Late Cut

Sorry, have been flying around, so no contact. Heard this when I was a fly on the wall somewhere.. Small Boss (b) : Sir, this is brewing into a big problem. Big Boss (B) : (snaps out of his snooze with a Homer Simpson drawl) Brew, ahhaaaa....I love my brew. How can brewing be a problem? b : Sir, I mean the cricket scandal; this spot-fixing by cricketers may fix us. B : (suddenly sits up) How? b : Well Sir, obviously everyone will think if cricketers are so corrupt what about the cricket board? B : How can people connect cricketers to the Board? We said and did nothing when IPL kicked out cricketers, did we? b : Errrr..well, (coughs), sir, we sort of managed it...newspapers did report Sports minister's complain to his counterpart about being snubbed and a national insult and all the patriotic emotional..... B : (cuts him off) Well, that is just standard political rhetoric. Does not prove our connection to the players. If anything, it will prove to the world that the governm...

It was not surprising that Aussies and Ricky Ponting have started their preparation for the upcoming series against Pakistan. If you are looking for details on a cricket camp you sadly underrate Aussies. Their preparation begins by hurling a few testing verbal bouncers at their opponents. Ponting decided to "compliment" the new Pakistani test captain Shahid Afridi (any one remembers how many have come and gone?). Nothing new there. Aussies believe in softening the opponent captain first. However the quantum of statements about Afridi ("He hasn't played much Test cricket of late, has he?" OR "he's....not necessarily one of their best Test players" etc), especially after winning the last series, tells me that he may be a tad worried about Pakistan team getting together under this new captain. Read his last sentence..."...we just have to make sure we're focusing on our little things to be the best team we can be when we play them." Love...

Had India failed to win today's test, there could have been numerous Indian journos asking why BCCI refuses to play test cricket under flood-lights. Well, there is some merit in that argument; Indians lost close to 55 overs yesterday due to bad light/rain and if flood lights were permitted, they could have put in some overs out of that. They came close to loosing an opportunity to square the series and stay on top of the ICC ranking. For now, at least, calls for BCCI to join in an attempt to search for flood-light solution to test cricket may not rise. Of all boards, BCCI has been talked about as an autocratic board which does not hesitate to milk Indian cricketers as cash-cows. But they some how are not falling in with other cricket boards on this issue. Call BCCI traditionalist or just bullish for not joining other cricket boards, especially two powerful lobbies in world cricket namely Cricket Australia and ECB who are very keen to play test cricket under flood-lights as early as...