Narain wins British A1GP!!

Oh what a fantastic race it was! Robbie Kerr won the sprint race, but who cares!! We won the Feature Race. Narain drove faultlessly to bring the car home. Ok, he did make one tiny little mistake by running wide on one turn, but that still kept Robbie Kerr behind him.

Narain made an impressive start to fend off an overtaking manuver from Neel Jani of Switzerland and pulled away from the pack. No sooner did he build up a good lead, there were a string of car crashes which cut down Narain's lead to less than half a second. Then it was time for the pitstops and this was all the drama was concentrated.

Narain dived into the pits earlier, sacrificing his race lead, which left Robbie a nice and open track to build up some speed and chop the seconds off from his timesheet. I presume Team India were running on a light fuel load, thats why they had to pull in to a pitstop earlier. Robbie Kerr, pulled in to the pits in the next lap and thanks to a brilliant pitstop by the British A1GP team, Robbie pipped Narain by half a second.

Both of them drove faultlessly and the Indian team knew they would have another chance at the next pitstop window. And they grabbed the chance with both hands. Narain just about edged Robbie on their way out and came out ahead of him in the pitstop race. After that, there was one small glitch in Narain's driving and he brought the car home in one of the most hotly contested races of the season.

And the best part? Had to be the Indian National Anthem playing over Britain. Enough said.

Royals rout Chargers in a nailbiter!

This is the stuff T20 matches are made of. Runs, runs and more runs! What more fun than to watch something that goes right down to the wire, or in this case, the very last ball!

The Deccan Chargers came out to bat first, and one man, Andrew Symonds, did all the damage in the world. He hit the fastest century in IPL, reaching the magical 3 digit figure in just 47 balls. He went on to score 117 runs, not out.


The Deccan chargers set a respectable target of 214 in the twenty overs for the Royals to chase. Greame Smith, Mohd. Kaif and Yousuf Pathan chipped in with performances of 71, 34 and 61 respectively. Everything looked nice and blue till Shaun Pollock was at the crease and Shahid Afridi took the ball.

Afridi's over put massive brakes on the Rajasthan Royals as he took 2 quick wickets and almost ended taking a 3rd one when a dropped catch by Kalyankrishna ensured otherwise. Ravinder Jadeja got a new lease of life with that particular dropped catch.



Shane Warne stepped into the crease and everything seemed to be looking in the Deccan Chargers favour. Andrew Symonds stepped in to bowl to his fellow Australian and was in for the shock of his life. I am just presuming that Warne as a spin bowler could predict to the last degree, where Symonds ball would fall. Warne sent the ball flying around the park and made 22 runs in just 9 balls.

Warne played every bit of his role of Captain for the Royals and finished match in style. The poor Deccan Chargers must really be wondering as to what went wrong.

Maha govt doesnt like Cheerleaders!

Be associated with anything popular in the public eye. So what if it can make you look stupid. This is the rule the Maharashtra government and our ever so friendly moral police seem to follow.



Apparently, they just don't seem to fancy the cheerleaders who are providing some good eye candy to the spectators. Mr. Siddharam, Mhetre, The Home Minister for Maharashtra and more importantly, another esteemed member of the Moral Police Brigade seems to think the Cheerleaders are obscenity at its peak. This is totally unacceptable to him in a country where "Womanhood is worshipped".

Erm.. hate to break this to you mate, but are you seeing our Bollywood movies? And erm... focus on more important things which, in your capacity as Home Minister can do to improve the state of affairs in Maharashtra. Control things like farmer suicides and woman infanticide. Not cheerleaders who are spreading cheer.

Please, get back to your work, Sir, and forget about scantily clad women. I know they are distracting. But the public is enjoying it. And so should you.

Brendon shows the Royal Challengers who's the boss!

After the terrific opening ceremony came one hell of an exciting match. It was a bit one sided, but it sure was fun. One man, Brendon McCullum made all the difference in the world.



Not many know him here, but who cares. His 158 run knock made sure that everyone would remember him for some time to come. He sent the ball flying at every place in the park and had a strike rate of more than 200.00. He took it all upon his shoulders and made sure that the Kolkota Night Riders posted a huge total for the Bangalore Royal Challengers to follow. So what if the other Knight Riders didn't really help in posting a total. Shah Rukh Khan, the team owner did little to contain his excitement and cheered every ball that kissed the boundary ropes.

The Royal Challengers came to bat and they could do very little in the name of putting up a good fight. Ishant Sharma showed the Bangalore team, who's the boss as he sent Rahul Dravid back to the pavilion in the very first over. 5 overs later, there was little doubt left in anybody's cranium as to who would win the match.

The Kolkotta bowlers showed some amazing consistency with their bowling and picking up wickets at regular intervals. Just what is needed to seal a struggling teams fate. The Royal Challengers need to focus on their cricket. Vijay Mallya seems to have served up a load of distractions by way of the Washington RedSkins.

Here's hoping that the forthcoming games are not so lopsided.

Indian Premier League Opening Ceremony. What a night!

It was a night to remember. It bloody hell was. I'd never thought in my wildest dreams that IPL would open in such a BIG way. But that was certainly a foolish presumption. We are talking about Vijay Mallya after all. There is little that he does without grandeur. Pick his teeth maybe.


The captains of all the teams were welcomed with more thunder than the rain Gods but before that Sharad Pawar and Lalit Modi were boo-ed with just as much gusto as the captains were cheered for. Probably because they brought 10 page speeches to the dias. We want cricket, not your boring speeches, goddamit.

Bangalore and the Royal Challengers played host to the opening match for IPL and it was spectacular to say the least. Shankar, Ehsaan and Loy played some silly pop music at first, but after that the proceedings went on at full throttle. There were girls on stilts, girls hanging from the air, cute Japanese girls in air bubbles and a horde of cheerleaders from the Washington RedSkins. Boy, are they hot or what? There was also a spectacular laser show which left me spellbound. That is a bit of an understatement, but you get the picture, now, don't you?

One guy even got a huge banner reading "I'm here for the girls, not for the Cricket". IPL delivered and how!