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.)

7 players and why they didn't hit IPL jackpot

1. Brad Haddin: Teams agreed exposing the impressionable Indian juvenile populace to gloved crooks might adulterate their spiritual make-up and vitiate the values;

2. Philip Hughes: The idea of finding secret team strategies all over Twitter on the match-eve didn't appeal to anyone;

3 & 4. Monty Panesar & Mark Ramprakash: Shelved for a future Indian-origins' Premier League.

5. Shahid Afridi: His impersonation of Statue of Liberty after every dismissal was found neither original nor aesthetic;

6. Vernon Philander: The surname cooked his goose;

7. Sulieman Benn: With Mitchell Johnson and Haddin not in IPL, Benn would have been of limited utility.

Since my last post...

1. Brad Haddin has discovered the 11th way a batsman can get out;
2. Daniel Vettori's SMS to Haddin created frictions, sending sparks flying all over Australia. Doosra understands once the Victorian bushfire is under control, Vettori will be chargesheeted for arson.
3. It took a president, a shaman and a coiffeur to make Lasith Malinga's return from wilderness possible;
4. Rajasthan Royals ensured the support of Indian truckers, Richard Gere and subsequently HH Dalai Lama in this year's IPL by selling stakes to Shilpa Shetty;
5. Shah Rukh Khan's Kolkata Knight Riders helped Bangladesh double its Gross National Income by buying Mashrafe Mortaza.
6. West Indies unleashed an Australia-bred White West Indian, Brendan Nash, and a 6’7” high-extension tower in Suleiman Benn, whose deliveries, Poms claim, come like oracles from heaven;
7. Kevin Pietersen convulsed with laughter after he: i) topscored for Poms in the Sabina Park massacre; ii) derived sadistic pleasure as Strauss’ captaincy honeymoon got over before it started; and iii) found Vijay Mallya has emptied his pocket to engage his service.