The Good Bad and the Ugly

Finally ,the so claimed next BIG thing after GOD(not read as sachin here), THE IPL is back and so are we . After all the hullabaloo,player retention controversies, team owner controversies,the IPL auction took place at Bengalooru without the ex-Kingpin-Lalit K Modi. There were a few good bids and a few shocking bids . Here listed are a few bids classified as the GOOD(total value for money),Bad( a little waste of money) and Ugly ( total waste of money ).

THE GOOD


1) Davy Jacobs - One of the best buy of the auction. It was one bloody hell of a steal for $190k. High stakes were expected of him considering his form in the Champs League . He is an opening bat as well as a keeper and an outstanding captain. Chennai almost bought him before MI raised the stakes and bought him. Well done MI!

2) Kumar Sangakkara- A steal for $700k, considering the way money was thrown around. He can double up as a keeper as well as a number 3 bat. Not to forget his captaincy skills . He is a major utility player . Well done Deccan!

3) Dan'The Man'Vettori- $550k! Can u beleive it . You cant get cheaper than that even in Clearance sale . World Class All rounder. Considering the fact that the matches are gonna be played in India,SPIN is the KING!. With his late order hitting and good captaincy skills , he is surely a match winner :).Well Done RCB!

4) Shakib-Al Hasan- Yet another steal! Bangladesh Captain, who has literally revolutionized the team was picked for $425k.Yes,agreed that he is a Bangladesh cricketer , but he is the No.1 in the ICC All rounder ratings . KKR!

5) Scotty Styris and Dwayne Bravo - Two match winners , having a tough time presently , but to get them $200k, who would say NO.Good job CSK !

6)Charles Langeveldt- At $140k , he was a terrific buy . He is one of the best bowlers at death presently , though , very underrated.

THE BAD


1) Umesh Yadav - $750,000. Who the hell is he ?? Seriously . Delhi Daredevils!

2) Subramaniam Badrinath-$800,000. Kochi sensed CSK's desparation after their strategy became an open book and started chasing Badri which finally ended up at 800,000.Happy New Year Badri.

3) The Pathan Bros. - $4million. Do they even know the number of 0s in it . Let them be good players , but 4mn is almost like half the total budget . A bad buy for sure . 2.1 for Yusuf and 1.9 for Irfy , who haven't shown much promise after the first IPL season.But thanks Irfy , you made sure CSK lifted the trophy :)

THE UGLY

1) Joginder Sharma and Sudeep Tyagi- What a waste of $390,000. Period .

2) Ravindra Jadeja - What were the numbskulls even thinking ? Do they even watch T20s? For $950,000, even his parents wont buy him.

3) Saurabh Tiwary- !!SHOCKER!! . Agreed he's a young talent and all other crap,but,$1.6million for a guy who bats  at 6 . The Owners must be crazy.

4) Gautham Gambhir - Maybe the KKR team weren't off the hangover while bidding for Gambhir. A record buy of 2.4million for a single dimensional,injury prone player . Even Viru would be cursing him now .

5) Mahela Jayawardene- Again a front line batsman, overpriced at $1.5million.

6) Dan Christian - Who ???? Wonder what made them bid so much for him . His stats aren't impressive . Waste of $900,000.

And few more players add up to each of the categories . But the thing which we have to look forward is , Does any team buy Saurav ' Dada' Ganguly off the auction. Overall,the teams looks good . Kochi were mindfucked and were on lookout bolwers,forgetting T20( esp. in India) is a batsman's game.Chennai went on go for the same players, which was the smartest thing to do . Keeping their faith in their players(even Jogi and Tyagi). KKR and RCB opted for a totally new look team. Mumbai Indians look like a Juggernaut on the paper. Time will tell, which owner succeeded and which owner sucked.

IPL 3.0 Royal Spirit

RAJASTHAN ROYALS

Introducing this team is like showing light to the sun(LOL), from being the under-dog champions to now being over-rated chimps they have done it all in just 2 seasons of IPL. The big news last year was Shilpa Shetty and her beau who had bought stakes in the champion side. From there on everything seemed to go down-hill literally! Warne the chief-in-charge could not re-create the magic the Royals put up in the debut season. Partly due to missing key players like Watson and Tanvir who were very effective in the inaugural season. Even Graeme Smith dint look in touch even at home conditions. So, they ended up missing the cut to the semis but, entertained us with a few fiercely fought games. Thus, keeping us interested in the Royals.

This year they have done Warne some favour and made him feel at home by bringing in some of his mates from down under and his county side Hampshire. Michael Lumb currently making news is also one to look out for. Damien Martyn was probably the steal for them in the auctions it has to be seen whether he stands to that. Otherwise losing Kaif and Jadeja has made their domestic rooster even more brittle. Apart from that Royals planning to expand their franchise even outside India is a bold and great move.

SQUAD: Shane Warne, Johan Botha, Damien Martyn, Michael Lumb,Abhishek Jhunjhunwala, Shrikant Wagh, Abhishek Raut, Sumit Narwal, Faiz Fazal, Syed Ahmed Quadri, Amit Paunikar, Kamran Khan, Amit Singh, Graeme Smith, Dimitri Mascarenhas, Morne Morkel, Shaun Tait, Munaf Patel, Yusuf Pathan, Sidharth Trivedi, Swapnil Asnodkar, Mahesh Rawat, Naman Ojha, Amit Paunikar.

STRENGTHS: Warne's captaincy, his ability to make heroes out of unknowns.

WEAKNESS: Domestic players aren't top-class or even half of that. Sticking to just 4 foreign players will be tough.

WATCH OUT FOR: Michael Lumb as said earlier, Shaun SLOON Tait who's been in impressive form for Australia in T20s.

WAH's xi:

• Smith
• Naman Ojha
• Abhishek Jhunjhunwala
• Damien Martyn/Michael Lumb
• Dimitri Mascarenhas/Shane Watson
• Yusuf Pathan
• Shane Warne©
• Abhishek Raut
• Kamran Khan
• Sidharth Trivedi
• Munaf Patel

WAH Say: The team looks mighty weak, if they need Tait/Morkel they would have to either drop a foreign player who can bat. The pinch of losing Jadeja, Kaif is gonna feel like a sledge hammer slammed on to your face! Sure to end at the bottom of the league table. Expect very few wins this time. Ex-champions will have to remain "ex".

Quick Updates : India Vs South Africa ODI#1

After the much hyped test series , it was time for both the teams to battle it out in the ODIs. Indians were missing the service of Gauti, UV and Zaks and Graeme Smith was on the SAF injury list .The Sawai Mansingh stadium was tightly packed with the buzzing crowd. Kallis won the toss and chose to field. Sachin was run out cheaply . But after that Indians kept the scoreboard ticking steadily. Everyone chipped in with 30s and 40s but none of them could convert it to a big score. Raina was the top scorer for India with an almost run -a-ball 56 .
The partnership between Nehra and Pk produced 18 very important runs. It was fun to see them running between the wickets, typical tailender's running . India ended up scoring 298. Gibbs and Bosman opened the innings for SAF and got off to a good start scoring 58 until PK cleaned up Bosman. From then, the Proteas kept losing wickets continuously and they were 180/7 after 35 overs.

Kallis and Parnell put in a useful partnership of 45 runs . Kallis was sent to the pavilion after Sree bowled him. Well, I am sure 95% of the people would have thought that the match was over and would 've switched off their TV sets or changed channels . But .. hold on.. Match had just started . 74 was required of 7 overs when Steyn took strike. Well, I guess the Indian bowlers became a touch over confident and Parnell and Steyn took advantage of this and sent the ball sailing to all parts of the stadium. Both of them were showing No Mercy .
Indian players heart rate was rising exponentially with each ball. The equation of runs to balls kept narrowing after each over and finally it was down to 10 runs of 1 over. Well, considering the way the duo were smashing , it looked an easy SAF victory . Pk was given the ball for the last over . He held his nerves and cleaned up Steyn.
Commendable effort by Steyn , scoring 35(19). It was down to 3 reqd of 1 ball and Parnell's desperate attempt to at least tie the match went in vain as he was run out in the final ball for an awesome 49(47). Parnell's innings was just mindblowing . This reminded me of the match when India played against Oz and Pk and Bhajji almost won the match for us .
Plays of the day 1) Raina's well compiled 56(63)
2) Jacques ' Mr. Dependable ' Kallis's 89(97) which ensured that the runs kept ticking even when the wickets were tumbling at the other end .
3)Terrific bowling by Jaddu . He varied his pace , line and length nicely giving only 29 of his 10 overs and bagged 2 wickets too.
3) Last but not the least , the 'almost' match winning partnership from Parnell and Steyn.
Turning Point - Some may say Sachin's effort to save the boundary or Jadeja's bowling but according to me, it was Abhishek Nayar's effort to save the boundary was the turning point. He saved 2 runs, which cost South Africa pretty heavily in the end .
Indian's almost pulled out a defeat from the jaws of victory. But that's typical Indian Ishtyle.

Indian Squad for 1st two ODI's

Just when no one seemed to be bothered the national selectors have announced the ODI squad for the 1st two ODI's against South Africa. Yuvi remains injured and is ruled out but joining him is Gauti in that injury list. Bhajji wants to share some brother love so he's missing the ODI series as well to attend his sister's marriage. So, lots of seats up for grabs one might think. Here's how they faired.

• IN

Sachin(yes, as he missed the ODI tri-series in B'desh)
Yusuf P (some mad monkey hitting gets him a berth)
Abhishek Nayar (Finally!)
R Ashwin (spinner & Tamil)
PK (Praveen Kumar)




• OUT

Yuvraj (waiting for IPL)
Gambhir (new delicate dolly of the team)
Bhajji (family comes first, country goto H***)
Ishant (picked, dropped, picked again, dropped again...)
Sree (manages to puzzle everyone)
Ojha (ahem.. who? why?)




• Lucky

DK (still there.. backup wk??)
Jadeja (In the news lately for all the wrong reasons, very very lucky indeed)
Tyagi (dint play much, doubtful that will change anytime soon)
Mishra-ji (now the spin leader, No Bhajji, no Ojha PARTY!! :D)




• Unlucky

Pandey (With 2 batting slots open he should have made it purely on merit)
Mithun (If he was chosen in the Test squad, he deserved a chance here.)

So, the team: M S Dhoni (captain), Sachin Tendulkar, Virender Sehwag, Virat Kohli, Dinesh Karthik, Suresh Raina, Ravindra Jadeja, R Ashwin, Zaheer Khan, Ashish Nehra, Sudeep Tyagi, Praveen Kumar, Abhishek Nayar, Yusuf Pathan and Amit Mishra.

• 1st ODI - 21.Feb - Jaipur
• 2nd ODI - 24.Feb - Gwalior

B.B.O.T.D. - SOMETHING BIFFY ABOUT IT!

It’s late already but, I have to post this before the day ends. Else, these ppl won’t get this chance for the next 365 days. No kiddin! I remember ignoring Saqlain Mushtaq and I still feel bad for having done such a merciless thing. So, Biff, Jadu, Malik, Rose, Fulton we shall honor you with the prestigious Bday Bum of the day. And all u had to do to earn this was play the damn game. Sheesh, was that hard enough?

So, u don’t scream like a mad bull


Or blame my family over this ..


Or act crazzzzzzeeee …


Or Gimme cheap(GAY) looks…



So, grab ur partner/partners and hit the dance floor.. and P.A.R.T.Y.


U have earned it!!! U are officially the Bday Bums of the day. Happy Birthday! :)