Cricket,Blogging and Morons

The Fake IPL Player (FIP) saga finally came to an end with the blogger posting a 'shadow video' but refusing to reveal his identity as he had promised earlier.

The comments on the blog in response to this final post make for interesting reading.Most people are livid with FIP for the anticlimax, but as he himself said in the video 'It was all a shadow play'.Its rather amusing because FIP has managed to make everyone look and feel like a bunch of morons.But more of that later.

There is lots of speculation by people who have commented on the blog as to the identity of FIP.The most popular guesses are

1.Aakash Chopra (as he had his tournament cut short by the KKR management and has written cricket columns before)
2.Rohan Gavaskar (because of the Bengal Connection,and because he is part of the ICL)
3.Sreeram Veera, Cricinfo Journalist (I don't really know why)
4.Rahul Bose (because the profile of the person in the video as well as voice and intonation are uncannily like Rahul Bose)

I don't have an opinion on any of these speculations, though I must say that when I saw the video, I immediately thought of Rahul Bose.

The evidence seems to suggest that only a group of people as opposed to a single person could have come up with a blog like this.And its very difficult to say who they are.

If we look at the quality of writing and the brand of humour and wit which the blogger has used used,its quite clear (with due apologies to Kolkata Knight Riders(KKR) team members in particular , and cricketers in general) that the blog has not been written by a member of the KKR.Articulate cricketers from the sub continent are as rare as English batsmen who play spin well.But it does not rule out the involvement of KKR players or insiders as sources of information.A different person with the writing skills could have written and posted the blog.

Whether the whole thing was an elaborate fake or not,it was certainly entertaining (some of the pseudonyms are really good!).It also served a more useful purpose in highlighting some facts about show business and cricket which Indian society already knows but feels embarrassed to admit because it shows us up as the real morons in the whole scheme of things or exposes our idols in a bad light.Two of these facts worth noting are :

1.Whether its movies or cricket, all those massive amounts of money ultimately generated come from our pockets,because we spend time in front of the TV or both time and money in cinema halls.We don't earn a single paisa.If that does not make you feel like a moron, I wonder what will.
It follows that people in the entertainment business will always try to manipulate our minds and our eyeballs so that they can cash in.One of the things I suspected from the beginning while watching the IPL coverage was echoed by FIP in a post : he claimed the producers are only showing the crowded parts of the stadium and the 'atmosphere' and 'excitement' which is gleefully pointed out by commentators in every game is usually staged.For me, that is only a few steps away from orchestrating the entire match (I did not use the word 'fixing'!).And the mid innings strategy break would certainly be a great help in doing that.

2.You can make rubbish films and still make money from them because we the Indian people,being morons,give so much adulation to the Bollywood crowd that we go out and watch any bilge they throw at us. But cricket is a different matter.It is a sport,and in a sport there are winners and losers.And even morons don't like losers.
So you can throw the money ,buy the best bunch of players (KKR is an excellent team on paper), throw some more money,go for a massive media blitz and still end up at the bottom of the table.Why ? Because cricket is a sport.Its not a three hour Bollywood film which has had the same simple formula for success for decades : stars + plagiarism +marketing = HIT!
Let that be a lesson to KKR and Mr Shah Rukh Khan.Fittingly by now all three teams with the Bollywood connection have been booted out of the tournament.

The last post from the blogger was entitled "FIP RIP".Now that the IPL is almost over, the blog will indeed rest in peace, and whether it was a fake or not, one hopes that after reading it all of us morons become a little smarter.