Doosra live from Kotla

Welcome to WNWSACWR. What Neo Won't Show And Cricinfo Won't Report, for the uninitiated.

2210: Dhoni and Henriques try to run through each other and come crashing down. Both believe the other guy goofed up the mantra.

2150: Had they been in the press box, a handful of Australian cricketers would either have contemplated homicide or quit the game altogether hearing the way their names were being molested by the official scorer. See if you know Dog Bolllinger, Adam Bhaujee, Peter Seed Le, and Nathan Harish.

2130: Yuvraj hits Henriques for an effortless six. It looked a fullish delivery but replays showed it was a foolish delivery.

2115: Dhoni changes gloves and Doug Bollinger uses the time to rub the ball furiously against his thigh. Doosra has raised it in the past also that ICC should do something for dermatosis among players.

1930: Sorry for the prolonged delay. Had other fishes to fry. BTW, the Tata Stand, from where Johnson is trying to decapitate Dhoni, has Hema Malini selling purified water on one side and Tendulkar peddling cement on the other. It gets too boring, so here goes a PJ, the copyright of which belongs strictly to Doosra. Q. Which place in India is named after Hema Malini's brother? Ans. Dharamshala. (More PJs if Dhoni and Yuvraj don't end the boredom.)

1645: Ponting just raised the bar in self-abuse after his dismissal and you don't need lip-readers to tell you that he capped the line with the most popular four words in the history of human civilisation. In fact he was so loud that the thunder could be heard in Tasmania, if they strain their ears a little.

1555: Gambhir literally has a pain in the neck, just copped a Ponting pull. Shame on you Punter. Be a man, play fair and square.

1545: Babes with bottles enter the field with Foster's refreshment. Foster daughters indeed, one would assume. You don't send out your own daughter in such sartorial scantiness.

1445: Surprise! Surprise! Ponting opens with Watson. But then for someone who has uncorked zillion bubblies in his pomp, opening comes spontaneously.

1428: Both teams observe a minute's silence in David Shepherd's memory. You kind of agree, this is how Harbahjan looks best, lips sealed.

1425: Who says Ind-Pak cricket ties have been knotted, I mean snapped? Before the Men in Blue and Canary Yellow walk out, the ground has been invaded by the Men in Green. Alas, they turn out to be mere groundsmen. The same bunch of souls who top Ponting's hit/hate-list for watering the practice pitch yesterday.

David Shepherd R.I.P

Every Friday the 13th, you tied a matchstick to finger so that you are constantly touching wood.

You hopped when the scoreboard signalled a Nelson.

All your life, you probably didn't walk under a ladder, feared black cats and possibly carried a rabbit's foot in your pocket.

To sum it up, you could have been a walking 5'10" old wives' tale.

We still liked you.

For not looking like a dead fish in white.

For not being just a hat-hanger.

And for your humour that never stooped to buffoonery.

David Shepherd, we will miss you.

Men in White: Necessary Evils or Jetsam?

Neville Cardus felt umpires are as good as bathroom geyser. “We cannot do without it, yet to notice it only when it is out of order.”

In the same piece, he went on to mourn “The umpires are the Dogberrys of the game. We see them as essentially comic characters. Whenever a batsman swipes to leg and hits the umpire in the small of the back, how the crowd roars! If the wind blows the hat off the umpire’s head, laughter holds side.”

Not surprisingly, Cardus’ romanticism finds no taker, least of all in the ICC. Now that the referral system is being trialled in Sri Lanka, I wonder why don’t we completely do away with the custom? Why on earth place two hapless souls under the scorching sun and steady drizzle, ask them to stay put and focus all day as if nothing exists beyond the ball’s trajectory – only to end up as butts of numerous jokes for a rare moment of transgression? Why can’t we just replace them with technology and completely wipe out the ‘human error’? Or is it that they provided the entertainment value, as outlines by Cardus?

A fence-sitter weighing the pros and cons, I listed what could be the arguments for and against the Men in White?

FOR:

1. We just love Billy Bowden, the ghost of a ballerina trapped in an umpire’s body.
2. Umpires make excellent almirah. And you don’t need pest control or rustproofing either!
3. Idiosyncracies are part-and-parcel of the game. Cricket would have been poorer without Steve Bucknor’s slow-death finger, David Shepherd’s hilarious attempt at a pirouette or Billy Bowden’s ballet.
4. Rival team does not lend hankies when you have running nose.
5. You need an interpreter of maladies called sledging to ensure there is no communication gap between players.

AGAINST:

1. High time cricket did its bit for the environment. Cricket’s contribution to noise pollution stem from the sheer existence of the umpires. Take them away and future Shane Warnes would have no eardrum within earshot to holler into, thus saving a tribe from going deaf as well.
2. Bucknor is perennially one match behind in his decision making.
3. When you replace umpires with robots, you don’t need to care about their salary, perks, legally binding contracts and their rights too. Just make sure those are not from any Isaac Asimov sci-fi.
4. Allow Virender Sehwag play his straight drives without the fear of culpable homicide.
5. Finally, stop making annual fun of Simon Taufel’s Androgenic Alopecia in the annual ICC awards night.

Image: INKCINCT Cartoons