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 punishments for Dhoni & Co for NZ flop show

BCCI sees only the Sunny side but never the funny side of it. So what if New Zealand plastered India by 200 runs?

That doesn't mean you cancel the home trip you had promised the players who have spent enough time in Lanka to be eligible for a citizenship there.

It was not just a low trick on the players but quite unimaginative too. Doosra suggests 7 alternative ways BCCI could have punished the players:

1. Make the whole team row its way back from Sri Lanka;

2. A favourite theme with Doosra. Ask them to write the full name of Welegedara on the grain of rice. To be fair, give them a choice between Uda Walawwe Mahim Bandaralage Chanaka Asanka Welegedara and Warnakulasuriya Patabendige Ushantha Joseph Chaminda Vaas.

3. Ask Yuvraj to share room with Suresh Raina before a Test series and come out in the morning without any culpable homicide charges against his name; alternatively ask him to report after three weeks without a bar brawl; or spend 15 minutes on the field without inviting frenzied chants from the spectators;

4. Thrust a shaving razor in Praveen Kumar’s hand and ask him to turn up clean-shaven for a match;

5. Make Ashish Nehra play a full Test with no ambulance facility within 10km of the stadium;

6. Let MS Dhoni bat with Nehra as his runner;

7. Ask Ishant Sharma to bowl with Nehra fielding at point.

Take a bow, Murali

Few cricketers polarise cricket world like Muttiah Muralitharan does and now voices would break all decibel barriers as the Lankan maverick joined the 700 Test wicket club, founded by a certain Shane Warne.

The case with Murali has been either you love him or you hate him. There simply is no in between. Bishan Singh Bedi felt Murali is a javelin thrower, a bandit in flannels. Martin Crowe believes Murali should be chucked out of the game. Another commentator opined Murali should figure in dart competitions and not in cricket field.

But there is another school of thought as well. Many a friendship would be strained in debates on whether his freak action is result of an elbow bent at birth or a wicked effort to exploit ICC's ambiguity on the subject. But the fact remains that Murali has curved a niche for himself and is here to make an indelible mark in the game's history.

Isn’t it incredible that in a trouble-torn Sri Lanka, divided deep along ethnic and religious lines finds a unifying factor in Murali?

Murali is set to overtake Shane Warne later this year, right at the leggie's backyard, perhaps amid jeers and cat calls. Lesser mortals could have succumbed to the series of setbacks Murali withstood in a rollercoaster career. Hostility has often brought out the best in Murali. So when he eventually eclipses Warne in Australia, the boos and barracking would only confirm Murali's status as perhaps the best off-spinner the game has ever seen.

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P.S. I take this occasion to share my experience of meeting Murali. I have been to Colombo to cover that ill-fated Unitech Cup last year. Chicken-hearted South Africa had just pulled out following a blast, which meant SAF Games, and not cricket, was my purpose of staying put in the picturesque Lanka capital.

There is a lovely, lively food court at the basement of the Cinnamon Arcade in Colombo and you would be treated to food of every possible kind while local bands belt out old numbers. Born, bred and spoiled by sweet-biased Bengali diet, I found food too hot. I was clueless as I moved from one counter to another.

I had reached the Lankan food stall when I realised that virtually the entire Lankan squad was out there with their family. The guy in the counter asked me what I would love to have and I explained him my problem, also maintaining an eye on the gentleman on my left, with a baby in his arms.

"You should go for plain rice and pulse, that should not be a problem with you," the advice came from the most unexpected corner. Muralitharan had his son in his arms and he too was glancing through the dishes on display.

I thanked him profusely and ordered the one he suggested. "Did you take your son to your in-law's place in Chennai?" I asked.

"No, he has not. But we will soon visit Chennai ," he replied.

As I returned to my table, I could not help but compare Sri Lankan cricketers with their Indian counterpart. Have no illusion, the Lankans love their game as passionately as Indians do. But there is a clear line of demarcation between passion and madness there.

Murali, Vaas, Sangakkarra were not mobbed in the food court and there was not a single security person to shove you aside to make way for them.

As I gulped down the rice with generous amount of soft drinks, I watched Murali, a perfect family man, taking care of his baby and chatting with his wife, just like an ordinary man, after a day's hard work in the office, was out to dine with his family. Stardom often strips you off humility, but again, Murali has often been an exception.

Image: Getty Images

Only if it could silence the guns…

(Can they apply balm to the war wounds with a win tomorrow?)

Hours before the final showdown, Ricky Ponting has expectedly initiated the psychological warfare.

“If Barbados has the pace and bounce it had for the last couple of games, it should play into our hands beautifully,” Punter thundered, hinting he would unleash his pace battery on a lively Barbados track to bounce out the Lankans.

Glenn McGrath too joined the skirmish before the war. The Pigeon has scalped Sanath Jayasuriya seven times in his career and he wants him one last time tomorrow.

"In Australia I have always been reasonably successful against him, and I think the bounce has nicked him out quite a few times," Pigeon squeaked. Again, this was expected. McGrath has always been fond of such pre-match banter.

What was not really expected was Sanath Jayasuriya, that Matara Marauder, matching Punter and Pigeon decibel for decibel.

“'It doesn't matter what they bowl to me. I have been around long enough in international cricket to face any sort of bowling-if they bounce me, I can pull and hook as well… It's not as if we haven't played on bouncier pitches," Jayasuriya replied.

But all these rhetoric and saber-rattling seem irrelevant, even vulgar, when Muttiah Muralitharan takes a broad view and says he wants to win the cup to help his strife-torn countrymen forget, even if for a few hours, their troubled times.

"It would be a bigger achievement than all my personal records…It will act as an inspiration for youngsters and we being a team of different nationalities, it could also help tide over the problems our nation faces.

"We are going through a bad situation in our country but this could achieve something different," said Murali, a minority Tamil player. In fact the current squad has a Sinhala Buddhist in Jayasuriya, a Sinhala catholic in Chaminda Vaas, a Muslim in Farveez Maharoof and also a Tamil Catholic in Russel Arnold. Cricket has shown in Sri Lanka what it is capable of and that’s the best part of the game.

For a change, the LTTE Tigers have remote control in their hands not to explode a mine, but just to switch on innocuous TV sets in their hideouts; for once, they would acknowledge Jayasuriya, and not a certain Velupillai Prabhakaran, is the real Master Blaster.

Now if one more World Cup triumph could have silenced all the guns in this teardrop island in the Indian Ocean, I guess even a title-hungry Ponting would not mind losing for once. May the deserving team win tomorrow’s World Cup final.

Lankan Lion has Kiwi in breakfast, Kangaroo for dinner?

(Murali the Magician, again the wrecker-in-chief)


Australia is not the team to step and skid on banana skin. That’s for lesser cricketing mortals, like India or Pakistan. Even South Africa. And thanks God, finally there seems a team with the wherewithal and the guile to upset the Aussie applecart.

Lankan triumph against New Zealand in the first World Cup semifinal conveys the Lankans are here for business. You simply don’t have a better balanced team in the World Cup. Not even Australia – with no slow bowler of worth in their ranks -- can boast of such combination.

The batting order looks a never ending one with each of them having distinction either in the bail-out act or the belting act. And his yesterday’s ton meant Mahela Jayawardene too came to the party and the timing could not have been better.

The bowling is potent enough to bring disorder to any batting order. Australian bats, provided they get past South Africa today, would struggle to see the ball coming off Lasith Malinga’s hands. Vaas may have lost couple of yards but no waning in guile – remember how he and his partner-in-conspiracy Sangakkara stumped Lara? Dilhara Fernando has also developed into an intelligent bowler and he put it on display in that last over against England.

Also, the mere sight of Muralitharan licking his lips and tossing the ball up at the end of his bowling mark is enough to send shivers down the spine. All those innuendoes and cat-calls from the Australian gallery are still fresh in his mind and Murali always loved to sizzle in sizzlers.

Come Saturday, the Lions would be ready to have Kangaroo for dinner.

Duck Tales

(Fleming lbw Vaas for zero, fourth time in a row. AFP Photo)



The Lankan Lions finally brought down the high-flying Kiwis in the Super Eight clash yesterday and it snapped New Zealand's record sequence of nine ODI wins.

When Fleming was trapped by Chaminda Vaas for a duck, some interesting statistics came to the fore. This was Fleming's fourth duck in a row against Sri Lanka and it was Vaas who got rid of him on all four occasions! And, hold your breath, on each occasion, Vaas has removed him leg before wicket!

For those who has a special liking for numbers, here are details of Fleming's duck details!

8.1.2006 Fleming lbw Vaas Napier 0
20.10.2006 Fleming lbw Vaas Brabourne St.Bombay 0
6.1.2007 Fleming lbw Vaas Auckland 0
12.4.2007 Fleming lbw Vaas Grenada 0

Overall, we are told, Fleming has been dismissed without scoring six times against Sri Lanka - 17th time overall in ODIs.

Vaas has claimed Fleming's wicket 11 times - the most by any bowler. Brett Lee and Waqar Younis has captured Fleming's wicket seven times each.

Fleming the captain, with 14 ducks against his name, this equals Arjuna Ranatunga and the third in the skipper's duck-list is Sourav Ganguly, who had nine noughts during his captaincy.

Slinga Malinga: the pacer who has his head on fire

After Muttiah Muralitharan, another maverick from the Sri Lankan stable. Amidst the gloom of Bob Woolmer’s murder, cricket finally hit the headlines for the right reason, as Lasith Malinga scalped four wickets in as many deliveries against South Africa in Guyana.

To be honest, I dislike his action as much as his hairstyle, or the other way round. I happened to see him first in Sri Lanka late last year during a rain-ruined tournament and I still believe he is the game’s second most outrageous hair ever spotted near a cricket ground. For those who came in late, Darrel, the Oz Man in White remains the first in my list.

From a distance, it is seems his head is on fire but somehow the flames are not flickering enough. No wonder, Mahela Jayawardene insists Malinga adds firepower to his pace attack, especially with Chaminda Vaas walking into the sunset of his career.

Malinga’s round-arm action has given sleepless nights to many a batsman. Graeme Smith is not known for his candour but still the Protea southpaw admitted “Malinga was incredible. He made me age a bit."

Back in 2005, Malinga’s low-slung action prompted Stephen Fleming to approach the umpire and request him to change his trousers, for the ball seemed lost in the black backdrop and the Kiwi bat could not spot the ball.

Thankfully, no such requests have been received so far this time. And one thing is sure. This World Cup has seen more distractions and less of cricket and Malinga, despite his weird hairdo, deserves a pat in the back for setting it right.