ONCE THERE WAS A ‘MIDDLE FINGER’!

Once there was a middle finger whose owner 'Virat Kohli' was very happy to own such an asset. The finger was fair in color, good in health, tall, beautiful and most importantly, loyal to her owner. She used to take proud of her owner as he had achieved some serious feat: cemented his place in the Indian National Team, performed well in ODIs, T20’s and working hard for a place in the test side.

Virat Kohli is one of the finest talents the country has produced. He has accumulated loads of runs in the ODIs and has 8 centuries and 18 half centuries under his belt in One-day cricket. Being just 23 years old, this is quite a feat. In his captaincy the India U-19 won the World Cup and that paved his way into the National Side. The youngsters coming into the team today have one thing in common, that is aggression. If you see Shanthakumaran Sreesanth, Ishant Sharma, Ravichandran Ashwin, Varun Aaron, all have this personality trait. Even, some of the seniors, Yuvraj Singh, Harbhajan Singh have this trait inherited in them. Aggression and Gentleness are completely different things and what Cricket is by definition: 'A Gentleman's Game!'

Now, coming back to the story, that is, the story of the finger. A finger basically has many functions to perform, it helps in the day to day works like eating and the phrase 'Finger lickin' good' has come from there. And in cricketing terms, the fingers are used to hold the bat, to take a catch and to hold the ball for bowling and to give the revolutions to it. And from the bowling in cricket another term has come, the 'finger spinner'. Apart from these functions some of the fingers have special functions, for instance, one person showing thumb to other means Good Work when shown Up(thumbs-up) and the thumbs down means just the opposite. These gestures means a lot and the gesture of showing a middle finger means something serious ( although, sometimes, it is done just for fun as well) and when 'the finger' is shown in public, it adds to the seriousness. And on the cricket ground in the presence of a 30 thousand people it further makes it a terrible thing to do.

And this is what Virat Kohli's finger did one day. The deed of Kohli's asset got vast criticism, but made him news in the foreign newspapers. Who the hell in the world not like popularity! And then, the explanation came from the talented cricketer equally talented in giving explanations as well. Defending his finger he tweeted, "I agree cricketers don't have to retaliate. What when the crowd says the worst things about your mother and sister. The worst I've heard."

 

But, it’s unfortunate that the game of cricket has got vastly in the favor of the Batters, that is it has become a Batsmen dominated game, the power-plays, the T20s are all for the Batsmen. And the latest example of this is Indian bowler Ishant Sharma's Middle Finger show hasn't got the newspaper space. Why? It’s not a fare Game at all, he must be saying!