By Kriky
March 16 2007

Sri Lanka v. Bermuda March 15, 2007 Bermuda drew first blood. Jayasurya was hit on his fingers and seeing the blood I thought the Bermudans would faint, but no, they showed a stomach for a fight (the girth of some of them amazes me). The fight lasted all of one over. The second over must rank among the longest overs ever bowled in a World Cup. After that the only point of interest was to see if the earth shook each time Leverock hit the ground. On that point, I thought he fielded much better than our own 'Dive after the ball has gone past' specialist Kumble. But seriously, the ICC definitely has to think hard about what to do with the minnows. Maybe they could use the 'five thinking hats concepts' for some new solutions and after that go home and ask their wives for commonsensical answers which would be better. In the end Sri Lanka cantered home in their sleep… speaking of which…

Zimbabwe v. Ireland March 15, 2007

This match was a bit more interesting than the other one and hence I went to sleep in the 46th over of the Ireland innings. I miss the old Zimbabwe players, the Flower brothers, Campbell, “The Chicken Farmer”, Taibu - they were a class above this current lot.

Bray (what a name!!) showed that a stint in the upper reaches can definitely help. While he was super strong square of the wickets, it seems someone forgot to teach him how to play in front of it. So he came up with this clever ploy wherein he hit his pad hard and close to the ball, hence making it difficult for the umpire to decipher what hit first, the bat or the pad. But still a hundred is a hundred and he has got two in seven matches. Good Show!

Since I fell asleep I had to scour the news channels to find out that the match was a tie. I flipped through every Desi channel including Bangla and Punjabi (two among the many languages I dont understand) to see if anyone could come up with how thrilling this match was, but sadly the answer was in the negative. Still all credit to Ireland for greening the Zimboks. The high point of my channel surfing was this comment from the anchors of the dumbest all girl trio of anchors on television…on Headlines Today – they asked “So will Ireland beat Pak next?”' Yeah babies, they will, the day Osama kidnaps all three of you and returns you back with the note written in perfect English that reads – “Thanks, but no thanks”.

I must mention these two brilliant observations from the genius commentators assembled to enlighten us lowly cricket fans:

1. L Sivaramakrishnan: When the Bermudans were bowling wides as wide as their waistlines he said – “The Bermudians need to understand and learn the value of bowling line and length” Hey Shiva - if only you could have understood and passed this message from your top brain to the bit you sit on, you would have had a much longer cricket career and more importantly would be commentating with the guys on ESPN instead of being stuck here.

2. Rameez Raja (my favorite): When Rainsford bowled this ball that beat the batsman and Rameez gushed: “That was intelligent bowling, he bowled the ball a bit wider of the off stump inviting the batsman to drive and shaped it away to beat him”..yeah Rameez, except the friggin ball was a NO BALL...Goose!