Rainman talks Cricket

# RandomCricketPhotosThatMakeMeHappy One thing that most people seem to remember from Monty Panesar's brief but eventful career is his inimitable style of super exuberant celebrations. In his book 'Monty's Turn', Panesar takes us to the origins of those celebrations. Such a massive fan he was of Sachin Tendulkar while growing up that he had a poster of the Indian batsman on his bedroom wall. In fact, in 1996, when Indian team played a tour game against Northamptonshire, he to ok his bat to get it signed by the little master. He recounts how he and his friends jumped and danced in joy in the stands when Sachin raised his bat in their direction upon reaching his 50. 5 years later when he toured India with England U-19s, he went back home with a massive collection of Sachin posters to adorn his bedroom walls with. 10 years later, making his Test debut against the man he grew up admiring, he managed to conjure up a delivery that beat Sachin's bat ...

# RandomCricketPhotosThatMakeMeHappy Seems like a fairly harmless photograph, right? Well, some English fans did get 'harmed' as a result of this moment in the photograph. This is a photograph from the West Indies vs England Test at Lord's in 1966. It shows a cricketer who has just completed his ton in the second innings being lifted by an over enthusiastic fan who has found his way to the middle, as fans so often used to back in the day. The batsman was none other than the gr eat Sir Gary Sobers whose 274 run partnership with his cousin David Holford had rescued West Indies from a precarious 96-5 in the match. In England's second innings and the fourth innings of the match, several English fan inspired by the West Indies fan decided to fete their hero of the innings the same way. The only problem this time around was that the man who scored a century for England - Colin Milburn - weighed 112 kilograms. So, once he completed his ton, out came several ...

#RandomCricketPhotosThatMa keMeHappy There have been few cricketers as eccentric as Jack Russell. While that's a well-known fact, another fact is that there have been few men as multi-talented as the former English wicketkeeper. Both the facts are well captured here in this photograph from 1996. As England stumbled from one disappointment to another in the sub-continent in their World Cup campai gn, here was their wicketkeeper taking his mind off from those disappointments doing what he discovered a love for almost a decade back in the same country. While he had already begun wielding the paintbrush, it was in 1987 that he got into it when he travelled to Pakistan as a reserve wicket-keeper to Bruce French. With just two and a half days of cricket for him from two months of the tour, he had a lot of time to hone his skills by making the myriad views of Pakistan his muse. He went back and put his 40 pieces of art on exhibition. In two days, they had flown off the walls. And, wit...

#RandomCricketPhotosThatMa keMeHappy Is this a cricket photo? YES, IT IS! The man here is David Frith and what he is eating is not food but paper. To be precise, he is eating the paper that carried his own prediction for the World Cup of 1983. Or 'Eating his words' as a certain Man Singh wanted him to. Before the tournament began, David Frith wrote in the Wisden Cricket Monthly that India should be made to qualify for the World Cup with the associate nations if they fare poorly in England, of which he was sure of. He gave them no chance at all and asked them to leave the tournament. And then 25th June, 1983 happened and Kapil's Devils proved Frith wrong. Emboldened by the turn in India's fortunes, Man Singh from USA wrote in a letter to WCM saying, "I will give him a sporting chance to eat his words now that the team he wrote off has won the World Cup. I will allow him to lace it with chocolate and wash it down with ale or stout." He added, "Be a goo...

#RandomCricketPhotosThatMa keMeHappy You don't see much, do you? It's a thigh pad. A thigh pad that belonged to Mark Waugh. Now, look closer. The thigh pad has annotations indicating the FC centuries Waugh Jr. made in his career. For every century scored, Waugh would draw a little matchstick man on his thigh pad with the name of the opposition against whom the century was scored written below. Cute.

# RandomCricketPhotosThatMakeMeHappy Dexter's 1993 Smog Prophecy In 1992-1993, when England visited India, they had no idea about the magnitude of disaster they were going to be a part of. They got some of it when, in the first Test in Kolkata, they floundered the trial by spin miserably after being put to sword by Azhar's classic 182. India coasted home with eight wickets in hand. The 'Brownwash' had begun for the English. Ted Dexter, the Italy born English Chairman of selectors, while dissecting his team's abysmal performance, put forward a reason for the loss that was dismissed by everyone with a chuckle. The seemingly 'sour grapes' kind of reason put forward by Dexter was that England's defeat was to be attributed to Kolkata smog. He even went on to announce that he had commissioned a report into the impact of air pollution in Indian cities. The subsequent inning defeats at Chennai and Mumbai discredited Dexter's cl...

#RandomCricketPhotosThatMa keMeHappy Botham, Pakistan and Mom-in-law For all his charisma and brilliance, Ian Botham was a bit of a loose cannon as well. In 1984, when England went on a hastily organized tour of Pakistan, Botham picked up an injury and left midway through the tour. After returning home from a tour that didn't go well for him, he made the following remark on a radio show. "Pakistan is the sort of place to send your mother-in-law for a fortnight, all expenses paid.” This obviously irked the Pakistanis and the board coaxed an apology out of the star all-rounder, but not before the statement had created quite a furore. In the 1992 World Cup match against Pakistan, after Botham was dismissd, Aamir Sohail asked him on his way back, "Who's coming next? Your mother in law?" In 2000, when England was to tour Pakistan again and Botham was to do commentary duty there, someone at Daily Mirror had this inspired idea of sending Botham’s mother-in-law Jan ...

# RandomCricketPhotosThatMakeMeHappy Wondering how's this a cricket photo? Read on. After defeating India on 15th March, South Africa had booked a place in the semi-final of the the 1992 World Cup. However, whether they would play or not in the Semi Final was dependent on a result that was beyond their control. A day after the India encounter, the referendum on Apartheid was to take place in South Africa. The team's participation in the World Cup was ensured only after ICC was assured that the whites will vote to end apartheid. However, if they had voted 'No', South Africa were most likely to sent back to isolation midway through the tournament which they had bossed till then. The White electorate voted Yes. South Africa stayed on to play England. Were robbed of a final appearance by a stupid rain rule. And yet, graciously went on to do a lap of honour for the fans in the end. So, if you wonder why don't we see South African cricketers crestfallen after a defe...

# RandomCricketPhotosThatMakeMeHappy For as long as he played for Pakistan, Shoaib Akhtar and pace were synonymous. And so were Shoaib Akhtar and theatrics. And that almost always made for great cricket viewing. You can ask anyone who was at the MCG on December 27 2004. In the final over before Tea on the second day, Justin Langer had driven one on the off side where substitute Afridi had brought to halt a proverbial tracer bullet. That got Akhtar going. He wasn’t pleased. A stare followed a spit in Langer’s direction and that got the batsman going. A bouncer followed and Langer had a few words to say to Akhtar who had almost reached the batting crease on his follow through now. The next delivery was better directed and hit Langer on the forearm who, sensing the danger, quickly asked for an armguard, something he usually never wore. And Akhtar was quick to mock it when at the beginning of his run-up of the next delivery, he laughed while acting as if he was hurt on...

#RandomCricketPhotosThatMa keMeHappy Plastered hand and perspective Among all the photos of Malcolm Marshall on the internet, I believe, this is the most important one of his for perspective. With his thumb broken at two places while fielding at gully, Marshall could have easily sat out in the third Test of a 5 match series in 1984 which his team was leading 2-0 against the hosts England. Instead, he came out to bat with a plastered hand to allow Larry Gomes score a ton and then bowled with a plaster cast to take 7-53 to win the match for his team. Was there any challenge that Marshall couldn't triumph? It didn't seem so then, at least for a man who finished his career with 386 wickets at an average of just 21. 15 years later, while he was coaching West Indies in the 1999 Cricket World Cup in the same country, his colon cancer was diagnosed. In no time, the man who could instill fear in the heads of the most fearless of batsmen in his prime, was reduced to almost 25 kgs by...

#RandomCricketPhotosThatMa keMeHappy If you are not a trivia cruncher, you might not know English leg spinner Eric Hollies. The major claim to fame for Eric Hollies is this picture where he's not even properly visible. To put it straight, Hollies is the man who denied Bradman a Test average of 100 by dismissing him for a duck in his final innings in the 1948 Oval Test. Now here's the story. Hollies didn't even want to play the match. As England had lost the Ashes 3-0 already, he thought it didn't make sense of him to play for the national team as fixtures for Warwickshire were lined up and playing the Test would have meant missing out on two Championship matches. But selectors insisted he played since he had picked up 8 wickets in a tour match against the Aussies. Interestingly Bradman’s dismissal wasn’t a stroke of luck for Hollies. Hollies had prepared himself for it. In a tour match earlier at Edgbaston, he had deceived Bradman with a googly. And then the wily cu...

# RandomCricketPhotosThatMakeMeHappy Iconic moments from a classic Ashes series that wouldn't have probably happened had the DRS been in place a few years before it eventually made its debut on the international stage. With 108 to get and only 2 wickets left, England pretty much had the match in their pocket. However, Warne, Kasprowicz and Lee staged one of the finest comebacks by a tail ever seen and brought Australia within 3 runs of an improbable victory. And that's when Kasprowicz gloved one to Jones behind him. Bowden raised his finger and sounded the death knell for Australian hopes to hand England a 2 run victory. Kasprowicz, however, wasn't out. Harmison's bouncer did brush Kasper's right glove as he took evasive action, but television replays revealed that his hand was about three inches off the handle at the time. Cricket rules state that a glove can only be considered part of the bat when contact is made "between the ball an...

# RandomCricketPhotosThatMakeMeHappy On 25th March 1980, Scunthorpe played Bournemouth. In the first few minutes of the second half, Ron Ashman' cup of woes seemed to be overflowing when Graham Pugh got injured with his team trailing by a couple of goals. With no option left, he decided to sub Pugh with a newbie who was taking the field for Scunthorpe for the first time in the match. And when he took field in the 52nd minute, drama, like always, couldn't resist itself from following the man! And it did. Following the debutant's introduction, the game turned on its head. From staring at a certain defeat, Scunthorpe went on to accrue three goals in eight minutes out of thin air to level the scores 3-3. In the dying minutes of this humdinger of a contest, Ashman's sub fired one towards the post. But as luck would have it, the debutant's shot was blocked on the line. And that's how what could have been one of the most memorable debuts in football...

#RandomCricketPhotosThatMa keMeHappy Dale Steyn once recalled a conversation he had with his skipper Faf du Plessis. With injury concerns and an ageing body occupying much of his headspace, he said to his captain, " Hey Faf, I think I'm not going to celebrate that hard when I get those dodgy wickets. The ones where the batsman smashes it to square-leg, because I haven't quite earned it. I would  rather celebrate the ones where I have worked the guy over. Wicket with an inswinger after two away-swingers kind of a thing." Faf didn't take time to shoot down the thought. He replied saying. "No. No. No. You don't understand how much the team enjoys when you celebrate like that, how much it lifts the team. And that's why you need to celebrate. To lift the side." Those celebrations will be missed. As will be those jaffas he could produce out of thin air. In an era, where we discredit batsmen because of how much the game has been tilted in their fav...

# RandomCricketPhotosThatMakeMeHappy Once you've picked your jaw from the floor or dialed down the judgment, I will tell you why this Sean Dempsey capture is much more than just another photo of a woman in lingerie. The lady in the picture is a former model named Debbie Lee who used to be the girlfriend of Australian cricketer Stuart Law when this photo was clicked in 1998. With fellow models Shelly Moore and Adele Graham, she had come to pose for a Lingerie fashion show at the Lord's cricket ground. After posing for several photographs, she sneaked into the famous Lord's Members' Area Pavilion where this photo was clicked. Not too long after the photos, security chief Jim Hogben probed her with questions like "How did you get here?" before telling her categorically, "You are not allowed in this area.'' This was a week after MCC members had voted to keep the membership of the club all male. A woman posing in lingerie in the...

#RandomCricketPhotosThatMa keMeHappy Since someone mentioned yesterday that most of my stories are about the major Test playing nations and not from other countries, well here's one for you. In 2014, Brendan Taylor decided to tie the knot at the age of 28 with Kelly Anne Readings. The date fixed was March 29th. But it wasn't going to be easy. The World T20 fixtures were announced soon after the date was finalized and Taylor calculated that if Zimbabwe progressed beyond the group stages, his wedding day might clash with one of the match days. And so, Taylor postponed it and found a new date for the important day. 29th April. On 12th February, Taylor found himself in a fix once again as something he wasn't expecting happened. An IPL franchise had picked him at the auctions. Due to elections, the IPL this time was to start on April 16 and end in June. Luckily for Taylor, his bosses at Sunrisers Hyderabad relented and he was allowed to join the team a little later, after h...

#RandomCricketPhotosThatMa keMeHappy Sambaran Banerjee averaged a modest 25 with the bat in 75 FC matches. In 1989, however, he led Bengal to a Ranji Trophy win. And in April 1996, he was at Delhi's Taj Palace as one of the selectors to select the squad to travel to England. The other selectors as well as Captain Azhar and Coach Sandeep Patil wanted Sunil Joshi. But Banerjee put his foot down for  he believed Joshi was a bowler who could bat a bit and instead tried to push the case for a batsman he knew could prove to be handy with the ball in English conditions. Banerjee had come to Delhi two days ago to meet ex-cricketers to convince them that media reports about the player's attitude were inaccurate. All his efforts paid off when he gave his player's career a new lease of life by putting him on that plane to England. Apparently, Azhar left the meeting extremely angry on being given a player he didn't want in his team. Little did he know then that Sambaran Banerj...

#RandomCricketPhotosThatMa keMeHappy When England won the 2005 Ashes, it didn't only break a barren spell of 16 years for the team but also ended a 14-year long wait for someone. Born in Rhodesia, this man first applied for a British passport in 1991. And his application kept on getting rejected. He really started to panic in 2002 when conditions back home began to deteriorate since it meant the  chances of his passport getting renewed plummeted. Somehow, he managed to obtain a South Africa passport at that time while he still waited the British authorities to shower some mercy on him. On 13th September, 2005, a day after he had coached England to an Ashes win after 16 years, Duncan Fletcher received a text during the celebrations that gave him news he had been waiting for 14 years. He had been finally granted a British Passport. Was it because of his role in the Ashes victory that had sent the country in a frenzy? The Home Office downplayed the conjecture by calling it just a...

#RandomCricketPhotosThatMa keMeHappy A dismissal that caused a traffic mess, apparently. The beginning of the end had begun for Ian Botham as we entered the last decade of the 20th century. In the 5th Test against West Indies in 1991, Botham's career received a fresh lease of life as he was given another chance by the selectors. Having scored an uncharacteristic 31 in his comeback bid, Botham los t both his balance and wicket trying to hook an Ambrose delivery. He dislodged a bail while trying to avoid the stumps and was out hit wicket. It should have ended there. But that, was the beginning of the drama. In the Test Match Special commentary box, Jonathan Agnew remarked in all innocence that 'He just didn't quite get his leg over'. Now that would seem an apt visual description of what panned out on the pitch but there's a little catch. 'Legover' is an euphemism for intercourse in the English language. The remark set off Agnew's co-commentator Brian ...

#RandomCricketPhotosThatMa keMeHappy Bob Taylor and the story of two nicks What's happening here? Indian skipper Gundappa Viswanath stopping English wicketkeeper Bob Taylor in the Jubilee Test of 1980 to ask whether he nicked the ball or not after the umpire had given his decision and he had started walking. What happened next? On Taylor's insistence that he didn't hit the ball, he was reinstated to the pitch. Just a year before this, Taylor had reached 97 against Australia from 361 deliveries. Rodney Hogg bowled the ball which Taylor edged and walked. Later in the day, the umpire, Max O'Connell, came into the dressing room at close of play and said, "Thanks for walking, Bob. I wouldn't have given you out." Sadly for him, that 97, the one he scored playing more than 360 deliveries, would remain his highest score in 57 Tests long career.

#RandomCricketPhotosThatMa keMeHappy Since the time I started comprehending the world around myself, I have been fascinated with sports. Cricket, despite its complexities, drew me towards itself like nothing else. But as I have grown up, I have realised that the magnitude of complexities of Duckworth Lewis or Follow on rule or the LBW quite simply pales in front of what exists beyond the closed do ors of a dressing room. And that's true for any team sport, not only cricket. The champion Australian side of the late 90's and 2000's was built around the talisman of Warne and unwavering grit of skipper Waugh. Obviously, the likes of McGrath and the younger Waugh were no less important, but Waugh was the natural leader and a part of the old guard who had been ripened to the core before he assumed leadership. Warnie, as has been said about him in innumerable descriptions, was a magician who had shown an ability as well as penchant to spin Australia to victory out of nowhere....

#RandomCricketPhotosThatMa keMeHappy Personal contests like these make cricket spicier. Mutual respect and admiration are nice things to have off the field but a little bit of needle between cricketers of the highest pedigree always make the game more watchable. Separated by a good 40 yards are two mercurial characters - Mitchell Johnson and Kevin Pietersen on the stage of Ashes. While the runs  no more flowed from the bat like they did in the past, it did little to change Pietersen's 'I'm next only to god' demeanor on the crease. But he was taming Mitchell Johnson, who with his No shave November Mo, had acquired this rather demonic quality and pace that scared most English batsmen witless in Ashes 2013.` But not Pietersen, who after having issues with the sight screen, began gardening down the pitch, much to Johnson's dismay. The best thing about this photo is that you can almost hear Johnson screaming "Freaking get on with it, @#$#%$!"

#RandomCricketPhotosThatMa keMeHappy So many envy sportsmen for their lives filled with achievements and the limelight that it brings. But there is a flip side to it that many don't understand because sportsmen don't talk about it. The only man to have been knighted while still playing cricket would testify. At the peak of his career, Sir Richard Hadlee suffered a crippling mental breakdown. And  it got so bad that he even thought of taking his own life, a fact he admitted several years later. "Being in the limelight is not a place where you want to be when suffering from a depression it is a lonely and dark place to be and all you want to do is hide," he once said. In another interview, he added, "As time went on you have a lot of self-doubt and you start thinking very negatively and questioning the will to live." "That is how tough it can get. It was serious at the time when you question the will to live. "You just want to run away from it a...

#RandomCricketPhotosThatMa keMeHappy The Kiwi way of playing Cricket! There is a lot more that this photograph hides than it reveals. In fact, thanks to the protagonist's poker face, it tells us nothing about what has just transpired. Just a few overs ago, New Zealand looked set to draw the 3 match series 1-1 when the 9th wicket was taken. In their eyes, they had already won it but Danny Morrison's appeal for a certain LBW against McDermott got a reply in negative from the umpire. It all came down to the hero of the match Richard Hadlee, who had already taken 10 wickets, to dismiss an absolute bunny with the bat, Mike Whitney, to win it for Kiwis with the last six deliveries of the match at the MCG. Plucky Whitney saw it off. Australia won the series one nil. Hadlee's 10 wickets hadn't proved good enough to give his team a series equalling win. But seconds after bowling the last delivery and not getting the desired return, he can be seen here congratulating a jubil...

#RandomCricketPhotosThatMa keMeHappy Brett Lee's Not A Chainsaw celebration This celebration of Brett Lee was one of the enduring images of the 2003 World Cup. He drew a lot of flak from those who thought a 'chainsaw celebration' was too violent for a cricket game. The good news is that it was never a chainsaw. The bad news, however, is that it wasn't any less violent. Here is what Lee revealed in his autobiography about the celebration that in a Twitter Q&A years later, he called his most favorite one. "Funnily, one of my celebrations has drawn particular comment and has come to be known as the 'chainsaw', because apparently it resembles me pulling a cord as though trying to start a machine." "The only thing was, though, I wasn't starting a machine." "In fact, that celebration does have a definite meaning to it: I'm giving a knockout punch as though I'm hitting someone to the ground." "I haven't bother...

#RandomCricketPhotosThatMa keMeHappy THE CORNERED TIGER T-SHIRT This, for me, is easily the most iconic Cricket World Cup picture. Exactly 27 years ago, this is how Imran Khan walked out for the toss for the 1992 World Cup Final. Just look at the confidence on his face. This wasn't the first time he was wearing the t-shirt though. It made its first appearance when Pakistan played Australia in the group stage, a do-or-die encounter for Imran's men. Before this match, they had lost to West Indies, South Africa and arch-rivals India. They were skittled out for 74 against England before rain saved them. An early exit looked imminent for Imran, who had been called out of retirement by Zia-ul-Haq on live Television after he had hung up his boots post 1987 World Cup. At the toss, surprised at what he saw Ian Chappell, now handling commentary duties, asked him "You’re known as the Lion of Lahore. What’s this? (Pointing at the tiger emblazoned on the t-shirt) Imran repl...

#RandomCricketPhotosThatMa keMeHappy In 1986, when Nelson Mandela was enduring his 27-year sentence for opposition to white minority rule, he was visited by Malcolm Fraser, who had served as the Prime Minister of Australia from 1975 to 1983. Fraser was one of the staunchest anti-apartheid voice and it was supposed to be quite a decisive meeting between the two leaders. However, Fraser was surprise d when the first thing he asked him was, 'Mr Fraser, can you tell me is Donald Bradman still alive?' When Fraser later met Mandela after he had become the President, he carried a bat with him for Madiba signed by Bradman with the message - 'To Nelson Mandela, in recognition of a great unfinished innings.'