Amit Varma does a hilarious take on Facebook and the IPL - who slapped/hugged/nudged who. Read on in India Uncut.
Muzamil Jaleel of the Indian Express profiles Mohammad Mudasir, the 19-year-old Kashmiri medium-pacer who has signed with Kings XI Punjab. He also writes about how the IPL has "confused the decades-old cricket loyalities" in Kashmir.
Mudasir was discovered during a pace hunt conducted by Javagal Srinath and TA Sekar of the MRF pace foundation at Sher-e-Kashmir Stadium, Srinagar in 2006. He represented the J&K under-19 team last season and bagged 35 wickets.
Mudasir has not yet made his debut but IPL has already confused the decades-old cricket loyalties in Kashmir which were always an expression of separatist politics here.
The cricket pitch was, in fact, the first platform for separatist politics. On October, 13, 1983 when West Indies came to play India in Srinagar, the separatists dug the pitch to protest. The police arrested Mushtaq-ul-Islam and Showkat Bakhshi — who later became militant commanders — inside the stadium while Hurriyat leader Shabir Shah too was charge-sheeted.
Also, check out Deepak Narayanan's article in the Indian Express titled 'T20 and the art of forgetting.'
Mixing the corporate culture with cricket seems to have affected the Bangalore Royal Challengers big time. Rohit Mahajan of the Outlook has more.
Insiders say meddling in the Bangalore team has reached ridiculous proportions. "They join the team meetings and point out mistakes to the coach and players," a Royal Challengers source told Outlook . "They even berate the video and statistics analyst for not providing enough data to the team to form its plans." Besides this piecemeal cricket analysis, the corporate minders even insisted players must double their practice time, arguing that "when we fail to meet our targets, we work doubly hard".
There's more hard-hitting material on the plight of the Royal Challengers. Sharda Ugra, writing in India Today writes that Vijay Mallya’s swift abandonment of his struggling team has shown just how far big business’ attachment to cricket goes—only until the next victory, exactly like the fickle, effigy-burning fan. She adds that some of the Indian players are feeling the heat much more in the IPL than when they represent their countries.
When Sourav Ganguly’s KKR lost three matches in a row, a teammate watching him in his next game remarked, “The only time I’ve seen Sourav so much under pressure was in the World Cup final.”
In the same magazine, Charu Sharma, the ex-CEO of the Royal Challengers, says owners of the IPL teams should be sensitised about what cricket means.
Buying a sports team is one thing, administrating it is different. It's a new business for them, and they've got to learn it.
