Cricket in 2011…pun intended!
Whilst many predict cricket to undergo changes in 2011, I am enlisting a few arenas which would continue to remain the same this year, next year and for many more years to come.
1. Pakistan cricket will continue to hog the headlines for all non-cricketing activities. Javed Miandad will be asked to come out of retirement and will be named as the vice-captain with Imran Khan leading the side once again after a short gap of 18 years. To set the record straight, PCB chief Ijaz Butt will double up as the coach, manager of the side for the World Cup in addition to being the top boss of the board.
2. Yuvraj Singh should have been in Pakistan. Why? Simple. He has the talent, supplements it with oodles of ego and consistently features in the chopping books of the Indian selectors. Yuvi’s Twitter biography states-Celebrity, Entrepreneur, budding Philanthropist aka Yuvi. Did we see cricket anywhere? The year 2011 will see Yuvi being given a honourary citizenship of Pakistan and Ijaz Butt will want him to even be the selector-cum-player for the team.
3. The man who actually bit dust in the real sense in 2010 was our very own Lalit ‘Been there done it all’ Modi. The year 2011 will witness the erstwhile scion of IPL venturing into what would be known as MPL (Modi Premier League). What’s so special about it? Well, for starters it will be modelled on the cash-rich IPL. What next? The team can comprise of cheerleaders who would come with what will be coined as ‘attention diverter quotient’. The cheerleaders’ can be a maximum of four in a team, akin to the foreign player quota in IPL teams. That’s not all. The cheerleaders have the option of running to the field and kissing their teammates whenever the batsmen hits a boundary or scores a big shot. Now, for the mother of all rules. Teams that are tied on points will be rated based on an audience poll which will have parameters strictly on the oomph quotient which the girls bring to the team. As they say, the more the merrier.
4. The year 2011 will witness turnarounds in the lives of those who have had a sorry run of fortunes in the year that passed by. Pakistan, who have hit the nadir on more occasions than one will witness a change in fortunes and how. They will start the year with series losses to New Zealand, prompting the selectors to bring in Imran Khan, Javed Miandad, Saeed Anwar, Inzamam-ul-Haq, Saqlain Mushtaq, Ijaz Ahmed, Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis, Moin Khan, Salim Malik and Mushtaq Ahmed with Aamir Sohail kept as the stand-by. This retired bunch of cricketers would not only play to the often-used word potential but also put up a brave show.
5. Shane Warne will become the captain of the Australian team with the team losing the World Cup, setting the goal of winning back the urn. The next World Cup will also be on the agenda. He would rope in Adam Gilchrist, Steve Waugh, Mark Waugh, Matthew Hayden and Justin Langer in crucial roles in the Australian ranks.
6. Pakistan’s tainted trio—Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Amir will face bans and for the first time in the history of cricket, players will be asked to do community service. For their part, Butt and Asif will be part of the Afghanistan cricket set-up while Amir will take up coaching the taliban.
7. Cricket’s brand ambassador Sachin Tendulkar will score 10 more hundreds in Tests, 11 in ODIs and will want to take a shot at the 2015 World Cup as his next challenge. His son will make his debut in the first-class circuit in Mumbai.
8. Mohammad Azharuddin, the tainted captain of Indian team will contest elections for the BCCI selection committee. He will swear by honesty, integrity and not to forget non-adultery.
