Yesterday marked the birthday of a cricket hero. I’m referring not to Sourav Ganguly but to Krishnamachari Srikkanth. Being a cricket star these days means your effigies will be burnt if you cannot please everybody. In Vadodara, fans of Irfan Pathan burnt effigies of Srikkanth expressing their anger over his non-selection into the Indian squads for the Champions Trophy and the Emerging Players tournaments. He cannot be drafted into the latter squad since he has spent more than five years in the Indian team and thus cannot be termed emerging. But it does come as a surprise to see him excluded from the Champions Trophy probables. Effigy burning is bound to become a common place act in future given what happened yesterday in various parts of the country.
Mattan Biriyani, head of the Baroda Irfan Fan Club, expressed his outrage against Srikkanth with this statement “Arrey saala Krishna Acharya Srikkantha, just because Irfan’s name contains the letters f,a and n, you think he becomes a fan? If you include him in the squad we will build a temple for you and do abhishegam everyday using Amul milk. Else all you will get is Amul underwear. Kem cho, kem che, kem choo, milkybar choo, aathi choo”. The next moment, the fans began dancing to the song ‘Aathi Choodi’ from the Tamil remake of ‘Taxi 9211′. However fans of Yusuf Pathan could not tolerate Vijay Antony’s music and ordered Irfan’s fans to stop the music. The latter did not relent and this led to a clash between the fans of the two brothers. Only after the Pathans’ father, Mehboob Khan, came into the scene with his own fans like PSPO, Havells, Khaitan etc, there was peace.
This act of the Irfan fans had spread to Ahmedabad where the fans of Parthiv Patel decided to lodge their own protests. Larsons BDM Cricketbatwala, chairman of the Amdavad Parthiv Patel Fans Association, expressed his anger over the lack of players from Gujarat. He was referring to the Gujarat Cricket Association but Srikkanth thought it was the state of Gujarat and mentioned the presence of Yusuf Pathan and Ravindra Jadeja. But Cricketbatwala retorted in a mix of Gujarati, Hindi and Marathi “Woh Vadodara aur Saurashtra se che. Aamchi Amdavad se naahi. Parantu Parthiv Patel Amdavadi che”. He also threw up a surprise when he concluded by saying “Yeh Ahmedabad hai, Vadodara ya Jamnagar nahin. Idhu enga area, ulla varaathey”.
The scene was exactly the opposite in Tamilnadu, the state which now saw four players in the Champions Trophy probables and three in the Emerging Players squad. Fans of Chennai Super Kings erected a statue of Srikkanth outside the Chepauk stadium and were bathing it with packets and packets of Aavin milk. The theme of their celebration was “Move over, Amul. Welcome, Aavin”. Cutouts of Srikkanth were erected on lampposts all along Mount Road and they too were being bathed in milk. Within half a day, the fervour had spread to all over Tamilnadu and the Aavin dairies began working over time.
Karnataka witnessed mixed reactions. Bangalore celebrated the return of Rahul Dravid to ODI contention. Masaldosa Ootaamaadappa, president of the Rahul Dravid fan club, announced his grand plan to sponsor milk supply for Dravid’s new-born child for the next two months. He thanked the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (translated in English as Dravidian Progressive Movement) for their continued support in ensuring the progress of Dravid. But in Coorg, irate fans of Robin Uthappa garlanded Srikkanth’s effigy with onion uthappa and threw cups of hot, steaming Coorg coffee on it. Elsewhere in Hassan, a new fan club for Manish Pandey was inaugurated. At the same time in Jamnagar, in Saurashtra, the Cheteshwar Pujara Fan Club came into being in a grand function that was marked by the fans doing puja and eating jam.
Kerala witnessed a flash strike once news of the non-existence of Sreesanth’s name in the two squads spread. Kannukutty Thennamarathil Chacko, head of the Sreesanth fan club and a leading Malayali poet wrote a poem directed at Srikkanth and published in Malayala Manorama. It goes as “Dear Srikkanth, Don’t think Sree can’t, Because he is Sreesanth“. A few hours later Chacko got to know of one Abhishek Nayar and soon he called off the strike thinking he was from Kerala.
Ajit Agarkar’s fans staged a demonstration in Mumbai. They planned a rail thaamba (Marathi for Rail Roko) protest and had the busy Western line as their target. But like their hero setting a packed off-side field and bowling anywhere other than the off-side, the fans squatted on the express train line where no trains passed by. Frustrated, they changed their location to Agarkar Chowk in Andheri East. However instead of disrupting traffic they began regulating traffic when they found the public apathy towards their protest was worse than the apathy of the selectors towards their hero.
Fan clubs for individual players will be in vogue in a couple of years from now. After three good innings in a domestic T20 tournament known as the IPL, Manish Pandey is thrown into the league of Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid and his fans urge that 19-year old Pandey be included in the test team. Very recently, a 5-year old named Phanish Monday shot to fame when he broke Saeed Anwar’s ODI record of 194 runs in an innings. Phanish played with a plastic bat and plastic ball and the rule of his game was; hit the bat and you get two runs. In this process Phanish managed to score 200 runs in 100 balls and earned a fan club for himself. Another success story is that of 2-year old Rajathi Raja Raja Marthanda Raja Gambhira Ayyampettai Arivudainambi Kaliyaperumal Chandran (known as R.R.R.M.R.G.A.A.K Chandran), born in Sri Lanka and presently living in Chennai. He is being touted as the next Mitchell Johnson after he broke the head of his zoozoo doll with a deflated tennis ball. His father was a huge fan of the Sri Lankan cricket team and said that he named his son after legendary names like WPUJC Vaas, DPMD Jayawardene and HMRBK Herath. John Buchanan planned to sign Chandran up for the Kolkata Knightriders only to be met with a “No Thanks” retort from Sourav Ganguly. Miffed at this, Buchanan wrote crap about Indians in his latest book.