It’s strange. Nobody is going crazy yet. Not many painted faces. People are still on the roads, going to or coming from somewhere. The traffic is just as bad as it always was. Tendulkar is still practicing as if he is going to bat no. 4 in a deciding Test at Adelaide.
But then, there is still one day for the IPL to begin and given how paranoid some people are, the low profile helps. There are brand new chairs at the CCI. Someone said it was a great initiative of the franchise owner to buy some sparkling Neelkamals for the heritage ground. Isn’t that supposed to be their primary job… providing decent comfort for the audience? And yeah, the Mumbai Indians nets have Sachin Tendulkar and Sanath Jayasuriya. One is batting while the other is bowling. Sachin asks, in Marathi, a practice bowler something about the length he was bowling at him. And he continues practicing as if there is just a day to go before the deciding Test at Adelaide. Sach, relax. It is just a T20 tournament. Try telling that to him!
His former Mumbai and India team-mates, Abey Kuruvilla and Vinod Kambli are just a two-hour, traffic-ridden journey away at the DY Patil Stadium in Navi Mumbai. Kuruvilla is so massive that it makes you wonder if he spent his career bowling just slower balls. Did he ever touch 140 in his international career at all? Kambli, meanwhile, is just somewhere in the shadows, two meters away from the pitch, but still so far away from it.
The big news though is the terror alerts being issued almost everyday. It just adds to the paranoia of foreigners here on work. They don’t want to be here, but they can’t help it. And these IB reports aren’t helping either. What we need is Sunny Deol, Sai Kumar and Vijaykanth owning IPL teams now and that would make everyone feel so much safer.
If Possible Laugh – Part 1
12 Friday Mar 2010
Posted Cricket
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