IPL: some turds

In the good old days, the Forrest Gump saying "life is like a box of chocolates, you never know which one you are getting" could be applied to cricket. "Cricket is like a box of chocolates, you don't know which gem each game will unearth".

But during and post IPL, the line needs some major modifications. Now it looks like: "cricket is like a community toilette commode with the seat down. you never know which turd will show up when you really want to have a go."

In the one and half month long jamboree that was IPL, I used to switch channels to Set Max with almost similar dread everyday. My only limited expectation was that it should be anyways better than the Marathi soaps the female population of our household forces on me everyday. And one fact I (re)learnt is that one very easy and fool-proof way to be happy in life is to lower your expectations so that you overachieve all the time. With that fixed, I paid my daily obeisance to the megalomaniacal melee of Indian cricket administrators, cricketers, movie stars and who's who of Indian industry.

Let me confess that most of what was served exceeded expectations by a large margin. Let's talk about that, too. But later.

Of course I did not expect anything out of ordinary and got everything expected. The biffers biffed, the ballers generally prayed and hoped. Most influential were people with the state of art training and attitude also known as the Aussies. Nobody was expecting this format to be the pinnacle of strategy. But it was proved that it does not even have a place for tactics. The baller tried things and prayed; the batsman picked his fav hitting areas and hoped. The result was almost as random as a toss of a coin. We can not prove it is otherwise in one dayers or tests, too. So let's not talk about it.

Here is the list of some of the worst turds I dreaded and came across, not necessarily sorted by their sizes:

1. Commentary: A confession- I like cricket more on the television than on the grounds. You can burn me at the stake for this but that has always been the case. OK, now that this is off my chest, let me continue with the point I am trying to make. One of the reasons for this is the thoughtful analysis of the experts. For me it is one of the forth pillar of cricket along with batting,bowling and fielding. Nothing like a Ian Chappelle-Naser Hussein banter in the commentary box or a generally tongue tied Wasim suddenly waxing eloquent about left hand swing balling. Now the Indian commentators were never worshipped for nutrality but some of them (esp Gavaskar, when he is talking abt Sachin) came up with small gems here and there.

But what was on display was even worse than the cheer-leaders exposing as much as legally possible. Not only did they not have anything meaningful to say but even the semi-respected one's like Sunny also pimped my most precious part of a cricket match, i.e. the commentary with turds like "DLF maximum strike".

2. The fabulous fours: The revered ones failed in different degrees.
a. Dravid was not only an absolute and abject failure but an undignified one also. I was feeling like putting him out to sleep when he used to come up with pathetic excuses after yet another thumping defeat. Failed in team selection, failed as a batsman,failed as a captain, failed as a cricketer, failed as an ambassador of whatever is good with current versions of cricket.
b. Lakshman: Was lucky as he did not as much falter in team selection. Learnt reality fast and was the first non-playing captain of any cricket tournament soon.
c. Ganguli: Held together only cos of his tenacity and never say die attitude. Managed to have non-insignificant contributions in almost all insignificant clashes.
d. Sachin: Generally saved by the groin. This reduced his attack surface area. 10 years before he was a fidgety one day captain, incompetent test captain. He is a clueless 20-20 captain as well, after all these years.


3. Slapgate: When our new-born Indian team gave it back to the brits, the pakis and most importantly to the aussies, we applauded. But apparently there is something wrong with what we are teaching our kids. Otherwise why there is no aussie slapping/kicking another one? Still I will consider this a blessing if these two learn their lessons from this. At least this happened in this bastardized version and not in any of the "standard" matches!!!

4. Aussies: I don't know whether you noticed but once the Aussies left the tourney was running on half tank. Almost a ship without sails fully up. In fact the momentum was held together majorly by remaining Aussies themselves with some noted exception of some Indians and a couple of Paki ballers.

Hey, let's come back to this later. Russia not only is giving the dutch a tough time but generally controlling the game and they are about to head towards the shootout. Nope, as I write this they have got one across the goal line !!! Far more interesting things are afoot. I will share some more views on this for sure. But let's keep that for the laters :)