Afridi’s Secret Diary: Sleeveless Nights!

If you ask me, I'm confucius. Three months in front of World Cup and I the captain can admit I'm having sleeveless nights like nobody's business.

The team having a head (which is I) but no butt...because salman butt is suspended. And I missing kamran akmal like nobody's business.

kamran is a key player. Late me tell you why. Once my hotel room was locked and he opened it with his tooth!

I don't wanting to talk about asif. One day, in my front, he questioned a pitch curator "You got grass there?". asif...I mean as if I don't know what grass meaning!

The hole team in a mesh. One day younus is captain, another one day yusuf and another one day misbah.

You will not believing me but one day in the nets, azhar ali was talking lonely. I thought he had becomed mad. Know what he was telling? "It was a team effort...boys played well...we played as unit…"

I asked him, what matter was and he said, "Shahid Bhai, who knows, maybe I'll be the captain tomorrow."

Think! Yesterday's kid wanting to be captain tomorrow! This new generation...so amphibious!

But his saying have truth. Nobody knowing who becoming captain yesterday....or is it tomorrow? whoever...

All bad thoughts eating me and I'm loosing piece of mind. Time to stop writing, it's getting darky...another sleeveless night.

Ind vs Oz...Day 4

1003: After Haddin and Hayden grassed and Ponting leaked, Australian are suddenly making atonements by throwing themselves around. Suddenly they realise it's the cricket board which takes care of their laundry bills!

1108: Drooping shoulder, increasing frustration. Ponting finally injects some life and brings in Mike Hussey to roll his arm over. Last time Hussey was seen bowling was when Hillary Clinton was running for the US Prez's post, Yuvraj Singh was dating Deepika Padukone and Ms Padukone was not dating Ranbir Kapoor.

1315: India leading by 510 runs and Dhoni still not declaring. Needs to give bowlers time to bowl out the Ozzies. I think he is overestimating his bowling unit and underestimating Ponting and party.

1324: In between his attemps to halve the ball into two, Dhoni the Woodcutter was experimenting with a different scoop shot. So far we have seen the scoop famously bungled by Misbah which takes the fine leg route. Here, Dhoni was trying to scoop whatever White hurled at him to the third man area! Indigenous indeed but success still Dhoni.

Live Irani Trophy Updates at Doosra...Day 2

(Those who want to follow the scores live, you've typed the wrong URL. Those who want things that Neo TV won't show and Cricinfo won't report, welcome aboard. Oops, forgot to say, Doosra reports live from Vadodara IPCL Stadium)

1110 hrs: R P Singh makes peace with sparse crowd. Half an hour back, he was shouting at someone 'Arre, sightscreen ke saamne kya kar raha hai? Hat ja". A few people were hurling some not-so-flattering words to the UP pacer, who finally folded his hands and gestured to the crowd. No love seems lost as those camping near the sightscreen greet him back. No mediator required.

1129: Munaf is emptying his reserve of aggression well before the Oz series. Rajat Bhatia patted back one to the Non-Resident Gujarati pacer who hurled it back hoping Bhatia to do Inzy. Bhatia apparently does not idolises Inzy.

1135: The official scorers in the press box keep calling the Delhi wicketkeeper Puneet BUST. Casting serious aspersion indeed. I bet he would have preferred BEAST. Come on Puneet, show them you are a MAN.

1147: Kumble delivers his second NO BALL, a borderline case. Not impressed, AK has a chat with umpire, probably asking which contact lense he uses.

1151: Officiating under a harsh sun with 11 people screaming into your eardrums and giving you pan-Indian assortment of choicest abuses and ugly stares is not an easy task. Both the umpires seem hungry and can't wait for lunch, checking the time every now and then. Or checking if the watch has stopped ticking.

1158: Y'day, Dravid played Chetanya Nanda as if he was Ajantha Mendis. Today, Puneet Bust...errr I mean Bisht and Raja Bhatia are playing Harbhajan Singh as if he is Jaspal Bhatti.

1310: Watching Munaf Patel chasing a skier ranks among the most hilarious sights you hope to see in cricket. Sangwan hit one off Harbhajan, Munaf reacted as if he had sighted a UFO, chased only to see it land near his ankle and he could not help kicking it, inadvertently of course. As the ball races to the rope, Munaf realises his folly, stoops and picks it but his momentum almost takes him to the other side of the boundary line. To avoid that, Munaf does a little Kangaroo jump and manages to stay inside. Quite an entertainment package in the end!

1322: Zaheer Khan just 'leaked' a ball and both Harbhajan and Pragyan Ojha came rushing to stop it from reaching the boundary line. Ojha is the second substitute for VVS Laxman after Ashok Dinda did the job in the morning. No word on Laxman, has he gone fishing?

1325: Even Ojha has rubbed his trousers red. Is it the clay or the color of the ball? Whatever, cricket should develop a better, and more decent, way of hiding growing cases of dermatosis among its practitioners. And no wonder, you have so many groin injuries to cricketers.

1444: I always felt that insomniacs need not lose hope. All they need is to sit and watch the entire post-lunch session of any domestic tie, preferably with Dravid and Jaffer inaction...I mean in action. Jokes apart, both Dravid and Jaffer have done what they are supposed to. They must be sipping their rich elaichi-flavoured tea with some satisfaction for not allowing Delhi make any inroads in their second essay.

1629: I suspect Ajantha Mendis has done some permanent damage to Dravid, who continues to struggle against Chetanya Nanda. He edged twice, though it didn't carry to the slip. Finally Dravid does a Misbah and scoops it to get some runs.

1846: My swansong update of the day. Talked to Vijay Dahiya, who was upset with Delhi batsmen's shot selection and hailed RoI's superb catching. Meanwhile, I'm fending swarm of hungry mosquitoes in the media box and posting. Got hold of Paddy Upton who informed Laxman is down with food poisoning, hence could not field. "Things are better this afternoon, he's spending less time in loo, you know." Quite a jovial guy.
See you all tomororw.

Will Pak players raise their hands, please?

Now that IPL is in its adolescence, stock-taking seems an irresistible idea. But hang on, will the Pakistani players please raise their hands, and possibly their game too?

Intriguingly, the T20 World Cup finalists have not set the IPL alight. On the contrary, barring the possible exception of Asif, none of the Pakistani players pass muster. What happened to the T20 World Cup finalists?

If headline-hogging is made the yardstick, I think the only Pakistani who really made some mark is Shoaib ‘Will-He-Won’t-He’ Akhtar.

Let’s delve into the details on a case-by-case, and occasionally nutcase-by-nutcase, basis.

Among the KKR trio, Salman Butt got a look-in against Rajasthan but the sight of Sohail Tanveer probably made him emotional and he could not deny the fellow Pakistani a wicket. No wonder Butt made all the effort to drag the ball onto his stumps.

To be fair, Butt still can lay a legitimate claim that he did not get enough matches, an excuse Mohammad Hafeez can’t afford. Four matches and the Pakistani young gun is still firing blank.

Worst is the case with Umar Gul, who clearly shot himself in the foot with his candour that Ganguly has miles to go before he can replicate his success as India’s ODI and Test captain in this format. Criticising your own skipper, especially when he’s struggling to digest a hat-trick of defeats, doesn’t make Gul an ideal candidate for any diplomatic job but my suspicion is he wanted to prove that post-retirement, he is a commentator material.

Meanwhile, of the Rajasthan Royals trio, Younis Khan is phantom, while Kamran Akmal’s contribution hardly goes beyond his toothy appeal. No wonder Tanveer is wearing a smug smile.

In the Delhi Daredevils camp, Shoaib Malik has been cagey and he treats every bowler as if his alleged Indian father-in-law. Asif, on his part, looks shrinking under Glenn McGrath’s widening shadow.

And no prize for guessing who takes the cake. We have seen enough mopping of hair. Can we have some action, please, Afridi?

But you can’t really fault Misbah if he looks a miserable misanthropist. As someone pointed out, he’s the guy behind the razzmatazz. Had he not scooped that shot in the T20 World Cup final, had not India won the title, had it not triggered frenzy in India, IPL would not have been a reality after all.

But such is the plight of the Bangalore Royal Challengers – no prize for guessing Charu Sharma is their CEO – that they had to bench Misbah. Now that Ross Taylor is gone, Misbah gets his rightful place and I feel he might turn out to be Pakistan’s redemption man.

Image: AFP