A bruised, battered and
beleaguered team India takes on a rampaging Kiwi team in their own backyard
beginning Friday morning (the unearthly hour of 3 am to boot); will team India
register the increasingly elusive victory on alien shores and partially salvage
it's tattered reputation or then will the Kiwis bury them six feet under and
drive the last nail in the Indian team's coffin; well your guess in this regard
is as good as mine, though the possible of the former seems a remote
possibility and the latter a far more realistic prospect. Damning allegations being made by bookies
ensnaring none other than the current Indian captain in all three formats of
the game one Mahender Singh Dhoni in their webs of lies and innuendo, effigies
of players being burnt right, left and centre and last but not the least; the
son-in-law of the incumbent BCCI president being at the centre of it all;
Indian cricket seems to have touched it's lowest nadir and the only way forward
is up.
Whoever says India is a
poor country largely inhabited by beggars, mendicants, snake charmers and
others of their ilk; the doubters and critics simply need to look at the
ongoing IPL auctions and the huge sums of money being splurged by the team
owners in order to procure what they consider to be a winning combination; who
was it that said moolah has the power to change many a thing, a derisive
opinion being the very least of them. Despite being held under the twin clouds
of betting as well as match fixing scandals, the IPL auctions have well and
truly got under way and the marquee Indian players are being sold for
unprecedented sums that surely must be making their rivals turn green with
envy.
The IPL Delhi Daredevils
franchise (the only franchise that did not retain any of their players and
begin the current auction with a clean or virgin slate) have bought a certain
Kevin Pietersen for the mind boggling sum of Rs. 9 crore as well as Murali Vijay
and wicket keeper batsman Dinesh Karthik for the astronomical sum of Rs. 12.5
crore while the King's XI Punjab franchise has once bought back dashing Aussie
batsman Shaun Marsh for a bargain basement prize..
My favourite IPL side
Kolkata Knight Riders has finally made it's first big buy of the season by
buying marauding and dapper right hand batsman Robin Uthappa for the princely
sum of Rs. 5 crore thereby augmenting their batting line up and providing it
with the much needed impetus.......
King's XI Punjab have
proved to be the most adroit buyers in the ongoing IPL auction thus far; they
have so far bought Aussie speedster Mitchell Johnson as well as George Bailey
(current Aussie T20 skipper) and seem well on their way towards assembling
their strongest ever squad in the history of the IPL.........
Yuvraj Singh must
certainly be thanking his lucky stars, his guru's, spiritual advisers as well
as the pantheon of gods above.......He has been brought by the Royal
Challengers Bangalore IPL franchise for the astronomical sum of Rs. 14 crore
and is now part of an enviable batting line up comprising of Chris Gayle, Virat
Kohli, AB De Villiers and last but not the least, the pied piper of Punjab as
he is fondly referred to as by one Navjot Singh Sidhu....
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