Balloon head!

Anything can happen in Twenty / 20 cricket. Even scoring 36 runs in last over is possible. That is the reason T20 is so popular in cricket playing nations, and it won’t take too much of a time to have result. It is like a carnival show, people go to watch their home teams playing straight after the work. Support the home team, have some drinks, cheers, excitement, thrills and little dance show with few DJ tracks. Modern day entertainment after PS3 and Xbox Kinect!

IPL became food for thoughts for few neighboring countries. BPL is not British Physical Laboratories LLC as me and you identify with. It is representing Bangladesh Premier League! The latest buzz is that Pakistan also planning to have their own Premier League very soon, probably sooner than anticipated. PPL wannabe heads already hinting the possibilities of omitting Indian players from their game. The funny part is this discussion took place even before they could take decision on where to play the cricket!

I have hinted in my previous blog posts that Harbhajan Singh is a balloon head! Still if you guys are not convinced enough; just watch that match reply where Mumbai Indians played against Deccan Chargers. Bhaji was ramming towards the umpire and shouting, umpire was looking for a shield to avoid the saliva spray! At one point I thought he gonna slap the umpire like; you know he slapped someone in first edition of IPL?

Umpires make human errors, but a player can’t argue with umpire! Honestly; I was fancying Bhaji to slap the umpire, so his career would be in jeopardy. As again and again Harbhajan Singh is showing the world he is not only fit to play cricket but also any competitive game at large. Someone has to put this mentally gone case to a mental asylum as soon as possible for the best of the game cricket. He is the captain of Mumbai Indians, I am wondering how the hell an illiterate like Munaf Patel would learn discipline from the leader? Munaf can’t read, write or talk in better words. So only thing he can do is just watch somebody and try to learn from him. Unfortunately he got to look at very bad idol and that too all the time!

Virendar Sehwag is having a bad patch in his life. As soon as he got fixed his bald patch on his head all sort of bad patches start pouring at him left, right and center. His prolonged bad form successfully extended to IPL so far, been dropped from the national team, giving the chief selector Mr.Srikanth hard time to explain the media, his best buddy Gautam Ghambhir lost the vice captaincy to comparatively new comer Virat Kohli. Sehwag’s word of war with Dhoni didn’t improve the cause either. Cost him everything including his position in the team. He was probably too ignorant about the change of tide, initially the power shifted from Mumbai to Delhi, now Delhi to Chennai. Look at the opponent buddy; Chief selector Srikanth is from Chennai, BCCI secretary N.Srinivasan owns the team Chennai Super Kings, Dhoni is the captain of Chennai Super Kings, why Suresh Raina is so confident about his position in the team even after lack of form in recent international matches?, he too plays for CSK, why Bhaji is out and Ashwin is in?

Mera Bhai; tum dekha huwa book cover, poora kahani andar hai!

But one thing is for sure, nobody can mess with the HULK of Indian cricket, Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar! And everybody including foreign players are aware of his unbelievable popularity in India. Look at Greg Chappel, he has to say something about Sachin to sell his filthy biography, before coming to play IPL Brett Lee was more concerned about himself than Sachin Tendulkar by making a sweet statement about Master Blaster; consequences he may have to face from Indian crowd for blocking Sachin from scoring a run in recently concluded match in Australia could be pricy! Even Dhoni said Sachin is the ultimate batsman India can’t afford to miss, this came right after his statement about rotation policy and slow fielders. So Dhoni was hitting someone in Delhi by this statement, and he is making sure he meant particularly one player when he made that statement. Slow fielder? Ahum…. Harbhajan Singh is a real Chamcha of Sachin Tendulkar, if anybody come up with a statement against Sachin, Bhaji will be the first one to defend the little master, so what did he get out of this?, a permanent position in Mumbai Indians team, and now he became the captain of the Mumbai Indians!

100^th 100 ton in international cricket is unbelievable by any stretch of imagination; Sachin achieved that feat sighting nobody nearby to break the record.  Even Sachin puffed, huffed and gasped to reach there! If not against Bangladesh he was aiming at Zimbabwe, if not Zimbabwe then new comers like UAE or Afghanistan. Luckily he got there against Bangladesh. Now he can play free cricket as some critics says, that means they too not expecting Sachin to retire in near future! As an ardent fan of Rahul Dravid said; Sachin may hang the boot and hand over the bat to his son Arjun when he is ready to play international cricket!

A media person asked Virendar Sehwag “actually Irfan Pathan is what in your team?”

After a long pause Viru answered “you know, he is a bowler, he is fast medium slow bowler who can bat a little”

“Fast, Medium or Slow… which one?” the interviewer mystified completely, the answer was nothing but a burning stare!

Adios!

IPL Fungama! Let's Start!

So there it is. If you are in a pub celebrating historical Indian World Cup victory; take your next zip of beer after a while, IPL has started rolling!

New Team Kochi Tuskers Kerala proved from their first match against Bangalore Royal Challengers, they are going to be the savers of KKR this year. They will never allow KKR to touch the bottom line; it is booked and taken by Mahela Jayavardane’s KTK this year! Sorry to disappoint you Mr.SRK.

Look at their team, highly inconsistent cricketer McCullum who always try experimental shots to get out as their opener, Test specialist VVS Laxman, choker (not joker) R Jadeja (OK, I changed my mind, he is bit of both), even Australians won’t agree if I say Hodge is a good T20 cricketer. Then Kerala’s Super Hero Sri Santh. If anyone think this team can make in to semi finals of this year’s IPL require urgent medical attention!

Sree Santh is a Sachin Tendulkar of Kerala, Sree Santh even started growing hair like Sachin Tendulkar once was in his early career, Sree’s hair had out grown his head such a degree, once the cricket ball bounced after accidentally hitting his head err, hair!

The whole gallery was cheering for him in Kochi Stadium, and he himself had puzzled seeing a good portion of crowd chanting his name. Sree Santh never allowed crowd to cheer for him in his entire career till now. He had seen pinching himself and patting on his head out of utter disbelieve. “Am I gone mad or the whole crowd gone mad?” He even gave a flying kiss to the crowd after taking a first wicket in this year’s IPL.

KTK’s jersey is very vibrant, colorful and energetic, unlike their players. At least one thing they got it right on that perspective.

As usual KKR started with a defeat. But this time the margin was less. So definitely there is improvement from last year!

Check this blog regularly for more IPL news and gossips.

Why Indians didn’t appeal when Strauss edged?

The Indian team seems to have a “hearing problem” in addition to its bowling and fielding affliction which led to its failure to shield a strong score of 338 in the World Cup match against England on Sunday.

Much has been spoken and written about how poor bowling and fielding in addition to late batting collapse that resulted in the fall of India’s last seven wickets for 33 runs and nearly enabled England to win. I mentioned in my previous blog how happy Mr.Dhoni was to draw a match that was surely could have won hands down. I seriously think Dhoni should consult an ENT specialist before the next match for the betterment of Indian cricket. Zaheer Khan too should accompany Dhoni.

England skipper Andrew Strauss, who was the architect of India’s agony by scoring his highest score in ODI 158, should have been out when he has scored a mere 13 if wicket keeper Dhoni, Zaheer or close-in fielders had appealed for a caught behind at that point. Strauss clearly nicked a Zaheer delivery and waiting for an appeal from behind and the bowler, for his amusement there were no appeal! 98 runs later, the England captain had edged another delivery from the same bowler Zaheer with his score at 111 but none of the Indians on the field appealed! There is no excuse to blame noisy crowd. When Strauss trapped Leg before he was expecting same mute from Indians, but this time they did appeal and got him out. How sad!

Sachin Tendulkar scored 137 v Sri Lanka at Delhi on March 2, 1996,

Sachin scored 143 v Australia at Sharjah on April 22, 1998,

Sachin scored 141 v Pakistan at Rawalpindi on March 16, 2004,

Sachin scored 123 v Pakistan at Ahmedabad on April 12, 2005

Sachin scored 175 v Australia at Hyderabad on November 5, 2009

All above matches have one thing in common, no. Not only Tendulkar’s centuries. India lost in all those matches. I am not blaming the little master for those losses, he did well his part but his countrymen failed to capitalize on his contribution. They let him down most of the time when he scored heavily.

ICC World Cup 2011 Snippets – Part 1

2011 ICC World Cup kick started with a beautiful boundary from India’s Virendar Sehwag. His survival as a batsman in the crease for the first 5 overs are running on 80% of pure luck. Next 5 overs 60% of luck, after 25 overs it is 100% talent with little or no luck!

Look at his game against England on their second match in world cup. First ball he faced turned into streaky four, well, he wasn’t teasing the team England with those half chances, he was hell nervous out there and Bangalore crowd was aesthetic!

Match between Pakistan and Srilanka too was a good entertainment. But wait…, a young Pakistan batsman jumped on the pitch while batting, apparently spoiling the pitch according to the umpire. Umpire called the batsman immediately and tried to explain not to jump on the pitch, poor Pak player didn’t understand a thing what umpire was trying to convey. Umpire jumped hard on the same surface to show the batsman not to do that!! Srilankan captain Sangakkara was pulling his hair out and finally pleaded to the umpire let it be, if he got it or not. Don’t show it on the pitch sir, we got to bat after this!

Sachin Tendulkar is a living legend, but he is not bigger than team India. Every tom dick and harry says India should win this year’s world cup for Sachin Tendulkar. What about the country? What about millions of Indian fans around the world? Less fortunate street ass riding on Tendulkar’s popularity is not new. Started by one time Sachin’s good pal Vinod Kambli, and it was like a domino effect everyone including Harbhajan Singh backing up the presupposition. Harbhajan Singh is well known friend of Sachin Paji, or Harbhajan created this impression about him and Sachin in media smartly responding on anything about Sachin, in return he gained so much of popularity, a lot of money from the ads and a place in Mumbai Indians in Indian Premier League, even his own state team Punjab Super Kings didn’t rate him so much!

Indian pacer Sree Sranth was very upset initially when he was left out of the World Cup team. He cried on the rooftop to pick up some sympathy (not exactly like how he reacted after getting slapped) Indian Cricket team chief selector Krishnamachari Srikanth compelled to answer the media questions when he visited Kerala; the speedster’s home state. In fact Srikanth was struggling to find a convincing answer. Praveen Kumar’s ill timed injury became blessing for Sri Shant, he played against Bangladesh in opening match and showed the world why he wasn’t picked in playing eleven initially. Now Srikanth is thanking Srisanth for clearing the cloud!