IPL withdrawal and the T20 WC patch
It's loud, it's crass and the cricket is, to be honest, of quite poor quality. But I love it. And now I miss it. I miss it so much that I actually watched "Housefull" to get my periodic fix of Deepika looking stunningly cute and just as expressionless. There was even the mandatory Sri lankan in the "lineup". Needless to say, the movie, much like the outcome of a KKR outfit design meeting, was a disaster. In retrospect, the catchy song from the movie "Apni to aise taise... aap ka kya hoga?" seems oddly prescient. But I digress; this isn't a "Housefull" review.
The IPL has its flaws, I'll admit. The cricket field looks like it was invaded by extras from a low budget Indian mythological teleseries. Lakshman Sivaramakrishnan's thighs become the unit of measurement for bat thickness, SI units be damned! A northern Indian team is referred to in the same terms as the "talents" of actresses providing late night entertainment on the Internet (for those who didn't get this, think Danny Morrisson + Delhi Darevils). And then, there's the open insult to my engineer brethren when a balloon with a camera hanging off it becomes the forefront of technology. A camera that doesn't even work!
Amidst this feeling of emptiness, I think to myself, "There's the T20 World Cup. It's T20 too. It'll be fine". But deep down I know it won't. Hitting the ball straight up in the air will actually be suicidal and stupid rather than a matter of one team questioning the fielding competence of another. Fast bowlers the world over will breathe a sigh of relief since RP Singh and other 130 kmph trundlers will not be referred to as "quicks". There will be no annoying drummer and certainly no other team will actually copy that and come up with an uglier, more hirsute version of their own. Not to mention the absence of the other Double Ds, the Dynamic Duo of of DannyM and LS. Or for that matter, the incredible irony of a bankrupt corporation sponsoring a "moment of success".
Fortunately though, some things will be the same. Harbhajan will still be a d*ck and Sreesanth won't be in any XI. Inexplicably though, Praveen Kumar will. The outfits will still be kind of ridiculous (can someone please tell me why the Indian uniform has a big orange ass patch?) Sehwag's contribution to his team will be insignificant and and the batting line up of the team I support will still read Vijay, out of form lefty, Raina, fringe Indian player, Dhoni, out of form big hitting lefty, slogging righty who can't spell "technique", let alone possess it. Cliches will still flow thick and fast with everything from ordinance (tracer bullets) to the weight of gold being discussed, and balls will race to the fence "at the rate of knots" even though they travel on land.
In these similarities, I will have to take solace. For the IPL is over and it will probably never be the same again. The next auction will likely change everything. Dhoni might well be accosted at a "red light area" in another city. Who knows how the (soon to be) Pati, Patni aur Woh incident will turn out? And we thought Sreesanth was the worst thing out of Kerala!
Finally, Lalit Modi, Twitter was a mistake. A huge mistake. But you probably already know that by now. Facebook is way better! You could have uploaded tagged "candid" pics of Tharoor and Pushkar! And 400m+ users... can't argue with that!
Disclaimer: Any relation between the author's current employer and any social network mentioned above is purely coincidental. Any disrespect to cricketers, administrators or other persons however, is probably intentional.
The IPL has its flaws, I'll admit. The cricket field looks like it was invaded by extras from a low budget Indian mythological teleseries. Lakshman Sivaramakrishnan's thighs become the unit of measurement for bat thickness, SI units be damned! A northern Indian team is referred to in the same terms as the "talents" of actresses providing late night entertainment on the Internet (for those who didn't get this, think Danny Morrisson + Delhi Darevils). And then, there's the open insult to my engineer brethren when a balloon with a camera hanging off it becomes the forefront of technology. A camera that doesn't even work!
Amidst this feeling of emptiness, I think to myself, "There's the T20 World Cup. It's T20 too. It'll be fine". But deep down I know it won't. Hitting the ball straight up in the air will actually be suicidal and stupid rather than a matter of one team questioning the fielding competence of another. Fast bowlers the world over will breathe a sigh of relief since RP Singh and other 130 kmph trundlers will not be referred to as "quicks". There will be no annoying drummer and certainly no other team will actually copy that and come up with an uglier, more hirsute version of their own. Not to mention the absence of the other Double Ds, the Dynamic Duo of of DannyM and LS. Or for that matter, the incredible irony of a bankrupt corporation sponsoring a "moment of success".
Fortunately though, some things will be the same. Harbhajan will still be a d*ck and Sreesanth won't be in any XI. Inexplicably though, Praveen Kumar will. The outfits will still be kind of ridiculous (can someone please tell me why the Indian uniform has a big orange ass patch?) Sehwag's contribution to his team will be insignificant and and the batting line up of the team I support will still read Vijay, out of form lefty, Raina, fringe Indian player, Dhoni, out of form big hitting lefty, slogging righty who can't spell "technique", let alone possess it. Cliches will still flow thick and fast with everything from ordinance (tracer bullets) to the weight of gold being discussed, and balls will race to the fence "at the rate of knots" even though they travel on land.
In these similarities, I will have to take solace. For the IPL is over and it will probably never be the same again. The next auction will likely change everything. Dhoni might well be accosted at a "red light area" in another city. Who knows how the (soon to be) Pati, Patni aur Woh incident will turn out? And we thought Sreesanth was the worst thing out of Kerala!
Finally, Lalit Modi, Twitter was a mistake. A huge mistake. But you probably already know that by now. Facebook is way better! You could have uploaded tagged "candid" pics of Tharoor and Pushkar! And 400m+ users... can't argue with that!
Disclaimer: Any relation between the author's current employer and any social network mentioned above is purely coincidental. Any disrespect to cricketers, administrators or other persons however, is probably intentional.
posted by Rahul Iyer at 9:12 PM
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