Mayday

Day 14 of the IPL. Finally Ganguly gets to open the batting for the Knight Riders. Out first ball. Can it get any worse?

Yes it can. Kolkata won't just crumble to a heavy defeat against the mighty Mumbai. Instead, once again the team wrings every ounce of hope out of its supporters, taking it to the final over yet again.

Game two also went down to the last ball, another excellent match, Yuvraj scored a fifty and took a hat-trick but Punjab just missed out. A great game, and a great result for old Kumble.

Aside - in defence of the "strategic time out". Of course giving it that name is as disingenuous as calling civilian death "collateral damage", but the cricket community is a conservative one, and the old brigade seems to hate this enforced mid-innings advertising break (for that is what it is) whatever it is called. But really it's just the test match mid session drinks break with a different name, no big deal at all. In fact the issue is that it is not used properly. Instead we still get adverts between overs - with the same sponsor's message repeated every single bloody time, that is the most counterproductive advertising imaginable.