THE WODEHOUSE IMPACT

When P G Wodehouse wrote the book “Pigs Have Wings”, little did he realise that it would have a worldwide impact in the 21st century in the form of Swine Flew !

IPL TEAMS ON THE WEB

The IPL season 2 is due in 8 days from now. I was browsing through the websites of the eight IPL teams over the past one week. All the sites have one thing in common-an online shop where you can purchase team merchandise. There are many features that distinguish one site from the other. My analysis and findings:

1. Chennai Super Kings

CSK

Probably the simplest IPL team website around. The best thing about this site is the blog that is authored by V B Chandrasekar, the chief selector and assistant coach of the Super Kings. No other site maintains a blog for its team and thus CSK’s website, the Lions’ Den, as it is called, stands out. However it lacks a discussion forum and to make up for it, the fans post their views as comments in the blog and these are in no way relevant to the blog post. My rating–8/10.

2. Kings XI Punjab

Sher-e-Punjab

This site was launched just two days ago. I am not sure if this site existed last year. It is also designed to be as simple as the CSK website. Featured currently is an interview between co-owner, Preity Zinta, and Brett Lee. Some day in future, you can expect the Superkings to fight a copyright violation since the Kings too call their website as “Lions’ Den”. It has to with the names of the two captains-Mahendra Singh Dhoni and Yuvraj Singh. Rating 7.5/10

3. Rajasthan Royals

Champions out of underdogs!

Probably the best and most comprehensive of all the IPL team websites. It has a section called Squad Tracker that brings forth news articles about its players from all over the world. This helps ensure the site has content even during the off season. A discussion forum is an added asset and the best of all is a separate merchandise store for international fans. In addition, they are on Twitter. My rating 10/10.

4. Mumbai Indians

Aamchi Team

At the entry, you have snapshots of Mumbai at the top and pictures of Sachin Tendulkar and Ajinkya Rahane to welcome you. Go in and you have a concise site with plenty on offer. Rating 9/10.

5. Delhi Daredevils

Delhi Daredevils or England Cricket Team?

A very good website that greets you with the fiery faces of Gautam Gambhir and Virender Sehwag popping out of an animated picture. Another comprehensive one. Rating 9.5/10

6. Deccan Chargers

Chargers-gaaru!

A replica of the Chennai Superkings website albeit with a much better background colour. Rating 9/10

7. Bangalore Royal Challengers

Makes you wonder if Vijay Mallya is able to spend $1.55 million on buying Kevin Pietersen, why can’t he spend a much lesser amount and get his website hosted independently? The site is hosted in an MSN platform and this lacks the independence that other IPL sites enjoy. While every care has been taken to update the player list, the animated GIF of the players at the top still shows Venkatesh Prasad and Zaheer Khan. (For the uninitiated, Venky has moved to Chennai Superkings while Zaheer has been lapped up by Mumbai). Rating 6/10.

8. Kolkata Knightriders

Thank God no SRK in this

As a fan of Sourav Ganguly, I hate to say this but this is the worst website of the eight. The URL is kkr.in and once you enter you wonder if it is kkr.in or SRK.in. It’s Shah Rukh Khan everywhere. I searched throughout the site for photos of Sourav Ganguly, Brendon McCullum and David Hussey but all I saw was huge and glaring images and crappy videos of Shah Rukh Khan while the photos of the aforementioned players have been kept small and relegated to a corner of the site. The merchandise store still reads “Coming Soon”. When ? After May 24 ? They also have a poor presence in Twitter with a “huge” follower count of 11! This promotional website of Shah Rukh Khan deserves a rating of 1/10.

FOR THE LOVE OF CRICKET

Finally it’s official-the IPL 2009 will not be played in India this year. The flip-flop by the various state governments over providing security cover went too far to the extent that the IPL organising committee, headed by Lalit Modi, was fed up. The last of the flip-flop games was played about two days ago when the Maharashtra government went on record expressing satisfaction over the revised schedule only to reverse it later. A similar thing happened in Andhra Pradesh when the government assured security cover but later the chief minister, Rajasekhara Reddy, went on record saying that elections were important.

The consolation for IPL fans is that the game will be played after all, albeit in a different country. This is good for the primary reason that cricket is not going to bow to terrorism. This gives an opportunity for the franchisees to build fan bases abroad. There are speculations that the spectator count may not touch high levels owing to the recession in the UK. But if football league games run to full houses, there’s some hope that the IPL will not be party to empty stands. Brickbats are being heaped on both the BCCI and the central government. In case of the former, the one word that is doing the rounds among critics is “money”. It’s hardly surprising for me given that similar cash bundles are being thrown about in inter-team swaps and transfers of football league players and noone complains. And much of this is happening in the United Kingdom, the country believed to be greatly affected by recession. Maybe Lalit Modi is right in his view about cricket being recession free.

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The T20 Champions League has kindled the interests of cricket fans, urging them to follow domestic cricket. The KFC T20 competition in Australia ended on Jan 24 with New South Wales emerging champions, thus ending Victoria’s hat-trick of T20 wins for three consecutive seasons ever since the competition’s inception in 2005-2006. The runner-up was Victoria this time. The two teams will go through to the T20 Champions League 2009, to be played in September.

New South Wales sprang a surprise when they signed up Brendon McCullum. This was done keeping in mind that he would be an important cog in the Speedblitz Blues’ wheel during the Champions League. Now comes the most interesting part. Lalit Modi has already announced that the 2009 edition of the CL would be a twelve team affair with New Zealand as one of the probable two additional countries. Matters have become tricky for McCullum since his home side, Otago Volts, have emerged winners of the NZ T20 competition. Now if Kolkata Knightriders make it to the CL, McCullum will find himself in a soup, being left to decide on priorities among three teams.

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Cameron White may not be the best batsman for Australia or the best leg spinner but he is definitely a great captain when it comes to his home side, Victoria Bushrangers. They emerged runners up in the domestic T20 cup and in the domestic one-day competition (Ford Ranger Cup). They ended the Australian domestic season on a high by winning the prestigious Sheffield Shield test competition. The final match of the competition was a special one for the leading Victorians, White, David Hussey and Brad Hodge, all of whom got centuries in Victoria’s massive innings of 862 runs. After ODIs and T20Is, David Hussey is keen to join his brother in the Australian Test team and this performance, he believes, will make the selectors consider him for the Ashes. Brad Hodge, who expressed frustration after being overlooked for the role of Matthew Hayden’s successor, had a point to prove and he still believes he can overtake his Victorian peers in the race for the Ashes squad.

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Ricky Ponting would have definitely banged his head on the wall in the lunch break of Day 3 of the Cape Town test. The previous day Bryce McGain was taken to the cleaners with his 10 overs accounting for 93 runs ! When one expected Ponting to turn to his reliable part-time spin duo of Simon Katich and Michael Clarke, with the former having three wickets from the 2nd test, he threw a surprise by persisting with McGain. The Proteas were ruthless on him and his 18 overs accounted for 149 runs and no wickets. Thus the question of Shane Warne’s successor still remains open.

THE TRADING WINDOW

The transfer cum trading window of the Indian Premier League came to close the day before. It had largely been a period of inactivity with franchises refusing to accept terms and conditions over player trading. However there were two signs of activity towards the end of it when Delhi Daredevils’ Shikhar Dhawan and Mumbai Indians’ Ashish Nehra were interchanged. Mumbai, for long, was looking for an Indian batsman to boost its lineup and had cast its net on Deccan Chargers for a specific “fish” named Rohit Sharma. But this endeavour failed and Mumbai then came to a conclusion that the best alternative was Shikhar The-One. Delhi was looking for a replacement for its relieved bowler Mohammad Asif and could not find a better option than Ashish Nehra. The Daredevils snapped him up before he decides to tread a path similar to Akshay Kumar’s “From Chandni Chowk to Bollywood” and invents intelligent phrases like “From India Gate to Gateway of India”.

In the neighbouring state of Karnataka, in the capital city of Bangalore, a son of Kannada soil was in talks with another son from South African soil. Vijay Mallya spent most of his time with Kevin Pietersen to sign the latter up for his Royal Challengers team. Mallya was keen on not repeating the mistakes of last year. He was desperate to sign on Pieter Sen in the last season itself but thought that the Kolkata franchise had lapped him up. In addition he put up all his players, including the star of last season, Nathan Bracken, for sale. He even collaborated with Future Group and offered attractive discounts and amazing offers like “Got a Steyn ? Get Mr.White FREE !

Mumbai, meanwhile, were looking for someone to step into the shoes of Shaun Pollock who decided not to extend his one-year contract. Noone was willing to set foot into a pair of old, stinking shoes. Mukesh Ambani was pondering over the question of who can do it when Sachin Tendulkar said “Zaheer Can”. Ambani wasted no time in filing a request to Vijay Mallya but came back disappointed on finding that Mallya was intent on Robbing Uthappa. Tendulkar solved the problem saying that they had Shikhar The One and the matter was solved amicably.

The Kolkata Knightriders issued a permanent contract to Ajanta Mendis as a warning sign for every other player to Mend His ways. After Anbumani Ramadoss banned smoking, the Knightriders were forced to kick the Butt. In his place, they brought in the naughty Brat Hodge who was frustrated over being ignored by Aussie chairman of selectors, Andrew He’ll Ditch. Soon after Matthew Hayden announced retirement and a place in the Aussie test team opened up, Hodge said about He’ll Ditch, “He has done it before. I know Andrew. He’ll Ditch me for sure”.

Moments after Lehman Brothers went bust, one of the stakeholders, Darren Lehmann of South Australia, announced retirement from first-class cricket and signed up with Deccan Chargers as its coach. They also signed up Ryan Harris, a tearaway fast bowler from Queensland, who, a couple of years ago, played for South Australia.

Rajasthan Royals signed up a Kerala batsman Raiphi Gomez. Sreesanth recommended his name to Preity Zinta and Ness Wadia for Punjab but his words were somehow caught on Emerging Media’s radio service and Shane Warne wasted no time in roping Gomez in. Sreesanth perceived this as a bigger insult than Harbhajan Singh’s slap and started weeping.

Elsewhere in Sydney, a 22-year old New South Wales player was sending out warnings to Andrew He’ll Ditch to give him a place in the Aussie squad. This lad was aptly named Warner. His stint with the New South Wales Blues showed he was daredevilry material and the Delhi Daredevils instantly signed him up. He later went on to make his T20 debut for Australia excelling in his very first innings. Lot of hype and praise was showered on him but he failed in his second T20 match and in his ODI debut. But he downplayed it saying that these were warnings to the media not to put too much hype on him. His warnings were echoed in Western Australia where Mike Hussey and Adam Gilchrist requested the media not to make heroes out of one-match-wonders.

Microsoft’s latest tagline goes “Life without walls”. This writer questioned the logic in the statement asking “How can there be windows without walls?” The transfer window also involved a wall here. There were speculations on whether Rahul “The Wall” Dravid would continue as Royal Challengers’ captain. When questioned about this, Anil Kumble intelligently answered “A wall takes time to build. In Test matches you have more time but in T20 there is literally no time. You cannot build walls in such short periods. T20 is a game without walls.” Microsoft immediately signed up Kumble as its brand ambassador while simultaenously laying off 5000 of its employees.

There is more of such things to come when the player auctions kicks off on Feb 6.

[ Disclaimer : Some incidents reported here are real while others are fictitious. Any semblance to real incidents is purely an unsolved mystery ]

BOXING DAY

Dec 26th, every year, is an important day for cricket buffs in that the Melbourne Cricket Ground would be host to a test match between Australia and some other team. Over the years this has come to be known as the Boxing Day test. With the advent of the Indian Premier League and the T20 Champions League, focus has shifted to other cricket matches as well. Tomorrow, alongside the Australia vs South Africa test match, the four Ranji Trophy quarter final matches kick off simultaneously at four different venues. Also Australia’s domestic T20 tournament, the KFC T20 Big Bash starts and will go on for one month. All eyes will be on last year’s champions, the Victoria Bushrangers , and the runners-up, the Western Australia Warriors, as the two teams start from scratch to regain their places for the 2009 T20 Champions League. Not to forget, the international T20 match between the New Zealand and the West Indies. These two teams will play another T20-I on 28th and later, in January,  Australia and South Africa play two. Looks like the possibility of a tournament with 3 tests, 3 ODIs and 3 T20s doesn’t seem too far.

Can’t hope for a better fare for the Holiday season.

IPL TRANSFER WINDOW

It’s finally here. The transfer window for the second season of the Indian Premier League begins tomorrow. There isn’t much hype about it and I doubt if most people are actually aware of it but once it gets underway it will be all over the papers. There will be moments of cheer when a high performer from one team moves to another and fans of the latter will feel a sense of betrayal only to be overshadowed by the entry of an equally better performer. Any player who has not made a single international appearance can be signed up any time while those who have done so can be signed up during the auction in February. My predictions on the likely moves by the franchises. 

The Fab Four- I am referring, not to Sachin-Dravid-Ganguly-Laxman but to the four teams that finished on the top of the IPL 2008 points table-Rajasthan, Chennai, Punjab and Delhi. These four teams are unlikely to make sweeping drastic changes to their squads given that most of their players had contributed quite significantly. There has  not been much news about specific names being targetted by other franchises but reports were abuzz that Sohail Tanvir of Rajasthan is being targetted by Bangalore for a hefty sum. Yesterday, Delhi signed up David Warner of New South Wales for his batting exploits in the ongoing Ford Ranger ODI domestic tournament in Australia. Rajasthan, Punjab and Chennai are more than happy with their present squads and will not offer their high performers easily, no matter how much money they are offered. Any new additions to the team would be seen as reinforcements for the already existing formidable forces. With the Pakistani players’ participation in doubt after the strained relations between the Indian and Pakistani governments, the absence of a player like Kamran Akmal of Rajasthan could be compensated by the presence of someone like Justin Langer (who did not participate in 2008 due to commitments with his English county team). 

The other half– Mukesh Ambani’s Mumbai is said to be targetting Rohit Sharma from Hyderabad. If his move succeeds, it would result in the loss of an important cog in the Hyderabad wheel. If Tendulkar has his way, he could bring in dear friend Ajit Agarkar, after the latter lost his BCCI graded contract but has done well with the ball for Mumbai in the ongoing Ranji Trophy. Mukesh might have made plans to sell off Luke Ronchi after the latter’s poor form in 2008 but would have changed his mind upon seeing his blazing performance against the West Indies. 

The Royal Challengers from Bangalore have already made changes to their management. Martin Crowe has been sacked as coach and Ray Jennings appointed in his place. Vijay Mallya is keen on bringing in Kevin Pietersen and was seen having frequent interactions with him during his stay in India. However Pietersen’s participation is subject to approval from the England Cricket Board and Mallya must be prepared for alternatives. He could look to buy Luke Pomersbach from Punjab given the already strong lineup that Punjab has. Or he could target one of Jayawardene or Sangakkara. At the end of the day what succeeds is a coach who can bring the best out of his team; one who can marshall his forces effectively; one who can bring out the best in players of calibre like Cameron White, Dale Steyn, Virat Kohli, Shreevats Goswami etc. 

Hyderabad, the Deccan Chargers, who finished last in the table in 2008 made some sweeping changes. It began with Deccan Chronicle selling off its stake in the team. It is not known yet who has offered to buy the team. Then captain V V S Laxman was sacked and Adam Gilchrist appointed in his place. Simultaneously coach Robin Singh was sacked in favour of Darren Lehmann (who had decided that he could do better than warm benches for Rajasthan). It is expected that Lehmann’s no-nonsense approach would be of great benefit to the team. Whether that succeeds, we will know in April-May. 

Sourav Ganguly’s men, the Kolkata Knightriders, recently signed up New South Wales batsman Moses Henriques. A coach in John Buchanan, a captain in Sourav Ganguly and the presence of dashing players like Ishant Sharma, Ricky Ponting, David Hussey, Salman Butt, Umar Gul and Shoaib Akhtar were no match for the other teams which chose to depend on talent rather than names. Buchanan gave his team “valuable” match practice during the later part of 2008 by making them travel to Brisbane and play against Queensland. Reports were abuzz that Andrew Flintoff is target no.1 for Shah Rukh Khan. In the 2008 season,Delhi chose to cut costs by sending off its cheerleaders while the Knightriders cut costs by sending off four of their players who were constantly in bench. Two of these were Cheteshwar Pujara and Ranadeb Bose. Given the two’s performances in the ongoing Ranji Trophy, Ganguly would do well to make good use of them. 

The next few days would be  full of news about player transfers and this is all set to become something big on the lines of similar transfer windows in league football.

THE INDIAN FACE TRANSPLANT

A woman’s near-100% face transplant has made it to the news. The Economic Times reports that it is USA’s first ever near-total face transplant and fourth worldwide. It is said that the first two occurred in France. However I beg to differ. The media has clearly ignored the previous occasions in which face transplants have occurred. A man from south India was a die-hard fan of ex-US president George Bush that he transplanted Bush’s face onto his. He thought of this as a better way to express his admiration than write fanatical posts in silly communities in social-networking websites.

However this led to the FBI framing impersonation charges against him and so he went for a second makeover in less than two weeks.
Meanwhile a Chinese person had gone for a transplant which became the third worldwide. The Indian was so impressed with the Chinese look that he decided to go for one himself.
But he was mistook for a Japanese and some young Japanese kids decided to try their martial art skills on him. This resulted in his face getting badly disfigured and so he went for a sex change operation. Unfortunately yhe doctors messed up with his face and body and produced a nonagenarian woman instead of a young, sexy damsel.
The man finally decided to regain his original face, but he himself could not remember which face he had. The doctors finally produced a near-partial transplant, along with a reverse sex change and resulted in this.

All this in a space of less than one year. Noone knew what the man’s original face looked like. The FBI came up with a picture based on description given by the man’s friends and relatives.

Never believe in statistics that the media gives out. Some of them are actually false.

RANDOM

Sachin Tendulkar played yet another great innings at his favourite hunting ground, Chepauk, thereby erasing every iota of bad memories of the 1999 test against Pakistan at the very venue. Cynics, who felt he was not a finisher, were left searching for answers. Critics, who felt he never scored centuries while finishing, were stumped. The England test match sought to answer both of them but criticism never stops. It keeps coming in new dimensions such as accusations over not contributing monetarily to the blast victims, blocking the entry of  “potential” youngsters etc. But champions are least bothered. They stand tall.

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Discovered two very hilarious blogs belonging to Rakesh Jhunjhunwala and Ramesh Srivats. Highly recommended for heavy laughter doses.

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Marathi names and words sound very much like Tamil words and hence have different connotations when interpreted by a Tamilian. There is this place in Pune called Kondhwa (pronounced Kondu-vaa) where Zaheer Khan runs his restaurant. Close to it is Mundhwa (pronounced Mundu-vaa). Near my office is a place called Kharadi (pronounced Karadi). Surnames take the cake. The name of the constable who died during the Marine Drive encounter on Nov 26 has a surname Ombale !

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There are many things that leave me looking for answers. Like why most of India’s capital cities are located close to neighbouring state borders. Like why the Tamilnadu Ranji team does not have Kedarnath and Kailasnath when they have Amarnath and Badrinath. Like why I am not able to get enough ideas to continue this post. Like how I manage to get 10+ hits everyday when once upon a time it was as low as zero.

BIRTHDAY BLUES

Indian superstar, Rajinikanth, turned 58 today. However he chose not to celebrate it to express his solidarity towards Tamils who were being killed in the ethnic violence in Sri Lanka and towards the victims of the Mumbai terror attacks. But his fans are celebrating it in their own ways.

Meanwhile activists of the Karnataka Rakshana Vedike are miffed at the actor’s constant switching of loyalties. Earlier when the actor “apologised” for allegedly insulting Kannada sentiments, the KRV believed that the actor’s pro-Kannada stance had returned. Now looking at his expression of solidarity towards Lankan Tamils and Mumbai ‘manoos’, they believe the actor has abandoned his pro-Kannada stance and have begun accusing him, citing his Marathi roots (Tamilian or Kannadiga, at the end of the day, he is Shivaji Rao Gaekwad). The KRV will ask for a confirmation and the actor will be forced to come out with another “apology”. This incites Tamil regionalists who ask the actor to leave the state for good. The actor will apologise to Tamils now and this will anger the KRV again leading them to disrupt all activities related to the Hogenakal water supply scheme. And the cycle goes on while the water supply project will continue to be ignored.

P.S–Most of the facts in the above post are unverified and are merely products of the author’s imagination.

ALL IN A ‘DE’S’ WORK

Shobhaa De comes out in support of Barkha Dutt’s coverage of the terror attacks in this blog of hers.

De describes Dutt’s coverage as “doing her own job” and goes on to say that one must not create much ado about nothing for someone who is doing his/her own job. Agreed. What we all disagreed with was the way she went about it. Like Vijayasarathy in “Neengal Kaetta Paadal” saying “Idhu dhaan Taj Hotel terrace. Inga thaan commandos ellam irangikittu irukkaanga”. Of course, even the other channels showed similar footages but Dutt’s coverage was like a live telecast of a cricket match with concomitant commentary in the background, which from the point of view of a defence personnel, is totally unacceptable.

Maybe Dutt will not feel beleaguered now.