The Midas (do not) touch
OK, so if an IPL player (or BCCI, or ICC) was to be sitting in an aircraft, and notices an ICL player across the aisle, what does he do? He can: A. Jump off (given that the plane is flying) B. Throw ICL off (given ICL is cooperative) C. Call Niranjan Shah, asking for 'advice'; decipher what he says, and then do accordingly. Not once, but several times over nearly 20 years, I've said "Now I've heard it all", about the Board of Control....
Posted by Jaideep Ghosh at 12 : 51 | 17 comments
Howzzat? Who cares?
Gautam Gambhir thinks it's a good thing to be able to challenge umpiring decisions, since matches then won't be lost due to mistakes by the officials. Fair enough call from him. Now we can attribute all losses to poor performances by the cricketers, not the umpires. Now that we can challenge the umpires as well, what next? Might as well legalise underhand bowling again, and allow players to take swings at each with bats and stumps. Who needs the rules anyway. The irony of it all comes....
Posted by Jaideep Ghosh at 17 : 00 | 7 comments
Anything to declare?
So 50-over cricket is back, and immediately, one is seeing signs that this format may not go last too long unless it sees some changes. We began with the Pakistan-Bangladesh match, and the former lost by 70 runs. Then India took on Pakistan, and doubled the deal, winning by 140 runs. By the end of the second game, one thing was pretty evident. If this is the level of 'excitement' that One-day Internationals can manage, the 50-over game is looking for a retirement plan. Twenty20 may not....
Posted by Jaideep Ghosh at 16 : 03 | 13 comments
Good, bad or ugly, IPL was fun
You know the best thing about the Indian Premier League? Some people actually succeeded in pronouncing Kolkata (as opposed to Kolkotta, Kolkawta, Kawlkata etc. etc.). There. Now I will be called parochial, but being in the media business, where we are supposed to be all objective and neutral, we cannot afford that, can we? Parochialism can be left to the IPL, where players have been booed for being attached to a certain city team, even when just on foreign exchange! So it is time, it seems, to take....
Posted by Jaideep Ghosh at 14 : 34 | 2 comments
