Tagged with indians …

Feb 01 2012
8 Comments
indians

Rahul “eyespin” Sharma

All legspinners are freaks.

Mushtaq Ahmed had hands of doom.

Shane Warne’s wrists were radioactive.

Anil Kumble could see into the future.

Imran Tahir had a magical alice band.

Tiger Bill O’Reilly was an actual tiger.

And Bryce is the human spreadsheet.

Legspinners aren’t normal.

Rahul Sharma is not normal.

He’s massive, maybe 8 foot 9, or taller.

He doesn’t spin it, but he still deceives, perhaps the hardest skill.

And he has a special legspinning bionic eye.

Some say it’s because he suffered bells’ palsy or something similar when he was a child.

Lies.

The man is just another super human mutant legspinner.

Now this doesn’t mean that Rahul Sharma is going to be the best spinner in the world, or even India’s first choice spinner. But it does mean he has an advantage that no finger spinner could ever have.

The world has been calling out for a tall wrist spinner with a bionic eye for years now, and Rahul could be that man.

If he was in the X-Men, he would be called eye spin, and his super skill would mean that his straight ball would be undetectable to the normal human eye.

He’d kill you while you were still waiting to see whether he’d bowl a leggie or a wrong’un.

His eye would also be silver or gold, which, if I was his manager, I’d have already sorted.

The man is uncanny, this should not be hidden, it should be celebrated like we do for the rest of the legspin freaks.

Legspinners aren’t supposed to be like other people, and Sharma isn’t, he’s better.

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Jan 25 2012
3 Comments
aussies, indians

A debut on NDTV and talking bout t20

NDTV wanted the lighter side of cricket when talking about India, so they locked Sam and I into an ADL oval room. I talked to them about Sophie’s Choice, North Korea and horror films.

You can watch it here, if you feel the need.

I also wrote this.

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Brad Hogg’s comeback and George Bailey’s rise don’t seem to have made people all that angry.

That’s odd, isn’t it?

Australia have picked an oldy and a dude to replace a dude with roughly the same record of the other dude who is slightly older. Where is the disdain, the outrage, the editorial’s sprouting anti-Victorian intent and how Australia are overlooking their future for some old dude the commentators all like?

Australia have picked a player who has been retired for years. I’m not even sure we knew that Justin Bieber was a thing when Brad Hogg last played, and Zach Galifianakis was a fat funny dude starring in such classics as Speed Freaks. Hogg isn’t exactly Bob Simpson, who was dragged from a retirement village to save Australian cricket.

I suppose if your lifestyle-hosting career is working well or you’re dating a famous model/actor/it girl, you don’t need to make a comeback at 40, but for Hogg it makes perfect sense. Statistically you can make an argument for Hogg. His economy rate is 5.4, he takes wickets, and no one has a better strike-rate on twitter abusing Mitchell Marsh. The only number not on his side is his age.

However, if you see Twenty20 as a way of easing young Australian cricketers into the team, then picking a guy who’s been retired four years who is only year younger than your selector is odd.

Then there is Bailey, who I am really glad is being given a chance to captain any Australian XI, but it’s not as if he’s hitting the captaincy with a stellar Twenty20 season behind him.

And age is also quite odd, as he’s a few months younger than Michael Clarke, and only a few months older than Cameron White. There’s no doubt Bailey can captain, he’s won more than his share of silverware, but so has White. Neither White nor Bailey made a cracker in a high class and low performance Melbourne Stars middle order this year.

You’d think that one of these decisions, if not both would be the catalyst for the first vicious attack on the John Inverarity reign as chief selector.

But it’s quite clear that virtually no one cares. Australians may casually enjoy the Big Bash League, and they may even make the trek down to see the odd match, but at the end of the day, you could have a man with a rubber chicken stuck to his head as captain and some bloke’s dog as the spinner and people would still spend more time discussing Shaun Marsh’s form or whether Punter (Ponting) should retire.

For all the hype and concern, Twenty20 is still just that thing people watch

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Jan 11 2012
5 Comments
indians

India give the finger, the finger

I think we’re all fan of sticking our middle finger up.

It’s a witty retort on a hot summers day, it says more than almost all words except cuntox and it’s funny when little kids do it.

When it was used in the first Test, by Meg Clement, at the kiss cam, that was funny.

When used by Kohli and Sharma there was something a bit wrong with it.

I don’t care if they go kart instead of train, I don’t even care if they freebase heroin off the asshole of the local kebab shop owner.

They are free to prepare their minds and bodies in whatever way they think will help them perform.

However, the finger is one of defiance. It’s a big fuck you at the world.

Sure, it’s a bit dated, and we’re waiting on modern culture to devise a new gesture, but right now this is the gesture we have.

With India, it’s hard to see defiance.

This tour they’ve more dropped their pants and waited for Australia to roughly manlove them.

Giving the finger while being consensually sodomised seems odd.

It could be why Sharma and Kohli weren’t looking in the direction of those they were trying to finger.

I get the rage, ofcourse.

Rage at the way you are playing, rage at the way your opposition are laughing at you, rage at the fact a fumbly wicket keeper who is short of runs is calling you soft,rage at your media abusing you and rage because Australian fans are experts at throwing verbal rotten tomatoes at any team who is struggling.

It’s a tough tour, and we understand the finger, maybe even respect it, but a bigger finger would be one where your bowlers pitch the ball up and get it moving, where your batsmen extract that same digit to apply themselves under pressure and your captain spends more time working out theories to dismiss the batsmen and less time trying to cover for young players.

I think the biggest finger India could possibly hit Australia with would be a win.

And you know, they’ve done it in Perth before.

Sehwag, Dravid and Tendulkar have all had some fun at Perth. And if a left arm swing bowler, tall right arm bowler, pretty damn quick young bowler and a tally finger spinner aren’t a good set up for Perth’s bowling conditions, I don’t know what attack is.

After losing the Sydney Test last time, India stuck up a finger.

It wasn’t some petulant finger with their back turned, they looked Australia in the eye, smiled a cheekily, slowly raised their hand and popped out a defiant middle finger.

Maybe they can’t do that again, this time they look too far gone.  But let’s hope if they try to give Australia the finger again, they are at least looking in the right direction.

Tagged
Jan 01 2012
14 Comments
indians

Congratulations Sachin on your 100th 100

Recently, like most of you, I’ve had all 99 of Sachin Tendulkar’s 99 international hundreds tattooed onto the inside of my eyelids.

It’s the ultimate mark of respect for Sachin, and only non believers would do less.

But every time I went to sleep, something bothered me.

One hundred seemed to be missing.

Sometime in 1998 I seem to remember Sachin making a hundred against New Zealand or Sri Lanka in Asia or the middle east or something.

It was about 107 off 144 balls on a pitch that was slower than you’d think, but Sachin had the requisite skill, patience and courage to get through it.

I seem to remember some exquisite drives, awesome work off his pads and he was particularly harsh on the spinners. Yeah, you remember it too, don’t you.

It wasn’t the best innings of his career, nor the worst, it was just a purely forgettable ODI knock that for some reason, was never put into the ICC database.

Things like that happened all the time, Ian Harvey’s 7 wicket haul against South Africa was never recorded either. There was a lot of meaningless cricket in the late 90s, unlike now, and things got missed.

The good news is, with this hundred rightfully recognised, it means that Sachin has made 100 international hundreds.

I knew you could do it, Sachin, or should I say, I knew you’d done it, Sachin.

What an achievement, imagine how old and good you need to be to do that, pretty good, very old.

Now Sachin doesn’t need to feel awkward from the moment he raises his bat at 50, web site designers don’t have to change the formatting of stats pages to have number of international hundreds on them and the rest of us can go back to not caring how many international hundreds batsmen have.

So, it’s all-good now, yeah.

Hail Sachin, the king of kings, the 100 of hundreds, the grand poohbah of the willow, you are statistically freaky in the best possible way.

But no need for too much celebrations, because you scored your 100th 100 ages ago, and it was grand, I’m sure, I just don’t really remember it.

Unlike this 107 in Asia, or the middle east, against Sri Lanka, or New Zealand, around 199, or so, which I remember very clearly.

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Sep 23 2011
12 Comments
indians

The Tiger

A cricketer.

 

 

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Jul 29 2011
18 Comments
indians

Dravid reinvents batting

Rahul Dravid is revolutionizing batsmanship

There was a time when Rahul Dravid’s batting was so technically correct that old men wept tears of blood into their wisdens as he played a forward defence of such straightness that Christian fundamentalists couldn’t question it.

All of his shots seemed epicly correct.

He left the ball like it was meant to be left.

A cover drive looked like he was posing for an artist.

His pull shot was tight, contained and morally acceptable.

And his clip off the pads easy, and relaxed, like he was thinking of something else and could play it blindfolded.

Now he’s changed.

Dravid now plays every innings like he’s trying to survive an alien attack.

He seems to play almost every ball through third man, often unintentionally, and he looks hurried and worried most of the time.

But it’s the humble block, Dravid’s best friend, where it’s changed the most.

Dravid now blocks the ball like his shoes just caught fire. His hands just drop straight down in a panic just as the ball turns up.

They probably turn the stump mic down as it happens so we don’t get the excitable scream as he realises that yet again he has barely got away with keeping his wicket.

It’s not pretty, but it is stoic and egoless, like you would expect from Dravid.

Dravid is basically rebuilding his batting the way a newly limbless man would teach themselves how to swim.

And if you can’t respect that, well that’s fair enough, but I think it’s pretty cool.

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Jul 23 2011
3 Comments
indians

After Sachin

Someone sent me an email that said, After Sachin.

For some people that is a scary thought.

It doesn’t have to be.

In a 1000 years when India is running the entire planet, and maybe a few others, people shall use After Sachin, or the term AS as a way of counting the years.

Everything before his career started could be simply, BT, or more aptly for some, BS. For instance, the year 2987 AD would become, 1 BS.

2000 years of some other dude is more than enough anyway, the world needs a new hero, and our Indian overlords have given us Sachin, it seems kind of stupid not to use him.

Unlike Jesus, who all we have to prove his existence is some rumours of magic tricks and potential grave robbing, with Sachin we have youtube.

Digital archaeologists will just have to fire up old computers and look at the clips, whilst reading the comments underneath to know how much love and respect we have for one another.

There might be some cynical new age types who suggest that the videos are faked, that he was just an actor, like the other known fraudster god, Tom Cruise, and that Sachin is nothing more than a false prophet.

There will also be some will also think that while Sachin was important, Joey from Blossom was the real messiah.

But, who cares about these Joeites, true believers will know that Sachin is the only saviour of humanity. Fuck them anyway, they can believe what they want, the year is 3011 AS, he’s already beaten them.

And when our descendants sit down on Sachmas day, eating korma and watching their kids open up their Virender Claus presents, they’ll have a jolly good time.

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Jul 22 2011
1 Comment
indians

The DRS hates Dhoni

MS Dhoni is a wicket keeper.

So when he comes on to bowl cricket statisticians orgasm, commentators chuckle and real cricket sadists find another years to fall in love.

If there was anyone in world cricket who didn’t want KP to go out to Dhoni, other than KP himself, they should be beaten.

Dhoni getting the wicket of KP is the sort of thing that adds to his legend.

In 12 years time you’re in a bar in Oslo (while some might know that I wrote Oslo before the fucked up shit happened, others may not. So I’m not changing this post, because fuck you you fucking terrorist cuntwad skull fucking cuntoxs, Oslo would be a cool place for the following story to happen in, who doesn’t want to get laid or drink booze with a crickety friend in Oslo. Stick that up your ass terrorists, I know the sole aim of your attack was to make me look like a fuckwit, but you lose), and some guy buys you a beer, you find out he’s a cricket fan and you can bond over Dhoni getting KP out.

You could have a lover in Oslo, or a drinking partner, and it’s all about Dhoni getting KP.

Cricket doesn’t win by KP staying in, thrusting his groin oddly down the wicket, it wins with a wicket keeping world cup winning captain getting out someone like KP.

That’s why DRS sucks.

But this isn’t just DRS’ fault, because cricket hasn’t got the laws right.

If there is a chance that something really cool could happen, it should.

Forget about hotspot, massage the laws however you need to, but the world is a better place when Dhoni gets KP out, and the laws need to help this.

Sure, it’s a tough law to police, but cricket needs it.

We can call it the Dhoni law, which means it’s slightly broader than it needs to be.

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Jul 22 2011
3 Comments
indians

Praveen Kumar’s the new medium paced Alien Terminator

If the film Alien Terminator has taught us anything, it’s that a nearly immortal organism capable of instant regeneration and with an insatiable appetite for living flesh is a motherfucker.

In that classic film, some kind of Petrie dish alien thing keeps using hosts to grow and then kills them and moves on. Or something.

Praveen Kumar is sort of like that.

There isn’t much to him, he’s not tall, he doesn’t hit the pitch hard, and he’s far from fast.

Yet, he somehow mutates himself and his appetite for human flesh means that he is always dangerous.

Not long ago Duncan Fletcher would have taken him out the back and shot him.

Some of it is based on his personality.

If it wasn’t for his impressive self confidence, amazing ability to think he bowls 15 miles quicker than he does and the best fast bowler’s face in the game, he might just be another under paced seam bowler.

There are a few Praveens around first class cricket.

They put it on the spot, nibble it around and generally nag at the batsman.

It usually doesn’t work at test cricket, the batsmen have seen it all before and you need to be able to move the ball at a more rapid rate than the Praveen’s do.

That’s why it’s amazing he has got this far, and even more amazing that he might make it.

There were times today when his deliveries seemed to be making up their own trajectory when they left his hand. If you do that at 70 miles an hour, it’s still hard to hit.

He has the ability to move the ball both ways, with seam and swing, and be able to repeat that skill whenever he needs to.

It’s not fast, but it is deadly.

Some batsmen will work him out, they’ll find a way to kill him, like a plucky scientist with fake breasts might.

You get the feeling that you can’t really kill Praveen completely, he might not be big or strong, but he will always find a way to regenerate himself, is insatiable for wickets and might end up proving to everyone that medium pace is nearly immortal.

Although the alien terminator does end up just being a dude in a shit costume, which might explain Praveen’s face at times.

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Jul 08 2011
5 Comments
general balls

The global legspin conspiracy

VVS Laxman knows some shit.

He knows where Jimmy Hoffa is.

Can explain the UFO sightings over London on the 24th of June.

Is an expert on the differences between butter and I can’t believe it’s not butter.

Knows why the chemical compound of blu tack can kill you.

And can explain to anyone exactly how the Keys of Enoch work.

The VVS is basically cricket’s smoking man.

He’s seen it all, knows it all, and he’s always just one step ahead of you without making a fuss about it.

If you want to know the secrets of the inside out cover drive from the foot marks outside leg stump, he has them. But do you really want to know them, I mean, can you handle that kind of truth at 230 am in a freezing cold car park. No.

So VVS just travels the world, gathering more information that would blow most of our minds, and looks middle aged cool whilst doing so.

Because of all this knowledge you don’t expect him to make mistakes.

And today, he didn’t.

It wasn’t a mistake that made him leave a ball from the seemingly fucken rubbish bowling of Shiv with his foot out of the crease.

That was a conspiracy.

VVS knows too much, and to keep him in his place Mossad, iJazz Butt, the CIA and Ben from Ben & Jerry teamed up with Shiv to concoct an elaborate plan to embarrass him so that if he does ever speak up, they can point to this one moment and say, “Are you really going to believe a man who went out stumped leaving the ball from someone with 8 previous test wickets in 133 Tests.”

And all of us on our couches will agree that VVS is in fact not a trustworthy place to get our information from.

It’s actually the only plausible explanation. I mean no one is going to believe that someone as casually awesome as VVS would just not know he was out of crease, I mean that is mental.

And I don’t believe it could have happened without some sort of conspiracy, or legspin.

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