The Real Story Behind Baba Ramdev’s Meeting With Sharad Pawar

Hear it here first!

Baba Ramdev is buying an IPL franchise and that’s the precise reason he met ICC boss Sharad Pawar.

Don’t trust the chumps in mainstream media. They got it completely wrong, misled probably by the fact that Pawar, in between ICC meetings, also happens to be the agriculture minister.

Unlike Nitin Gadkari, Pawar didn’t touch Ramdev’s feet. It was a shrewd opening move by the Marathi strongman that forced Baba into an immediate introspection.

"Do I really have stinking feet?” Ramdev would occasionally mumble throughout the meeting.

For some strange reason, Gadkari derived such a superiority complex out of it that the BJP chief was sighted running around his Nagpur residence screaming “Pawar can’t bend! I’m fitter than Pawar”.

Well, below is the excerpt of what transpired between Pawar and Ramdev:

Pawar: Welcome Ramdev ji. Hey! What’s that? Don’t wink at the maid!

Ramdev: Sorry, Pawar ji. Don’t get me wrong. This is something I can’t help. Completely unintentional you know.

Pawar: Whatever. You don’t know how tough it’s these days to get another maid. Anyway, how come you are here?

Ramdev: Pawar ji, I want to buy an IPL team.

Pawar: But I’m not sure they want another franchise.

Ramdev: Pawar ji, there’s nothing you can’t do. I have even decided the name of my team.

Pawar: And what’s that?

Ramdev: Patanjali Panthers! Awesome, isn’t it? Of course ToI may still call it Team Haridwar. I have already identified players for my team.

Pawar: And they are?

Ramdev: Well, Hashim Amla has to be the captain and Mohd Yusuf his deputy. See, I want it to be a team of bearded players. By the way, is WG Grace available?

Pawar: But are there enough bearded players?

Ramdev: If not, we’d identify local talents and groom them. Their beard to be precise. Jawed Habib will join the support staff soon. In fact, I’m thinking of having beard-linked bonus clause in their contract.

Pawar: But Ramdev ji, IPL is sports and entertainment. It’s like showbusiness with cheerleaders etc. Are you fine with it?

Ramdev: You hurt me Pawar ji. What do you think of me? We too would have cheerleaders.

Pawar: Oh, really?

Ramdev: Of course! We’d slightly tweak the concept and have cheerleader bhaiyyas, wearing borrowed salwar kameez.

Pawar: Oh yes. I should have imagined it.

Ramdev: After every boundary hit by our players, cheerleader bhaiyyas would do Kapalbhati while every dismissal of the rival batsmen would trigger mass anulom-vilom!

Pawar: Good lord! But to be honest Ramdev ji, I’ve washed my hands of cricket and you better get in touch with IPL guys.

Ramdev: I know you have but I also know there’s nothing you can’t do.

Pawar: Ok, I’ll help you. But what we tell the reporters now?

Ramdev: Don’t worry Pawar ji. I’ll repeat that black-money thing. And we’d hug each other before the camera. Done?

Pawar: (Reluctantly) I guess I have to. Why don’t you wax your chest? Ok, ok, stop anuloming-viloming. Was just kidding. Let's go and meet the press.

Misssing chapter of Shoaib Akhtar's autobiography: Bradman, Sobers…

As you read in the previous post, Shoaib Akhtar, in the original manuscript of “Controversially Yours”, dismissed WG Grace in 11 paras.

The Pakistani iconoclast took his political incorrectness to another level, devoting just about three-and-half lines for Don Bradman and Gary Sobers each.

According to him, Bradman owes his immortality to a madcap statistician; Sobers’ six sixes off a Malcolm Nash over was fishier than any of those ponds in Poschimbongo; and that Muralitharan was robbed of 13 bona fide scalps by lazy-bum scorers.

He also claims umpire Billy Bowden is not actually an umpire!

For his views on some of cricket’s most compelling characters, read on:

Don Bradman: “Bradman’s test average was actually 9.996 but the record book has it 99.96 because the statistician with a strong sense of aesthetics felt placing the decimal in the middle with two digits on either side looked better.”

Garfield Sobers: “Sobers’ six sixes was the first instance of computer generated imagery, used subsequently in making movies like Jurassic Park and The Terminator”;

Jim Laker: “Laker's 19 wickets in the 1956 Old Trafford test included 5 that Tony Lock took but couldn't be credited for because the box next to Lock’s name in the scoresheet had been smudged by an inadvertent ink-drop from the leaking pen of the absent-minded scorer”.

Muttiah Muralitharan: “Murali actually took 813 wickets but 13 of them were awarded to Vaas by lazy scorers once they realised writing VAAS takes 1/3rd time of writing MURALITHARAN”;

Billy Bowden: “Bowden is actually contortonist umpiring under duress since Sharad Pawar has kidnapped his family”.

7 things since my last post

1. MS Dhoni lost his bachelorhood and -- I want you to follow me here closely -- felt it was not safe enough for his wife to travel to Sri Lanka in the same flight with his teammates;

2. Surprisingly none of the bar brawl reports had any mention of Yuvraj Singh;

3. ICC President Sharad Pawar finally took over as India's Agriculture Minister. Well, it maybe the other way round, I'm told;

4. Spat at, Suleiman Benn refused to exchange saliva with Dale Steyn, preferring the rather dull method of gatecrashing in the dressing room and alluding to the female members of Steyn's family;

5. Muralitharan has promised to stop scaring kids with his eyeball-popping antics, at least in Tests. Of the current lot, he said, only Harbhajan can make his eyes spring out of socket like that, to which Bhajji said it was very kind of him to say so;

6. It's for sons to follow in their father's footsteps but Geoff Marsh did it other way round when he joined IPL as Pune Warrior's coach. Now only the pet dog of the Marsh family remains unemployed but IPL governing council assured they would right that wrong soon;

7. Ajantha Mendis was axed from Lankan team for his indifferent attitudes to teammates. He flunked the how-much-you-know-your-teammate test where he was asked to write Chanaka Welegedara's full name and he came up with this lame excuse of running out of ink. For the uninitiated, Welegedara's full name is Uda Walawwe Mahim Bandaralage Chanaka Asanga Welegedara.

(P.S. Tried my hand at Diski dance, played a soccer match as part of world’s first Indian-Argentine-SAfrican MIXED team, watched Germany-Argentina game on a giant screen at St George’s Park, met Port Elizabeth’s Mother Teresa and returned home without being mugged. That sums up my FIFA World Cup experience in Port Elizabeth.)

Exclusive: Sneak peek into Pawar-Thackeray meeting!

Blogosphere nearly had its first martyr!

Being a fly on the wall has its own peril. More so when your insurance premium is not updated.

To cut a long story short, Doosra flirted with peril to be privy to the IPL sweet nothings that Sharad Pawar (SP) and Bal Thackeray (BT) whispered in Mumbai!

For the facts, BCCI President Shashank Manohar was also present on the occasion but his contribution to the discussion was largely limited to goggling at SP and BT, besides the occasional feet-shuffling.

Excerpts:

SP: Balasaheb, this is not done.

BT: I'm happy you acknowledge it. Sugar costs as much as silver. Pulse drops when you ask about pulse price…

SP: Err...you got me wrong Balasaheb. I was talking about IPL. Why aren't you allowing the Australian players in Mumbai?

BT: Allow them! Over my dead body! I just can't let them here. What if they settle here and start driving taxis? Picture them bargaining with passengers in English, and not in Marathi! Whither Marathi Manoos?

SP: Come on Balasaheb, cricketers are well off. Most of them have chauffer-driven sedans. Why should they drive taxi here?

BT: This is hogwash, cricketers being rich. The other day I read about some underfed cricketer, some Afridi tribesman, eating ball. Such is their plight and you want me to believe they are rich? Rich, forsooth!

SP: Come on. He's just a mad guy.

BT: And you guys chased that mad guy? Is it Indian Premier League or India's Premier Loonies?

SP: Come on Balasaheb, what's your problem?

BT: Now that you asked me, arthritis has confined me to bed. I don't see much either. The other day I spilled some secret beans to Raj, mistaking him for Uddhav. The beard itches and doctors said after so many years, the sunglass can only surgically be removed. Hell lot of problems. Old age you know…

SP: Oh...Balasaheb, I meant why don't you let the Australians play here?

BT: Allow them there! Over my dead body. No, actually I can. But I have conditions.

SP: I'm all ears.

BT: Brett lee should become Brett Liquor...err...I meant Brett Leekar.

SP: What!

BT: Yes. Then they should celebrate Valentines Day getting rakhi tied on their wrists by their girlfriends. They should write exclusive columns in 'Samna' and subscribe it as well. Nobody reads it these days you know. Then irrespective of their teams, they would say 'Jai Maharashtra' before beginning every press conference, eat only Vada Pao in lunch and discuss Chhatrapati Maharaj in team meetings. You understand?

Servant: Sir they left long ago. Congratulations sir, this year's IPL will be without the Australians. Mr Pawar made a TV announcement just now.

Cartoon: Satish Acharya

Cry Eden, cry

Rows of empty galleries greet Tendulkar on his 12000th Test run but still I S Bindra’s Mohali;

Mumbaikars may have sold their soul to T20 and switched allegiance to YV Patil but still Sharad Pawar’s Wankhede;

Counterfeit tickets, counterfeit crowd, counterfeit administrators and still Arun Jaitley’s Kotla;

Lalit Modi’s indifference to anything not T20 shared by the entire Jaipur but still Sawai Man Singh;

Nagpur maybe a lemon as a venue but still Shashank Manohar’s VCA Stadium in Jamtha.

Once again, arguably the most hopelessly emotional bunch of cricket followers found them caught in the crossfire between egoistic administrators and their murky game.

Cry Eden cry.

Mayhem at Mannofield Park

The publishing industry is abuzz and grapevine has it that ICC fountainheads Ray Mali, David Morgan and Sharad Pawar are burning midnight oil, co-authoring “101 Sure Shot Ways to Kill One Day Cricket”.

How else you explain pitting an unsuspecting Liliput against the big Brobdingnag bully resulting in the ugliest mismatch in one day cricket’s history? And if this is how ICC envisages the associates improving, Mali & Co should at once be put through the SCAN.

Trust me, boxing – at least amateur boxing -- may look a gory sport but it’s more humane. You don’t see a flyweight pugilist hurled into the ring to be easy meat for his super heavyweight candidate. And then there also is this provision of RSC or Referee Stops Contest when it becomes mockery of a bout.

But then cricket is a different proposition, a different BALL game altogether. Licensed to overkill, bobblehead ICC nods in affirmative whenever an ODI tournament is proposed and the Mannofield Park massacre also reveals its criminal indifference to the associate members’ future.

Tip-toeing in its cricket infancy, all Ireland needed was to be guided to the pool. Instead, they were thrown into the deepest end, with a hungry shoal of sharks waiting for a feast. Poor Irish bowlers must have been shaking and shrinking in their boots when the McCullum-Marshall-Taylor trio was setting the ball on orbits, posing serious security hazard for the low-flying ScotAirways planes.

If ICC still claims to care for its associate members, it should engage shrinks to help the Irish players come out of the trauma.

What baffles me is ICC’s adamance not to learn the lesson from its Bangladesh experience and persisting with the same logic-defying rush to elevate the associates despite the obvious counter-productive outcome. I won’t be surprised if Kyle McCallan and his boys develop an inferiority complex, convinced of their inability to break into and hang around in the big league.

Meanwhile for ODIs, IPL has already done enough to put it on the deathbed. ICC surely can’t wait to administer the last rites.

From toast of the nation to pariah

India doesn’t know how to treat her heroes – Arjuna Ranatunga.

Alas, only the context changes and Ranatunga remains as relevant as ever.

If you’ve followed BCCI moves over the past some months, you tend to believe:

i. it was the forefather of one of the Board mandarins who smote Eddie Hemmings for four sixes in a row to avoid follow-on in that 1990 Lord’s Test;

ii. Anil Kumble is the first Indian to take 400 Test wickets;

iii. India got 175 runs extras in that crucial 1983 World Cup tie against Zimbabwe; and

iv. India won the 1983 World Cup without a helmsman and with a 10-man squad.

Indeed, affluenza-stricken Sharad Pawar and his fellow partners-in-crime in the cash-awash Board have not left any stone unturned in their effort to establish that Kapil Dev simply didn’t exist!

Since aligning with the ICL, Kapil has been ousted from the NCA – a decision yet to be conveyed to him, lost his pension (maybe because he was donating the amount to an NGO dealing with children), plans were dropped to rename the Mohali stadium after him, his mural was removed from the stadium and BCCI grudgingly agreed to felicitate him along with the rest of the 1983 World Cup winning team.

Make no mistake, not that I’m a great admirer of the man. For sure, Kapil keeps dubious company and he may froth at the mouth but all his promoting-cricket blah-blah is complete crap and it was Subhas Chandra’s moolah that led him to ICL.

But how on earth can you deny the fact that he led us to the Holy Grail in 1983 and, apologies to innumerable imposters and perpetual pretenders hovering around, is the only genuine all-rounder produced by India?

The board has treated him like a pariah. He has been dealt as if a stigma, not only a persona non grata but also He Who Should Not Be Seen With.

But what the BCCI pooh-bahs forgot is that cricketers necessitate administrators, and not the other way round. Umpteen Pawars and Modis have come and history has dumped them in the bottomless pit of oblivion. But legends live on.

That magical knock against Zimbabwe, the stunning catch of King Richards running backward…Kapil presided over that unforgettable Triumph of the Underdogs, the biggest upset in the world since David slew Goliath.

You can remove a mural alright. But fortunately, they are yet to discover a way to erase what is etched in the collective memory of the umpteen cricket fans.

Is Ford’s appointment a Pawar-ploy to grab ICC top job?

Graham Ford is all set to take over as the new Team India coach and he is way ahead of John Emburey as far as coaching credential is concerned. And to sceptic eyes, Ford’s appointment won’t be the end of the ongoing high-voltage drama, but just part of a bigger plot.

The growing notion that Ford would be chosen because BCCI President Sharad Pawar desperately seeks South Africa’s vote to become the ICC President. The megalomaniac in Pawar has never tried to hide his unabashed love for power and these days, he’s doing everything to please the Protea cricket board for reasons too obvious.

After Percy Sonn’s death, Pawar could have assumed the ICC top job but he hinted that he was not game for a stop-gap role. Instead, he suggested a South Africa should get the job. Ray Mali, the Cricket South Africa chief, eventually succeeded Sonn.

"The point that weighs in Ford's favour was that Pawar requires South Africa's vote to become the next International Cricket Council president (ICC)," a BCCI source was quoted as saying in a media report.

Now, this is one can only expect in India. Team India’s reputation, the emotion of its umpteen die-hard fans, everything is hit for a six just to ensure that a power-hungry official gets the post he craves for.

Ford has an impressive credential, no doubt about that. But Dav Whatmore’s was even better. We still don’t know why BCCI dangled the carrot before ditching him at the eleventh hour. Things are not looking bright with Indian cricket and it’s really tough not to be a cynic.

Image: The Hindu

A Captain Is As Good As The Coach He Gets… or… Coaches Win Matches

Now that BCCI is headhunting for a full-time coach, I ponder who fits the bill and wonder how much it hinges on the captain-coach relation.

I often felt that like openers, the captain-coach duo too needs to be perfect foil for each other, at least in Indian scenario. They should be as different as chalk and cheese, acid and alkali, yin and yang. I believe it’s like an average Indian couple. One of them has to make some sacrifice, concede an extra inch, and take the backseat to allow the other to cap the initiative. It may smack of male chauvinism but the reality if you have equal number of hen-pecked hubbies as against docile wives!

I feel the Sourav Ganguly-John Wright marriage yielded the results just because of that. Ganguly’s relation with the former Kiwi captain may have dwindled towards the end but the southpaw should acknowledge that he owes much of his success, and a good drink, to the affable Kiwi.

The Ganguly-Wright pair was just the perfect combination. An assertive, aggressive, hi-adrenalin skipper in perfect contrast to a reticent, introvert coach. Indian cricket owes a lot to Wright. A divorcee, away from his two sons, Wright spent many a lonely new year’s eve in company of candles and his favourite guitar in his hotel room in the adopted homeland.

You can always accuse him of being soft, vulnerable to Ganguly’s tantrums and whims but to his credit, Wright never used media to wash the dirty linen in public. Media is a dangerous weapon, a double-edged blade that hardly serves any purpose other than mudding the water. See how Wright’s successor manipulated media to serve his purpose and left the team in complete shamble.

Wright did raise issues with the men who mattered but Ganguly, with a Godfather in Jagmohan Dalmiya, could not be reined in, the zonal selection system stayed on (till Sharad Pawar’s regime just scrapped it) and other things also ceased to change. Despite all provocations, Wright never disgraced Indian cricket.

Once he quit – on his own, no mean feat in Indian cricket – I always doubted how long the Ganguly-Chappell honeymoon would last. Both are the same side of the coins, headstrong, abrasive, combative, pugnacious.

It was obvious that two men of such strong ego can’t share the dressing room and one had to go. Soon sparks started flying out all over and Chappell won the first round. Enter Rahul Dravid and to be honest, I expected this marriage to last longer and deliver the goods as well.

Dravid is a perfect team man, a reliable cricketer and a captain’s delight. But he is not the one who would assert himself . And I’m not the only one to feel so about a player who has played the second fiddle throughout his life – his epic knocks would always got overshadowed by VVS Laxman’s class, Ganguly’s pyrotechnics or Sachin Tendulkar’s stroke-making.

Dravid needed a coach like Chappell and the combination looked a balanced one. Somehow, despite their mutual admiration, the Dravid-Chappell pair did not produce the results. You can’t really blame Dravid. I believe a captain is as good as his coach. And at times, coaches win matches.