Caught off-guard!

 

 

Despite its share of controversies, contests and controversial contests, the game of cricket draws one worshipper too many toward the demigod that is the cricketer. If tennis had characters such as John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors, cricket over the decades has also had mavericks like Doug Walters, Javed Miandad, Kiran More and Sourav Ganguly who have provided enough spice, both on and off the pitch. With cricket’s crowning glory, the World Cup, to be battled for among 16 nations in the next one-and-a-half months in the West Indies, yesteryear star cricketer Sandeep Patil and sports editor Clayton Murzello sprinkle salt and pepper to the feast with Caught & Told: Humorous Cricketing Anecdotes, a wacky compilation of a host of bloopers and bloomers right off the pitch.

From tales of Sachin Tendulkar’s sleepwalking and boundary-shouting sojourns to buddy Vinod Kambli romping around all day on a city street donning a skirt, to former Indian coach John Wright ordering Harbhajan Singh a couple of rounds of the field only to find him racing about till 90 minutes later while he attended a BCCI telephone call, a slew of hilarious episodes on international cricket tours and individual idiosyncrasies make this mini-sized book an animated flashback into the game’s most guarded mortifications! Albeit a tad caught long-winded on occasions, this one’s a sparkling hark back to the rollicking capers of our frolicking playmakers . . .