The T20 spirit, after storming U.K., the place of its inception, places like the West Indies, South Africa and of course, with the ICL and IPL in India, is ready to hit the world circuit big time, and this time, it’s even bigger than the World Cup! The T20 World Series, a battle between thirty-two teams from all over the world, is ready to get underway in Orlando, Fl, USA where cricket caught up with the sports-entertainment fancies of football, baseball and basketball with it’s fair share of ‘home runs’ (sixes) and bubbly cheerleaders! The tournament will of course be played over a span of two months in every major city of the United States with teams from all over the world and owners ranging from former cricketers and businessmen and politicians and authors to movie stars looking for a tad more attention! Our representative Jesse Jobless caught up with the owners of the clubs belonging to Group A of the competition: The Kolkata Knight Riders, LA Adopteds, Paris Chihuahuas and Satan’s XI, the owners being Bollywood superstar and the King of Indian cinema Shah Rukh Khan, Hollywood Heavyweights Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, Billion-dollar heiress and socialite Paris Hilton and Booker Award winning author Mr. Salman Rushdie, respectively.
JESSE: Well, most of you are relatively new in this venture of cricket, except you, Shah Rukh! So, what are your expectations from this thing and what drove you to this venture? All of you!
SRK: The betterment of cricket, of course! And also, to contribute, as much as I can, to this beautiful game. Of course the rumors have been going on that since my last three movies: Mohabbatein re-incarnated, Om Shanti Om re-reincarnated, and Dhoom 3 (I still don’t understand how the movie failed with my twelve packs on display! Maybe it was Abhishek…) failed to do much at the box office, I have removed John Buchanan and taken up the role of the owner-cum-coach-cum-publicity manager-cum-mascot-cum-jumping jack-cum-head cheerleader-cum-non playing captain of the team. Frankly, it’s not a lot of work! All I do is show up, recite my dialogues from Chak de India (WITH English subtitles for Ponting and co.), wave to anyone and everyone and display my dimpled smile, shake a leg and shoot a few ads, and I’m done!
PARIS: You see, this game… (what d’ya call it again?)… I bought a team for my boyfriend Brett Lee, who’s good at throwing the ball, I guess, who wanted me to be the owner anyways! So… I kinda thought… okay! And he wanted me to name it, and make the outfits for the players… so… I named them after me (Paris) and my pet Chihuahua… (isn’t that hot?) and I wanted to design real hot outfits for them too! I had this skin-tight thingies for them, with shorts… all in soothing pink… but they say they need baggy jerseys… and I said that’s totally last year… and they say, it’s not only last year, it’s been going on for the last century or something (that’s so like… old!) and I’m like… can we keep the pink? So, we’re keeping the pink! Pink’s hot!
JOLIE (Bracketed lines belonging to PITT): I was motivated to popularize this game in this part of the world after watching the madness over it first hand when I went to India for shooting ‘A Mighty Heart’ about a decade ago. But without any disrespect to anyone, I don’t approve of the prevalent idea of bidding for players. That was one of the reasons I started adopting players (Kids!), yes, kids, from all over the world. We sort of had the vision of forming a World XI, which is going to have representatives from all over the world. We went to Africa, Asia, Europe… (Not to mention our own children)… and now, we have our very own (Pitt-Jolie) cricket team… the Adopteds! (LA Adopteds)…
RUSHDIE: I had relatively indifferent (or rather, negative) views on cricket until the other day before I was approached by the idea of this wonderfully troubled and supposedly iconic cricketer called Sachin Moneykar. A multi-faceted character who’s a world-famous cricketer in his early-50s, has scored over 50000 runs in international cricket, but still has about another 50 years of cricket left in him. The only living cricketer who I thought could come anywhere close to this character was Sachin Tendulkar, and for purely research-oriented purposes, I went to Mumbai to gather some information when he asked me to buy off the Mumbai Indians team, whose owner The Reliance Industries, (after it’s mobile network went dead for 2 years at a stretch) was finding it difficult to continue sponsoring it after its continued losses in all previous IPL and other competitions. I figured that by being with this team, I would not only acquire every detail I needed about this game for my book, but also renew the bond with my city of birth, Bombay. So I decided to buy off the team and rename it, Satan’s XI (without meaning to create any controversy, so the riots in parts of India which have reduced the iconic status of Sachin even if only a little, aren’t my fault!)
Jesse: That’s very candid, thank you! Now, Shah Rukh, coming back to you, what do you have to say regarding your much-hyped fall-off with your former captain Saurav Ganguly? Was it really the clash of egos that the media are trying to portray, since Saurav’s debut movie ‘DADA’ (Duniya Ab Dewaana Apna) with Saurav and Sania Mirza in the lead, was a bigger hit than Om Shanti Om?
SRK: DADA was a great movie, a great concept, and Dada acted really well, considering it was his debut movie! And about this overblown fall-off story which was probably the product of a bored Bollywood columnist never happened in reality. Saurav simply said he wasn’t willing to be involved with the Knight Riders anymore since he was planning to start a team of his own: the Bengal Tiger’s Army! We said ‘best of luck’ to one another and went on our ways.
Jesse: But your constant involvement with your team, isn’t this going to hamper your upcoming Bollywood projects? Two months isn’t exactly a small amount of time.
SRK: I have this upcoming home production ‘Hit toh Khushi, Flop toh Gham’ which will be directed by Farah Khan. It would’ve been ready to release by the end of this year had Farah not decided to have a second set of triplets at this very time. I’ve told her to go for quadruplets the next time around! (laughs) And then there’s this project with Karan, which won’t have Karan in the lead beside me and which won’t be a Bollywood remake of ‘Brokeback Mountain’ as reported in some delirious filmy magazine, but will be a typical 4 and a ½ hours KJo flick with a million songs, I’ll be playing a teenage college-goer, the movie will be shot in the US or UK, with NRIs being the target audience, and I think it’ll be called ‘Karan Johar Ki Typical Formula’, armed heavily with bagfuls of tears and emotions and mindless comic situations, and I’m thinking of putting in an item number featuring me and a number of hot American girls! You know, Dard-e-Disco revisited…
Jesse: Enough about movies, let’s come back to The World Series! So the Knight Riders have their first game three days from now in Austin, TX against Rushdie’s Bombay Satan’s XI. You squaring off against Sachin again, huh? Old times!
SRK: Yes, old times! But it’s actually the first time I’m squaring off against him after my daughter ran off with his muscle-flexing, lousy-haired, no-gooder son without my consent. And being the loving dad that I am and always was to my daughter, I couldn’t bear to see her ruining her life in the company of that stupid boy! You know, he even has that stupid womanly voice like his dad, says ‘ayilah!’ whenever he’s confused, and decided to flunk his higher secondary exams. And my daughter fell for that copycat-of-daddy-Sachin! I would’ve been glad, though, with the relationship if that boy was even half as good a cricketer as his dad is. But he never even got selected for his school team!!! And I’m mostly angry at Sachin since he declined my request to return my daughter to me. He said, “Ayilah Shah Rukh, main to DDLJ dekh kar hi inspired hua hoon, main kaise doh pyar karte huye dil ko alag kar sakta hoon?”. I never regretted doing a movie in my life, but I think I do now!
Jesse: Well, it sure is personal, then! And we have a match on our hands! Thank you so much for sharing your time with us… and of course, best of luck! Any final words?
SRK: Yes, my vice-captain Ricky Ponting gave me an interesting proposal the other day, and said that I should try my hand at wicket-keeping, since I’m quite good at jumping, you see! So I’m considering being the playing captain for a change… but as of now, I’m yet to take the final decision… all I can say is: never fail to expect surprises from King Khan! And support the Knight Riders!
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