Of liver cancer, stupid cupid and Knight Riders

Sourav Ganguly can’t be faulted if he looks a sulking misanthrope. And as if the Kolkata Knight Riders didn’t have problem enough.

Already depleted by the exit of Ricky Ponting (so what if he forgot to put bat to ball) and Brendon McCullum (so what if he sizzled only to fizzle subsequently), Shahrukh Khan and Ganguly hurriedly roped in Brad Hodge for his well-documented Twenty20 prowess. But call it quirk of fate, the hitherto-out-of-favour Hodge also gets an SOS to forget IPL and join the Australian squad in West Indies as shadow for a cupid-struck Michael Clarke.

Reports say though Clarke’s father is fighting Hodgkin's disease, it’s the condition of his fiancée Lara Bingle’s father, who is battling a liver cancer, that prompted the Australian vice captain to stay back. Well, while that may fetch Clarke a nomination for the inaugural ICC Lover of the Year 2008 award, I doubt it does not win him a friend in Ganguly.

Tourism Australia had Lara as its face till the slew of scandals forced them to replace her with Croc-Hunter Steve Irwin’s daughter Bindi. Lara featured in the 2006 campaign “So where the bloody hell are you?”

Ganguly was last seen wielding his bat and searching for the stupid cupid, mouthing the line he borrowed from the campaign.

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