Quick on the heels of Anjum Chopra’s request to the BCCI to hold an IPL for women cricketers, the premier sports administrative body in the country received another appeal— this time for an IPL constituting wives and girlfriends (WAGS) of cricketers.
The move is spearheaded by Australian spinner Shane Warne’s current love interest, Elizabeth Hurley and MS Dhoni’s wife, Sakshi.
The 16th of April, 2011 will remain a red letter day for Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar.
It is the day he scored his 100th international century in book cricket.
The master batsman believes that this is a good omen. All his tons in international cricket have been preceded by equivalent tons in book cricket.
“Book cricket is a sport I have indulged in since I was a little boy.” says the Little Master.
IPL franchisee owners are clamouring for change.
Fed-up of being short-changed by the non-availability of key players, team honchos have decided to drive changes in the format of the IPL.
“After paying superstars millions of dollars, the least you could expect is that they would be on hand for the duration of the tournament.
But no such luck.”
“National team commitments are deemed more important”, complains a prominent unnamed IPL co-owner.
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The debate rages on.
Have the Indian selectors chosen the best possible side for the ODI World Cup?
The argument centres on whether there ought to have been a back-up keeper. MS Dhoni—as captain and stumper—shoulders a heavy responsibility.
To his credit, he has borne the burden well and there is no reason to believe that he will not do the same in February-March—should he remain fit.
As for the pessimists, they will wonder who will keep wickets if Dhoni is forced to miss a match.
My dog, Bolshoi The Boxer, asked me this morning: “Am I egoistic? Do I have a large ego?”
“What makes you think that? Has someone said something to you? Have you had another fight with Botox?”
Botox, the Pekingese, is Bolshoi’s girlfriend; Bolshoi, however, takes umbrage at being termed her boyfriend.
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“I have been reading an article about Yuvraj Singh ranked among the top ten egos in sport this year by the British newspaper, the Daily Telegraph.”
I have always been a huge fan of Sunil “Sunny” Gavaskar, the cricketer — the original Little Master.
When the rest of the world cowered under the barrage of bouncers and intimidating pace bowling unleashed by the marauding, rampaging Windies side of the late 70’s , 80’s and early 90’s, one man stood firm amidst the ruins.
That man was Sunil Manohar Gavaskar; thirteen of his 34 hundreds were against the mighty West Indians.
Another eight were belted against the Australians.
Whenever India played a series against the West Indians, we knew that as long as Gavaskar occupied the crease we were safe.
When the ace batter succumbed, the Indian team surrendered weakly as well.
At a time when India were making the transition from being mostly a spin bowling side to a pace bowling attack (thanks to another all-time great, Kapil Dev), we depended on the batsmen to save Test matches.
Bowlers win matches, batsmen save them.
This was a time in Indian cricket when a draw was always a noteworthy achievement; Indian sides rarely had the bowling strength to bowl out a team twice.
Doubts still linger about Sunny Gavaskar’s role in the Kochi franchise bid.
Was he just being helpful when he informed the Kochi consortium members about how the bidding process worked?
Should not the Kochi franchisee members have approached the BCCI for clarifications rather than a sitting member of the IPL Governing Council?
The question of propriety is yet to be answered comprehensively by the master batsman.
If the Kochi proposal is accepted by the BCCI and Sunny Gavaskar handles the newly formed team’s cricketing operations, would this not be a case of a ‘revolving door’ where Sunny has moved from a governing body to being part of a governed body?
Sunny Gavaskar hits the deadlines once more; this time it is his links with the Kochi franchise that have drawn flak from all quarters.
The Indian batting legend , the first cricketer to score 10,000 runs and surpass Don Bradman’s 29 tons, is mulling over an offer from the Gaikwads, the Rendezvous group owners, to handle all matters cricketing.
The news comes as a bit of a surprise and there exists speculation about Gavaskar’s role in the bidding process as a possible conflict of interest ; the master batsman was then on the IPL governing council.
(The fallout between Lalit Modi and Shashi Tharoor was the result of allegations that Tharoor sought Modi’s interference in the bidding process to ensure that the Kochi group’s bid would be successful.)
Gavaskar is no longer a part of the IPL set-up; he quit the re-constituted governing council citing differences with the BCCI.
Was the conflict of interest a reason for the differences? If yes, why then was just the super accumulator penalised?
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A non-IPL post, for a change. Some ramblings on the latest happenings in the cricketing world.
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The inability or unwillingness of the BCCI to field an Indian cricket team for the Chinese Asian Games has been greeted with widespread consternation by the Indian public or so the media channels would have us believe. I , for one, am not of the view that India needs to field their best team for the Asian Games and thus the BCCI could have been somewhat more diplomatic and said yes to fielding a second string team like they have for the tri-series in Zimbabwe. Besides apart from Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, no other teams of cricketing note will be there! And surely, the Indian cricket team cannot do worse than their performance at the World T20!
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