FCKING BLOG

The Champions League T20 is a giant leap for the fantasy kind simply because of the number of  teams involved. I advise you download the schedule, print it out, stick a copy in your loo, memorize the schedule, do your research and make your bloody changes on time.

Don’t be perplexed by the number of people you have to choose from and don’t be fooled by presence of big names. A lot of players in this tournament are T20 specialists. They’re average if not shit in other versions but awesome in T20.

A rundown on the teams:

Cape Cobras: The South African champs will miss Graeme Smith who had to pull out due to his upper limb dysfunction but they still have Herschelle Gibbs, JP Duminy, Charl Langeveldt & a maniacal South African/Bond villain will to succeed.

Deccan Chargers: The 50 slammin Adam Gilchrist, the innings finishin, hat-trick takin Rohit Sharma, the fast bowlin RP Singh, the fast bowlin, invective hurlin Ryan Harris took the team all the way in this years IPL. Their all round department looks a bit weak with Andrew Symonds coming off a quadriceps injury and no match practice in 3 months and Dwayne Smith choosing to play for Sussex but Scott Styris could fill that gap up. Literally.

Delhi Daredevils: The sight of Sehwag walking out to bat with Dilshan. The carnage. Waves upon waves of charging, barging attacks by Gambhir, & Karthik. Ashish Nehra & Dirk Nannes running in from both ends. Daniel Vettori. Have I painted a picture vivid enough?

Diamond Eagles: The precious stone birds of prey have a lot of T20 stars in their squad, most importantly Ryan McLaren, Boeta Dippenaar, Dillon Du Preez & Morne van Wyk who kept & batted excellently for Kolkata Knight Riders earlier this year.

Speed Blitz Blues (New South Wales): NSW has in its squad a number of Australia players. Among them, their best spinners (Simon Katich) best batsmen ( Brett Lee & Nathan Hauritz) & best pacers (Stuart Clark & Doug Bollinger). They also have under production coming attractions David Warner & Philip Hughes in their ranks, so watch out for them, like, now!

Otago Volts: The electric team, the thunderbolts have in their ranks Nathan & Brendon McCullum, Dimitri Mascarenhas & Aaron Redmond, all players who have had impressive T20 careers. Also in the team are New Zealand national players Ian Butler & Neil Broom.

Royal Challengers Bangalore: They will miss their inspirational Captain Kevin but sidekick Kumble should do just well in this extravagant line up of Dravid, Kallis, Steyn, van der Merwe & Boucher. All the famous names played some role in their road to the final but among the local boys, only Manish Pandey played a substantial role.

Somerset County Cricket Club: Among their ranks are the well known, explosive Marcus Trescothick, the observant, dossier compiling Justin Langer and the not so famous but still explosive wicket keeper Craig Kieswetter.

Sussex Sharks (Sussex County Cricket Club): The team boasts of the big hitting powers of Ed Joyce, Luke Wright & Dwayne Smith backed up by the bowling of Yasir Arafat & Piyush Chawla, two bowlers with enormous experience in bowling in the sub continent.

Isuru Udana will rock this Champions League like he rocked the T20 World Cup

Trinidad & Tobago: The most talented West Indian domestic side has an impressive line up. Stars include the all rounder par excellence Dwayne Bravo, brother Darren Bravo, keeper batsman Denesh Ramdin, Lendl Simmons, Ravi Rampaul & Dave Mohammed.

Victorian Bushrangers (Victoria): This is a very strong team on paper and on form. Big hitters Brad Hodge, Cameron White, Rob Quiney & David Hussey power the batting while demon pacemen Peter Siddle, Shane Harwood and crafty leg spinner Bryce McGain make up the bowling attack.

Wayamba Eleven: This is one of the most low profile sides in the tournament but features some of Sri Lanka’s biggest talents. Mahela Jayawardene, Ajantha Mendis & Farveez Maharoof all have proven T20 credentials  while Rangana Herath has dabbled in test cricket. Also in the squad is a celebrity from the T20 World Cup Squad, Butthead from Beavis & Butthead Isuru Udana.

Group A of the Champions Trophy went from being the Group of Death to being the Group of Bullies Against a Hapless Kid in the time it takes the WICB to mess up talks with a players organization.

No, seriously.

Here’s a preview for the Champions Trophy.

In the canary yellow corner, Australia!!!:
Defending champions Australia look like they have had a good year but they’ve not. They have wins against NZ, WI, Pakistan & Bangladesh but the one good team they faced (South Africa) beat them both home and away.

Thankfully, in the lead up to this tournament they’ve put all that behind them and are on the verge of handing England a 7-0 drubbing in England. Which makes this tournament more open. Which is what it friggin needs to be.
TNT (well, hopefully) : Brett Lee, Cameron White, Mitchell Johnson.

In the cornered tigers corner, Pakistan!!!!!!!!
Very short on match practice but that didn’t stop from winning a World Cup a few months ago. The ODI series against Australia in Dubai & the one in Sri Lanka saw them go downby the same margin 3-2.

The bowling has been pretty good but it’s the batting collapses that have hurt them a lot. Afridi 2.0 might explode again so that’s something you can look forward to.
TNT: The Akmals Umar & Kamran, Umar Gul, Shahid Afridi & Mohammed Aamer.

Mentally and to a large part physically at home because they couldn’t agree upon a corner, West Indies (Board Presidents XI) !!!!
These guys are a second string side. No amount of ‘Official Team: Certified by WICB’ stickers are gonna change that. The first line up had not exactly set the world on fire in the past season.

All this line up did was carry on the tradition against the one team the original line up could have beat. Not much hope. Any upsets will be absolutely thrilling though.
TNT( More like damp gunpowder, really): Devon Smith, Dave Bernard & Travis Dowlin.

In an undisclosed corner, India!!!!!
Strongly tipped to win but the only thing holding them back is their history in multilateral tournament finals, the pace attacks inability to think, the brain freeze against the short ball, the all body freeze when fielding and the undisclosed injuries.

But they’ve won 5 of their last series played across SL, NZ, India & WI with all these handicaps. On current form, expect them to make it to the finals.
TNT: Sachin Tendulkar, Yuvraj Singh, Ashish Nehra.

The Champions Trophy has been around. Now it has come around.

One of the biggest heists in modern history happened last week. Millions of people worldwide saw it take place over a period of five weeks. England beat Australia 2-1 to regain the Ashes.

All the statistics, the predictions, the headlines, the compass, common sense, etc point in the direction opposite to the result in front of us. Lady Statistics seems to be talking to Australia on the telephone while silently texting a confirmation to England, telling them that she will actually be coming to their party.

The sums don’t add up to the totals, but then that’s the beauty of the game.

Imagine the team in the bottom half of the picture defeating the team in the upper half.

Andrew Strauss's very brief inspirational talk worked wonders.

Brows furrowed, Kris Srikkanth took a long hard drag on his cigarette. The soothing breeze blowing across the Besant Nagar beach was momentary relief, the sand it deposited in his shoes was trouble accumulating.

His fantasy team, the Chola Pandya Super Rebel Alliance had done well lately. There was the dominating pwnage of the erstwhile champions, the dramatic brushing aside of the past masters, the quelling of the neighbourhood contenders and even the successful conquest across the mighty ocean of the tenacious islanders.

Read more…

Younis: A wealthy Pakistani wants to purchase the Pak cricket team and show them around the world as a travelling circus. Sangakkara: But the players are tall, big built, with even bigger egos, “Space is a problem, how will they ever fit?”

A headline that’s making a lot of their past players go “What the f&*#%! “

Every sports team has it’s bogey team. They could be bogey teams across categories and everyone worthy of the FCKingdom knows that the next category in cricket lies in your imagination.

Younis: Don’t worry, they are collapsible

Like the team that always beats us at the world cup, the team that always beats us even if they’re doing shit against everyone else, the team that beats us when they visit, the team that always beats us when we visit and so on.

Pakistan and Sri Lanka share an even special, reciprocative relationship. Both are shit hosting each other, which of course means that both are invincible when touring each other. This has happened since the beginning of time and it’s the way things are.

But bold new Sri Lanka under their modded captain Sangakkara have disrupted the fabric of time and space by contesting Pakistan and defeating them across a series of Tests and 50 over ODIs at home!

Pakistan’s young guns kept the dead rubber bully flag high by winning the last two dead rubber ODIs. But the contest everyone’s looking at now is the T20 match.

Pakistan beat Sri Lanka in the final of the ICC World Twenty20 Championship just over a month ago to emerge World Champions. Sri Lanka have beaten them black and blue in almost every match they’ve met in since then, but Pakistan have recovered just in time for the format the are the world champs in.

Who will prevail and more importantly, what does your team look like?

All Rounders are the shit.

Man for man, an all-rounder’s more likely to earn you more points than a pure batsman or a frontline bowler.

It’s a pity there aren’t too many good ones around.

Around the world, two all rounders imposed themselves on the field for historic wins for their respective teams. Andrew Flintoff & Shakib Al Hasan didn’t just raise their arms and get counted, they friggin choked the opposition under their arm pits till the opposition stopped kicking and struggling and gave into sweet surrender.

He'll bowl you out, then chase you down, smoke a cigar and your family will wish you were him.

Flintoff’s burst on the final morning pulled Australia from the cusp of the highest run chase in test history, slammed them mercilessly on hard rock and flung them off a cliff.

He ended with a five-for, England got their first victory at Lord’s in 75 years in an Ashes test and I got 708 points for for making him my trump player.

On the other side of the Atlantic, in the Caribbean, stand-in skipper Shakib engineered Bangladesh’s first series win abroad in ten years as a test playing nation.

He pwned the West Indian batting line up and bowling and his match haul of 8 wickets and 112 runs saw the Toygers create history.

It’s a pity that this series was available on just one crappy fantasy cricket website. It’s a damn crappy website, I’m not putting up the link anywhere in case you’re still curious.

All-rounders: A Salut!