-to-shoulder in those spectacular huddles to the refrain of the national anthem and pledged their life for the honour of the country, are suddenly holding their board to ransom.

A nouveau riche and unscrupulous BCCI, high on its stinking riches, has planted a seed of discord that threatens to tear apart the game and cricket could consider itself lucky if it can survive the upheaval.

Old fogies would mutter Bodyline, some would claim World Series Cricket and a couple might say Oval controversy or Bollyline. But if inkling are anything to go by, IPL could well be the biggest crisis in the history, geography and everything else of the game.

Australia may ban top plays from playing in IPL!

House divided.

That’s Australian cricket beneath the veneer. The Indian Premier League (IPL) moolah has done the seemingly impossible and Australian cricket is grappling with a crisis that threatens to leave the game in tatters Down Under.

The situation became so grave that Cricket Australia, struggling to maintain its authority, warned it might ban top players from playing in the IPL.

It has been an exasperating time for the Australia fans. The cash-rich IPL, BCCI’s ambitious money-milking project, has hit Australian cricket like a hurricane and the result is before us to see.

Andrew Symonds, as if he had not problems enough, now faces disciplinary action for his remarks in an unpublished column. Symonds believes he has a right to earn fast buck and complaints how Cricket Australia was coming in the way.

Ricky Ponting too admits the IPL has become a distraction enough to influence of the team’s performance.

The team looks divided, even though Ponting claimed that his teammates, with the lone exception of Adam Gilchrist, were not concern about IPL.

Ponting’s assertion notwithstanding, the lure of the moolah is too tempting and Ponting himself knows it better. Deep inside, every Australian cricket is craving for the money, which puts Cricket Australia on a tricky wicket.

But the Board does not deserve sympathy, because their predicament is their own making. They have been the partner-in-crime of the Indian cricket board in a venture which treats the game as a mere commodity, its practitioners’ slaves and the followers a bunch of sadists who derive perverse pleasure from a slogathon.

In the coming days, the crisis would only deepen. If Australia has been hit today, tomorrow it might be South Africa’s turn. And some other country the day after.

BCCI has become a monster that is not only usurping ICC’s authority but also scrambling after money, whatever be the cost. Cricket has never looked in more trouble.