Originally published in the Mirror Click here

Shocked to see empty stands in the Delhi test match? Don’t be. A gentleman who went to Ferozeshah Kotla has decoded the puzzle on a blog.

The gentleman and his wife drove 90 minutes to the ground only to be told that the parking was 5 kms away. After having parked, they walked back to the stadium to be told that the ticket counters were closed on the auspicious occasion of a Sunday. They were directed to a bank 3 kms away, stood in queue for an hour, and were compelled to buy a 5-day ticket for a stand where they won’t get tanned. Finally, just as they were entering the stadium, they were refused entry because the gentleman was carrying a lethal modern-day weapon of mass destruction. An iPad.

If you think the DDCA is responsible for this mess, you’re wrong. The real reason is that today’s cricket fan has become too soft, too pampered by modern luxuries and too influenced by what he sees on TV.

Let’s dissect the blog for finer details.

He writes in the second paragraph, “The plan was to get comfortable seats in a stand that serves good food and drink, so we could read the newspaper and chat, with occasional cricket interruptions”. Huh? He thinks he’s in Australia or what?

On being asked if he had “parking accreditation”, the gentleman accepted unfamiliarity with the term. He shouldn’t have transferred the blame of his ignorance on to the authorities.

The gentleman and his wife were also making jokes on the healthily built Delhi Police personnel calling them “Gatting-esque proportions”. Such objectification of the protectors of our law should be universally condemned.

Further, by complaining about being made to walk 16 kms he was being unappreciative of the DDCA who were just doing their bit to ensure our cricket fans remain as trim and fit as our cricketers.

Circa 1990s

To fully understand how soft we have become, we must compare this Kotla experience to the one I was used to back in the 1990s.

The adventure would begin 3 days before the match where 35,000 people would already be jostling for the 10,000 tickets available for the Students’ Stand, a situation that would kick in the Delhi survival instinct in us.

We’d help another group start a parallel queue. At an opportune moment, we would instigate an altercation between the main queue and the parallel queue. With tempers running high, chants of ‘Maaro…Maaro’ can quickly provoke one punch converting the altercation into a scuffle. A police lathi-charge and crowds running helter skelter would provide an ideal opportunity to find yourself close enough to the counter at a place that the police deems to be a legitimate queue.

On the day of the match, three hours before the toss, the queue would have almost reached Asaf Ali Road. A similar sequence of queue breaking, altercations, lathi-charge (this time by policemen on horsebacks), about 500 people falling over the pavement barriers, and a mini-stampede would follow.

If you’re smart enough, you would use this opportunity to get to the gate. You run in pushing and shoving those ahead of you, find yourself a place to sit and don’t leave it for the next six hours.

If you’re thirsty, spot someone with a cola bottle, offer him a place to sit in exchange for the drink, make sure you and your friends finish the bottle before laughing at the guy’s face when he asks for the return favour.

We have come a long way since then. The gentleman is complaining that he couldn’t take his iPad inside. We were thankful that we got out with our limbs intact.

Originally published in the Mirror Click here

The beauty of life is that it teaches you lessons from even the most meaningless of events, like the recently concluded India-England ODI series. As someone who followed every ball of it, here’s what I learnt from the series.

Lesson #1: Be careful of what you say…
Because it has a habit of coming back to boomerang you on your backside. One can hope that this is a lesson that Michael Vaughan would have learnt too.

During India’s disastrous English tour, Michael Vaughan had led the former England player pack in ridiculing the Indian team, including a bizarre suggestion that Laxman had used Vaseline on his bat to hide faint edges from hotspot. Throughout the tour, caustic, vitriolic and sardonic comments aimed at the Indian team kept coming from the former England captain through his commentary, tweets and newspaper columns.

While fans can be excused for resorting to jingoism, one doesn’t expect those who’ve played the sport at the highest level to stoop so low.

With each England defeat in this series, Vaughan found his twitter page flooded with diatribes from Indian cricket fans, most of them personal and abusive. The most hard hitting message, though, was delivered to Vaughan by a 14-year old Bangalorean through a picture inspired by Shoaib Akhtar’s autobiography’s cover page.

If even this doesn’t silence Vaughan, probably nothing will.

Lesson #2: It’s true that some wines improve with age…
But only if the grapes were good in the first place. In Tony Greig’s case, not only are the grapes bad, they are also sour.

For the last six months, every second sentence from Greig has had India in it. Starting with BCCI bashing on the use of technology issue, to Indian team bashing during the England series, to doom’s day prediction for cricket in the BCCI-led era. India is on his mind so much that one wouldn’t be surprised if he mutters the word in his sleep.

It’s common knowledge that Greig was deeply involved with the ICL and the BCCI-ban on ICL has affected him financially. From the looks of it, it has also affected him mentally.

Just yesterday, he tweeted urging the BCCI to think that ‘when making money is the ultimate ambition, you do things you shouldn’t’. Wise words from a man who not only quit England captaincy to join Kerry Packer, but was actively recruiting English players while he was still captain.

For Greig, one can safely say that one shouldn’t attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity.

Lesson #3: ‘z’ is keeping your mouth shut
Albert Einstein had said that if ‘A’ is success in life, then A = x+y+z where ‘x’ is work, ‘y’ is play, and ‘z’ is keeping your mouth shut.

Throughout the English tour, MS Dhoni maintained a dignified silence, refusing to be provoked by what was being said about him and his team. He played hard, played fair, and called a spade a spade in his trademark casual style.

In the return tour, he refrained from the ‘payback’ or ‘revenge’ bellicosity, saying that sportsmen don’t exact revenge. And even after the convincing series win, he didn’t resort to chest thumping, preferring to talk about areas that the team needs to improve upon to win overseas.

In the colossal mass of off-field trash over the last few months, MS Dhoni stands tall and clean.

As an Indian, that’s what I am proud of, even more than the 5-0 win.

You can hear the Fake IPL Player’s live wacky cricket commentary during match hours on www.pitch-invasion.in

Originally published in the Mirror Click here

The court hearing in the Pakistani cricketers’ spot fixing case got underway in London recently. While the case exposes the seedy and greedy world of match fixers, several questions related to agent Mazhar Majeed’s claims captured by the NOTW sting operation remain unanswered.

In an uninhibited chat, Majeed shared his experiences as a match fixer. As it turns out, match fixing is a world where almost anything that can go wrong, does go wrong. And how!

Here are the highlights.

It seemed Majeed regretted working with the Pakistani boys. “If you ask for a no-ball, they give you a four-feet no-ball. You ask for a maiden over, they dead bat the entire over. There’s no subtlety in their technique. Everything’s so obvious,” he said.

He was most upset with Kamran Akmal who, he said, once forgot which catch to drop and ended up dropping every catch in the match.

But he has fond memories of working with one Pakistani captain. “Working with Shoiab Malik was great. He followed my instructions meticulously. And, in the end, I was able to fix a match for him successfully.” After a pause, he added, “And that match is called Sania Mirza.”

Shahid Afridi, Majeed said, is someone he never worked with. “How can you trust a man who ogles at other men’s legs?” he asked.

On the Indian players he had named, Majeed said that he had asked Yuvraj to play out a maiden. Yuvraj, on his part, played out not one but many maidens. However, not one of them was played on the field.

As for the other Indian he had named, Majeed is hurt by what Harbhajan said about him. “I was only trying to help him by giving him an alibi for his shit bowling these days,” he said.

Majeed claimed complete honesty when asked how he could be believed given the ludicrousness of his other claims like knowing Roger Federer and Brad Pitt. “I know both of them very well,” he said emphatically. “But…they don’t know me,” he added softly.

Sahara Enforces India

In a dramatic move, Dr. Vijay Mallya has offloaded 42.5% stake in Force India to the Sahara Group making it Sahara Force India.

Reports suggest that the deal was arrived at after hectic negotiations between the two business honchos.

It’s believed that Dr. Mallya even offered Saurabh Tiwary for free, which Subroto Roy refused. Mallya’s offer of white mischief was also rejected by Roy who said that he was quite happy with his brown mischief.

In the end $100 million as a price was agreed upon.

Other than Force India, Sahara owns the IPL franchise Pune Warriors India whom they purchased for close to $350 million, has a sponsorship deal with the Indian cricket team of more than $100 million, sponsors the Indian women’s cricket team, junior and senior hockey teams, and the Calcutta Football League. A back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests their investment into sports this year at about $200 million or Rs 1,000 crore.

Assuming that Sahara invests half of their marketing budget (5% according to industry standards) into sports, their revenues should stand at Rs. 40,000 crores, twice the size of Hindustan Unilever Ltd.

Now, all that remains to be known about the Sahara Group is what it is that they actually produce and where we can buy it from.

You can listen to the Fake IPL Player’s live, wicked and wacky cricket commentary during match hours on www.pitch-invasion.in

Originally published in the Mirror Click here

Ladies and gentlemen, it’s time to formally welcome the new BCCI president Mr. N Srinivasan who has confirmed that there is absolutely no conflict in his interests as far as managing the BCCI, Chennai Super Kings (CSK) and India Cements is concerned.

In a series of television interviews he said it’s not him but India Cements that owns CSK, thereby conforming to the great BCCI tradition of under-declaring, best exemplified by one of his illustrious predecessors Mr. Sharad ‘TwelveCrore’ Pawar.

Mr. Srinivasan, of course, has absolutely no control over CSK through India Cements, a company for whom he is the Managing Director, Vice Chairman, Chairman of Share Transfer Committee, Chairman of Compensation Committee, Member of Shareholders/Investors Grievance Committee, Member of Audit Committee, Member of Remuneration Committee, Executive with the highest compensation and, as per a Financial Express report on May 6 2010, its “only promoter”.

With role models at the top, can anyone really blame the Indian team not going past 300 in tests? In fact, there are reports that, toeing the under-declaring culture, Dhoni would have declared at 299 anyways.

These are the kind of opportunities Mr. Lalit Modi waits with bated breath for in his undisclosed location in London. Soon as Mr. Srinivasan’s TV interviews were over, Mr. Modi started tweeting pictures of IPL accreditation cards (the ones they hang around their necks) of Mr. Srinivasan and his family which mentions them as ‘Owners’. How many people in the world do you know who’d keep pictures of others’ accreditation cards? It’s foresight such as this that makes Mr. Lalit Modi Superman, albeit without a cape and with his underwear where it’s supposed to be.

In his defence, Mr. Srinivasan claimed that the word ‘Owner’ printed on the card only meant that he owned that particular accreditation card and not CSK.

To further prove his point, Mr. Modi, then, spent the next one hour tweeting pictures of Mr. Srinivasan, his wife, daughter, son-in-law, lawyers, auditors, and managers of India Cements, all in CSK T-shirts. Yes! all of them in CSK T-shirts! The missing link to conclusively prove Mr. Srinivasan’s ownership of CSK has finally been found.

The only pictures Mr. Modi seems to have withheld are the ones that Ravindra Jadeja uses to get into the Indian team again and again.

A day later, the Julian Assange of Indian cricket was on TV with an ‘I told you so’ tone on the Kochi Tuskers’ exit from IPL saying he knew that the consortium didn’t have the financial strength for the long haul. A visibly fatigued and greyed Lalit Modi strongly defended valuation figures of IPL teams including Kochi Tuskers Kerala (KTK) who were bought at $333 million last year. Just for the record, Forbes’ list of football team valuations puts only 5 English Premier League teams above the figure KTK went for. Lalit Modi would like us to believe that KTK deserves a valuation figure higher than Manchester City.

Disrespectful to jokers
Mohinder Amarnath becomes a national selector 23 years after calling selectors “a bunch of jokers”. He spent his first few days on the job visiting circus shows around the country before deeply regretting his remark. “I think I was very disrespectful to jokers,” he said.

Sequel to RaOne
KKR sneaked into the Champion’s League thanks to some heroics from Dutchman Ryan Ten Doeschate. Soon after, Shahrukh Khan announced sequel to RaOne which will be called RaTen.

Bad news for singles
Bad news for all single boys and girls around the country. Gautam Gambhir is getting married. Somewhere in Karol Bagh Ishant Sharma sheds a quiet tear.

You can listen to the Fake IPL Player’s (Anupam’s) live alternate cricket commentary during match hours on www.pitch-invasion.in

Originally published in the Mirror Click here

Much before dust settled in the series, much before Ravindra Jadeja started his long voyage from Jamnagar to London, and much before Rohit Sharma injured his drinking hand, the BCCI had already launched an inquisition into India’s performance in the test series.

The report is a bit like Cricket Australia’s Argus Report except that this one’s far more comprehensive, far more independent, and with far more far reaching consequences than Argus could have ever hoped to achieve.

Unlike the Australian investigation committee which had members entrenched in the establishment like Border, Waugh, Taylor and Speed, BCCI’s investigation committee was completely independent comprising only of board members of India Cements.

Avoiding any conflict of interest, BCCI supremo N Srinivasan opted out of it. Again, going against popular notions of megalomania in the BCCI, the committee chose not to name the report after the committee chairman and have instead called it the Srini Report.

Some recommendations in the report given below.

1. Injury Management
Taking a strong view of injuries to key players, the report makes it mandatory for all players to inform the board of their injuries well before they get injured. This will allow the board to get replacements’ visas processed and allow them to make their shopping lists before they go on tour. This will save precious time on tour which can be utilized for team bonding exercises like sharing hookahs and partying together.

2. Domestic Cricket
Taking a leaf out of the Argus Report, the Srini Report stipulates that players prioritize domestic cricket over international. Henceforth, all contracted players have to rid themselves of injuries, personal problems, form issues, and make themselves match-ready for domestic tournaments like the IPL, CLT20 and any future tournament with an ‘L’ in its abbreviated form.

The report hasn’t taken kindly to Gautam Gambhir being forced to stay on the tour despite a serious injury, thereby threatening his participation for KKR in the CLT20. And it lauded BCCI’s move of sending in Ravindra Jadeja, a decision that’s unlikely to adversely affect any IPL team Jadeja represents.

3. Lovers vs Haters
There are only two kinds of people in the world – those who love Indian cricket and those who hate it. The report recommends that the BCCI nurture the lovers, like IPL franchise owners who spend millions on players whom the haters call names such as ‘donkeys’.

“Not risking Yusuf Pathan before CLT20 is the least we could do for Shahrukh Bhai,” a committee member said with folded hands, showing the world that N Srinivasan’s folded hands posture in front of the cabinet committee inquiring into the IPL wasn’t subservience but corporate culture of India Cements.

4. Foresight
The report lauds the BCCI for being well ahead of its time in several matters. “If you see, the Australians have banned Greg Chappell from the dressing room only now, while we did that four years ago,” another committee member said with folded hands.

5. Strategic tie-ups
The committee recommends strategic tie-ups with other cricket boards like the one with the Sri Lankan cricket board that makes it mandatory for Sri Lanka to always perform worse than India. Going by the Sri Lankans’ performance in the current series against Australia, the partnership seems to be already bearing fruits.

6. Pension
The committee also recommends pensions for retired board members. “This is a decision taken on principle and won’t really affect our financials,” said a committee member.

With folded hands, he added, “Have you ever seen a BCCI board member retiring?”

You can hear Anupam’s live alternative commentary during cricket match hours on www.pitch-invasion.in