Graeme's Hindi might kill AB

So suddenly Smitty wants in on the IPL. Tennis elbow is only for tennis players, he says. I play cricket. Confidentially, he has advised me that the tennis elbow is really only a fake injury to make him appear saintly and all-sacrificing in front of audiences. And it worked. His dastardly plan to fake a broken finger in Australia and later return to bat it out worked like magic. "The Aussies are lapping this shit up," he tells me, his South African accent particularly amusing today.

But Graeme has been giving others better interviews. He's bought a new Hindi For Dummies CD and is working hard to be able to call himself trilingual and therefore better than KP:

"My broken finger is recovering well, and I should be ready for the one-day internationals against Australia, starting on April 3. In the meantime, my elbow is also doing well, and depending on how it goes during the ODIs, I might play for the Rajasthan Rajahs after all."

On the other side of town, AB is still gloating over his 163 runs in the last test against Australia, and is determined to keep playing the same way for the T20 matches:

"At this level we're all professional enough to make the change. I'll still bat the same way, use the same technique, I'll just be more positive and try to hit a few more boundaries."

A few more boundaries? Is 4 consecutive sixes in a Test match not enough for him? Apparently not. But forget boundaries, AB has more worrying things on his hand. Like a Mortal Kombat situation with the SA team. On the topic of SA's lacklustre performance in the 16 Pro20 internationals they have played:

"I don't think our record's that bad and a lot of our inconsistency is down to the nature of the game, you can lose at any time. It's not like test cricket where you play for five days and it's more about your skills; in Pro20, if one player comes off it can kill you."

It's a fight to the death and AB's just trying not to get killed.