Comparing myself with Manish Pandey

When I was 19, I was busy skipping classes at uni. Clearly, he's not.

The end.

The better team won today. Bangalore batted well, fielded well, and bowled well. They also managed to do each of these better than Chennai, so they deserved that win in every way. I find myself okay with that, and if it's not heresy to say so, throughout the match I didn't quite mind BRC's onslaught against CSK bowlers.

As the commentators have reminded us about a hundred times, the No. 7 and No. 8 teams from last year will be meeting in the final this year. Just because I like some of their players more, I'm going Bangalore. But it would be good to see Deccan win the tournament this time.

If you're interested, Ryan Campbell and Corey Wingard are all over Pandey's name. Apparently it's "Pandy" as in "Mandy".

Shuk Rah Khan's Royal Ways

I love Ryan Campbell too much not to henceforth rename Shahrukh as Shuk Rah. What shits me about this is that someone emailed ONE saying they were incorrectly pronouncing "Punjab" and the hosts took that on board (for all of 30 minutes. After that Wingard returned to "Poonjab") but that nobody has seen fit to send in an email about the frightfully disturbing "Shuk Rah Khan".

I'm taking it upon myself to do it. Watch Thursday night's action on Australian screens and hopefully Wingard will tell us about Campbell's royal error.

Speaking of royal - excellent segue there - I'm shitting myself watching SRK in the stands observing his team. While Ganguly is blinking out "Fuck you all" in Morse code, Shuk Rah sits in his throne having a smoke.

But wait? Is the camera on him? In that case, he'll casually drop his arm and wave a royal wave to the crowd that would make Queen Elizabeth damn near proud. Just look at his posture, his quiet confidence, his shit hair. In fact, he'll not only wave to his fans, he'll blow a quietly sentimental kiss at them.

Fuck. Isn't he amazing? His kids must love it, what with the passive smoking and all. Their grey little lungs are jumping for joy.

Random trippy photo to break this post up a little.

Seeing as I didn't really post on it, I'll just mention how awesome Irfan Pathan was with the bat last night. Top job from our Top Bloke.

Time to watch the advertising

If you think you've got it bad with advertising, try watching the IPL in Australia.

Same ad breaks, same times, but completely different content during the ads. You see, even the tactical time-out is purely ads, and 30 second ones at that. Then it's back to the studio to get Ryan Campbell's expert advice on cricket before we head to the game.

Sounds alright to an extent, but that's before you consider that with the ad breaks thrown in at every possible opportunity, including between overs, after wickets, etc, we are being subjected to quite a lot of advertising when we sit at home watching the IPL. (this is for everyone across the world, of course)

It's made worse by the fact that Australia's IPL broadcaster - ONE - is still a very new channel. It's barely been a month since this channel was launched, and in that time, the only sponsors or advertisers they've managed to secure are Castrol, Hungry Jacks, Advanced Hair Studios and Gatorade. If there's one or two more, tell me in the comments, but this is pretty much it.

Now, in the time that we're expected to watch ads, imagine these 4 ads being repeated, time after time. Imagine watching only these 4 ads for the duration of two matches, every day. Throw in a few ads from the channel itself and we've got a very narrow range of advertising that is expected to cover about 2 hours in total per night. It makes you actually want to watch Anthony Hudson and Ryan Campbell, or Corey Wingard.

I have most of the ads committed to memory, they haunt me in my dreams.
"At Hungry Jacks, we believe you should be able to get a meal for the same price, no matter where you live."
"I have to ask, is this true or is it just a load of spin?"
"I'd be looking like a new ball."
"You mean 'yeah, yeah'."
"Can you afford not to use it?"
"I guess this stuff works."

If you can identify the person who has said those quotes, congratulations, you must be Australian.

You mean 'yeah, yeah.'

As a side note, did anyone catch Corey Wingard repeatedly asking Campbell whether Warnie could make the Ashes team? He must have come up with a different scenarios in which the selectors have to decide whether Warnie can be on the squad, and each time Campbell responds with a no. By the end of that drawn out conversation, I was ready to kill myself.