Dear Anil,
It has come to my attention that South Africa's main weapon, the weapon that recently demolished your nation, the maniac that has done so much for your IPL team is currently struggling with an elbow injury.
(Excuse me, I must got FML)
Okay, I am back. So, Dale Steyn has an injury which is almost reminiscent of last year, when the Poms came and managed a draw and a win before lovely Dale was back in full swing. They may have managed a draw afterwards as well, but that obviously has been selectively removed from memory. Except when the brain perceives something ginger but, I digress.
This year, some more men in blue are coming to Saffaland, only they wear a different shade. We really have a shortage of colour in sports but again, I digress.
IF Dale Steyn is injured before the tests and we have another drawn home series, your red and gold, too bright for it's own good team will have to pay. Chances are you won't reach the semis of the Modi/Majola/Sutherland tournament, but it's okay. You have Cam White, a whole lotta Saffers and of course all those female actresses that Lalit Modi like to stare at. So really, the S&M's love you anyway. What the hell will you do with a trophy? It doesn't last eternally, like love does.
So from here onwards, Dale must not play. He needs to rest for the real tournament. Got it?
Of course you did, you are an engineer after all.
Love,
Me
P.S: Do you really have to wear gold?
Showing posts with label Anil Kumble. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Anil Kumble. Show all posts
Friday, September 17, 2010
Thursday, April 15, 2010
And now Anil Kumble
Twitter: the final frontier. Well for a lot of cricket folks anyway. Certainly for Lalit Modi, and for Anil Kumble too. For Anil it's also similar to visiting his shrink. After a hard day on the field Anil goes on twitter to vent, because twitter is a private place where no can see what he writes. Maybe twitter is his brain and the tweets are his thoughts! That's how it works right?
Wrong. Tweeting is akin to speaking in a press conference, unless you have your tweets protected. But evidently, nobody told him that:
Kallis seems more interested in his fight with Sachin for the orange cap rather than in trying to secure a semi final berth for his team.
Let me remind Kallis that cricket is a team game, his orange cap is totally worthless and useless to us if we cannot make it to the semis.
Okay, so Kallis has fucked up here and there for the RCB. As a captain, he has every right to criticize him. But questioning his commitment to the game is pretty uncalled for. He speaks like a bloody gossip magazine rather than a captain, but why am I surprised? Anil Kumble was never captain material. Just for the record, I am not lashing out on him because he said something about Kallis, although I am a Kallis lover. If you visit his page you will see him saying unsavoury things about the others too. People who are already out of form, being judged by their 'captain' on twitter. Nice eh?
Then he justifies his outburst with this:
Sorry for my outburst about Kallis, it is a do or die game today, pressure to win is too much, team bosses say even my job is on the line.
His job is on the line, so he takes it out on others. Way to handle the pressure old man! Hey Anil, if you can't deal with the captaincy, don't take it. This: the tweeting, the public speaking, keeping it together when your job is on the line...all of this shit is part of being a captain.
And let ME remind YOU that it is because of Kallis' indomitable form in the beginning that RCB is in the running for the semis. But maybe you want him to do all the work like South Africa. What the fuck would South Africa do without Jacques Kallis? Well that's a question I don't even want to think about.
I know what you are going to say here: Kallis has a big fat ego. Well my answer to that is, some people are justified in having an ego. Jacques Kallis is one of them.
Wrong. Tweeting is akin to speaking in a press conference, unless you have your tweets protected. But evidently, nobody told him that:
The loss to DC was a huge setback for us and it was very disappointing after Steyn had set it up nicely for us with a torrid opening spell.
Unfortunately Steyn's good work was largely undone by his fellow south african Kallis who seems to have his own agenda in this IPL
Kallis seems more interested in his fight with Sachin for the orange cap rather than in trying to secure a semi final berth for his team.
Let me remind Kallis that cricket is a team game, his orange cap is totally worthless and useless to us if we cannot make it to the semis.
Okay, so Kallis has fucked up here and there for the RCB. As a captain, he has every right to criticize him. But questioning his commitment to the game is pretty uncalled for. He speaks like a bloody gossip magazine rather than a captain, but why am I surprised? Anil Kumble was never captain material. Just for the record, I am not lashing out on him because he said something about Kallis, although I am a Kallis lover. If you visit his page you will see him saying unsavoury things about the others too. People who are already out of form, being judged by their 'captain' on twitter. Nice eh?
Then he justifies his outburst with this:
Sorry for my outburst about Kallis, it is a do or die game today, pressure to win is too much, team bosses say even my job is on the line.
Kallis is my dear friend, I can understand his liking for all things orange including caps, after all we were playing in the 'orange' city.
His job is on the line, so he takes it out on others. Way to handle the pressure old man! Hey Anil, if you can't deal with the captaincy, don't take it. This: the tweeting, the public speaking, keeping it together when your job is on the line...all of this shit is part of being a captain.
And let ME remind YOU that it is because of Kallis' indomitable form in the beginning that RCB is in the running for the semis. But maybe you want him to do all the work like South Africa. What the fuck would South Africa do without Jacques Kallis? Well that's a question I don't even want to think about.
I know what you are going to say here: Kallis has a big fat ego. Well my answer to that is, some people are justified in having an ego. Jacques Kallis is one of them.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Why should I fucking run mate?
There was a wonderful incident at the game yesterday. KP had become temporarily Saffa, taking a stunning catch (Yes, I am claiming that as a result of his Saffa genes. The English don't turn 360 degrees in mid-air like that) and of course molesting Jakes like no tomorrow. But KP was actually over-excited yesterday. He was involved in most field changes, moving around like he was on battery. So, when he came out at number three (after his lover Jakes had failed), and started thwarting the bowlers around people were sort of expecting it. At this point he may have been feeling like a Saffer or English. We never know when he takes on what identity. And the fact that the Poms call him a Saffa the minute he starts sucking doesn't help our dilemma either.
Anyway, the already confused lad, now has to assume a third identity. That of a RCBian (Evidently, that's the official term. Don't ask!). And there is no shortage of criticism there for him either. He fucked up one game and they dropped him and called him a useless git. I happily listened to them, I am not very fond of KP. But if you really think about it, he didn't deserve it. Just like Kallis didn't deserve those harsh words from Kumble. But that's another post where I fry Kumble for thinking Kallis is going to fucking babysit the team that think Cameron White is more valuable than Mark Boucher.
Back to the incident. It was very English, or rather Saffa-English as Michael Lumb had demonstrated earlier in the match. Both of them charged down the pitch like bulls with thyroid problems and refused to acknowledge the fact that their partners had signalled 'no'. KP has done this before, so we were not surprised. But we were delighted about was the fact that once given out, KP turned around to say "Fucking run mate" and then "Fuck man" to his team-mate Kohli, while lovely pig Shane Warne stood by laughing at them.
We loved it. As did we love the strong arm that KP put around Kohli afterwards, pretending to show him some love but actually strangling him so he smiled for the camera. It was comedy all around. Including Dravid trying to console KP right after. And we all know Dravid had to frequently run with Saurav Ganguly. That couldn't have been fun.
What this incident is going to lead to is something that I'm sure the IPL has brought up before: the question of whether IPL teams can actually evoke the same sentimentality and pride that cricketers feel when representing their national teams, enough for them to overcome the fact that their team-mates are actually their competitors the rest of the 10 months (unless some of them play county as well). Could Kohli really have cared enough to sacrifice himself for the man that was clearly much more settled than he was, seeing as the man was not a fellow Indian cricketer? Should Kohli have cared? The obvious answer is yes. They are a fucking team and they get paid gazillions of dollars (and free alcohol when you are a RCBian) to be a team. But it does not necessarily mean that the players are emotionally that much charged up to give their everything. Kohli might have ran down the pitch for say, M.S or Yuvraj, but for KP...not so much. And you can't really blame him. This is the guy he is going to fight in another slogfest in about two weeks.
At this point, we obviously have the age-old argument of how a sportsman should always uphold team spirit no matter what team they are representing. To which I say, bull fucking shit. This is not football, where your club team comes first. In cricket the national team is and will always be top priority. Meaning subconsciously, KP will always be Kohli's opposition and KP will probably not think twice before swearing at him, like he would have even if Owais Shah had been at the other end.
Plus, poor KP is already lost. Don't burden him with any more issues of identity crisis. But know this: whether he is Saffa, English or RCBian, he will always run himself out like an idiot at some point. It's called KP cricket. Get used to it.
Anyway, the already confused lad, now has to assume a third identity. That of a RCBian (Evidently, that's the official term. Don't ask!). And there is no shortage of criticism there for him either. He fucked up one game and they dropped him and called him a useless git. I happily listened to them, I am not very fond of KP. But if you really think about it, he didn't deserve it. Just like Kallis didn't deserve those harsh words from Kumble. But that's another post where I fry Kumble for thinking Kallis is going to fucking babysit the team that think Cameron White is more valuable than Mark Boucher.
Back to the incident. It was very English, or rather Saffa-English as Michael Lumb had demonstrated earlier in the match. Both of them charged down the pitch like bulls with thyroid problems and refused to acknowledge the fact that their partners had signalled 'no'. KP has done this before, so we were not surprised. But we were delighted about was the fact that once given out, KP turned around to say "Fucking run mate" and then "Fuck man" to his team-mate Kohli, while lovely pig Shane Warne stood by laughing at them.
We loved it. As did we love the strong arm that KP put around Kohli afterwards, pretending to show him some love but actually strangling him so he smiled for the camera. It was comedy all around. Including Dravid trying to console KP right after. And we all know Dravid had to frequently run with Saurav Ganguly. That couldn't have been fun.
What this incident is going to lead to is something that I'm sure the IPL has brought up before: the question of whether IPL teams can actually evoke the same sentimentality and pride that cricketers feel when representing their national teams, enough for them to overcome the fact that their team-mates are actually their competitors the rest of the 10 months (unless some of them play county as well). Could Kohli really have cared enough to sacrifice himself for the man that was clearly much more settled than he was, seeing as the man was not a fellow Indian cricketer? Should Kohli have cared? The obvious answer is yes. They are a fucking team and they get paid gazillions of dollars (and free alcohol when you are a RCBian) to be a team. But it does not necessarily mean that the players are emotionally that much charged up to give their everything. Kohli might have ran down the pitch for say, M.S or Yuvraj, but for KP...not so much. And you can't really blame him. This is the guy he is going to fight in another slogfest in about two weeks.
At this point, we obviously have the age-old argument of how a sportsman should always uphold team spirit no matter what team they are representing. To which I say, bull fucking shit. This is not football, where your club team comes first. In cricket the national team is and will always be top priority. Meaning subconsciously, KP will always be Kohli's opposition and KP will probably not think twice before swearing at him, like he would have even if Owais Shah had been at the other end.
Plus, poor KP is already lost. Don't burden him with any more issues of identity crisis. But know this: whether he is Saffa, English or RCBian, he will always run himself out like an idiot at some point. It's called KP cricket. Get used to it.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Who is Harbhajan Singh?
There seems to be a lot of confusion in Durby's mind as to who he actually is. In the beginning, he was an exciting prospect with lots of ideas underneath that turban, but young.
Then the prospect became a bowler that got wickets, had a doosra. Almost a feared one. Almost because his place in the side wasn't garaunteed. So he searched his soul, we think, and decided to listen to the Kiwi one, John Wright. His sense of identity might have been muddled then, as he being an Indian spinner took tips from a Kiwi opener. It helped his bowling, but the question is whether the semi-Kiwi transformation left a mark in his heart in the manner of an Indian pitch. Because he never learnt how to bowl anywhere else.
They kept on dropping him and picking him according to the availability of Anil Kumble or when Punjabi beats became so popular, you could hear them everywhere you went. His identity then was that of an entertainer.
So he stopped giving a shit about this bowling. Yet, somehow, he remained India's first choice spinner once Anil Kumble left. He was good, but only on the days that he wanted to. During that time, he was the face of pie-chucking on his bad days and the advocate of the word 'mother fucker' on his good days. Every batsman who gave their wicket to him was a mother fucker. Even if he had scored a duck. "Mother fucker, how dare you pad up and come to face me?".
Well maybe because on neither days, his identity said bowler.
Then at some point, he decided to bat. I'm not too sure when. Regardless, I doubt he takes the batting seriously as he had to borrow Sachin's bat yesterday. So I will not suggest that he thinks he is an all-rounder. Althought judging from his batting for Mumbai, I think his turban told him that he is. As did the man-of-the-match award.
You might conclude from this that Durby is a man that wears many hats, which usually means that he is talented and an asset to the team. But Durby defies the norm. He is unusual, always has been. Hence he is a man that is buried underneath his hats, trying to find his true identity. And not bowling in the process.
Although, I'm afraid that when he does find his true self, it might turn out that he is a mother-fucking monkey with anger management issues. Then we will have to venture on another journey to figure out whether monkeys can bowl.
Then the prospect became a bowler that got wickets, had a doosra. Almost a feared one. Almost because his place in the side wasn't garaunteed. So he searched his soul, we think, and decided to listen to the Kiwi one, John Wright. His sense of identity might have been muddled then, as he being an Indian spinner took tips from a Kiwi opener. It helped his bowling, but the question is whether the semi-Kiwi transformation left a mark in his heart in the manner of an Indian pitch. Because he never learnt how to bowl anywhere else.
They kept on dropping him and picking him according to the availability of Anil Kumble or when Punjabi beats became so popular, you could hear them everywhere you went. His identity then was that of an entertainer.
So he stopped giving a shit about this bowling. Yet, somehow, he remained India's first choice spinner once Anil Kumble left. He was good, but only on the days that he wanted to. During that time, he was the face of pie-chucking on his bad days and the advocate of the word 'mother fucker' on his good days. Every batsman who gave their wicket to him was a mother fucker. Even if he had scored a duck. "Mother fucker, how dare you pad up and come to face me?".
Well maybe because on neither days, his identity said bowler.
Then at some point, he decided to bat. I'm not too sure when. Regardless, I doubt he takes the batting seriously as he had to borrow Sachin's bat yesterday. So I will not suggest that he thinks he is an all-rounder. Althought judging from his batting for Mumbai, I think his turban told him that he is. As did the man-of-the-match award.
You might conclude from this that Durby is a man that wears many hats, which usually means that he is talented and an asset to the team. But Durby defies the norm. He is unusual, always has been. Hence he is a man that is buried underneath his hats, trying to find his true identity. And not bowling in the process.
Although, I'm afraid that when he does find his true self, it might turn out that he is a mother-fucking monkey with anger management issues. Then we will have to venture on another journey to figure out whether monkeys can bowl.
Monday, December 7, 2009
KP Claus
Dear Santa,
Since I am home for Christmas this year, I would like to give special gifts to those who have adopted me into their hearts. I would like them to know that even though I am loving every bit of my home-coming, I am always 100% English. So please make sure you give these to them from me.
For Barbie: A very pissed off Yuvraj Singh. Trotty told me that's how Broady likes him, not sure why.
For Straussy: The handbook I wrote when I was captain of England. I really feel he could learn from me.
For Swanny: A new chin. He is rather envious of my looks (Between you and me, he really wishes he looked South African)
For Bresy: A book of Afrikaans slang so the ECB can't chastise him anymore. He really needs it, that dom fokker.
For Ravi: The Ashes Dvd. Oh wait, is he even in it? Can you photo shop him in please?
For Cooky: A video of his last few innings so he can learn from his mistakes. What's that? He has it already? Oh...let's get him a brain then.
For Colly: Also a handbook I wrote on captaincy. But this is when I was captain of BRC.
That will be all this Christmas. I do have to spend the rest of my money on my lovely wife and Anil might not let me play next season. Which reminds me, please send Anil my love. I better start sucking up to him from now.
Since I am home for Christmas this year, I would like to give special gifts to those who have adopted me into their hearts. I would like them to know that even though I am loving every bit of my home-coming, I am always 100% English. So please make sure you give these to them from me.
For Barbie: A very pissed off Yuvraj Singh. Trotty told me that's how Broady likes him, not sure why.
For Straussy: The handbook I wrote when I was captain of England. I really feel he could learn from me.
For Swanny: A new chin. He is rather envious of my looks (Between you and me, he really wishes he looked South African)
For Bresy: A book of Afrikaans slang so the ECB can't chastise him anymore. He really needs it, that dom fokker.
For Ravi: The Ashes Dvd. Oh wait, is he even in it? Can you photo shop him in please?
For Cooky: A video of his last few innings so he can learn from his mistakes. What's that? He has it already? Oh...let's get him a brain then.
For Colly: Also a handbook I wrote on captaincy. But this is when I was captain of BRC.
That will be all this Christmas. I do have to spend the rest of my money on my lovely wife and Anil might not let me play next season. Which reminds me, please send Anil my love. I better start sucking up to him from now.
Monday, October 26, 2009
My Dad the Comedian
My father is an Indian supporter. It would have been unfortunate expect for the never-ending hilarious rivalries we have, whenever India play South Africa. He is also wonderfully adept at making fun of the Blues when they are terrible. He has been out of the loop with cricket for a while, thanks to the North American lifestyle and the terrible cricket coverage. Thus, he was delighted to see the first India vs Australia game on TV and sat down to watch like an eager school boy. Till Ravindra Jadeja started bowling.
Dad: He is a spinner? Why isn't the ball spinning then? Has cricket evolved to the point where a spinner doesn't need to make the ball to spin anymore? He can't even spin the ball on an Indian pitch! He is bowling again! Why is he bowling again?
Me: Probably because Dhoni loves him.
Dad: Who is Dhoni?
Me: The Indian Captain.
Dad: Why?
I didn't know why Dhoni was the captain. So I started laughing, trying to explain to him that Dhoni actually had a good record. To which he replied,
Dad: So his record is going to win him this match? How lovely! Another flat ball! This Jadeja guy really is a true 'mystery spinner'!
Then the misfields started and his rants just kept on getting better.
Dad: All the fielders are lying flat on the ground but the ball still makes it to the boundary. I think the Indians don't realize that there is a reason people dive when the ball is racing. No one told them that diving after the ball has already passed is of no use. Know what Kumble used to do? He would make heroic dives with his legs wide apart, so the ball could continue to roll on through the gap. It was quite a show. But he had done his part, he dived!
I just had to find a picture of this.
It's not the ideal picture but his legs are far apart and the ball seems to have evaded him. I laughed so hard. These are times when I have no qualms in admitting that my father is always right!
Dad: He is a spinner? Why isn't the ball spinning then? Has cricket evolved to the point where a spinner doesn't need to make the ball to spin anymore? He can't even spin the ball on an Indian pitch! He is bowling again! Why is he bowling again?
Me: Probably because Dhoni loves him.
Dad: Who is Dhoni?
Me: The Indian Captain.
Dad: Why?
I didn't know why Dhoni was the captain. So I started laughing, trying to explain to him that Dhoni actually had a good record. To which he replied,
Dad: So his record is going to win him this match? How lovely! Another flat ball! This Jadeja guy really is a true 'mystery spinner'!
Then the misfields started and his rants just kept on getting better.
Dad: All the fielders are lying flat on the ground but the ball still makes it to the boundary. I think the Indians don't realize that there is a reason people dive when the ball is racing. No one told them that diving after the ball has already passed is of no use. Know what Kumble used to do? He would make heroic dives with his legs wide apart, so the ball could continue to roll on through the gap. It was quite a show. But he had done his part, he dived!
I just had to find a picture of this.
It's not the ideal picture but his legs are far apart and the ball seems to have evaded him. I laughed so hard. These are times when I have no qualms in admitting that my father is always right!
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