Shikar Kalmadi

What did i do?

faking news !!

Moving with unprecedented speed and decisiveness, the Government of India and the BCCI has come up with a remarkably elegant and effective solution to the ongoing IPL controversy - they have appointed Lalit Modi as External Affairs Minister and made Shashi Tharoor the commissioner of the IPL.

Lalit Modi points in the general direction of Sikkim, denying its very existence and ending the border debate with China in a matter of seconds.

"We suddenly realized that the amazing negotiation and crisis-management skills displayed by Mr.Lalit Modi are completely wasted on trivialities such as cricket. They would be put to much better use in the MoEA, where he could tackle serious problems such as Pakistan, China and Sri Lanka, and give the rather blade ministry a much needed branding makeover. Woo hoo!", said Prime Minister Dr.Manmohan Singh.

"Any man who can so brazenly thumb his nose at everyone even when he is neck-deep in shit will be a valuable asset in telling Pakistan to pike off.", said Dr.Singh, unexpectedly using a cuss-word cribbed from the Planescape : Torment universe. "His superb denial skills will also come in handy in situations where we need to deny the existence of fairly obvious but annoying inconveniences such as the LOC, the refugee problem, and most of the north-eastern states. Plus, Mr.Modi is a perfect blend of 'external' and 'affairs', making him the perfect man for the job.", said Dr.Singh.

Early reports also indicate that Mr.Modi may be given additional charge of the Finance Ministry, to take advantage of his undoubted mastery of making ridiculously untenable financials seem viable, even exciting. "We are confident that Mr.Modi will be able to find sponsors who will pay for initiatives such as the UID and NREGA schemes, and even find a title sponsor for the national debt. This will free up thousands of crores of taxpayer money that we can coolly pocke . . er . . ah . . pockastickate for stringinindous rural development projects.", winked Congress party spokesman Abhishek Manu Singhvi, making up a few official-sounding words in the nick of time.

Apparently Mr.Modi has already swung into action, and has initiated an auction process to create privately held franchises out of institutions such as the State Bank of India, NABARD and, unsurprisingly, the Income-Tax Department. "We'll see how you lT losers investigate my accounts when my good friends Mukesh Ambani and Vijay Mallya own your sorry asses", smirked Modi, under the mistaken impression that this was not already the case.

Meanwhile, former Minister of State for External Affairs Dr.Shashi Tharoor will take charge as commissioner of the IPL. His immediate duties will include implementing Mr.Modi's original vision of globalizing the league, by taking it to countries such as Gabon, Burkina-Faso and Sierra-Leone. "Dr.Tharoor's experience in Africa is very relevant to the IPL, since a third of the IPL matches have been played there anyway.", explained BCCI president Mr.Shashank Manohar, justifying the unexpected posting. "Plus, Africa has contributed one of the IPL's most integral parts - Akon. Smack that!", said Manohar, wisely resisting the urge to swiftly slap his palm on the posterior of BCCI secretary Mr.Niranjan Shah, who was standing beside him.

Neither Mr.Modi nor Dr.Tharoor were available for  further comment, since they've both been told to stay off Twitter, cutting off their main communication channel.

by Anand Ramachandran

BCCI receives two bids for Indian team sponsor

In the end, only two players, Sahara Group and Bharti Airtel, submitted bids for the right to sponsor the Indian team. Both Sahara, the existing sponsors, and Airtel bought the tender document at the last possible minute before the submission deadline, and Cricinfo has learnt both companies have submitted the mandatory Rs 50 crore (US$10.7 million) deposit required by the BCCI.

The Indian board issued the tender on Monday inviting companies to bid for the rights, whose tenure is three-and-a-half years beginning July 1, 2010. Other companies in the fray included the ADA Group (ADAG), consumer electronics major Videocon, Delhi-based Monnet-Ispat, sports broadcaster Nimbus, which owns the rights to matches played in India, and advertising firm Percept.

A source close to Nimbus said the broadcaster was approached by ADAG on Saturday morning, as its top brass was reluctant to commit as much as Rs 400 crore (US$ 85.6m) on its own. Nimbus, meanwhile, was trying to put together a consortium to bid for the rights, but was unable to pull it off due to the short time-span - less than a week - between the date the tender was released and the date the bids were submitted. "They released the tender on Monday and all the bids need to go in by Saturday, which is just about four working days by the time the tender was in hand. That is not very easy to work out when you are trying to get people to commit to Rs 400 crore."

It was reported widely that the BCCI was against consortiums bidding for the rights, but one of the interested players, who was among the first to pick the document, said that the board never had any issues there. "They had sent a clarification stating they did not want any marketing agencies to be part [of the consortium]."

The BCCI has set a base price of Rs 2.5 crore per match for a three-and-a-half year period, during which India will be playing between 144 and 167 matches, depending on how far the team progresses in the ICC tournaments.

The current price represents a 16% discount from the tender the board issued late last year, which had a base price of Rs 3 crore per match, and failed to attract a single bid. As a stop gap measure, the Sahara Group agreed to extend its sponsorship of the Indian team for a further six months, a period that ends on June 30.

The lack of interest in the tender six months ago and the subsequent lowering of the base price represents "the impact of the IPL," according to Hiren Pandit, Managing Partner-Entertainment, Sports and Partnerships at Group M, a prominent media buying agency. Pandit believes the IPL gives firms an alternative avenue to get involved with cricket, thereby reducing the exclusiveness of the Indian team.

After winning the bid for the Pune IPL franchise, Sahara chairman Subrata Roy had said the company would re-evaluate its sponsorship of the Indian team. Subsequently, when contacted by Cricinfo, the company declined to comment to on whether it would be bidding this time around. The Sahara Group had paid roughly Rs 400 crore in 2005 for the right to sponsor the Indian team for four years.

At least one prospective bidder, who bought the bid document, thought the current base price was still too high. "Anyone who bags the rights will have to spend on an average 125 crore annually only on this. That is a huge amount of money."

Shailendra Singh, joint managing director, Percept Limited, which had reportedly purchased the bid document for a client, says the Indian team is still the best cricket brand around. "From a value perspective, the sport of cricket stands unparalleled as a property for sponsors today," he said. "For any fan, especially in India, the national team is the ultimate. People follow IPL because you have the cricketers from the Indian team playing, they are the main attraction. Hence this in no way reduces the importance or following of Team India. Team India will be one of the best cricket properties always."

The BCCI will announce the winning bid after holding its marketing committee meeting in Mumbai on Monday.

Cricket

Cricket: Gillchrist wid Harsha Bhogle

Cricket

Bradman

Cricket's greatest batsman was a colossal contradiction: a young visionary and an old reactionary; and he triggered the sport's first two great cataclysms

History's most colossal batsman is, in many respects, a colossal irrelevance. Nobody ever emulated 99.94, the one average that will never be average. None ever mimicked that barmy stance - bat between his feet, back-lift pointing towards gully. He did not play in Asia or Africa or the Caribbean. He did inspire cricket's first great cataclysm, Bodyline, but only briefly. From 1928 to 1948 he was roughly twice as good as anyone who ever had, or ever would, play the game. Then he quit and everything returned to normal.

He was a colossal contradiction too. He spawned dozens of books, yet revealed almost nothing. He answered umpteen-thousand letters from complete strangers but avoided his own ma and pa's funerals. His 1948 Invincibles exuded joy and goodwill, yet he could be as quick to dispute a catch or order a bumper barrage as the next mortal. He was a money-alert player but a penny-pinching administrator - the young visionary who stood up for his economic worth becoming an old reactionary, who according Ian Chappell, "treated the board's money as though it was almost his own". Thus, by default, he helped trigger cricket's second great cataclysm: World Series Cricket.

Bradman mattered, though, because of his omnipotence and origins. He was the supreme master of any ball game - better than Pele, Nicklaus and Jordan - and he lent cricket a lustre and romance. It lives on today in the obscene sums forked out for a dead man's old green caps. The fact that he came from a small town in a colonial doormat made him all the more powerful. As Matthew Engel, an Englishman, wrote on the day Bradman died: "More than any politician, he gave Australia a unity of purpose and a sense of itself and of its own worth as a country… No sportsman has ever influenced a country's history to the same extent."

Bradman was bigger than the sport he played and the country he lived in. Irrelevant? Hardly.