WADA: The holy cows & little lambs

The debate rages on, the latest to join the issue is Shashank Manohar, chief of the BCCI. While he has not said anything about what BCCI’s answer would be to the Sports Ministry, he has said they would discuss about the issue with ICC.

May be he could have made the lives of the journo's simple had he said, “Let me discuss that with Sharad Pawar and come back”

Going back to the January of 2009, it was the ICC which had approved and implemented the WADA regulations. I am not sure if a single official at ICC could take a unilateral decision to sign the regulations. For, the ICC is supposedly a council. Hence it wouldn't be wrong if one assumed that the decisions must be consensual.

The Indian board and all the other “little lambs” that are following the BCCI today had time till July ’09 to think about WADA. To read, re-read, evaluate & re-evaluate the merits and demerits. The BCCI woke up after August 01, 2009, that was when the “Whereabouts” clause was to be implemented. That too after a couple of holy cows moo-ed.

The worst thing is that NADA, the National Anti-doping Agency of India has been writing to BCCI to know what their response / opinion / view on doping and WADA regulations are, but the BCCI has not been responding.

BCCI’s holier than thou behaviour could be justified by saying that they are not answerable to the government or any governmental agency, they are a private co-operative society after all. But when it comes to upholding the integrity of the game, when it comes to guarding the spirit of sportsmanship the BCCI should have answered.

Add this to the BCCI’s rhetoric of starting their own dope control agency which I am sure has not even seen a pen and paper, it makes one whine. I am sure the BCCI can get away with murder in India, because they are not dependent on the government and they are cash rich but the other “little lambs” that want to follow this Mary today would have to herd back to their respective farms once their governments wink on this issue.

So it wouldn’t be long before the BCCI is left orphaned with an immoral cause.

WADA speaks to BCC!

WADA, the World Anti Doping Agency spoke to us at Bored. Too much dope about anti-dope across media and too many interpretations of what WADA & "Whereabouts" stand for, our objective was to clear the air up.

And that is precisely what Ms. Julie Masse, WADA's Communications Director did, speaking to yours truly

Anirudhha & Logos - Part II

We saw Anirudhha's response to the facebook quizzes a while back, that was about cars.

This one is about everything. From soaps to supermarkets, from his favorite music icons to IPL teams, TV channels and many more.

Some 60 of them were shown to Anirudhha and you can see how he manages them.

A test match fact file...

Q called the first test between Pakistan and Srilanka in Galle, A more than happening test match.

True it is. And he also had 3 Q's & A's about the match.

One of them was that debutants shared 16 wickets between them. He said he wouldn't be surprised if these (3 he had mentioned) had happened in the Galle test for the first time in history.

You would be surprised, of course...

It happened during 1988 in the Madras test between the Westindies and India. There was a young leggie called Narendra Hirwani who made his debut in that match. He took all of 16 Westindian wickets.

That was not all, there was another leftarm spinner who was also a capable lower order batsman (It was ironic that this leftarm spinner forgot bowling to become a opening bat soon...) called WV Raman who also made his debut. He took 1 wicket.

So I remember an instance when 2 debutants shared 17 between them. It was another story that the (in)famous Ajay Sharma and Phil Simmons also debuted in the same match.

But here comes a twist in the tale...

There is another instance when 40 wickets fell in a match and all 40 were captured by debutants. How ??

It was 1887 and that was the first test (called the first official test) between a combined Australian team and the visiting English team. Australia batted first Charles Bannerman scored the first runs of test history. And in the end Australia won the test by 45 runs.

Another trivia to close this post...

This was probably the only instance when 24 people who made their debut were there in the middle.

Yes 22 players belonging to the two sides and the 2 umpires. Add the scorers the number swells !!