Murali the Thief

In yet another one of his boring and meaningless articles, our articulate-with-the-bat, not-so-with-the-words ex-captain Mahela has insisted the need to play our own brand of cricket in order to achieve success in South Africa. If I got one rupee for every time I hear our cricketers talk about this so called our own brand of cricket I would be filthy rich. Only I don't and so I'm not. The point is none of them seem to understand that this phrase has become such a cliche now.

Everybody seems to talk about it but nobody seems able to do it. It's like nobody knows where to find it anymore. The only possible explanation for this is somebody stole it. Our guys were playing this our own brand of cricket so happily, world was all rosy and sweet, and then all of a sudden, BOOM! Gone. Vanished. Now they have a problem. They are nothing without it. Success is only a distant dream. But of course they can't reveal it's gone; how can you come out and say this valued treasure is gone just like that? It would be like the king going out to the public and saying "I'm sorry guys, I seem to have lost the crown." Or Pamela Anderson announcing she seems to have lost her fake boobs last night. Not gonna happen.

What would the king/Pamela do in this dire situation? He/she would probably make a fake crown/ fake fake boobs for the time being, use it/them pretending everything's fine while fanatically search for the real thing(s). This pretty much is what our poor cricketers are doing right now. They are writing an unnecessarily large amount of articles explaining the need to play our own brand of cricket while on the lookout for the real thing. Hoping, praying, they would come across it. And then they can start playing the real our own brand of cricket and attribute the current poor patch to a glitch in the matrix. Or something like that. Bottom line is somebody stole it and the poor guys are desperate now.

So I decided to get to the bottom of this shit and find out what happened.

First thing to do, re-trace the steps. Find out what went wrong, when and where. Obviously the right thing to do would be to go back to the last time we were playing this our own brand of cricket. Last significant (actually, any kind of) Test success; July 2010, against India. Last significant ODI success; reaching the World Cup final, April 2011. However those two events are some 8 months apart. While we looked like the desperate king/Pamela in Tests since July 2010 we still seemed okay in ODIs till April 2011. The only logical conclusion; we had not one but two our own brands of cricket one for each format. We lost the Test version back in July 2010, the ODI version April 2011. Now what is the other significant thing that happened in relation to our cricket on both these occasion? Of course. One off spinner called it quits in Test in 2010, and ODIs in 2011. It all fits, doesn't it? Everybody doesn't have access to king's crown/Pamela's boobs though one could argue that the latter is subject to dispute. However, chances are that only someone who's close enough can steal them. It's the same with our own brand of cricket. It's got to be somebody who had pretty good access to it. And who has better access to it than the very players who play the game with it? Dressing room is where they probably keep the our own brand of cricket and after the last time this player has access to it the our own brand of cricket vanishes. Same happens April 2011; he quits cricket, we lose our own brand of cricket. Coincidence? I think not.

I always thought that fellow was a bit dodgy but this proves it beyond doubt. Yes, yes, he pretty much raised that our own brand of cricket baby by himself, but who is he to think that he owns it? Give it back, Murali, they need it!