Harbhajan Singh slapped Sreesanth. Sreesanth had a bit of a cry.
This happened because Harbhajan Singh’s a little bit of a dick and because Sreesanth’s also a little bit of a dick. Harbhajan Singh would slap anyone and anyone would slap Sreesanth. It’s a huge surprise that it hasn’t happened before.
That’s how we’re reporting it.
And this annoys us.
When people are throwing huge money around, there’s nothing quite like watching them make a right balls of it. Andrew Symonds sold for $1.35 million and we’d have quite liked him to be a colossal failure. Unfortunately, he’s been okay and even if Deccan Chargers lost the match, 117 off 53 balls is more than tidy.
The other downside is that this will reinforce Symonds’ self confidence and if there’s one thing we hate more than people who are self-confident, it’s people who are justifiably self-confident. What’s so wrong with constantly questioning your own worth and then giving yourself massively unflattering answers, eh?
Faith in your own abilities? Pah. Let’s see you do it the hard way, when you know you’re a huge imposter who’s merely been tricking people into thinking you’re in any way competent at anything. That’s a true test.
At least he’s gone for 101 runs from the 6.5 overs he’s bowled.
Which ones are Deccan Chargers? This is the problem we’re having with the IPL. The teams have no real identities. It’s impossible to remember who’s who.
Here’s what we can easily remember:
That’s pretty much it. We do know more, but we have to think and you all know how we feel about that kind of exertion.
Turns out Adam Gilchrist, Shahid Afridi and Andrew Symonds play for Deccan Chargers. You’d think we’d be able to hold that information in our head - and we sort of did.
We just allied those names to an entirely different team.
If Twenty20, in the form of the IPL, is supposed to be conquering the cricket world, nobody told Ravi Shastri, who was addressing the crowd before the first match between Bangalore Royal Challengers and Kolkata Knight Riders.
With an audience already whipped into high fervour, Shastri was given the task of whipping them still higher. Introducing each of the team captains, Shastri started with Rahul Dravid, who was at his home ground.
“A man who’s scored more than 10,000 runs in both forms of the game.”
Both forms of the game, Ravi? Kind of implies that there are only two forms and that Twenty20 isn’t one of them. Ah well, something else for the marketing men to work on.
In the actual cricket, Brendon McCullum didn’t so much loom large as obscure all else. 158 not out was the highest-ever Twenty20 score, beating Cameron White’s 141 for Somerset.
McCullum’s innings came off just 73 balls and featured no fewer than 13 sixes. Nobody else in the match passed 20.
Last month, Mike Selvey wrote an interesting article in The Guardian about how McCullum has fashioned an innovative technique for one-day cricket. Selvey points out that the slips are effectively taken out of play as McCullum’s bat comes down at such an angle that edges fly over them.
That said, we didn’t see slips for the majority of McCullum’s innings yesterday. Nor did we see edges.
In truth, this match didn’t show Twenty20 in its best light. The crowd still went mental when McCullum cleared the rope off the final ball of Kolkata Knight Riders’ innings, but maybe not as mental as they went for his first few sixes. It seems everyone can tire of the six-hitting a little bit.
The best Twenty20 matches are those that go to the wire and Twenty20’s greatest strength is that this is often the case. Every ball counts. Yesterday, the second half of the match didn’t count - although the first half was quite a spectacle.
This appears in a section entitled ‘team mandate’.
Apparently: “We are all Punjabis; by heritage, by birth or by choice.” That’s nice and inclusive and very fortunate when you’re marketing a franchise that doesn’t really have a great deal of regional appeal beyond the name.
So we’re Punjabi. Who knew? What are we like then?
‘Lion-hearted’ - could be a lion cub, we suppose.
‘Spirited’ - Mmm.
‘Passionate’ - Our overriding passion is for Kings XI Punjab merchandise.
‘Hospitable’ - No-one’s ever been round so that we could test this. We’ll assume they’re right.
‘Entertaining’ - Mmm…
‘Brave’ - Oh now you’re just taking the piss.
Now that we’re a Kings XI Punjab fan, we should probably find out something about them. To the Kings XI Punjab website!
It’s loading!
It’s still loading!
At least there’s plenty of time to get worked up about just how AMAZING the site’s going to be.
Plenty of time.
We could have saved far more of these images during the time it took to load, but we figured you’d get the general idea from a mere five.
These web developers are clearly aware of how unbelievably patient internet users are about this kind of thing.
Ooh. It’s almost loaded. Get on the edge of your seat for…
A blank page.
Let’s see if we can at least find out the schedule.
[Close window]
Join us this afternoon for a glimpse as to what happened when we were really, really patient and managed to find out what being a Kings XI Punjab fan MEANS.
Can’t believe we thought the Kolkata Knight Riders theme tune was good. This urinates all over it.
Our sole criticism is that they didn’t use that monstrously fat Sikh singer. We don’t know his name. Anyone?
Thanks to Soviet Onion for wasting his work time to find this.
We nearly went for Bangalore Royal Challengers, because they’ve got Rahul Dravid, Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Misbah-ul-Haq and Dale Steyn.
We nearly went for Deccan Chargers, because they’ve got VVS Laxman, Herschelle Gibbs, Adam Gilchrist, Andrew Symonds and Shahid Afridi. We’re not a massive fan of several of those players, but the potential for stroke-making’s quite appealing.
In the end we’ve gone for Kings XI Punjab.
Kings XI Punjab is a shit name and certainly nowhere near as good as our suggestion - ‘The Mohali Cricketinator 9000s’, but what are you going to do?
We’ve gone for them mostly on the basis of their playing staff: Yuvraj Singh, Mahela Jayawardene, Brett Lee, Irfan Pathan, Ramesh Powar, Kumar Sangakkara, Ramnaresh Sarwan and, er, Sreesanth. There’s a generally agreeable bunch of players, which means they’re bound to lose. And if they do, it’ll be so much easier to support them.
We also went for Kings XI Punjab, because they play in Chandigarh and we quite liked Chandigarh when we there, in a faintly post-apocalyptic kind of way.
Dimi is quoted as saying: “I only hope that people will look back in 20 or 30 years time and say that I gave everything for a franchise I’ve supported since I was a boy.”
He didn’t really say that. But someone might before too long, because people are, on the whole, stupid. Franchises, eh? It sprays a thin mist of diluted excrement over the whole enterprise having franchises. Pump as much money as you like into something, if it’s franchise v franchise it’s always going to sound a bit shit.
Hampshire have allowed Mascarenhas to appear in the IPL. This is quite definitely not because he would have just walked out on them and played anyway if they hadn’t given their blessing.
After all, they’ll have no problems fielding a decent team next season with Shane Warne either on IPL duty or playing cards for 90 percent of the season; with Nic Pothas and Shane Bond probably banned through appearing in the ICL; and with James Bruce having retired into The City.
In other IPL news, Misbah-ul-Haq signed for Bangalore.
They’re going to be the Kolkata Knight Riders. Brilliantly, this isn’t even a joke. Writing this site gets easier by the day. This time next week, we fully expect Sohail Tanvir to change his name to Optimus Prime.
But the Knight Riders aren’t the best-monikered IPL outfit. That honour has to go to the Chennai Super Kings. Could they have been mere ‘Kings’? Could they have been ‘Supermen’? No, that would be nowhere near good enough. Chennai’s men are better than that. They’re Super Kings.
We’d probably support the Chennai Super Kings on the basis of their name if it weren’t for the whole Hayden factor. The Knight Riders too have Ponting and Agarkar fouling things up. Who’s left? Mohali seem the least-objectionable, but it’s not a done deal just. They haven’t got their full name yet.
We move for ‘The Mohali Cricketinator 9000s’.