Cricket Compendium

Tillakaratne Dilshan. Photo / AP

Full of Spunk
A visit to India's version of the mall provides an insight into cricket merchandise. If you're after a bat, you can buy any of the following slabs of willow to wield on the local maidans: the Spunk Master, the Shredder, the Brain Dead or the Funky.

Whatever happened to just a good, old Gray Nicolls Scoop or Gunn & Moore Maestro?

Who's bad?
Waqar Younis could only weakly defend the poor performance of Kamran Akmal dropping Ross Taylor twice in his first seven deliveries on his way to 131 on Tuesday night.

One Pakistani journalist asked Waqar cryptically what the difference was between Michael Jackson and Akmal? The journalist's answer? One knows how to wear a glove. Waqar's dead pan response, which had the conference erupt into fits of laughter? "One is dead." Eerie.

Presumably Akmal has a secure door to his hotel room.

A Dire Situation
India's middle-class love to soak up Western culture. The breakfast crew showed their devotion at the Comfort Inn in Ahmedabad with a karaoke sing-a-long to Dire Straits' Walk of Life while frying a masala omelette. A cheerful way to start the day, especially combined with a pot of masala chai, one of India's special creamy blends of herb tea.

Sensing murder
Indian fast bowler Munaf Patel struck a tricky dilemma heading off to a Bollywood movie for some "quality downtime" with his wife. They started watching a film involving seven murders in the plot. Patel saw two of them before receiving news about the impending cricket murder of England by Ireland. He shot out
of the theatre and down the road to watch the finish with some mates.
No doubt the dogbox beckoned...

Sunny and share
One of the best trips by rickshaw through the Ahmedabad traffic was with a Sunil Gavaskar look-alike in his brand new vehicle.

Sunny boasted of driving several cricketing notorieties, including Daniel Vettori, Stephen Fleming and Sir Richard Hadlee - a rarity for rickshaws. He also knew how to flatter, bringing out his camera phone at the end so he could "go home and show my family".

Wait for it
The passion for cricket knows few bounds in India or Sri Lanka andsome of the best sources of cricket information are the walking Wisdens, otherwise known as waiters. They can reel off archives of statistics at will which boggle the mind - Muttiah Muralitharan's various bowling averages, the number of sixes Virender Sehwag has hit this year and Ross Taylor's favourite food all came courtesy of Kumara at the Serene Garden Hotel in Kandy.Well, at least we all know Kumara's last gem.

Taylor deservedly gorged himself on plenty of the Colonel's secret recipe to celebrate his 27th birthday and his unbeaten ton to defeat Pakistan.

TV nation
Given Ahmedabad's a dry city, the airport is as good a place as any to gauge how Indians observe matches.

The relatively narrow five-wicket escape against Ireland was a good example. A couple of locals mill about the public television, then a wicket falls. A couple more gather and a batsman (on this occasion Virat Kohli) blasts a few. Suddenly there is murmuring and bonhomie, dozens emerge and the TV is surrounded. Then a wicket falls.

Complete silence of the pin-drop variety. Heads sink
as India suffers a mini-collapse. The TV is visible again. Eventually Dhoni raises spirits with an unbeaten 50.

But there is no whooping - just palpable sighs of relief as shame is avoided. A swarm of 100 people suddenly surge to the departure gates.

Good week: Tillakaratne Dilshan
It needs to come with the disclaimer, 'it was only Zimbabwe', but Dilshan had barely put his bat down after scoring 144 when he claimed 4-4 with his 'deadly' offspin. The Sri Lanka opener plundered 16 fours and a six in his ninth ODI century to almost single-handedly power Sri Lanka into the quarterfinals.

He also became only the second player in World Cup history after Netherlands allrounder Feiko Kloppenburg to hit a century and take four wickets.

Bad week: Kamran Akmal
Extensive investigations by the ICC and Pakistan Cricket Board revealed Akmal probably isn't involved in spot-fixing. Rather, it's been discovered he's just not very good.

The Pakistan wicketkeeper made two horrendous mistakes when Ross Taylor was early in his innings - the second would be among the worst dropped catches by a wicketkeeper in history - and they were just the latest in a series of calamitous misses. It led Ian Chappell to ask: "How many wickets does Kamran Akmal have to cost Pakistan before they drop him? It's ridiculous. If his batting was as good as Don Bradman's he couldn't make the runs to make up for what he costs them in the field."

Bird man
Indian player Yusuf Pathan has an alternative way to deal with downtime during the Cup ... buy more parrots for his collection. Two grey and two Amazon parrots were added last week.

After going for US$2.1 million at the start of the year to the Kolkata Knight Riders in the Indian Premier League, he can afford them.