Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Viru, Mahi and their hidden secret

For long, I’ve held a conspiracy theory, close to my chest. It may sound like a harebrained hypothesis to cricket aficionados like you, but to hardnosed cynics, it might hold more charm than the Undie Tiwari tapes. To cut a short story shorter, the meat of my premise is that cricketers get to wear the Indian Test Cap not on the basis of their bowling or batting averages but on the uniqueness quotient of their names!

Let me elaborate. If you have a blend-with-the-crowd name (say Sridharan Sriram, Vinay Kumar or Manoj Tiwari) as compared to a catch-the-ear name (think Tinu Yohannan, Hrishikesh Kanitkar or Saba Karim), then you can kiss your career goodbye. The bitter truth is stellar players have to have stellar names. The others will have to settle for the Almost-There slot. Take a close look at some of the names of our cricketing stars. Perhaps that may clinch the argument in my favour, your honour.

Exhibit A is Harbhajan Singh. You’ve heard of many Singhs but this one really sings. Harbhajan literally means one who praises god forever. May be that’s why we see him swear, all the time. Jokes apart, don’t you think that’s a stand out name? Exhibit B is Virendra Sehwag (Virendra = Lord of the brave, Sehwag = Wielder of the sword). In this case, the surname makes all the difference. If Viru’s name had been the plain vanilla Virendra Shekar, my gut feel is, he would still be languishing as the Non-entity of Najafgarh.

Let’s face it. Dhoni (a Kumaoni surname) is the LSD in MSD. Dravid (Sanskrit for someone from the coast) adds the jammy to the very bread-and-butter Rahul. And Tendulkar (anyone with roots from the village Tendul) is the reason why he towers above all Sachins.

It’s not always about supra-original surnames. Sometimes even the first letter of your first name can ensure you stick out like a sweet thumb. Take Zaheer Khan. He’s the only Indian cricketer whose moniker starts with Z. With an advantage like that, you don’t need toe-crushers to make your test debut.

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