7 World Cup inferences!

I know people who dismiss the Indian cricketers as obscenely overpaid nitwits who should not be allowed to open their mouth except when eating.

But if you can read between the lines they utter, you would be amazed at their unsuspected depth. The word I’m groping for has a cat in it...implications…if you know what I mean.

Sample the seven inferences anyone will draw after listening to them:

1. Yusuf Pathan is Atlas reborn: As Virat Kohli so articulately put, Tendulkar has “carried the burden of the nation” for 21 years and Yusuf Pathan carried Tendulkar in Mumbai. It amounts to, if your arithmetic is alive and kicking, carrying the burden of a nation + 65 kg.

2. Yuvraj Singh has corrected himself: "I think we kissed the World Cup trophy a thousand times".

3. Yuvraj had a bright future as a claymodeller before he took to cricket: "Earlier, whatever I was touching was turning into mud."

4. Praveen Kumar thinks Dhoni is fast losing popularity : "Dhoni is Obama of cricket"

5. Dhoni believes if human mind develops pimple, it should be named after Sreesanth:"If you want to irritate someone that should be the opposition and not your side."

6. Yuvraj thinks there is not much difference between Gambhir and love – both are blind: "I told Gautam: I am not Virender Sehwag, I can't run like that."

7. Dhoni helps a great deal to keep Yuvraj cool: "I am a great fan of Yuvraj."

P.S. A couple of you wanted to know my World Cup experience. I’m afraid the details would only bore most. If you insist, well some of my experiences include being abused by Yuvraj's father over phone for about 10 minutes, holding Geoffrey Boycott's hat in a flight while he jostled with Arun Jaitley's secretary to stow luggage, spilling coffee on Nasser Hussain's shoe in Chennai, listening to Derek Pringle swearing profusely in Hindi in Ahmedabad, nearly tripping Sanjay Manjrekar in Mohali...warned you, it would only bore you.

7 IPL auction sub-plots!

1. IPL has precipitated the Armageddon by putting monkeygate protagonists Harbhajan Singh and Andrew Symonds in the same team;

2. Vadodara is about to seek separate nationhood, convinced that the money Pathan brothers fetched from IPL auction is enough to sustain a nascent nation;

3. One of the team owners with an obvious zombie expression was so thick-headed that auctioneer, at one point, asked her if he could use it as the hammer;

4. Anil Kumble opted out of IPL because he feared Rajasthan Royals might be interested in him and there are enough scientific evidences to prove the indelible scars that Shilpa Shetty's non-stop giggling can leave on human psyche;

5. Sid Mallya was the only owner with a scientific outlook. Few realised his mohawk was actually a subtle anti-thesis to Newton's law of gravitation;

6. There was so much coldness between Preity Zinta and Ness Wadia that every cappuccino they ordered turned tropical iceberg in no time:

7. In a last throw of dice, Pakistan agreed to export onions to India, offering one cricketer free per sack but IPL governing council members said they have got used to salad sans onion.

IPL, a lexicographer’s perspective

Had Samuel Johnson or Noah Webster been around, it would have spared me the trouble. Since they are not, I guess someone has to step in, spit on his palms and get on with the job.

So here are seven IPL words which Doosra believes should straightaway be in the lexicons.
 

1. Laliterature (la-lit-ray-chur): any text rich with recurring phrases like ‘multi-million-dollar deal’, ‘tender’, ‘rights’, ‘franchise’ etc. (e.g. The eunuchs who came to listen to Pranab Mukherjee’s budget were disappointed, admitting they could not make heads or tails of the Finance Minister’s laliterature.)
 

2. Yusuffering (yu-suff-ring): See-saw, yo-yoing. (e.g. Elin Nordegren finally handed Tiger Woods his hat, saying the golfer’s yusuffering fidelity was to be blamed for their parting.)
 

3. Mandiraxed (man-di-raxd): Dumped unceremoniously. (e.g. Sarah Palin says she is clueless why Barack Obama mandiraxed her and fell for that Chicago lamppost called Michelle.)
 

4. Yuvinile (yuv-nael): Excessive penchant for nightlife. (e.g. ‘Shoaib Akhtar had all the ingredients to be a great bowler but for his yuvinile indiscretions,’ rued Imran Khan.)
 

5. Shilparasites (shil-para-saets): gatecrashing relatives of your lady boss. (e.g. I had invited only my boss in my anniversary but she turned up with hordes of her freeloading shilparasites.)
 

6. Gangulyse (gang-u-lies): revive, mend. (e.g. John Terry’s tormented wife today made it clear that no amount of counseling can gangulyse her relation with her Casanova husband.)
 

7. Sehwagon Wheel: A wagon wheel where 4s and 6s far outnumber 1s and 2s. (e.g. Arjun Tendulkar’s Sehwagon Wheel reassured us that the youngster is following in his father’s footsteps.)

Yusuferman!

Make no mistake, we still hate Lalit Modi. But let’s face it, IPL isn’t skin-deep cricket. 

Yes sir. There is intense drama. And there is heart-wrenching tragedy too.

Come March and the Athenians had their Dionysia where Greek tragedies were staged. 26 centuries since then and March still springs tragedy on us.

His profile says he is from Baroda. Actually, Yusuf Pathan is straight from the pages of the great Greek tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides.

Last of the Mohicans

Sourav Ganguly would vouch, Andrew Flintoff often struggled to keep his shirt on.

This time, Freddie sheds flannel to retain pyjama. Test Cricket, on its part, can surely find a lonely, dingy corner and shed a tear or two to mourn the exit of the Last of its Mohicans.

I’m afraid we won’t see his like again. The era of 24-carat all-rounders is just behind us. Welcome to a new world where imposters in the all-rounder’s garb would fool around.

ICC rankings would want us believe Mitchell Johnson is world’s number two all-rounder and Chaminda Vaas ranks fifth. But then ICC’s understanding of the game rivals Paris Hilton’s grasp of rocket science and both come with the unmistakable ‘Not To Be Taken Seriously’ tag.

In his approach, Flintoff was a throwback to an era where the popular notion was that an all-rounder should be good enough to merit two places in the side, one for bowling and another for batting.

Now, take Garfield Sobers out of the action. He could bowl pace and spin, at times both in the same over, keep wicket and then hit a poor Malcolm Nash for six sixes in an over. He could be Clark Kent’s estranged sibling endowed with equal supernatural ability and a markedly better sartorial taste.

Soon after the Kapil-Imran-Botham-Hadlee quartet left the scene, batting pie-chuckers and bowling sloggers thronged the dais and statistics – often confounding than enlightening – were thrown up at regular intervals to prove their all-round credentials.

You don’t have to strain your eyes to see the clowns fooling around. Underneath the garb, Shane Watsons and Yusuf Pathans are essentially bits-and-pieces players of some utility but anything but all-rounders.

Unlike them, Flintoff, in between his injury rehabs, sent down real 90mph thunderbolts from an awkward angle and then returned to wield the willow with impunity.

More importantly, he was match-winner with both.

His foibles only endeared him and make no mistake, it’s people like him who ensured bums on seats.

Above all, Flintoff was the rare flicker of flair in an otherwise mass of mediocrity that is English cricket.

I insist, Test cricket is all about romanticism and if you don’t like, you are free to frequent the nearby Twenty20 circus.

MCC diagnoses Test cricket is dying and their optimism simply baffles me. They might declare Michael Jackson alive!

Pix: PA

Behind the KKR wall

A deathly silence greets you as you cross the unmanned gate. Inside the premises, umpteen tents dot the place and you feel you have strayed into a field of giant mushrooms.

Fortunately, they have plastered the inmate’s name on each of those tents and I decided to follow the protocol and start with the skipper.

The Baz seemed buzzing inside but lo! He was not roaring but actually snoring! Poor guy. Caught napping, always.

Considering how his and the team’s form have given him sleepless nights, only a man with a boulder for a heart would wake him up. But as I’m about to step out, Baz sprung on his bed and moaned “Stop the Lappie, I’ll go for the toss.”

I offer him water but poor Baz dropped the sitter. I offered him again and this time he fumbled and spilled half the content before finally latching on to it. In a state of trance, he drained the glass, tossed it back and then murmured, “I’m still the skipper, John. Let me go for the toss.”

My heart bled for him but I left him to his state and entered Ajantha Mendis’ tent, to see something that gave me goosebumps.

Stripped down to bare minimum, Mendis was lying prone on the cot with one guy shaving his head and another applying some sticky stuff on his skull.

I nudged the third in the tent and whispered “what’s the matter?”

“Poor fish. He had just overcome the trauma of the Lahore attack but Yusuf Pathan’s Super-Over terrorism probably left indelible scars on his psyche. So much so, he wants to quit cricket and wants to open a kiribath stall in Moratua,” he whispered back.

“By the way...”

Before he could finish, I found myself in the tiger’s lair. But instead of Ganguly, a gang of four was inside, engaged in intriguing activities.

Arindam Ghosh and Wriddhiman Saha, having swapped tracks for batik lungi and netted vests, looked agitated over a game of ludo while Ashok Dinda was looking at the mirror, admiring the headband, which, I’m told, can only be surgically removed.

I cleared my throat to draw attention and asked if Dada was around.

“No, he has gone out sulking. You know what? He’s called Sulk Hogan these days,” Ghosh giggled.


“And gora coaches call him albatross,” Saha chipped in.

Laxmi Ratan Shukla was dipping his brush in some solution and was rubbing it ferociously on some metal scraps, which was not quite recognizable from where I stood.

Shukla cast a dismissive eye on me and deadpanned, “I heard everything. You people better come and brush dada’s chains or I’ll tell him what you said.”

I left the commotion behind and ran into Mashrafe Mortaza, who looked lost, sitting outside his tent.

“Mian bhai! Tell me, is anything wrong with me? Do I look like a scheme?”

“Scheme!”

“Yes, these guys keep saying that I’m actually an Indian scheme to revive Bangladesh’s GNP.”

“well…err…I better be going.”

Buchanan’s tent was empty too. In his absence, Andy Bichel and Matthew Mott had occupied the place and were grimly pondering future, completely oblivious of my presence.

“I heard John would be fired and they would get Jyoti Basu to do the job,” Bichel said.

“Why?”

“They said KKR is a house divided and the Basu lad has presided over a fractious coalition for some donkey’s ears,” Mott explained.

“You think we got a chance?” a worried Bichel asked.

“No mate,” said Mott.

“Only Steve Waugh has some chance. They have changed emigration rules and Tugga is the only Australian allowed in Kolkata.”

Yusuf-erman!

As mild-mannered as Clarke Kent, as lethal as Kent’s more famous persona!

Y would be the man his wise captain would send to rescue his girl friend and Y would return with the girl unscathed.

Like Superman, Y’s got flight, when he’s bowling. Like Superman, he’s vulnerable only to magic but then Y has the chief sorcerer on his side, as his captain!

Y has got x-ray vision and can see through a bowler’s mind, worse than being seen through garments.

His telescopic view tells him the bowler’s grip. The super-speed of the wood he wields can launch any hunk of leather in an orbit somewhere in the solar system.

Witnesses vouch, at times he stays static in the crease and his sheer will power does it for him!

RP Singh rolled up his jersey to flash his ugly hairy chest. Had Y done so, nobody would have missed a stylized Y shield on his chest.

He can walk on water, split sea and halve an atom. Possibly he can usher us out of recession too.

Superman is passé. Hail Yusuf-er Man.

Even better, he doesn’t wear his undies outside!

Pix: AFP Photo