Atul Karmarkar.Com» Cricket

The KKR Blogger: An Update

Atul Karmarkar — Wed, 13 May 2009 23:53:45 +0000

I guess there has been enough speculation on the KKR blogger and the fact that he was ultimately going to reveal his identity. At the time he said he was going to retire from all forms of cricket at the end of this IPL and that he would disclose his identity on the last day of the tournament.

However, in a recent post, he seems to have had a change of heart.

One last thing. I had mentioned about my decision to reveal my identity at the end of IPL. However, many of you wrote back saying that you’d rather this remain a mystery. Several of you also asked me not to chicken out and stick to my word. Now, while I created FIP, your participation by way of comments, love, appreciation, feedback, criticism, jokes, converations, brickbats, abuses etc have made FIP what it is today. FIP belongs to all of you as much as it belongs to me. And whether FIP’s identity should be disclosed or not, or how it should be taken forward, is as much your decision as mine. So, I’d like to throw the question open to all of you. I am putting up a poll on the right side. Pls take a few seconds to make your decision. One small request, please honour the democratic spirit of this blog and click only once.

You can read the entire post and also vote for who you think is the Fake IPL Player. Personally, I think this whole thing has been entertaining to an extent, but I care a damn for who this really is !

Who is the anonymous KKR blogger?

Atul Karmarkar — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 14:12:54 +0000

Have been hearing a buzz lately about a KKR team member who has started a blog in which he is detailing activities of his team mates and other IPL players on a daily basis. In fact, the nicknames given to players and nature of the posts have got the entire KKR team management in a tizzy. While some speak of player’s personal shenanigans, other posts talk of team plans, strategy and other similar information.

It is quite obviously a player or someone quite close enough to the teams to be able to write with such clarity about their daily activities in South Africa. He also says he’s just bought a Macbook Pro. Some of the nicknames in his posts are pretty obvious, like Warne (Sheikh of Tweak) and Ganguly (Lord Almighty).

This is how he ended his first post,

The other good thing about the IPL is that I can see all these big shots from pretty close range. My team has a superstar captain…err sorry… ex-captain. We have a megalomaniac as our owner. Our coach comes with loads of attitude and baggage. Some of our international players are interesting characters. Unfortunately, our biggest international player has dropped out this time. Otherwise, the scenes would have been even more interesting.

And throughout the IPL, I will be bringing to you the “aankhon dekha haal”, right from inside the dressing room, meeting room and players’ bedrooms .

Let the games begin!

Wonder if /when his identity will be revealed and if it will be similar to that of Fake Steve Jobs !!

Bucknor goes ga-ga, blames India for his sacking

Atul Karmarkar — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 15:50:09 +0000

Umpire Steve Bucknor, who recently announced his retirement, seems to have gone off his rocker, claiming that it was India’s money power behind his sacking from the India-Australia series last year.

The reason of course is well known… It was the terrible umpiring by Bucknor and Mark Benson during the Sydney Test that led to such a furore, and India lost a Test it could have won.

According to Bucknor,

I knew there would have been a moment when things would not have gone as well. But at the same time, I made two mistakes out of more than 40 calls. There are other who will say getting 90 per cent in a game is relatively good. I got better than 94 per cent in that particular game, but it wasn’t good enough for some people. So, I was expecting these things to happen because on Earth, there are some people who are more equal than others. Because they are more equal, they seem to have more say. And what they say, especially influenced by money, they seem to have their way. So I’m not too surprised.

Sounds all nice n cheesy, but Steve, before sounding like a bloody martyr, do take a good hard look at the decisions you’ve handed down over the past few years, against Indians in particular, and you will find it hard to justify those remarks you’ve made.

Happiness for Indian Cricket – Steve Bucknor to retire

Atul Karmarkar — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 02:13:34 +0000

Indian cricket has every reason to smile… as umpire and India’s chief bete noire Steve Bucknor has finally decided to retire.

The man has caused so much heartburn to cricket fans all over the world with his outrageous decisions, especially over the past couple of years, it’s a wonder how he took so much time to finally make this decision.

Goodbye, Steve… and can’t say I’m sorry to see you go !! :-p

Sachin Tendulkar, Leg Before Umpire

Atul Karmarkar — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 02:27:49 +0000

Saw India beating the Lankans in the third one dayer last night, and overall, a fantastic series win for Dhoni and his merry band, inspite of umpiring howlers that have raised their ugly head again.

In all three one-dayers, Sachin Tendulkar was given out LBW, and as it turned out, incorrectly on all three occasions. If it was a batsman looking to make his mark as compared to someone like Tendulkar, that player could well have kissed his career goodbye after three consecutive failures, especially given India’s batting strength now, and the quality of batsmen in waiting. A promising career can so easily be nipped in the bud due to such stupid errors, just as a great batsman can have people baying for his blood. (eg: TV experts debating: “Kya Sachin ko team mein rehna chahiye?”)

The Match Referee, the ‘great fine imposer’ Chris Broad, is extremely quick to censure playersand , it’s high time the role of umpires also came under the scanner. The fact remains that all these decisions were LBW ones, and clearly human error, where the umpire’s perception has been at fault. First Steve Bucknor, now Gamini Silva. When does it end?

Any answers, Chris and the ICC?

ICC and Aussies – spoilsports to the core

Atul Karmarkar — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 17:09:00 +0000

What’s it with the ICC and Aussies? Each seem keen to steal the mantle of spoilsports and sore losers from the other. The ICC probably felt it wasn’t getting attention from anyone so off it went and put together a list of top 20 batsmen and bowlers, ever.

Nothing wrong with putting up a list, but the real howlers were the exclusions in each of these lists rather than the “worthies” who made it.

Imagine a Top 20 batsmen list without Sachin Tendulkar, Brian Lara, Steve Waugh or a top 20 bowlers list without atleast three members of the famed West Indies quartet or the fact that South African Dale Steyn is ranked higher than Dennis Lillee, Wasim Akram or Allan Donald !!

Pig-headed to the core, if you ask me ! The only purpose seems to have been to muck up a controversy and get itself in the news. Though the ICC tried to explain how these rankings were arrived at, nobody’s buying their story. It’s probably their way of getting back at what they perceive as an Asian domination of the world body !

The Aussies are no less, and if India has been at the receiving end the past year, it was the turn of the South Africans to get the treatment, and in a pretty unique way during the second T20 match which the Aussies won.

Someone in the crowd flashed a green laser light at Wayne Parnell causing him to drop a catch offered by Mike Hussey, who then made an unbeaten 53 and led Australia to victory.

Cricket Australia of course apologised and said it would never happen again, but I wonder… Maybe they’ll come up with something even more innovative the next time given their tag of being sore losers !!

Ab Tera Kya Hoga, Ricky?

Atul Karmarkar — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 00:02:05 +0000

Facing the prospect of a 3-0 whitewash for the first time in over a century, Ponting says the Aussie’s are still Number One, which is really splitting hairs if nothing else. To watch the Aussies let the Proteas off the hook was amazing as slowly but surely, Duminy and Steyn snatched the game away from them, totally turning the tables on the Aussies.

A close call against India in Australia at the beginning of the year, a series defeat against India in India and now a crushing defeat to South Africa… a series lost on Australian soil after 16 years… A vice-captain who says he had no idea why Ponting took some of the decisions he did.. Personally, though, Ponting had a superb match, and missed almost set a new world record as the only batsman to score two centuries in a Test on four occasions… but missed out by a single run, dismissed for 99 in the second innings.

What now, Ricky? What aces do you have left up your sleeve ? Wonder if we’ll find out at Sydney…

Was Dhoni correct in playing for a draw?

Atul Karmarkar — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 02:06:48 +0000

At first glance, almost everyone who has an opinion on cricket will disagree on this. Not in the spirit of the game, killing test cricket, putting personal glory first blah blah and all that crap.

Firstly, this match was anyway robbed of much of it’s potential due to frequent delays on account of the weather and light conditions, and in terms of overs lost, almost an entire day’s play was wiped out.

Dhoni is a frank and forthright guy and is not afraid to speak his mind. If he had spoken more about the weather playing spoilsport, the need to safeguard their 1-0 series lead etc, not many would have raised such a hue and cry. I think he erred by being too frank in actually saying that they had decided to declare after Gambhir and Yuvraj had got their individual centuries. As an internal team decision, that was fine, but talking about it didn’t exactly show him in a glowing light, considering his reputation till now as an attacking captain.

To get back to the decision itself, I think it was pretty ok and we’ve been at the receiving end of similar bloody mindedness from other countries as well; there have been numerous instances where India have held the upper hand and the other team has employed tactics to play for a draw, denying us a chance to level / win a series.

Our bowlers’ fitness levels have also been a bother after a tough series against Australia and now England, so there was no reason for Zaheer, Ishant and Harbhajan to have a go at the Englishmen in a dead match and risk needless injury at this point.

Another problem is the huge pressure from the cricket mad public, and of course, the media. If Dhoni had declared earlier and allowed England a sporting run chase, and IF England had actually won, the debate over this decision would have reached epic proportions, reducing the present one to a lark. TV channels would have gone overboard, calling for Dhoni’s head, having stupid SMS polls asking viewers to respond, and of course each channel parading its so-called “expert” like Saba Karim, Maninder Singh, Ashok Malhotra, Surinder Khanna, and asking the question, “Kya Dhoni ne theek kiya?, Kya Dhoni ko aisa karna chahiye tha?” et al. We probably wouldn’t get to see this kind of hysteria being whipped up in England or Australia if the reverse were to happen.

To get back to the point about Test cricket being killed, I think the biggest culprits are………. the bunch of nutcases that make up the BCCI panel that is responsible for drawing up the tour schedule !!!

It beats me why these worthies insist on allocating matches to cities without taking location and climate into consideration and only think about “quotas”. Some recent examples:

Everybody is fully aware about weather conditions in North India during the winter. Why schedule matches at places like Guwahati and Jamshedpur, or even Mohali?
The India-Australia Test at Bangalore in October is another case in point, as it usually rains in Bangalore at that time of the year due to the retreating south-west monsoon.
Time after time, we’ve seen tours of Sri Lanka being scheduled right in the middle of the monsoon. So many India-Sri Lanka matches are full of instances where rain has either disrupted some part of the match or even the entire match itself !

So if anyone is to be blamed, it’s the BCCI !!

Sehwag and Sachin propel India to victory

Atul Karmarkar — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 16:35:24 +0000

Wow, this was super !! India managed to exorcise several fourth innings ghosts, chasing a target of 387 to beat England and go 1-0 up in the series. Finally, Tendulkar got a chance to shut up his critics with a superbly crafted if somewhat restrained century to help India overhaul the target.

What was truly awesome was the manner in which Sehwag batted ! Only a year ago, there were surprised looks from all around including yours truly, when he was selected for the Test series against Australia. What a difference a year makes ! He is now the leading run scorer in Tests this year. In this match, it was his stunning knock of 83 in 68 balls that completely took the wind out of England’s sails and set up the game for India. Instead of plodding around the 40 - 50 run mark, India were 117-0 in quick time before he got out, giving the other batsmen lots of breathing space and raising hopes of an Indian victory. Awesome !!

For once, Yuvraj also lived up to the hype around him, but the disappointment was Rahul ‘The Wall’ Dravid, who seems to be crumbling brick by brick and can’t seem to get his form back. Dhoni lived up to expectations, and now has 4 wins from his first 4 Tests as captain, a fantastic achievement, especially for the once “draw-happy” Indian team !!

Way to go, guys !!

Grow up, Aussies !!

Atul Karmarkar — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 17:57:59 +0000

What’s with the Aussie cricketers? They seem to be all busy writing books, and funnily enough each of them have some nasty ‘India’ tales to tell. The timing of course is superb and the more controversial the better.

Adam Gilchrist set the ball rolling with his comments against Tendulkar and Harbhajan, and then was quickly followed by Warne, Symonds and Ponting, each picking on current and former Indian players. Maybe Hayden was feeling left out of this India-bashing fest, so he also chipped in, making statements that the Aussies’ slow over rates were due to the problems that were part of playing in a ‘Third World country’. Huh ?

This was an atrocious remark, especially in this day and age. Till a decade ago, players touring India used to suffer from the ‘Delhi belly’ and faced travel and accomodation problems. However, all that is history now, and Hayden would do well to remember that; infact cricketers are treated like celebrities here !!

What makes his remark all the more laughable is the fact that he’s willing to come and play in the same third world country as long as they’re paying him a fat sum for playing in the IPL T20 matches. Hypocrisy rules…

Put simply, Aussies are bad losers, and hate having their supremacy challenged. Grow up, guys, and learn to see and accept the writing on the wall !!

Atul Karmarkar.Com» Cricket

The KKR Blogger: An Update

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