Chandu and Chandru!

Two men who are rocking the cricket world are Chandu and Chandru!

Chandu - Chandu Borde
Chandru - Chanderpaul

While the former is shining merely because he has been thrust into a position of paramount importance to the hungry curiosity if 100 million people, the latter is doing what he does best - bat in test cricket! Second consecutive century against the England and he is truly rocking !!! Chanderpaul has become the 'Last Man Standing' of WI after Lara's retirement!

While I stand in awe in front of Chandru's square drives and flicks, I only pity Chandu for what he has become from what he was in his heydays....

Cricket Won!

West Indies lost to England on the final day.

But all was not lost.

Chanderpaul played one of his most tenacious and fighting knocks, Fiedel Edwards showed that speed and fire still exists in WI bowlers and DJ Sammy had a dream debut.

Importantly, both teams played really competitive cricket, and Monty and Cook continue to impress.

More importantly, it was a loss despite which WI team could hold its head high - for the fight and spirit the entrie team showed.

Most improtantly, the game of Cricket won too, after a long time!

No, Thanks.

Wow! This feels so goooood!

This is how the story went!

Long time ago, in the land of "MoneyGetsYouEverything"there lived a king named Sharad.

He had a daughter - a princess who went by the name / adjectives of "Beautiful Cute Cuddly and Intelligent" - let's call her BCCI to shorten the long name.

The princess was not only like the adjectives her name went by, but she was also pompous and arrogant. She simply had to have her way as did Sharad.

They decided that she needed to have a new groom - the title to the groom was that of 'The Coach' for some funny reason.

Mind you, this was an era when a mariage lasted maximum 3 years and BCCI had her grooms before and the last marriage she had with the world renowned groom Chappell, left a sore taste in her mouth and she needed a replacement, and a fast one at that.

They started sailing worldwide to find suitors for BCCI. It was an unspoken fact that the suitor who took up the job would be rewarded in huge amount of money.

Bride's important uncle Rahul suggested the name of hitherto unknown 'Graham Ford' saying he is the best of the lot.

BCCI decided to listen to the uncle since it was important in those days for a marriage to succeed that the groom had to get along very well with the bride's uncle.

They had other proposals of well known deserving candidates, some domestic ones who had put up their hands for so long that the hand now looked longer than their entire height!

But King Sharad and BCCI decided that she would marry Ford.

They announced the wedding in a worldwide media campaign.

Uncle Rahul was very happy.
BCCI was happy.
Sharad was delighted with the match.

And then, the bomb dropped on them.

Graham Ford simply said "No, thank you."

(I imagine that there was so much egg on the face of King Sharad that he asked the responsible Rahul to clean it up personally. )

The story ends here.

I am happy that someone gave it back to King and BCCI like never before.

News Around The World During My Small Sabbatical!

While I was on my home-coming hiatus- a lot of things hapenned in the world of cricket and here is my belated take on them:
1) Kevin Pieterson : KP has stomped his feet to show his genes of a Royal Bengal Tiger, a real one. To me, he is a superior version of "Yuvraj Singh in full flow".

2) Dhoni : Back again on domestic pitches! Yawn...

3) Cook : Consecutive and impressive centuries - A Tiger in his own den or will he be here for good?

4) Afro-Asia cup - A wate of resources, time and money.

5) SRT won another man of the tournament - I am not impressed, though. We all know that he has years of cricket left in him - the question is how will he like to play it? Like an old man, or like a young Jayasuriya at 38?

6) West Indies are back to where they truly belong as of now minus Lara - in a rut. This is a challenge for them to be back where they once belonged - unfortunately, no one is puttign the hand up to take them there - only plus has been debutant Sammy's amazingly impressive 7 wicket haul. The question that will be answered tomorrow will be "Can Chanderpaul's fighting knock help them win a match they so desparately need?" Let's wait and watch the only real cricket being played around the world today!

7) Mohammad Ashraful should be renamed Mohammad Delightful - he is the Andy Flower of the Bangla team.

8) What will it take for Habibul Bashar to retire from playing cricket?

9) Graham Ford is appointed as India coach. I think that there is no better time to take over as India's coach - heck, even I 'd put a hand up to BCCI for the job - things simply cannot get any worse! Seriously, appointing Ford is a good move, captain trusts him (but Ganguly trusted Chappel too before Chappel 'took over', didn't he?), his record asa coach has been good and it is simple truth than you need not be a good player to be a good coach. For those who want to know what a coach can achieve in terms of miracle, please watch 'Coach Carter'! But of course, coaching a team of 'bloated-super-egos and billioniare-superstars' is another ball game all together. Anyways, I give a thumbs up to BCCI for choosing Ford over Embury.

10) Maninder singh is in some crisis - let's leave him alone in his personal life - we have nothing to do with it.

11) On a small non-cricketing aside, Nadal was delightful yesterday - he clearly outplayed the great Federer. Also, the young Lewis Hamilton continues to win hearts and make strides! Alonso this time has a real fight. My favourite driver of last seasons, Kimi, alas, has been down and out this season.