Crucket

Ever wanted to throw a tomato at Lalit Modi? Of course you have. I have, many times. A good, juicy, over-ripe one right in the nose for splitting cricket and getting so many good New Zealand players banned. But even this morning I was tensing my tomato-throwing arm when I read that the ICC had to deny his claims that his Champions 20-20 League had been added to the Future Tours Programme. Who does he think he is?

And I wouldn’t be the first – 2379 tomatoes have already been thrown at him. (I should say though that I am also inclined to give him some applause for creating the IPL and for the Herculean feat of ensuring it ran this year.)

This Connect site, where people are throwing tomatoes and bursting into applause, looks like it might contain countless buried treasures. A quick browse shows that Harbhajan Singh and Shanthakumaran Sreesanth are in a duel for tomatoes (with 484 and 472, respectively). However, Saurav Ganguly is in a league of his own with 7165.

It’s hard to think who is most tomato worthy in the New Zealand team. Ross Taylor maybe for not valuing his wicket more highly. Jacob Oram for all his whining recently. Jesse Ryder for trying to piss his career away. Brendon McCullum for being too big for his boots. Worthiness is not of great importance here though; since it is an Indian site, the most important thing is visibility, and with his gold helmet glinting at the beginning of every Kolkata innings, no New Zealand player is more visible than Brendon McCullum. And therefore McCullum leads the other New Zealanders in pretty much every category, with 1262 tomatoes thrown at him, 3618 roses handed to him, 518 pairs of hand ringing out applause and 3 songs dedicated to him. And then there are the comments: “God’s miracle”, “hearthrob”, “he is best”, “hats off”, “fan!”, “you bloody ghorey” (that last by the way is not so complementary).