Missing chapter of Shoaib Akhtar's autobiography: WG Grace.

Not many know that the manuscript of Shoaib Akhtar’s autobiography “Controversially Yours” contained chapters in which the “Rawalpindi Express” offered radical views on most of cricket’s greatest names, except Ajit Agarkar.

Libel-weary publishers, with business to run and family to feed, naturally refused to publish them, making sure they do not see the light of the day.

Until Doosra accessed them, of course.

Here goes the first installment in which Shoaib assesses WG Grace.

“I can’t believe they called him father of modern cricket. Father! My number 14 foot!

No hanky-panky. Let me make it clear what I think of that big, fat chump. He looks an obese ass with enough fat to run a soap factory.

Frankly speaking, I think he was dead-scared of my pace and decided to play in another era. Such a coward!

Even though he scored heavily against Joey Palmer in his debut test, I tell you his legs were trembling. Of course I was not there in that 1880 test but Shahid Afridi, who remains 21, says he himself saw them trembling.

Like most of us, Grace used to blatantly tamper the ball. I got to know he was called ‘Doctor’. I guess because he used to doctor the ball. And people have problems only when we do it. It’s a mean world, buddy.

No dramas. I think Grace was a slimy fatso. He filled English cricket with his brothers, sons and even nephews. If this is not nepotism then I’d like to know what is.

Man, have you seen his photo? Awful, man. Inzy bhai will look like him 20 years later.

Seems the guy never went to gym. Six packs? He had six sacks. If you have a good knife and you know how to do it, you can carve six cricketers out of him. Such a waste of space.

His beard was against the spirit of the game. I’m surprised ICC or whatever it was in those days didn’t ban it. It was a deliberate ploy to shield the stumps and confuse the bowlers. Disgusting!

People called him Grace. I call him Disgrace.

I know most of you won’t believe me. I know necromancy and I've challenged him to face me. I don't trust Lalit Modi. Fortunately, Kerry Packer wrote on my Ouija board that he would sponsor the event. Will keep you posted. Take care."

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.

Of players, prostitutes and a Prince

(Photo: AP)

"There is a little bit of the whore in all of us, gentlemen. What is your price?" Kerry Packer , during negotiation with the then Australian Cricket Board for TV rights.

Packer did not say cricketers but I find they have a lot in common with the prostitutes and I don’t mean to insult either of them in my comparison.

As professions, they can’t be more different but at the end of the day, cricketers, like prostitutes, are actually entertainers and at least Brian Lara, the entertainer par excellence, knows that.

"I just want to be remembered as someone who went out there and tried to entertain - it is a sport where people pay to come through the turnstiles and watch you and it is most important that someone can leave and say they have enjoyed watching Brian Lara play and enjoyed watching West Indies play."

And after we saw him last time against England, an emotion-drenched Lara again asked the choc-a-bloc Kensington Oval, "Did I entertain you? If yes, I'm very, very happy."

It’s rather surprising to see how close cricketers are to the practitioner of world’s oldest business and both know, they are as good as their body. A cricketer tones his torso, strengthens the legs and works on his muscles with the same care that a prostitute would do. For both, body is the temple, and also their bread-and-butter. They are in demand as long as they are in fine shape and they know the worth of their body.

All these talks of winning, losing, records, sportsmanship are pure crap. All that maters and appeals to us is entertainment. Deep at the heart, we always wanted to see a particular player, often an entertainer in gears, to do well. If that meant team’s victory, it was a bonus. Cricket pretends to be a team game but essentially, it’s an individual’s arena. Teammates merely provide the contrast.

Posterity, fortunately, cares little for teams. It’s the individuals we remember. Mind is not a dormitory where you put up squads. It’s a sacrosanct chamber, that square of the temple where you place one, maybe two, cricketers and deify them. And the lone criterion for that place has to be entertainment. Down the years, people won’t care how many matches Lara’s ramshackle West Indies won. What will linger is Lara’s high backlift, the angular trajectory of the bat and his gazelle footwork. For that’s entertainment.