cricket with balls

There was Lionel Ritchie singing with his microphone turned down. And other western acts.

Some drag queen dancing acts, except with the drag queens.

Bollywood stuff seemed to be happening as well.

Costumes that some people were comparing to klu klux klan on twitter.

Then Ravi yelled.

Andy Bichel did some commentary, he sounded like Danny Morrison on ketamine.

Lalit was missing most of the time, but in his place was a lady in a red dress, an obvious homage to the Matrix.

Brad Hodge looked pissed off.

Many snatch shots of the cheerleaders, none on super slow mo, maybe next year.

Angelo Mathews continues to not exist.

The Chargers song was remixed, still shit though.

Owais Shah had cut down his sleeves to show off the guns.

There were time outs, but they weren’t strategically named, but they were strategically used.

The IPL has ads between the balls, they are louder and less awkward than the Channel 9 versions.

ITV brought out Hoggard, Hick and some dude and some Indian chick for their coverage. Hoggy was ok, the rest were ordinary and only the Indian chick had done any research.

Gilly seemed to keep hitting the ball in the air and not getting caught.

I never thought I’d say this, but I wanted fake smiles from SRK.

Rohit Sharma continues to vie for Indian batsmen most likely to be assassinated.

The game fizzled out.

The Windies beat Zimbabwe.

Nap.

The IPL has started, not with a bang, not with a whimper, but with a carefully stage managed event that had shit western acts, lots of dancing, two teams making decent totals and Andy Bichel.

How do you know your cricket community has gone to shit?

You burn a toy that relates to the wrong country.

If these Pakistanis had any pride in their effigy they’d burn Apu from the simpsons.

This is sloppy fucken work, and if I was the insane bastard in charge of a posse batshit crazy enough to burn things, I’d at least get the metaphors right.

I assume the group, Pakistani Unified Burnt Effigies Syndicate,  had this toy ready expecting Ponting to anally rape Yousuf at the toss, or start throwing shoes at Umar Akmal, and when he didn’t they had the Tassie Devil (a token character, as he hasn’t lived there in how long?) taking up space.

Someone probably said, what does Lalit Modi look like, and someone else said, a smug prick, the first dude probably said, Ricky Ponting is a smug prick.

See how easy these things can get out of hand.

What they need is strong leadership, is Shoaib Malik free?

Buy the book, get a t-shirt, or donate to the whisky fund.

Like Ganguly doesn’t have an employee to wash his face.

The stunt double pretending to be Warne is doing a great job.

Has anyone ever read the paper with more intensity.

The IPL is back in India.

The IPL is back, so are the weird ass ads.

I was having a look at the list of potential IPL players for the next object and there was only one that stuck out, that of the super slogging Canadian Rizwan Cheema.

In the last little while there has been a some buzz about him, mostly because he hits the ball like it slept with his sister.

Luckily the fine non-Arquette like Canadian Cricket site hooked me up with the good shit.

Sure he plays across the line and he has a touch of wild slogger about him, but I am willing to say he is the best thing to happen to Canada since Degrassi Junior high, or the dude in our polls.

Ryan Ten Inches from the Netherlands was also nominated.

The IPL is doing for minnow cricket what the NBA did for Asian basketball and might do more than the ICC ever has.

I’ve just been reading an interview that Lalit Modi gave to Karan Thapar.

For most of the interview Lalit seems to be saying that every quote Karan uses has been taken out of context. He could be right, but it seems illogical that every single comment could be out of context.

Lalit is wasting his time with cricket, the man has to get himself into politics.

There is one point in the interview that I just couldn’t overlook.

“Lalit Modi: You are absolutely wrong. The quality of cricket that is played in the IPL is by far the best in the cricket matches that I have seen or for that matter anybody else has seen. The entertainment outside the ropes is only an add-on. It’s the quality of cricket that creates the viewership, and not the add-on.”

Whoahhhhhh.

This interview was given after the champions league. I understand standing up for your product, but don’t include others in your biased, and factually wrong statements.

Has anyone, other than Lalit, or people on the IPL payroll ever said that the quality of cricket in the IPL is BY FAR the best in cricket matches that they have seen?

Doubtful.

I like the IPL, keeps march and april interesting and all, but the level of cricket was just ok. The champions league pretty much proved that.

It certainly isn’t better than international cricket.

The interview is definitely worth a few minutes, it also covers the fact that Manish Pandey (if you don’t know who he is this will be a complete mindfuck) considers himself a celebrity. And some very interesting stuff about the fact that senior players have complained about younger players not putting in for their ranji sides.

Lalit does well to weasel his way around most of the questions. Got to respect that.

EDIT: Thanks to Homer, we now have the youtube links of the interview. Part one, Part two, Part three, Part four.

I found it great viewing, the more condescending Karan gets, the smugger Lalit looks.