Gentleman's game no more

Kiwi Daniel Vettori must be feeling chuffed that, at US$625,000, he's worth almost double Glenn McGrath. And I wish my surname was Pathan so I'd have a chance at collecting a cheque for US$925,000 from Kings XI Punjab.

Twenty20 cricket is also turning into a huge culture shock for Western players and even for Western commentators. I was watching a game in which Greg Chappell was giving commentary with former Pakistan batsman Aamir Sohail. This is what I heard:

CHAPPELL: OK, Aamir, I think you've got Shahid Afridi sitting on the Deccan Chargers bench holding the mike to have a chat.

SOHAIL: Yes, Greg, I think he's ready to have a chat.

CHAPPELL: Right, well cross to Shahid Afridi now.

SOHAIL: Ha, tho Shahid, thum yeh bathao ke thum ethe saareh payse ke saat kya karoghe? Aakhir, in Hindustaniyoh ne thumhe paanch laakh se ziyaada Amrikan daalar diyeh hai.

AFRIDI: Ha, Aamir bhai, mujhe patha nahi ke mai ithe sare pays eke saath kiya karoon.

And on and on it went. Five minutes of the chastest Hindi and Urdu Greg Chappell would have ever heard from a fellow English-speaking commentator.

And Chappell was smart enough to know who was buttering his bread, and that any requests for subtitles just wouldn't be tolerated. I, too, will not translate. All you white cricket tragics out there must now get used to the fact that us brown sahibs rule the cricketing roost!

Soon we will be changing the name of the game to kirkit (in honour of my mum's terrific accent).

Your involvement in the game will from now on be limited to providing pretty cheerleaders and first-class players ready to sell their cricketing souls. And if you don't like it, you can go and play your own boring game where you might not even get a result even after playing and watching for an entire working week.

Because from now on, real cricket is a game whose result simply cannot be predicted until some overweight sari-clad South Indian lady starts singing.