Posted by The 2020 IPL is being played in the UAE. As far as we are aware, Mumbai Indians owner Nita Ambani is not in the UAE. This begs a question.
Is Nita Ambani still sucking life from her players through mandatory and dispiriting and unnecessary team bonding shit?
You know the stuff we mean. We wrote about it before. The “okay, gather round everybody, I just want to say a few words” stuff.
It mostly involves everyone standing there uncomfortably while Nita goes on and on and on. Occasionally it involves her forcing someone else to make some sort of speech against their will.
Well GREAT NEWS EVERYBODY. It still happens.
Unperturbed by being on the wrong continent, Nita literally phones it in now.
She phones some random member of staff and then their disembodied hand holds the phone aloft and everyone has to pay attention to it.
Like this:
This is Kieron Pollard getting congratulated on playing 150 games for Mumbai Indians.
Pollard is well used to this inhuman treatment by now so he manages the terrible situation with relative ease.
That image at the top of the page (which probably doesn’t show if you’re reading the email) is her making Anukul Roy “lead the cheer”.
Anukul Roy “leads the cheer” far more readily and vociferously than any sane person and so now we instantly dislike Anukul Roy and suspect him of being a simpleton.
Sorry to change the subject, but I wanted to share something.
This evening a friend and I were playing that classic game of ‘which England cricketers share their name with England footballers?’
We discovered there was an England footballer at the turn of the century named ‘Charlie Athersmith’. Curiosity piqued, we investigated further. His Wikipedia page is quite something:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Athersmith
‘Athersmith played under an umbrella borrowed from a spectator before collapsing in the dressing-room afterwards. Claims that Athersmith scored a goal from beneath the umbrella appear to be apocryphal.’
Right. If Sam can change the subject to football, I can change the subject to tennis; the hard ball variety.
I presented my Tennis Around the Time Of Thomas Gresham talk to The Gresham Society last night:
http://ianlouisharris.com/2020/10/07/tennis-around-the-time-of-thomas-gresham-gresham-society-webinar-presentation-7-october-2020/
There is only the most tenuous connection between Gresham and tennis, but I use that one thread as a MacGuffin to tell a tale that leads us to a subplot of Hamlet.
There is an even more tenuous link between Gresham and cricket, but the branch of the Leveson-Gower family that includes test skipper H. D. G. Leveson Gower has a connection with the Gresham family, hence the G in HDG standing for Gresham.
I do like Zaheer Khan’s expression there – disgust masquerading as a smile. “Oh fuck me, this shit again”, it seems to want to say but decides against. It is the expression of a man who realizes Nita Ambani has a fizzilion dollars in her account so you probably cannot ask her to go to hell.
I apologize for changing the subject right back to the post – inexcusable behaviour on my part, I know.
How many lakh are there to the fizzillion, Deep Cower? I’m struggling to contextualise Nita’s wealth.
Apparently in 2019 Mukesh Ambani made on average $4.5 million per day. Hope that contextualises things for you, Ged.
Look at the fear in Chris Lynn’s eyes.
Not this Zaheer:
https://twitter.com/banglani/status/1310591000528605184?s=19
Great. ‘Cobblers’and ‘simpleton’ cannot be underused and should be shoe-horned into conversation whenever possible.
I fear I meant ‘overused’
Debate on that there internet about whether Wigan is in Greater Manchester or Lancashire.
https://twitter.com/lisanandy/status/1315636400293806082?s=21
Anyone here have the slightest clue?
It’s in Greater Manchester but used to be in Lancashire, much like how Manchester is in Greater Manchester but used to be in Lancashire. (Lancashire don’t play in Lancashire.)
Wigan vowels are Lancastrian though.