Match fixers, match makers, and match disrupters

Notes on a scandal
It's back. Or was it always around? You can decide, but match-fixing reared its ugly head again. Suggestions of possible match-fixing charges against Marlon Samuels, the West Indies batsman, surfaced Wednesday when Nagpur police said they had taped conversations of Samuels giving team information to alleged bookie Mukesh Kochar on the eve of an ODI in the Indian city on January 21. (Click here for significant developments in the story so far.) The assumed phone conversation between Kochar and Samuels, or simply "Room 206", sounded vague and sketchy, and there are a host of theories and hypotheses going around, obviously. While Brian Lara backed Samuels, the West Indies Cricket Board said it would launch a probe. And on a special show on the latest cricket controversy, aired on CNN-IBN, an expert panel on Friday night tried to demystify the latest controversy and bring forth the true story. If you are going to fix something, get someone in on the racket who works in room service, so you can code your dealings based on mineral water brands and chilli cheese toast. Do you want to get caught, man?

Down to the bone
Spare a thought for Andrew Symonds' torn biceps. Injury, surgery, widespread speculation and scrutiny, a special sanction from cricket's governing body, and a ticket to the Caribbean. All in less than ten days. To take you back, Symonds injured himself during last Friday night's loss to England - no, not in the first final, but the other Friday England beat Australia (did I actually just say that?). With estimates on the speed of his return varying from six weeks to six months, Australia requested the ICC to allow Symonds be named in their World Cup squad and then replaced if he fails to recover. The ICC stretched its muscles.

Catch and release
During his time off, Symonds stepped into the Channel Nine box for a bit of commentary and sparked an action that sparked a row. As he explained to Ian Healy that he played with a pink bat grip in order to raise awareness about breast cancer, the former Australian wicketkeeper-turned-commentator was seen playing an air violin. Almost immediately, Channel Nine's switchboard operators around the country were swamped with calls from viewers outraged at the insensitive gesture.

Healy was quick to apologize and denied he was making light of breast cancer. "I was winding Andrew Symonds up to talk about his pink grip, you know, we've got these massive big blokes using pink grips on their bat and that was the wind-up," He told Channel Nine. "As he got into his promotion of the scheme I did the air violin as people are calling it now. People have perceived that to be me mocking breast cancer, now no one in the world would mock breast cancer research or breast cancer."

Wasn't the first time those highly-rated hands blundered in front of thousands, though was it, Brian? Inzy?

Hindi 101 - Aussie style
We're all entitled to our opinions of Brett Lee's crooning - read cringing - act in that hit single on the Indian charts with legendary singer Asha Bhosle, but the verdict on Lee's spoken Hindi may yet turn a corner. In case you were wondering if it really was Lee mouthing those candy floss lines, here's further proof that the man did pick up a few words while over in India. Prompted - on air at the Allan Border Medal presentation ceremony - by one-time batsmen and full-time talker Michael Slater to show how his language skills were progressing, Lee delivered a line in Hindi, to solid applause from the crowd. Beats me if any of the invitees and awardees got what he said to Slats, but it's a safe bet that it wasn't a dreamy-eyed "Haan main tumhara hoon, tumhara hi rahoonga." ("Yes, I'm yours, and will always be yours.")

Ronnie on the radio
Burning up the stage or hitting the airwaves, these former England cricketers sure do know how to have a good time. Darren Gough and Mark Ramprakash have both won the BBC talent contest, Strictly Come Dancing - the former while his team-mates were toiling through a one-day series in Pakistan - and now Essex captain Ronnie Irani will be turning his hand to radio. Irani will fill in for Paul Hawskbee on talkSPORT's 'Hawksbee and Jacobs' show and admitted he was looking forward to the three-hour gig, though he said he would forgive his co-host Andy Jacobs for being a Chelsea fan. "I did a full winter of radio presenting with Dream FM here in Essex a few years back on Friday nights and absolutely loved it," Irani said. "Now to be invited to do a full-on session with talkSPORT is fantastic." Essex will just hope Irani's fully fit and ready for a full season's cricket, not spinning tunes or discussing his last tour to Australia on the radio.

Stranger than fiction
Critics have long questioned the Bangladesh cricket team's lack of tooth, but this past week at the Dhanmondi Cricket Stadium, what transpired was borderline insanity.

During a Premier League match between Brothers Union and Partex, a person ran in, uprooted the stumps at the bowler's end and took off into the horizon. Next, two others walked out to the middle, pushed a few fielders, verbally threatened the batsmen, were chased by a section of the few thousands watching, and had the stuffing beaten out of them. Gentlemen, shmentlemen. Turns out the stump bandit was a Brothers Union - what a name, and how unified they are - club boy and that the Rapid Action Battalion's (RAB), the local SWAT team, assistance was needed to control the baying crowd. When asked, the Brothers' officials pointed fingers at the ground staff as the perpetrators but when they were asked to continue play, they claimed that two of their players were 'missing'. A while later, one of them was found under an advertising board. To top it off, fans of the Brothers threatened the team.

Ultimately, the match events were dwarfed and Partex were declared winners by eight runs as per the Duckworth-Lewis method. That's probably the first time those two came in handy when it wasn't raining.

Twenty20 tee-off time
'Supersize me' doesn't seem to the catch phrase in sports any more. Inspired by the success of Twenty20 cricket and rugby sevens, a new version of golf, that leisurely upper-class pastime on which conglomerates have been built, is set to be launched. Aptly named PowerPlay Golf, this version of hitting a ball into a hole, features greens with two holes instead of one, and will only have nine holes, as well as the option of placing a 30-foot diameter circle around the last black flag hole. Get the picture? Oh, and over those nine holes, players have to make three powerplays where they have to go for the harder option. Evidently the planners of this game believe it has enormous TV potential. Now if they can get commentators to yell "that's fore!" in high-pitched enthusiasm. I can picture Walter Hagen and Bobby Jones, up in that great golf course in the sky, shaking their heads.

For love of the...err, game
He may not be in Duncan Fletcher's good books, but Northamptonshire batsman Usmaan Afzaal seems to have his love life all sorted out. Afzaal's girlfriend of some time, Bollywood item girl Amrita Arora, recently announced that she will tie the knot with her Pakistani-origin beau "in a couple years". "I'm certain this is the man for me. We'll make it legal whenever it's the right time for both of us," Arora was reported as saying. Afzaal has jettisoned down to Mumbai regularly and has been spotted at quite a few film dos, not least with Arora on his arm on the sets of 'Kaun Banega Crorepati?, the Indian version of 'Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?'. The last time a Pakistan-born batsman married an Indian actress and moved to Bombay, a dashing batsman was lost. An England re-call looks improbable, so will we see Afzaal aside Arora in potboiler anytime soon?

It's in the bag
The Indian board and Jet Airways, the official carrier for the Indian and Sri Lankan teams during the ongoing four-match series, have chalked out a different strategy for the way luggage will move around. Why, you ask? Well, while both teams arrived in Rajkot for the second ODI, on Friday, over 60 pieces of baggage were offloaded by Jet Airways in Kolkata, some 1770 kilometers in the opposite direction. The bags then had to be flown back to Ahmedabad and transported by road to Rajkot. Now, there's a foolproof way to do it: though the teams depart for Goa today, their kit bags have already left on a flight to Mumbai last night. Yup.

Quotehanger
"We are aiming for Pluto, but we may end up on Saturn or in the worst case we may end up in Mars, which still is where no man has gone before." Chris Dehring, the ICC World Cup managing director, when asked about the ticket sales.

And by the way...
...after bouts of homesickness, endless injury woes, the headache of having Michael Vaughan ushered in and out of the XI, and four losses in five games, England won four games in a row to claim their first major international ODI title in close to four years - when no one gave them a chance. After 126 days Down Under, England beat clear favourites Australia and didn't even need a third final. What next? A parade down Trafalgar Square?