Warne and Kumble flash for each other.

Here on Bored

I am the Real IPL Player!

I’m really real
I’m not a fake
I’m here in South Africa for Heaven’s sake
Not far away in some banana shake

I am the Real IPL Player
I am!
Not the Fake IPL Player
I am not!

I will take real names
Not any fake names
I’m here in South Africa
Not sitting somewhere far away in Antarctica

I’d love to play cricket in an animal safari
Bowl to some wild cat, sipping on my Campari
Instead I will sing and dance with them
Oh those round a*sed cheerleaders, how I love ‘em!

I am the Real IPL Player
No, no, I’m not the fake
I’m not gonna call him the Sheikh of Tweak
I'll call him Shane, and share with him a steak

I’m loyal to the royals
And with Delhi my blood boils
I’m for Real, I am
I’m not a Fake, I am not

Give me a shot!
It’s gonna get hot
You’ll forget what was it that
Alexander with Porus Fought!

Coz I am for REAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAL!
I am!
I am not a FAAAAAAAAAAAAKE!
I am not!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Som is the Real IPL Player at Bored Cricket Crazy Indians. Because Som like it hot!

Australia wins IPL.

As Saurav Ganguly and Shane Warne locked horns in the middle, teammate Yusuf Pathan looked on furiously.

That was an earlier game, but the image stays with you.

The Aussiefication of Rajasthan Royals if not complete, was truly underway then.

It harked back to earlier images of the Symonds, Hayden, Clarke trio taking on Bhajji Down Under.

The Aussies hunt in pairs; if not more, but rarely less.

When they take on the elusive ball hurtling downstream towards the boundary, chances are, there will be a pack of Aussie wolves chasing it down –never a lone wolf but a pack.

One for the slide, one for the throw. One for God knows what eventuality.

Rajasthan Royals took this groupism to a new art form in the finals when Kaif and Kamran Akmal caught a ball and a collision simultaneously.

And when they chased down balls there was an almost Aussielike certainty to them.

None of those all in vain escort service runs alongside the ball.

There were few, if any glaring missfields from erstwhile misfit Munaf Patel. There were even fewer criticisms on air of Munaf – till only the last India game that Patel played, Patel bashing had an ever greater following than Tendulkar adulation.

Patel bowled his trademark albeit repetitive short-of-length fare, game after game. He even snorted at the odd batsman. Here was a guy whose shoulders had fallen beyond drooping while wearing the India cap. A guy who withdrew to his village, only to snap back, unhinged through the press. A guy who his captain claimed “does not think”.

What did his new captain think of him?

And then there were the nameless “two lefthanders” – Ravindra Jadeja and Niraj Patel, who in true Aussie back-from- the- brink batsmanship beat the smiles off Mumbai. By now Tendulkar would know their names.

As would everybody know Asnodkar’s. It’s Asnodkar, right?

And Pathan will no longer mean Irfan Pathan. If anything, it could be big bro Yusuf –whose first international sighting was in the T20 World Cup finals as opener –where he smashed a six, and out soon after. Guts then, and glory now.

And what about Kamran Akmal, who played a few, didn’t come off, sat out, and then came back, sat out for the semis, and returned yet again for the finals. Not a rollercoaster but a joyride, it seemed. Little man Akmal smashed sixes, appealed, and even ran himself out with the enthusiasm of a player on whom the collective fortunes of the Royals depended. A Royal Guard, almost like Amitabh Bachchan’s character in Eklavaya, as the Royal Guard. Only here there was no asking, who’s your Daddy? It was Shane Warne.

Akmal aside, every player in the team was a Royal Guard – and the Jaipur Fort was not going to be breached. No way.

Not before you got past Graeme Smith, Shane Watson, Yusuf Pathan, Sohail Tanvir, Kamran Akmal, Ravindra Jadeja, Swapnil Asnodkar, Pankaj Singh, Munaf Patel, Niraj Patel, Siddharth Trivedi, Mohammed Kaif

And even if you got past them, you’d run into another player, a captain, a coach.

You’d run into Shane Warne.

Chances are, you would have run out of steam by then.

And he would run over you.

Here’s to Warne and his team:

Here’s to the crazy ones.
The misfits.
The rebels.
The troublemakers.
The round pegs in the square holes.
The ones who see things differently.
They’re not fond of rules.
And they have no respect for the status quo.
You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them.
About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them.
Because they change things.
They push the human race forward.
And while some may see them as the crazy ones,
We see genius.
Because the people who are crazy enough to think
they can change the world,
Are the ones who do.

(The text used in the introductory “Think Different” commercial created by Chiat/Day)

Winning Positions.

WINNING POSITIONS.

or

Win from any position.

A retired boxer told me this story over a beer.

That he could now beer certified retirement.

Previously, when he boxed he could only watch others beer.

Maybe that’s why he retired. But that’s not the story.

This is:

Some dirty dozen years back, a British middleweight boxer was desperate to win.

So desperate that he was prepared to do the unthinkable: he was ready to box a win into his head!

What’s that? How do you, eh, box a win, into your head, sir?

First, sit in a comfortable chair in a dimmed room.

Make sure you are not lying down as that increases the chances of falling asleep, which is not the goal of hypnosis.

Hypnosis did you say?

That’s right, the boxer had himself hypnotized.

He heard strange voices in his head. These strange voices went something like this: “I will have vengeance, I will be victorious”

Come to think of it, they can be monotonous when heard repeatedly, but not for this boxer.

Come boxing day (not December 26th in this case), our boxer was still under the spell.

Once into the fight, he was well out of it. Down for the count, but up again. And that went on and on. Round after round. Down, up. Up, down.

Clearly he was hearing that voice in his head. He was under the winning charm.

And then, out of nowhere, he swung one into his opponent’s head, and that was that.

Hypnosis had worked. He had won. From a highly unlikely position; or as Shane Warne’s Rajasthan Royals, he too believed, “win from all positions”.

It started as a joke when the Rajasthan franchise didn’t even use its allocated funds at the auction. Next, much retired Shane Warne as both captain and coach. Sounds familiar?

In a nation that picks poster-boy batsmen as captains, Anil Kumble was the last resort.

That Kumble could think was not a prerequisite. That Tendulkar wasn’t game, clinched it.

Coming from that history, it takes a lot for India to understand the almost hypnotic stranglehold Warnie has on his wards.

Ok, he can captain, so what? Possibly, Tendulkar being buddies with Warne creates bigger headlines here. Those “nightmares of Sachin’s Sharjah sixes” are Warne’s favourite bytes to the media, and how they lap it up. So, he knows what you want to hear. What else?

He’s a straight shooter –made no qualms about his less than amorous relationship with then Aussie Coach John Buchanan. Or for that matter, with Saurav Ganguly during their recent IPL encounter.

But still he’s a little thin on skipper-lore: Hampshire county captain, a ten odd ODI winning streak in Steve Waugh’s absence, and he becomes the best captain Australia never had?

Does that negate the pre-World Cup drugs fiasco that his mummy prescribed? Or is that non-cricketing too?

In many ways, Warne’s persona is beyond that of a mere cricketer. His stature, deeds, misdeeds, seeds sown, and what he has reaped, are in the realm of rock star royalty. When alleged romantic liaisons extend beyond a record wicket tally, the Rajasthan Royals and Hampshire lads must be in no less in awe of Warne than say, London’s lasses were of the Beatles and the Stones in the 60s (and not in their 60s)

It’s not just that Warne has this coolness about him, but he can still play top draw cricket. He can think, talk and walk that talk. He’s in the zone. But there is no zonal bias – he’s comfy arming around Paki keeper Akmal on the bench, with an aside, a joke, just one of the mates. At the same time, when he sits in the dugout, he’s assertive enough to tell his mates to vacate a seat to have two for you know who!

In a way, there’s a bit of Warne in M.S. Dhoni too. To realise that you’re not just a cricketing nerd, but there’s life beyond cricket. Look what that thinking did for Saurav Ganguly’s career.

Win from all positions – doesn’t matter if it’s Round 2 or 8, whether you’re down for the count or winning on a canter,

And when His Master’s Voice deigns to speak to his flock, are they are mesmerized? Hypnotized?

Do they stand up on their benches like school kids, reciting in unison, “O Captain! My Captain!”

Five wins on the trot, top of the League, does it even matter if they win or lose from here?

Regardless of what happens next, Warne has used his team’s Ninja like invisibility to its advantage.

You never know when, how or who will strike.

But strike they will.

Question is which team has the Samurais to take them on?

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