Wednesday 22 April 2009

Fake IPL Player Goes Commercial

I tried so very hard not to post this. I almost feel stupid doing it, but I felt I just had to get this out there.

At the moment, I am 80% convinced this person is not a player at all, and probably not support staff either. Maybe a journo, because they went out of their way to come up with a way to indirectly negate this option, and we all know they're quite clever.

But lately they seem to have gotten more lax in preserving their identity, in general. Some of the details in their last posts seem odd and consistency is becoming a little more see-through. The places they frequent and that fact that they seem to have some prior knowledge of the cricket blogging circles, or at least the good people at BCC!.

And the ads. You have to provide details for that kind of stuff. If you were a player, perhaps you'd be a little more paranoid about something like that, especially when you're posting about how big a deal this is to management. It just doesn't seem like something you'd do. If you did, you'd have to have the biggest balls in the entire Indian cricket team. And well, I suppose that wouldn't be altogether too difficult, but let's not get into that kind of stuff here.

Of course, this is all assuming there's a player behind this. Which I doubt.

So again, I can't even believe I'm posting this. I'll try to stop, but it's too much of a curiosity for me to stay away from it. In the meantime, I suppose enjoying the hilarious posts is enough.

18 comments:

missjane said...

yes, ultimately i figure it doesn't matter who it is (altho a huge con would be disappointing) - they are some of the funniest cricket posts i've read for a while.

besides yours, of course.

straight point said...

MJ...

just like these gossip movie magazines talk about 'movies'...this fake talks about 'cricket...

Barney said...

the fake guy is the 'fake' guy...

i don't care if he is the janitor...
let the posts roll..

hate the ads though...guy earns the IPL money forchrissake! WHY the ads???

or maybe, as the knowledge of blogging riches are unknown to me, there is more money from adsense than there is through an IPL Contract!!!

12th Man said...

He seems to have included a few ads onto his website. There are also people leaving a lot of comments there.

Amy said...

missjane, I'm flattered.

Barney, I don't know why, but I can't comment on your blog. In any case, I'll have you know there's no way I could have a crush on this guy. Something about him is a little off. (btw, I kid you not, I just checked my stats and it's going haywire. Everyone's desperately trying to find out about the Fake IPL Player)

12th, it's certainly evolved into something quite huge in a short period of time. Those ads are dodgy, though.

12th Man said...

Does your stats show a heavy volume of traffic from Bangalore? That could be me or my alter ego as well.

But i would prefer to be someone that searches for a fake international player as opposed to a fake IPL KKR player.

Anonymous said...

I'll be the contrarian here: I think over the last 2 days the "ipl player's" postings have become stale. His big news flash has been that Ishant had sex. First this is very difficult to verify, second it is not very interesting, and third that fresh humor in his earliest posts has been replaced by a stale, grimy "been there" vibe which doesn't really cut it for me.

In the end blogs have to be about good writing and a sharp wit. Which is why I'll keep coming here. And for this same reason I'm going to eschew this tempest -- that more and more seems like artificial hype. [NB: However I must acknowledge that his blog has crossed the chasm and I expect his influence to keep rising.]

I was the one who originally asked you to comment on this story. I'm retracting my request. He is not worth the time. Let's get back to the cricket.

--Gaurav

Amy said...

Cheers, Gaurav. Well said. That SRK conspiracy theory is suddenly not so strange a concept anymore.

12th, all of my hits have been from Bangalore. Thanks for clarifying that one, I should have known it was you and your obsessive googling of the fake IPL player.

Barney said...

hey amy, thanks for mentioning it.

i think i have sorted it out...

happy commenting on my blog...

cheers!

Sam said...

i think this ipl anonymous player cud be another bollywood gimmick...this lads cud do anything!!

Indophile said...

Well you should look at the number of comments he has received !!! Its a bigger hit than Janet Jackson nipple gate at the superbowl

Amy said...

Yes, he's quite the star. And no wardrobe malfunctions yet so it's looking good.

David Barry said...

This whole Fake IPL Player thing fascinates me. Especially from the last couple of days, I'm far from convinced that he's even a KKR insider, but then I read Dileep Premachandran at the Guardian saying that according to the Guardian's source, the KKR management are doing everything they can to root out the blogger.

All pretty odd. For the moment I'll stick to thinking that he's an Indian cricket journalist (or friend of a journo) with a wicked sense of humour.

Amy said...

So it's pretty much confirmed from a different source that this is something inside the KKR ranks. That's something solid, then. I wasn't sure what to believe.

The humour's been a little off lately, though.

Prabu said...

Amy,

While I was fascinated to know more about this guy initially, I don't think he is even in SA . One possibility is that this is an Indian MS student in the US who is working on his "thesis" by running some simulations and has too much time on his hands. Believe me, I've been there and I know how much time is available when u r an MS student. I have not seen one report out there that actually talks about verification in any of it. Second possibility is that he may have been part of Bengali cricket at one point in time but not anymore I think. He could actually be an ICL player out of favor with the establishment now!

David, I reread Dileep's post and think that you may have misunderstood this statement:

"But according to our man, there are frenetic attempts to smoke him out. In an entry headlined When the Going Gets Tough on Tuesday evening,...."

The "according to our man" actually refers to the blogger, not Guardian's correspondent. So all we have here is one post by KKR's CEO or whatever saying that there is a blog out there which is of "poison pen variety" and which it is. Other than that there has been no official response. The castle of cards has been built by the blogger and reinforced by good-for-nothing Indian jounos from Times of India and Cricinfo and people who are fascinated by the existence of a mole in the IPL setup.

The best thing the blogger did was to choose the one franchise people are quick to be interested about, especially becos of their owner. From then on his "fame" has spread, powered by the cricketing blogging community including the perennial commentors like me. Given that his initial posts were clever and he chose to "give out" details in clues which heightened the intrigue, all he is now trying to do is reinforce that he is real. For if people actually get to know that he isn't, his few days of fame will be quickly gone.

David Barry said...

Prabu, on re-reading it I agree with what you say. Sorry to Amy and any others I misled.

Amy said...

Prabu, I don't think he's in South Africa either. It's very hard to speculate, though, because nobody apart from him is providing any information. If you were clever and had a sharp mind, it wouldn't be altogether too difficult to write something realistic which might be off-putting to the KRR.

Having said that, there is definitely some source he's getting his info from. He pegged Ganguly coming in at 3 hours before the match.

People pointed out the US time zone thing. Maybe he did slip up on that one point because he didn't realise how big this would become. Your theory could well be right, especially considering the excellent grasp of English this person has. Of course, so do many people in India, so there's that.

The ads threw me off. He took them off because he realised he'd have to provide contact details, which was what I found odd in the first place. Still, something is off about this whole business. It's looking less convincing by the day.

IPL Anonymous said...

The guy does not earn a single penny from the blog....

Hot & Sexy Cheerleaders ...here u get some Ads, which, if visited, adds some penny in the owner's account !!!