[kombuchakid]

IPL? Ask Pan for masala

By Cyrus Broacha


Dada what is Kama Yudh?" asked my one-year-old daughter Maya, as she put down her copy of Pericles, Prince of Tyre. Kids, as you know, always ask us adults questions that we are incapable of answering, that are often questions which are way beyond the scope of human imagination. Questions that at the same time baffle and challenge the most mature and scientific of minds and since I am not one of those afore mentioned, they scare the living daylights out of me. Seeing her father wiggling like a worm, my erudite child offered to soften the blow.

"What is the IPL?" she queried. Cornered like an old stag by a pack of clinical dingos, I went for the only answer which is universally considered an elixir of life. "Give me 20 minutes," I gasped out with the shudder of a man who’s dodged the first bullet. I then rushed to my friend Pee Pee’s house. Pee, or as his mother calls him when she is angry, which is all the time, Prabha Pan is the man who is considered by many to be the last word in cricket. In fact, after two pegs of vodka (with a little lime squeezed into the glass), Prabha Pan, admits to having invented cricket. Although one must add that after three pegs he’s convinced he’s Ram Sampath’s lawyer, by the fourth peg he’s a Union Cabinet minister, by the fifth peg the vice-president of Taiwan and by the eighth a woman of ill repute who goes by the name of Lajawati Devi.

Be that as it may, I rushed to Lajwanti’s Devi’s... er Pee Pee’s... actually Prabodh Puri’s house and found him sitting on his sofa in his usual attire, of two leg guards, and abdomen guard, and nothing else. This, by itself, would not be so strange except for the fact that his wife and mother-in-law were also wearing exactly the same outfit.

Pee Pee began, "The IPL is an affront to cricket, to sport, to civilisation itself." At best an advertisement for cricket. Two sets of 20 overs that gets finished within three hours?

It’s just ridiculous. Cricket was invented so that all the unemployed in India (50 per cent), Sri Lanka (60 per cent), Bangladesh (80 per cent), and Pakistan (100 per cent), had something to do with their time. That is why the five-day Test match was planned. The longest sport in the world. Longer, unbelievably, even than a Hindi film (not counting Sawaariya which also ended in a draw).

If you take away, all this time, well then quite frankly it’s just not cricket. One-day cricket has already dented our social fibre with its quick-fix solution, but this is just blasphemy!

All our criminal undesirable elements, including actors, models, veejays, politicians, reality show exponents who normally while away their time watching Test matches, will now be free to unleash their full potential on a naked unprotected civil society, after a period of just three hours.

It is the end of the Third World as we know it. The thin line separating Hindi movies from cricket will be broken forever.

As he finished speaking, Pee Pee started relieving himself of his cricket equipment with an air of a defeated man resigned to his fate. However, before he could reach the Virgin Islands, I had left his residence with his explanation in my bag.

As I finished retelling Pee Pee’s little rant to my daughter, Maya dropped the book she was reading called Know Your Elders and asked me to find out what was meant then by the ICL and what was the difference between the ICL and the IPL.

As I reached Pee Pee’s residence I could see from the driveway that he was only wearing his cap.

I turned back home. Some things are best left unanswered.