The day after the High Voltage Match!

Next day after the clash of two giants in World Cup semi final I went to a salon to have a haircut. Those Pakistan hair dressers seem like so dejected and frustrated, I did not say a word about cricket till they finish their job on my hair, I was really scared of losing one of my ear between their scissor blades if I utter a word about cricket!

I thought it was so strange when I noticed they were watching a Chinese channel on the TV, err.., they were listening to the Chinese channel on TV. Before going out of the salon, after opening the push door completely I asked the hair dresser, “Why are you watching a Chinese channel? Do you know Chinese?”

“Every fucking channel is talking about that chootiya khel cricket. We had enough, all bullshit!” One of the men grumbled with an astonishing anger!

“But that is only a game, one team has to lose. Both teams cannot be qualified for the final game” I put forward a general theory.

“Then why can’t you guys lose the game?” one of them shouted!

I closed the door and walked away, immediately I understood the intensity of the situation! After a while I turned back in fear to check if they are coming after me with a scissors to cut my neck?

I would say the empathetic Indian win against their neighbor should contribute a lot to Pakistan cricket team itself for their dropped catches, sloppy fielding, run out chances and Kamran Akmal.  The Pakistan wicket keeper did something right only to make Goutham Gambhir out. Otherwise he was in his usual form.

Man of the Match Sachin Tendulkar should gift his trophy to Pakistan’s Mis bah ul Haq! He is the one worked hard to see India win. As fuming Pakistan commentator Rameez Raja said “if Mis Bah can hit a six like that in last overs (where there is no hope left) why couldn’t he hit one before?”

As long as Mis Bah Ul Haq is there in Pakistan cricket team India can win any tight, pressure cooker match effortlessly, remember T20 World Cup final?

Harbhajan Singh is under injury threat after taking two or three flying moths in his mouth following the wicket of Pakistan Captain Shahid Afridi! The insects entered in his mouth died immediately, one which narrowly escaped told his friends his three best friends sunk in a toilet bowl! Don’t ever fly nearby that thing, it is highly dangerous! If you don’t sink in it, you might get strangled in curly hair around it!

Another Indian Disaster!

South African victory over India was done when Ashish Nehra had been asked to bowl the last over! So good a man Nehra is, didn’t waste much of a precious time, within three bowls he finished the game and went to the dressing room to have much needed rest and an Orange juice! 4, 6 and 4. Game Over!

South Africa, needing 13 runs off the last over, broke the hearts of a adherent Indian crowd by pulling off exciting three-wicket win. There were pin drop silent in the gallery after the thick Indian crowd comprehended South Africa really won the match! But their real shock came little later when Indian Captain Dhoni defended the decision to give Ashish Nehra the last over of the South African Innings, saying the paceman has been doing a nice job and hoped that the laft-armer will win crunch games for the country later in the World Cup! That means we can expect same kind of horror in upcoming matches too! He is going to persist with left armer!

Difference between genuine quality bowler and not so quality bowler has been exposed in full public glare. Zaheer Khan’s over just before the disaster was top class; MSD most likely thought Ashish Nehra cannot be so bad to giveaway 13 runs in 6 balls that too against tail enders of South African Squad! Well…, Ashish Nehra proved that he is not only bad but dreadful by giving away 14 runs in 3 balls!

“Bowlers need to bowl at the right spots and if you are not doing that, more often than not, you are going to get hit. Bhaji (Harbhajan) was the only other choice but I thought a seamer would be better. Maybe I was wrong, but I thought that was the better option.” Dhoni said after the match.

Dhoni’s statement made a young man chuckle in the Indian dressing room; the young chap could not control his laugh even though dressing room was so tensed and gloomy after the defeat. Went out the dressing room and laughed till he got severe abdominal pain. A curious off spinner in the team who never got a chance to spin the ball till now followed the young pacer to know what is so funny.

“Bhaji will never agree to bowl last over, even if you point a gun at his head in point blank range!” While giggling, the aggressive paceman told the unfortunate off spinner who carries drinks all the time without a break. They spoke in almost same south Indian language, the third curious pace bowler followed them could not understand a single word out of their conversation rolled on the floor laughing! (One and only clue - He has got this inborn idiotic expression on his face all the time, even when he takes wickets, drop a catch or a miss field)

“Had we batted for full 50 overs, we could have got 20 more runs. What is important is you don’t play for the crowd you play for your country. We should have batted the full fifty overs. If we could have fielded better we could have made the score look bigger, but we’re not a side known for our fielding.” MS Dhoni continued.

Is he pointing at Yousuf Pathan, Yuvraj Singh, Harbhajan Singh or Zaheer Khan for their batting for the crowd? In short Mr.Dhoni is concluding this match defeat by saying they should have bowled, fielded and batted better, that’s all, very small problem to rectify before the next match!

Bollywood actress Bipasha Basu and Abhishek Bachchan were few celebrities attended to watch the India vs South Africa match. Indian cricket team had given back what Bachchan and Bipasha had given us in recent times. Let them know the taste of disappointment. It is sour. Very sour!

Sigh! Sachin scored century – India lost the match one more time. Sachin was fielding like Virat Kholi, he was talking to the bowlers frequently, his presence felt all over the ground. Still his younger fellows could not give him a Man of the Match Award that he really deserved this time!

ICC World Cup Snippets – Part 2

India sweats hard to win the match against Netherland. Intention was clear from the beginning as Sachin and Sehwag started firing from all cylinders from the word go. Indians wanted to show the world and probably bigger oppositions that how strong their batting line-up is. All went little wrong when they lost Sachin, Sehwag, Yousuf and Kholi. Yuvi and Dhoni played maturely to avoid anymore wicket slides. Because there after left was heavy weight champion Bhaji who knows to attack only Australian bowlers, Ashish Nehra, who is still under the supervision of Sunil Gavasker’s batting coaching (apparently Mr.Gavasker gave up and asked Nehra to do only bowling, his fielding coach too gave up long time ago) and Zaheer Khan who is as stiff as Arnold Schwarzenegger when it comes to batting!

Yeah, I agree, Yuvraj put up weight, but he is performing better now! Churning out fifties at will! How is he doing this, when our journalist made a way to the back door of Yuvi’s recent success we surfaced an astonishing secret. Here we go; Yuvi is banned from going out to bars, pubs and discos by his Mom and coach. What they certain were, too much of beer consumption is the reason behind his weight gain. (Rumor has it; someone convinced Yuvi, Fosters Beer can make him like an Australian) Yuvi was frustrated, seeing the aggravation on his face, coach promised Yuvi he can go to the pub every time he scores 50. Trick worked! Rest is there for everyone to see, the young lad working hard for the team and for him! He already had two nights in the pub dancing with girls! We are hoping for him to have more nights!

Having seen his career plagued by one injury after another, Australian cricketer Shane Watson has decided not to over exert himself to keep injuries at bay ahead of their remaining World Cup matches.
The injury-prone all-rounder is well aware of just how much is too much for his body. Now he is planning not to play World Cup at all to keep away from injuries. Captain Ricky Ponting trying hard to encourage Watson to participate in World Cup remaining matches, according to Ricky, injury can happen anywhere, while walking you can step on some pebbles and fall down, a vehicle can come and hit you on the road, if you are sitting in the room doing nothing and watching TV a pair of gloves can hit the Television set and the TV can fall on your head!

Pakistan Coach Waqar Younis made it clear at the press that they are not interested to win the World Cup this time. Waqar hinted that Pakistan wicket keeper Kamran Akmal could be replaced after the World Cup!

"He (Akmal) dropped catches which cost us the match. But we can't drop him in the middle of a tournament," said Waqar. "We can think about it after the tournament but he is going to be around for now. We will try to rectify his mistakes in the break that we have got. We can't fix all his flaws in such a short span but we can give it a try."

Waqar ji, World Cup supposed to be the mother of all matches; I wanted to appreciate your choice of tournament to have just a try!

Someone please remind Viru that he promised us all before the World Cup he will try to bat 50 overs! Will hair transplantation cause memory loss?

Bangladesh humiliation!

Either Bangladesh public is over ambitious or the team. Are they really thought they could win this world cup? Or they could beat every team that plays against them?

What a mismatch. What a shame. Bangladesh elected to bat, Captain Sakhib Ul Hassan probably thinking to score around 300 plus runs. Instead scored 58 (not an individual score, the whole team total) and allowed West Indies to win the match in 12 overs! Bangladesh public gone mad, they started throwing papers, towels and even jerseys to the ground. They booed so much restlessly after their team got out cheaply, the boos around the shere Bangla National stadium could still be heard even when the West Indian openers Chris Gayle and Bravo came out to bat.

Real humiliation; ruthless West Indies ripped the team Bangladesh in front of their own fans. In a way they turned their own crowd against them.

I won’t blame the crowd, they came to watch a match if not a win, they came with 4's and 6's cards, and girls came with their throat cleaned to scream, shout, and sing. Nothing happened, throughout the match they were kept silent by the performance of Bangladesh team, in fact Bangladesh fans were in a state of shock, forgot to react till the last wicket went down! When West Indies started batting they started cheering for West Indies batsmen, they cheered each and every boundary Gayle hit. OK, this is one way of enjoying the game, end of the day public is the one paid the money. Incidentally I remember a Japanese proverb “Better the beak of the hen than the tail of the horse”.