How to lose a match

Kolkata Knight Riders:

1/1 - Ganguly out first ball. Idiot. Bet he can't get on his high horse in front of McCullum now.

Hodge comes it all hodgily. If that's a word.

The 4th ODI between Australia and Pakistan is on right now. I'm not watching. Gayle is also an idiot.

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Anyway, so Mumbai win by 9 runs. There ya go.

Fake IPL Player = Ranadeb Bose

So it's almost official, but nobody's saying his name.
There must have been hundreds of people who pegged him days before this almost-there confirmation of the Fake IPL Player's identity.

Gulu Ezekiel writes for the New Indian Express, and pretty much says it all:

He is smart — educated at one of the country’s top schools — articulate and bitter as well. And he has reason to be, after being one the most successful bowlers in a recent domestic season.

The motive can be traced to the Kolkata Knight Riders camp in the IPL’s first season. After being kept on the sidelines for half the event, the player in question along with five others was asked to leave the team hotel in Kolkata and no longer be part of the franchise ostensibly on the grounds of cost cutting.

He had lashed out at the time at what he perceived to be shabby treatment and swore never to wear KKR colours again, being particularly critical of the team owner and the coach. It is no surprise then that KKR decided to dispense with him this year and he was picked up by a franchise from the North.

The name will be revealed within 24 hours but it's pretty obvious, if this article is correct which it seems to be, that Ranadeb Bose is your man.

And it looks like Ezekiel has received word that perhaps Lord Almighty was the one suppling KKR insider info to RDB. Oh dear. How exciting.

Super Over

What a super match.

The real stars of the night:

King Kong
Kamran Khan
Chris Gayle
And alright, Ganguly.

Another dig at Buchanan

Wow, these come on coming. And they're not even subtle in the slightest.

Sports editor of India Today, Sharda Ugra, wants to see foreign players and coached playing a smaller role in the IPL, which is, after all, meant to be for Indian players.

But she's not about to stop at simply making a suggestion for Indian coaches, she's going to be make a comment about a particular coach, omitting the name of this foreigner:

"Some of the foreign coaches have not even played Test cricket, that's why they don't know how to respect talent at the international level. No wonder, players like Ganguly are being ill-treated."

No need to be tactful there. By the way, Ganguly's sending over a giant cheque to Ugra for a quarter of his lifetime earnings.

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.

Ganguly's first over

Two wickets, he is mighty pleased with himself.

Take that, John.

The other players are trying desperately to suck up to their Dada.

Whatever, peasants. He doesn't need your grovelling.

Who's your Dada now? Ganguly says.

Who is the Fake IPL Player?

Everyone wants to know, everyone's speculating, and it's damn near impossible to figure this one out.

At first I thought it might be anyone. It didn't get too specific and some of the stuff written would have been easy to infer about the team. In fact, at first, the Fake IPL Player was pretty darn hilarious.

The Sheikh of Tweak. Vinnie Dildo. Lord Almighty. And so forth. Very amusing takes on players and happenings.

But then things took a turn for the, I suppose, darker side, when it became clear that this was perhaps upsetting an already upset team. The Knight Riders' CEO Joy Bhattacharya denied the blog was coming from a player within the team, claiming it was "sick and perverted". Which it hilariously is.

There are differences between the take of events on the blog and what Joy claims. In fact, the treatment of the Lord and his reaction as depicted by the Fake IPL Player is altogether too close to what is likely to be the truth, an uncomfortably close-to-the-bone description of the goings on following the captaincy issue.

The writer then went on to give a little disclaimer:
All characters appearing in this work (blog) are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and unintentional.

You know, seems intelligent, and much of the writing suggests this. Is definitely Indian, can speak English well, and must be an insider of some sort. There are slip-ups in spelling at times but it's got a well-educated feel to it. Or well aware of pop culture.

But who is this Fake IPL Player? When it became clear that the writer had a considerable idea of what was going on in the team, it seemed it could be a journo doing the honours. But they've denied this too, although they have said that other journalists suspected it was one of their own behind this.

And now apparently management wants to catch the player "within 24 hours" having narrowed it down to a list of 4 young Indian players, of which the Fake IPL Player claims to be none. The description of the ongoing secrecy in the team and the falling out between management and players has an all too ominous feel to it. Simply put, this writer doesn't appear to be making this up. They're getting their info from somewhere.

I don't really know some of the more obscure Kolkata players so I can't weigh in on who it could be. But whatever it is, in the last day or so, this hilarious blog has transformed into more of a mystery. Our very own blogger mystery.

KKR are claiming the opposite of the writer. In their version of events, SRK comes around for a coffee after the loss, and the players sit around chatting to each other. Sounds like a right old tea party.
In the Fake IPL Player's take of events, SRK doesn't come around at all, and the team is tense. The Lord is quiet, Coach is taking time off from the players on his laptop, and so forth.

A mystery, then.

But I think I've cracked it. The Colonel did it, in the library, with the wrench.

Rain rain go away

Hopefully it doesn't come back another day. The 3rd and 4th mtches of the IPL were affected quite drastically by the rain at Cape Town, with the Kings XI vs. Delhi match being shortened to just 18 overs in total.

The results: Delhi Daredevils won against Kings XI, despite some excellent performances by Karan Goel and Ravi Bopara up the order for Punjab. But the organisers decided to go with the stupid tactical time-out after 6 overs of play, and when they came back, all was not well for Kings XI.

You could argue that Goel had gotten out on the last ball of the over before the break, and that Delhi were going to bring on Dan Vettori anyway, but I do feel that 7 and a half minute break had something to do with Punjab's collapse. Ravi Bopara was out lbw first ball of Dan's over, who went on to pick up 3 wickets for 15. Impressive stuff from the Kiwi, which we all expected.

Yuvraj had a hard knock with a couple of sixes before being run out and eyeing Jayawardene quite frostily down at the other end. After that, Punjab were doomed, but they still set up over 100 runs. Delhi came in and Gambhir and Sehwag went lukewarm nuts, whatever that means. Rain stopped play soon after, and when Delhi came back on, they needed 30 to win from 25 balls. Easy. Delhi won. AB didn't get to bat. Heh.

Then there was Kolkata vs. Deccan Chargers. The latter won, surprisingly. But it was a good performance, and the Chargers won impressively by 8 wickets.
Rohit Sharma was smoking.
Herschelle Gibbs is in form, which automatically means he's on fire.
RP Singh was burning, picking up 4 wickets on the night.
Fidel Edwards - you saw it, need I say more?

But that run out from Sharma was one to watch. A direct hit from extra cover had Ajit Agarkar sobbing off the field. Brilliant. He also had an excellent catch, taking Moises Henriques, again at extra cover.

I guess Ganguly had his revenge. Brendon's first match did not go well.