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 ]