There's no cricket in my soup

Forget the hype about extra local trains, offices working half a day. And let us please try to forget some itsy-bitsy model who wants to strip if we win the World Cup. She says, “I’m a cricket fanatic and I’m a diehard supporter of my nation. India needs a lot of support and this is my way of supporting the team…and I’m doing this to excite our boys to play better.”

What a fruitcake. If she wants to do her bit, she can just get atop a table and gyrate at some of those lounge bars where other ‘fanatics’ are watching the game. They are more likely to get excited. It is insulting to India, Indians and our cricket team that some female who is “confident” of her body can have the temerity to announce that Indians will perform better just thinking of her stripping. I wonder what her exposure has been. These guys have seen many women doing much more, as sportspersons are accustomed to special attention. They'd be more excited if their captain threw off his shirt, as Saurav Ganguly had done some years ago.

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Since this model has posed for the Kingfisher calendar, perhaps she should try her stunts at Vijay Mallya’s IPL team innings, whenever that happens, as one of the pom-pom girls.

I also wish people realised that today’s game is not the final. Catching bits on TV has not excited me enough, despite the fennel and cheese crackers. The run-up in newspapers has been asking actors and Page 3 types about their favourite teams. The answer is pretty standard: “I luuuveee India.” And one more thing. I wish people knew that most Sidhuisms (what former cricketer and now commentator says) are quotations. They aren’t original, except that he mauls them. But then, more people know Sidhu than they know Shelley.

And I am tired of watching ‘celebrities’ I don’t know. And just for your information, the street below my building is buzzing; not everyone is cooped up inside.

File photo: Dawood Ibrahim and actor Anil Kapoor
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One more thing. The person who is not there is probably all there. How I miss those scenes from the Sharjah matches where the cameras would zoom into don Dawood Ibrahim in the company of Bollywood stars. Later, even those caught hugging him, denied it. Body doubles? Some said they were forced to be there. Possible. Although, rather surprisingly, he did not seem interested in Pakistani celebrities. Anyway, our stars have moved on. But has he?

Now for the finals at Wankhede, we all know how much money has been spent on the special lights and how Mukesh Ambani has bought three VIP boxes.

I don’t know how much things have changed, besides the cosmetic ones. But sometime in the mid-90s, I watched my first and only live cricket match at the same stadium and even the posh set was excited about Jeetendra in all white, including his shoes.

Let me reproduce a snapshot of those memories, kind of strip mentally:

Ms. Gucci arrived, flashing her gold trophy – a thick Cartier bracelet. Loud ‘whoas’ and ‘shiiiiit mans’ rent the air. But we could not feel the air. We were seated in the member’s enclosure, the one sealed with glass on three sides/

The talk among our august group, and I am sure of those in the private little cubicles flanking us, was about office, the party in the evening or the latest gossip about the other Ms. Gucci and Mr. Hugo Boss. Yet, when the umpire flailed his hands about indicating a boundary, these cats would meow a little prayer and figurines and taweezes would appear from nowhere to make life easier for Indians.

I had stepped outside for a feel of the real action and there was more lust here than that room with a view could ever manage. Our ‘boys’ were the toy boys and totems not because they were necessarily better than whoever they were playing against, but because every bead of sweat, open mouth and heartbeat was paying obeisance to them.

Today, the masses have been sidelined and it is all about the who’s who and what they are wearing.

Incidentally, I am dressed in green! But it isn’t that kind of green; it is the green of sage.

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Update:

- India won by 29 runs. Great. But how does it become "creating history"?

- Pakistani captain Shahid Afridi apologised to his country for losing. If he has to do that then they and not his team are a bunch of losers.

- Two cutouts were in the audience. Wait. They were the two leaders Manmohan Singh and Yousuf Raza Gilani.

- Heard several commentators say we need to win the finals and the cup for Tendulkar. Anyone heard of India?