my  block

where uzairs roam

Another entrant into the pantheon of incredibly stupid sports articles: Mukul Kesavan’s Subedar Major Haq and a Company of Sepoys, printed today on Cricinfo. The run up to the World Cup is obviously a quiet period for writers, which is why we get subjected to tripe like this, which tells us:

In this the150th anniversary year of the rebellion of 1857, a good way of understanding the Pakistani squad is to see it as a company of turbulent sepoys.

Trumpets please.

Never has there been quite as stupid a basis for an article. Never has an author stretched an analogy so painfully far. Never has an author been so intoxicated by the comparisons he’s forcing that he’s so totally ignored their invalidity.

Inzi comes off as a tyrant with sinus trouble and poor Shahid Afridi ends up a shaheed while Mr. Kesavan waxes lyrical:

Subedar Major I.U. Haq has great phlegm and can hold a position forever. Lance Naik Afridi, urf Shaheed [sic], (sometimes reduced to the ranks for recklessness beyond the call of duty), can turn a skirmish into a rout single-handed, but it is never clear whether his actions will cause Pak Company to be the router or the routee.

Of course, that bit of fluff isn’t enough — Mr. Kesavan is fully aware there are 9 other members of the team to blindly label, and the not-small matter of their faith-based bond as well:

Subedar Major Haq has been working on this with Pak Company’s new secret weapon: the prayer huddle. This formation’s solitary drawback is the possibility of being ambushed from behind while bonding in faith. Naib Subedar Yousuf, however, has solved that problem by suggesting that Sepoy Kaneria, surplus to requirement in the prayer huddle as Yousuf himself once was, ought to act as a look-out.

In the immortal words of Daffy Duck, I demand that you shoot me now!