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.

Picking John Howard for the top ICC job is genius.

You might not think that would be my opening line, but think about it, the Australians have picked the one man who is way more of a cunt than Lalit Modi.

Just finding that person is hard, but then convincing him to take the job takes a special effort.

To be a cricket administrator these days you need to be either dictated to by big business, adept of strangling people with red tape or just evil. The ICC should be ecstatic they have found a man who excels on all fronts.

I can’t think of a more devious flawed con-artist to take the job, but being that the president of the ICC has as much power as the person who runs your local Video store, this is a perfect job for John Howard.

Not that he won’t try and get his hands dirty.

Any of the possible outcomes are possible:

Howard takes over the ICC and sees that the BCCI is the one true power and thusly shoves his nose up their ass and becomes their puppet. He justifies this by saying “while cricket fans may think I am making the wrong decision, as far as the economic situation dictates at this present time there is simply no other option for myself on behalf of the International Cricket Council and that I now feel like I have solidified a strong strategic allegiance with the Board of Cricket Control in India. I am sure that when they sit down to meet they will take the best interests of the world wide game into their minds before they make any decisions based on what suits their own interests best.”

Howard decides that the IPL is the enemy and that it must be broken down so it does not massively destruct the game of cricket. He plans to attack the league on many fronts to divide and conquer, he even declares victory, but it is obvious that he has no real idea what he is talking about and the IPl continues to flourish. Lalit Modi does get fired as the commissioner and Howard then claims that it was his plan all along to make Lalit step down and he thinks that in this current state the IPL is a good for cricket.

Howard declares that Pakistan shall be kicked out of cricket. At first he declines to give reasons, but when asked, the ICC, on his behalf, claim that the whole Pakistani team is involved in match fixing. The media goes into a frenzy, some stating that Howard did the right thing, others staring at the flimsy evidence that is put forward by the ICC. Shortly after an ICC employee admits to faking the evidence and the ICC hires a new PR team.

On Howard’s first trip to Sri Lanka he has to give a speech to their cricket board and interested parties about his previous calls that he believes Murali is a chucker. The speech goes well with Howard humbly apologising, making jokes at his expense and admitting that he was not fully informed at the time of the comment. Most Sri Lankans take it well but Arjuna Ranatunga refuses to accept the apology and drills many hard hitting questions at Mr Howard which makes him sweat in the warm climate and he loosens his shirt collar only for a bullet proof vest to be visible underneath. This does not please the Sri Lankans much.

Howard stops wearing green tracksuits and starts wearing ICC issue pyjamas everywhere he goes.

Nothing changes because the position of the ICC president is the most unpowerful seat in cricket; even the gate attendant at McLean Park in Napier has more.

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?

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.

It is easy to take the piss out of Lalit Modi.

Look he is a greedy wanker who once pleaded guilty to kidnapping.

Look he has paid people to listen to him now the camera is on.

Look he is talking on two phones at once.

Look at his face, he is clearly the Ricky Ponting of Sports Admin.

But, think about what he has done for us.

He has given us three cricket sides that cost roughly 300 Million USD to be put together.

Only 170 Million of that was on the Deccan theme tune.

Then he put these three teams into a tournament especially set up so that they would have a second chance to shine.

He invited others for the hell of it.

And then his 3 millionaire clubs all fell down.

Not one of these sides has even made the semi finals.

That is quite an effort.

Instead we have the great story of the Trinidad & Tobago team captained by the smooth drink of water that is Daren Ganga.

And 3 other teams.

Lalit, i thank you for allowing all of us to laugh at millionaires and IPL teams, while giving us the gift of Ganga.

You are truly a good hearted man.