IPL 6: Both Mumbai Crowd and Kohli overreacted

This first appeared on Cricket Tadka

They had booed when Sachin was dismissed after crawling his way to a tardy 1 after batting for 34 long minutes. They didn’t spare Yuvraj when he did a Jonty to deny the MI a last ball victory. And now, it was Kohli’s turn.

The Mumbai crowd, a traditionally miffy one, apparently took offence when a Kohli direct hit had Rayudu scrambling for space to make it back in time to the bowler’s end. Pollard had hit the Vinay Kumar delivery to the cover region, and Kohli effected a direct hit. There was an ugly tangle involving Rayudu, and Kumar who was backing up the throw, and a grappling Rayudu failed to get his bat back in time. The collision was without a hint of doubt unintentional, as Vinay Kumar had his back towards Rayudu. Rayudu was, incidentally, yet to face a delivery.

Kohli went ahead with the appeal, and the television umpire had no hesitation in ruling Rayudu out. And this did not go down very well with the Mumbai crowd.

The dismissal was, as such, a fairly legitimate one. Kumar was in no position to be aware of the fact that he was obstructing Rayudu. But the fans were in no mood to relent, and started firing a barrage of jeers towards a cornered Kohli, and possibly even called him “cheater”.

Abraham Benjamin de Villiers – Defining the AB and D of cricket

This first appeared on Sportskeeda

The customised ‘wall of fame’ is the only raison d'être of my existence in an otherwise nondescript and dingy hostel room. Made up of carefully torn Sportstar posters that I managed to sneak in from the hostel common room, the assortment boasts of Sachin kissing the World Cup, Alonso atop his mean machine, Graeme Smith with the test championship mace et al. And in the midst of this league of extraordinary gentlemen (and a pretty lady in Azarenka holding aloft the 2013 Australian Open Trophy) stands a marauding de Villiers, ‘the man with the magic willow’.

Bursting into the international arena at a relatively tender age of 20, he has carved out a niche for himself that few others could have dreamt of. Speaking of dreaming, I remember reading an article on AB on how he dreamt of being the world’s best batsman. Nine years after he first made an appearance in SA colours, he is third in the list for test batsmen. And as far as the best one day batsman goes, the answer is shorter than ABC.

Not Very Indian Premier League

This post first appeared on Cricket Tadka

The Indian Premier league presents a point of statistical interest and intrigue. The teams in the fray seem conspicuous by a general lack of Indian skippers. Out of the nine teams battling it out for glory in this season of the Indian Premier League, five are being led by foreign recruits.

The four teams that are currently being captained by Indians are the Kolkata Knight Riders (Gautam Gambhir), Chennai Super Kings (Mahendra Singh Dhoni), Rajasthan Royals (Rahul Dravid) and Royal Challengers Bangalore (Virat Kohli). And for the remaining five, three are being captained by Sri Lankans and two by Australians.

Sri Lankan presence as regards captaincy in the league is as prominent as India’s. Kumar Sangakkara has been at the helm of affairs for the Hyderabad franchise (formerly Deccan Chargers) for quite some time and Mahela Jayawardene has been appointed as the Delhi Daredevils’ captain this season. And as Michael Clarke was ruled out for this season following an injury he picked up during the Border-Gavaskar trophy, the team management zeroed in on Angelo Mathews as their new captain. That makes him the fourth captain for the Pune team in three seasons, and the third Sri Lankan captain for this year’s IPL.

Is anyone jumping at all?

What is the single most retarded piece of shit currently doing the rounds on Indian television? The question barely leaves the lips, and pat comes the obvious and unanimous reply: ‘Dil jumping jhapak jhampak jhampak, thumping thapak thampak thampak , gili gili yeah’. No, seriously. Farhan Khan (and of late her brother too) have made it a habit of theirs to openly insult our intelligence.

The promotional videos that are a part of this year’s IPL feature Farah Khan in a series of TV ads barging into unknown households and offices with her band of acolytes, followed by full-blown harassment of the occupants. The one featuring the small family of three is particularly pitiable.

She storms into their house, brandishes a cudgel, and scolds them for being just a mute spectator (‘sirf dekhneka nai’ she says) and forces them to dance to a tune that is as retarded as it gets. Really, it is so annoying that even Justice Katju might not approve of it, leave alone pardon her.