Steyn rubs salt on Mallaya, apologizes later

As if the embarrassing 7/8 was not enough for the Bangalore Royal challengers, Dale Steyn the South African fast bowler and a front line bowler for the Bangalore Royal Challengers in the IPL, remarked that "the IPL was only four overs a game and it was like a paid holiday; you only had to work hard if you felt like it, which is probably why we finished second-last."

This perhaps tells the story about the loyalty of the players to their respective franchise as such and why the players are playing in the IPL. It proves further money to be a big factor and perhaps it would be a while before IPL can see the team loyalty among the players. At the time when we have been talking about whether IPL would be able to induce the loyalty for the local teams among the viewers and whether the viewers would be able to switch loyalties within months to support their national heroes once again who might have played opposite their local team in the IPL, this revelation by Dale Steyn has been an eye opener.

Later on, however, Steyn apologized for his comments saying "I was trying to be funny and just ended up being stupid - I was an idiot." and he reiterated his commitment to the Bangalore team by saying "I have written to the franchise to express my unreserved regret and apologies and tried to explain the circumstances of my comments. Sometimes, when you lose, you try to make a joke of it to lessen the disappointment. It was a stupid thing to say and a painful lesson for me to learn. I desperately regret my naivety and look forward to the opportunity of helping the franchise reach the semi-finals next year".

If you are ready to believe what Dale Steyn said later, I believe you are a big fool. The change of statement might have come after he realized how severely he might have damaged his future holiday plans in India, or it might have also come from the pressure created by already dejected and wounded lion in the form of beerwalah. Well, you never know..

Buying a cricket bat online

Buying a bat online can be risky and at times you might not get what you want. We always want to feel the bat before we buy it as we used to do as a kid. But unfortunately, here in Arizona, we do not have many choices to go to the shop, see everything and buy a bat. We only have a shop run by Paul ward in Mesa. You can visit his website to get more details about that. If you find something fitting your choice and budget, Great. Go and buy it locally.

However, you would always like to do research to get better and cheaper things. Choice wise, you would only be limited to Gray Nicolls at Paul’s Shop. Basic thing is we need to do a bit of research, probably spend half an hour to 1 hour on a few websites. For example, let us say I like the below mentioned BAT.

Reebok Bat at Amazon

I would go and search the same bat on different cricket equipment website. Some of them are:

1. www.cricmart.com (KCC member gets up to 15% discount and free shipping)
2. www.desiSport.com
3. http://www.bigbluecricket.com/ (Currently 10% discount and free shipping)
4. http://shop.dreamcricket.com/dreamcricket/pavilion/pavhome.asp

Search for the same bat on the above websites, read its specifications, see the pictures and you would get a good idea about blade, curve and weight. Some of them specifically mention the weight etc. 2lbs 10 Oz is the weight of my bat and its medium weight. I am sure most bats that we have in the team are in that range. You can get a fare idea about the bat specification from this article. If you are still not sure you can contact the website owner and shoot your questions.

So spend sometime and order it as soon as you want to play. You would need 1-2 week to prepare it.

Summary: If you spend an hour or so, minimal risk is involved :)

Cricket Bat Maintenance:

Sometime back, I had collected a few articles on this and posted them to 123kings.com. Please click here to visit the page. You can also Google and get many related articles.