7 players and why they hit IPL jackpot

1. Kieron Pollard: To fill the Resident Hairdo Weirdo's post lying vacant since Robin Uthappa left Mumbai Indians;

2. Shane Bond: To bolster West Bengal Police which cut such a sorry figure against the Maoists;

3. Mohd Kaif: Owes his contract to misunderstanding. With Preity Zinta nursing a sore heart, Kings XI Punjab wanted an actress for their new video and thought Katrina Kaif was on offer. Ms Zinta later strongly resented this skullduggery by Lalit Modi;

4. Eoin Morgan: A man of well-known scruples, Vijay Mallya wanted a Catholic taster for his breweries. Besides, he was under the impression that the stripling was ICC chief David Morgan's offspring;

5. Damien Martyn: The mothballed veteran was plucked out of retirement to fill the babysitting void at Rajasthan Royals since Kamran Akmal was not at hand;

6. Wayne Parnell: Delhi Daredevils could not get over its infatuation for players nicknamed 'Pigeon';

7. Yousuf Abdulla: Hear it here first. A grateful Lalit Modi paid the money from his pocket as a Thank-You gesture to South Africa for hosting IPL II.

A Suspect Cricketer

Both Ganguly and Wright had this sneaking suspicion that beneath the boy lurked a man. A yeoman.

A look at him and the selectors had this eerie feeling that they have seen future.

Those who sedulously tarred the walls of his Allahabad residence had this doubt that he did not try enough in 2003 World Cup.

Chappell, on his part, suspected he was a Ganguly henchman, who might spike his drink and then wait round the corner with a country-made gun.

And now umpires report him for a suspect bowling action in a Ranji match!

Show me a cricketer who has dealt with more doubt, suspicion and mistrust than Mohammad Kaif and I'll show you a liar.

World Cup Or No World Cup, Let Sanity Prevail

So here we go again. It takes just one defeat in a mere game of cricket to cover-drive the logic out of our soul and make us do silly things like pick up roadside bricks and aim at innocent windowpanes.

Last time, we vandalised Mohd Kaif’s residence and this time this World Cup had MS Dhoni’s under-construction house almost under similar attack. At least we are proving more consistent than a certain Virender Sehwag. (Dravid bats for Bank of Baroda but no bank dares to rope in Veeru. Reason? He’s a Non-Performing Asset, they insist).

At times I worry, why we heap so much of anger on the players which they don’t deserve? The answer, as I see it, is because we love them to an extent they don’t deserve.

Karl Marx (Or was it Groucho?) described -- he meant no evil -- religion as the opium of the masses and cricket in India has emerged as a powerful religion. Now when cricket assumed religion’s status, it could not avoid the fanatic part and no wonder we behave like fundamentalists and not personal, practitioner of the new religion.

We wanted Dhoni to bail us out from the ignominy of a defeat against Bangladesh, which he could not and that got our goat, cow, buffalo and the entire heard. Spare a thought for Dhoni, what could have been the state of his mind when he got the news? Do we want ourselves to believe that he can still focus solely on his game and give his best to achieve that theoretical Super 8 dream?

Wish we could love them little less, keeping it instead for say, the younger brother, little sister, a dear friend, the roadside tea-stall owner, an aged co-passenger, a lady pedestrian or even the neighbour’s dog.

Our love in this case is clearly blind and nobody knows it better than the shrewd ad-men, who con us into buying craps with our hard-earned, blood-stained money. Spare the Dhonis, watch the matches till they don’t affect your bread-and-butter, clap even the boundary comes off Lara’s bat

Let’s pledge to be practitioner of the religion and not remain a lunatic fanatic. Cricket is indeed a wonderful game, so let sanity prevail.