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.

People may not know this, but Cricket is only Australia’s number one sport by default.

If Victorians and NSWelshman didn’t hate each other so much, they might have decided on one brand of football, and then cricket wouldn’t have been the biggest sport in Australia.

If Ravi Shastri, Bishen Bedi and Kris Srikkanth walked down Lygon st on a Friday night, people wouldn’t look twice.

Well maybe at Ravi, but he’s a good looking man, and the ladies do like their brown sugar.

Australian’s are in love with all sports, well, let me rephrase, Australian’s are in love with all sports they win alot.

If you were to ask me if Australians were excited about the upcoming series against India, I’d say “not really” in a who knows, why are you asking me that kind of voice.

Australians don’t rate a team until said team defeats them, we are a simple people like that.

Beating Pakistan, England or anyone else doesn’t raise alarm bells for the average Australian fan, if India beats Australia, then next time they will get excited before the series.

It can be put as simply as this.

In India, cricket is a religion.

In Australia, winning is a religion.

Indians get caught up in the stats, the results, the details of cricket. They know about domestic players from all around the world. They find out details about cricket, they live and breathe it. Cricket stops the nation, the players are thought of as Gods, even players like Lillee and Bradman who never played there.

Australians are a different breed. Cricket isn’t that important here. Most Australian cricket fans couldn’t name any players from Bangladesh, they wouldn’t know who Dale Steyn is or care that Mishbah Ul Haq has a big behind.

In Australia if the cricket is on, and its news time, the news comes on (channel) 9 times out of 10. No questions asked. Channel 9 are the only channel in Australia that shows live international cricket in Australia, so when they go to the news, no one can watch the cricket.

When Shane Warne first claimed the world record, channel 9 were showing the Price is right, with some bogan chick winning a washing machine.

Cricket almost never gets on the front page in Melbourne or Sydney, but footballers of both rugby and aussie rules get it with idiotic monotony.

If I went out on the street and polled 10 people as to who the Indian captain is, they wouldn’t know.

If I polled the whole boxing day crowd before they got to the ground (not the day 2-5 crowd) only 30% would know it was Anil.

An Indian recently asked me if there is a sense of excitement over this series, the answer is no.

Last year there was 10 times more excitement than this, England had defeated Australia, this was to be a real test, and then Australia bent England over and gave them the biggest pounding this side of a Miike film.

So even with India’s improving team of elderly gentleman and young bucks, the Australian public aren’t really all that interested in it.

But Boxing day does strange things to people. For instance one boxing day i was with this chick, and for ages she wouldn’t let me… Actually that has nothing to do with cricket. Never mind.

If India win the first Test, or even the Second test, then every tom d1ck and larry in Australia will get excited over it.

Until then, it is summer as usual.

Pakistani’s have always been cool. Imran, Safraz, Abdul, Mushtaq, Afridi, Inzy… Hell the list is endless.

The other sub continent sides have been severely lacking in the coolness department. They have had the odd Fonz, like Ahzurrdin and Shastri, but they were the exceptions.

Times have changed though.

Somehow in spite of themselves India and Sri Lanka have produced cool players.

My thoughts on Yuvraj (sourav who) and Dhoni have been well known for a while.

But Sri Lanka has some dudes in their team now that are also quite cool. Malinga has a hair style that makes Nathan Bracken look straight, an eyebrow piercing and a bowling action that makes him look slightly retarded.

And yet the boy is still cool.

But he has nothing on the King.

Kumar is like Charlie Bronson in the dirty dozen, tough, talented and a mother f*cker to boot.

He is the prototype of what Sub Continental players should be.

Talented, gutsy, brilliant, aesthetically pleasing, and a player who loves a scrap.

He sledges like Steve Waugh in a world cup.

He bats like Lara used to when he was interested.

He keeps better than most of the worlds stoppers.

And of recent times he is as close to batting perfection as I have seen.

I think for the good of world cricket, he came along at the right time. The Proboters are starting to take over, and we need the likes of Kumar to fight the good fight.

Too many batsmen play like they are fighting for their mortagage, he bats like he is trying to win a cricket match.

Keith Miller style.

His innings in Tasmania was more than enough reason to keep Hobart on the map for the next few years.

Now he takes on England.

The Poms would have to be favourite for this series, but Australia only had to face him once and he damn near drew the series on his own.

If he averages under 70, England will win, if not, good luck England.

No one fu©ks with the king baby.

I’m in love with all rounders. Real ones, not the Jacques Kallis or Steve Waugh kind.

That was controversial.

By all rounders I mean, Miller, Sobers, Benaud, Gilchrist, Botham, and Khan. These sorts of blokes People who can win matches with either bat, ball or gloves.

So in the spirit of India being a half way decent team again, let’s talk about the last world cup India won. 1983 when they somehow toppled the great West Indies.

There was this dude who played for them called Kapil. Rhymes with apple.

We could talk stats.

Runs 303. Average 60. Strike rate 108. 4 more players scored more runs than him (no where near as quick). 2 players scored quicker than him (but they both made less than half the amount of runs.

Or 12 wickets at 20, which for him really wasn’t that spectacular. But hey I’d take it.

Really though the stats mean jack shit. India at the time had a really handy side, but the truth is they quite often have really handy sides.

Gavaskar, Shastri (before he became the new Richie Benaud) and Srikkanth. Were holding up the batting side of things. Maden Lal and Binny took 17 and 18 wickets respectively for the tournament.

Dev however did the heavy lifting. Maybe it was the mullet.

When their tournament was disappearing against of all teams Zimbabwe, the team who had already beaten Australia, Dev and his mullet stood up.

India were 5 for 17. Gavaskar and Srikkanth were out. Both for ducks. Shastri was only a youngster and was yet to come in, but when he did come in, his score of one hardly made a difference.

The second top score was 24, by the number 10, who was involved in a 126 run partnership. The Indians ended up making 266 off 60 overs. Hardly a brilliant score but hey they were 5 for 17, so you take what you can get.

Dev played some ok shots and scrambled his way to 175 not out off 138 balls.

That would be amazing now. But in 1983 that must have twisted anuses inside out.

The amazing thing is that if he hadn’t have made those runs, India wouldn’t have made the semi’s which makes it harder to win the final. I’d think.

Some will say, well it was only Zimbabwe, how hard could that have been, well other than the fact they had rolled the Aussies in the tournament, how about this argument. Try scoring at a strike rate at 120 for 138 balls when your team mates have all crawled up and died and your batting with the number 10.

6 sixes and 16 fours. The balls on this dude must be the size of a Jupitor. If any of those sixes doesn’t clear the fence (that’s what they called the rope in those days) India goes home having been knocked out of the tournament by Zimbabwe (Dave Houghton’s boys).

How many effigies would have been burnt if that had happened.

India won the final as a team, but they got there riding a beautiful mullet into the final.