Thanks for the killer intro, guys! But I have a confession to make. I have never played organized cricket. Though I trained for it, I could never make my school team and even if I had tried, I would have never made my college team either. And when we formed a team to play in a local league in the Midwest, I barely made the team and that too only for a couple of games to make up the numbers.

But if you met me and we got around to talking cricket, you would leave me thinking that you had just met a professional cricketer or someone who had played cricket in some capacity. Little would you know that I can’t hit the ball to save my skin! And that is why I am here. Because I can talk cricket and I sometimes talk like I have played it.

If you are still wondering what on earth qualifies me to be a guest blogger here and that too a blogger brought in mainly to talk about cricket, welcome to the reality that is 21st century India. Adam Smith apparently labelled Britain, a “nation of shopkeepers”. If he were alive today, he would label 21st century India as a nation, not of sportsmen, but of sports watchers. Actually make that “cricket watchers”. So while this predominantly vegetarian nation (I think it is a fallacy that India is predominantly vegetarian) cannot seem to produce a freakishly fast pace bowler, we definitely seem to have produced millions of self absorbed armchair cricket pundits. Yours truly is a card carrying member of this same fraternity.

So throughout the duration of this World Cup (oh, did I mention there is a seven week long cricket tournament starting in a few days?), I shall bore you to death with arbit fundas about the game of cricket. There will be some trivia, some ego boosters (for self) and the odd match report, but for the most part what you will read here, would be opinion pieces. Do leave your comments and if needed, brickbats too.

And since I have been spoken in the same breath as Regis, why don’t I end this post with a proper trivia question? In fact let me make it a simple visual. Go ahead and identify the man in the picture. Going by his reputation, rather than the red cherry, he might prefer to throw a phone once he is done batting. If you know the answer, don’t spoil it for everyone else by putting it in the comments section. Instead, email your answers to anantha [at] gmail [dot] com with “Ãœber Trivia-1″ in the subject. The right answer shall be given with the next post.

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