Aspi, maanglik cricketers and me
My mercurial driver of 12 years, 7 months and 13 days, Aspi, drives me with undue circumspection as he navigates some wild traffic on Mumbai’s chaotic streets. "Saar?" he asks, his voice carrying that dangerous tinge of emerging crisis. I wake up from my semi-slumber and the stuffy seat-belt expecting an engine smoking away. Thankfully, the bonnet is still not a bonfire. "Why is India losing all the time, Saar? Very sad, no?" "Aspi "---I said, agitated at his lack of sporting....
Posted by Sanjay Jha at | 9 comments
One flu over the cuckoo's nest
Rahul Dravid was apparently sporting an electric blanket even as Chacha Chandu walked gingerly behind the Indian skipper, his face barely visible in a monkey cap. Sourav Ganguly mistook Chacha for Ranadeb Bose and gave him a tight bear hug, and Chacha, overwhelmed by the passionate clinch, said” Oh, Gourav, you are too much.” The other celebrated members of the Indian squad were in the meantime involved in an unseemly wrangle, each one desperately attempting to seize the other’s warm blazer. Mahendra Singh Dhoni, it is rumoured restored order, by....
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Irish Cream, Common Sense and Ajay Jadeja
There was something strangely awkward, somewhat unfamiliar, and strikingly conspicuous about the Indian team’s departure for some cricketing action in picturesque Ireland. Dravid’s Dadas actually looked happy. It was so perceptible; calm faces, serene smiles and a bunch that looked like they were a bunch. Rahul Dravid was a personification of his usual serious but remarkably collected self, Sachin Tendulkar was grinning as wide as his bat slashes on the off-side, and Sourav Ganguly seemed in a jovial spirit, sporting a countenance he usually does when dancing down the wicket....
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Chandu ke chacha, BCCI ka bakra
It is rumoured that when former cricketer Chandu Borde received a phone call telling him about his appointment as Manager of the Indian team for the next 100 days, he apparently thought it was the omnipresent Cyrus Broacha pulling a MTV Bakra prank on him. On being assuaged by his family that his appointment was Breaking News on TV channels even before he had received an official verbal intimation himself, Borde was hugely relieved. He was BCCIs Bakra, he thought with a cocksure grin, not that inane absurdity of the....
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