Just for the record

This is the first time i am writing a post before the last one actually sinks in. The post is about one such thing very close to my heart, cricket. If there is one thing that i enjoy and am really proud of ; it is my cricket.
Of late i may be boasting of cheering Juventus or Villareal or ManU for that matter this season , just because it sounds glamarous or because it makes me one in those elusive groups of the college .But, let me confess, cricket still to me, is the best game ever played. I like cheering players in trousers rather than in shorts. It's the other way round for women, i like female athletes in 1) Tinies 2) Micro-minnies 3) Nothing at all.

Writing a eulogy for the game of cricket is difficult. So, i have decided not to do that. Instead we will discuss the weird records in cricket. This idea struck me when my friend told me ,India broke the record for the highest number of consequitive wins, batting second.You have a record for anything you do on and off the field, i thought.

-Wankhede holds the record for being the first ground on which Tendulkar sneezed.

-Saeed anwar was the first player to be mistaken for a terrorist and was thrown out of the field by his own team mates.

-Ganguly is the first player to hit the ball to slips, when the ball was 3 feet further away on the legside. No wonder he is the God on the Off side.

-Mpumelelo Mbangwa as the most abusive name in cricket. I pronounce it as mooh-may-lelo-Bangwa. Other people prefer Pommie Mbangwa.For people who didn't hear his name, he is an experienced zimbabwean cricketer who played 1 oneday international and 2 days of test cricket before he retired.

-Shoaib Akthar as the only player who pissed on the field, in the worldcup match against India.This caught him napping while the crowd was clapping.

-Paul Adams of South-Africa as the first polio patient to play international cricket.Many people still consider Murlitharan to be the first, but ICC has clarified it is Paul Adams.

-South Africa as the team which played most number of rain affected matches.

-Mohammed Kaif for taking more number of catches than his aggregate runs ,including domestic cricket.Great going kaif, you deserve a place atleast for this.

-Kasprowich as the 76th player, whose career was almost brought to an end by Sachin Tendulkar.

-Shivnarine Chanderpaul for digging the biggest hole on the pitch. They have stronger bails when chanderpaul is playing. He broke a total of 19 bails while digging holes before he bats.

These are too technical if you ask me. You don't have to know all these details to enjoy the game.Talking of technicalities,when i was in school we used to have this guy named Bujanna with whom we played cricket in our apartments.We used to play in the parking lot where we could barely manage a full length pitch and this guy used to ask me to field at 17 degrees to the right of deep midwicket, which generally meant under or over a yellow Fiat.He asked us to hit over the fineleg which actually didn't exist in the garage we played.I played it back to him and said "The ball is nipping back into me at the rate of 14 degrees/sec , so i played it back 45 degrees to the right of midoff" which loosely translates to "I had to play it straight."

To call for a run , he used to shout "C'mon run to the other side of the pitch before the fielder throwns in ..blah blah blah" before he ran himself out because he couldn't ground that o.6th inch of his bat in time .That is what he told me. Once he asked me to learn the lemon-cut ,supposedly a cricketing shot and you must have guessed what i did the next day.He asked us to play the backward defensive shot with the bat at an angle of 45 degrees to the superior venacava.

Oh my god, what a techie he was. I think he is now teaching geometry in a reputed institute near that cricket coaching centre in Narayanguda.

This is all for the records and the technicalities of cricket. Next post on "Dynamics of a disorder in which strongly felt ethical and altruistic impulses are perpetually warring with extreme sexual longing often of perverse nature." which in common man's language is LOVE.