TUESDAY, 26TH MARCH 2008!

It has been exactly one year since the Indian team made a not-so-quiet exit from the world cup. As you are probably aware, the BCCI sacked the entire team last year and banned them for 5 years. Of course later on, the opposition walked out of the parliament as usual, some of them threatened the loksabha speaker with stumps, and finally the govt relented to their demands, and sacked the BCCI too. One eventful year has passed, and a new look Indian team is slowly winning matches in India as well as outside. So we decided to find out what happened to those banned band of boys. And this is what we found

Rahul dravid: at the request of the Chinese government, he works as a consultant to advise them on how to prevent cracks from developing in the great ‘wall’ of china. The Chinese have fondly given him a new nickname, they call him rahul ‘cement’ dravid! Every morning he is seen searching for cracks in the wall!

Robin uthappa: he was so frustrated at the BCCI for ending his budding career, that he shifted to tennis and now is set to represent India in the davis cup. A double fisted back hand drive being his favourite shot.

Virender sehwag: poor guy, for a few months he was the brand ambassador for the famous ‘kesh sawaar’ hair oil, but the company lost their business very fast, and our viru bhaiyya lost his hair too. On the najafgarh bypass, he has a small joint selling aloo parathe . He proudly has named his joint ‘princy de parathe’!

Saurav ganguly: india’s pride has now become neighbour’s envy. Dada is now the coach of Bangladesh team. He was last seen perfecting the technique of run-outs! Bangladesh being a conservative nation, dada has been instructed to wear 2 shirts all the time. Even if he sees even street cricket being played, he has a habit of removing his shirt and waving it wildly.

Sachin tendulkar: his restaurant closed down. Clients complained, the order in which food was served, kept on changing daily. Desserts were given upfront , soups came in the end , and so on. But he recently wrote a book called “1001 ways of getting out”, and it’s a huge success!!

Yuvraj singh: he, along with his girl friend, acted in a movie recently ‘lassi ke side effects’. Though the movie barely ran in india for a couple of days, it was selected for the Caribbean film festival. He is in Barbados, to promote his film.

Mahindersingh dhoni: after modeling for practically all the major shampoo brands during last one year, his female fans have somehow prevented him from having a hair cut . Now, with knee length hair, he was last week offered a lead role by mira nair, for her latest production ‘hair today, gone tommorrow’!

Ajit agarkar: he has bought sachin’s restaurant, and is confident or reviving it back to its old glory. The Nepalese cricket board recently rejected him as their bowling coach, as agarkar wanted to sign a long term 30 year contract.

Anil kumble: he produces cricket related software in Bangalore. Frequently resists offers from politicians, who want to learn from him how to throw googlies.

Harbhajan singh: he produces music videos, albums under the banner of “ball-le ball-le entertainment”. His old friend muralitharan recently inaugurated his latest album aptly named ‘teesra’.

Zaheer khan, munaf patel, irfan pathan – they started a modeling institute called ‘baroda ke bande’. There is a long waiting list to join their institute.

Sreesanth: he runs a dance academy in ernakulam, called “ the unsteady samba”. also supplies cheer leader teams on contract for cricket matches, all over the world!

Dinesh karthick: his recent book ‘behind the wicket, it was not cricket’ turned out to be a best seller. He is thinking of writing his autobiography now. Too early for him in life, to write an autobiography.

The drama begins....

The drama now begins within the next few weeks. As my friend sammy fears, there will be jerky reactions. Once the team is back from the Caribbean, the BCCI will get down to announcing some tough measures to please the fans, senior cricketers, and public opinion in general. It will be very interesting to see who makes it to the Bangladesh tour coming up in may.
In all probability greg chappell will be given a farewell. As such majority of public opinion is already against him, including some ex-cricketers.

There will be a huge debate over whether the next coach should be of foreign or Indian origin. The cricket crazy nation forgets that a good coach is a good coach, irrespective of what nationality he belongs too. World over foreign coaches have done well, but now the Indians will be in no mood to relent. BCCI will be in a hurry to show that they have taken some concrete action.

A few senior players will have to say goodbye to one-day cricket. 2 names that immediately come to my mind are kumble and harbhajan. Kumble is over the hill, lets admit, and bhajji hasn’t done anything remarkable in the recent past.

Agarkar probably might be dropped too. From the batting side, I have a feeling that sachin might announce his retirement from the limited version of the game. Sehwag might be dropped once again, this time he might be considered only after some consistent performance at the national level games. Captaincy could go back to either ganguly or yuvraj. There are some who want sachin to take over the captaincy. Sachin has been a great player but not an aggressive captain at all.

There are chances that some old faces will come back. Kaif, raina, dinesh mongia, and maybe even vvs laxman could be seen in the team soon. Pawar could return to the team too. It would be interesting to note now what would be the steps taken by the board, once the team returns. Selectors might face the sack too.

My suggestion is to scrap the zonal selection pattern, and have a 3 man selection committee consisting of any 3 former players with maximum experience at the international level. One such combination could be gavaskar, venkatraghavan, and vishwanath. Let them have a free hand bring in their team and use the Bangladesh tour as a sort of experiment. There are a billion cricket crazy fans out there, and I guess there will an equal number of aspirations and dreams.

All said and done, coming few days could change the face of Indian cricket with some major and surprising changes. I only with the BCCI members are accountable in someway too.