Friday, March 27, 2015

Aga Aga Mhashi....

Forget the World Cup 2015.  Dhoni. Smith. Maxwell. Kohli . New Zealand.  AB de Villiers, Dale Steyn.

Cricket , as we know it, has been through a number of changes.  Test Cricket, stuffily, but unwillingly turning a blind eye to One Day 50 over cricket; which in turn sniffed at, but still allowed the shenanigans of  T-20 Cricket. 

The original red cherry, changed color occasionally, with the advent of games played after the sun had set (some say on the British Empire).   The number of balls you could bowl, to get a team out , changed, depending on whether it was a 50 over One Day game or T20, twenty over game.  While bowlers got desperate and batsmen whipped their bats around , someone decided how many threatening balls you could bowl in an over, and made a rule. 

Cricket test whites, a completely inappropriate color for 5 days of swishing and falling in the outfield , not to mention rubbing balls on trousers  to polish them , have only benefited dhobis and now given way to kindergaarten type matching track pants and tees in horrible colors , thanks to completely irrelevant companies agreeing to sponsor costs. 

They even made rules, for where fixed number of fielders could stand for part of the game, in a circle way inside,  from the boundary. It is however pertinent to note that the Silly nomenclatures  such as ,  silly point, first slip, second slip have been kept unchanged.  Some guys went unnecessarily ballistic putting magic lights on the stumps and bails,after the stump microphone stuff got boring  with the wicketkeeper chitchat.

Which brings us to the point.  (And it is not Silly .)

The innovation in cricket. Moving stumps. Also alternatively called Sustainable Eco friendly Cricket.  

Refer the above graphic. 

Introducing, Dagdu, the first brand ambassador, and Aga Mhashi, the bovine second.

Aga Mhashi , the moving medium, that holds the stumps.  Needs no bails. Uses no wood . No cutting of trees.  Dagdu bats in style within a crease defined by 1.5 tail lengths. The aforesaid tail belonging to Aga Mhashi.

The pitch has copious amounts of straw, to keep the dust in check as well as for Aga Mhashi to imbibe , during the  team Milk Interval happens on and off  the field.

The amazing thing is that about wide balls.  Anything that gets bowled outside the four legs of Aga Mhashi is a wide ball, and the batting team gets 4 runs.

You can do away with the wicket keeper altogether  sometimes. And make him a slip or something. (Which might just be possible given some slippery stuff which could be around unpredictably).

 Anything that hits the batsman's legs, and then Aga Mhashi's legs, and bypasses the new slip (taking his name seriously) ,  gives you Leg byes, as Aga Mhashi turns and glares at Deep Fine Leg.  The no of runs you get depends on how many Aga Mhashi's legs the ball  touched.

You may not even need umpires .  Maybe just one at the bowling end.  The square leg umpire will possibly cease to exist, and so will the third umpire, who had nothing to do than watch TV the whole day. 

A careful perusal  of the game,  the actual play, a chewing of the cud while  coming to a decision, and a solid whack of the tail on the batsman's rear will indicate an "out!", while a sneeze and a snort will give him a "life" .

While the ICC is still coming to terms with this, BCCI has instructed IPL to ban red color uniforms on teams .  A suggestion to ban red outfits on T20 cheerleaders was shot down because of inadequate red yardage. Someone has typically gone to court on this, and the head of BCCI is currently consulting temples and astrologers because of Aga Mhashi's  place in our culture,  and the need to cut down on the  use of wood.

The software companies currently minting a fortune,  designing and coding softwares that show imaginary extrapolated balls flying over the stumps, hitting middle stump, missing leg stump etc, are in the throes of   alternate system design, given that the position of stumps will now be a function of time. At some point Aga Mhashi might sit, and stumps may be at knee level, harking back to the old  cricket days, with wicket keepers mobilizing to pounce.

Lot of theoretical research happening at the world's leading universities in England, using perturbation theory , trying to predict the path of the  natural movement of Aga Mhashi throughout the session, and therefore the stumps.  It has also introduced a new method of bowling where the ball zigzags to the batsman.  

Someone suggested that the symbol for the partial derivative in the differential equations used to predict random stump movement, was similar to Aga Mhashi's tail, and the ICC Committee has referred this to a select committee in Baramati, which has much bovine expertise.  Several Bihar politicians who have life long expertise in Aga Mhashi prototypes, as well as  Power Play, have been co-opted onto this committee.  

In the meanwhile, cricket goes on.  New Zealand and Australia, preparing for the One Day 50 over World Cup 2015 final ,  are thrilled for their respective dairy industries, and plans are afoot to get a prototype of Aga Mhashi as part of the presentation party during the final.

Dagdu, the iconic batsman pictured above, just had a question.  

He wanted to know, rather,  his bowler wanted to know,  if SarpaTee (underarm)  balls would be allowed, now that the stumps were raised and moving.

It appears that one of the Chapell brothers of Australia had something to say on that.     

Details awaited ....           

 

2 comments:

  1. Oh my gracious! I'm sorry to say I have a hard time understanding baseball much less cricket. My son started to follow cricket in Bangladesh though when he working there and enjoyed it.

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    1. Indians are completely cricket crazy and it holds true for much of the subcontinent. And yes, I remember reading about your trip posts when you visited Bangladesh to visit your son. My best wishes to him .

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