There's a famous story, probably apocryphal, hopefully not, of Vijay Amritraj swearing in the choicest Hindi at Wimbledon, only to be reined in by the referee, a Pakistani.
"C'mon Sultan," Amirtraj reportedly said in response. "Only you and I understand what b****c*** means!"
No such luck for Alexi Lalas, who was part of the US World Cup team. Lalas once regaled a referee in Ecuador with the Spanish translation of "son of a bitch." The resulting phrase turned out to be far more offensive than the English version, and he got a red card on the spot.
So, what language are they—players and officials—speaking in this World Cup?
I would be eager to listen Kumble or Dravid throwing some kannada expletives. But namma hudguru thuma olleyavru( our Boys are good)
Poli maathu baralla( they dont know vulgur words) .
Maybe Sadanand Vishy or Sunil Joshi or Dodda Ganesh or Sujith Somasunder would have used .I have heard Tilak naidu using .
“yee nanna magange aadiskoLamma Mundhe”
” make him play front(come forward ) “
I’m assuming its only a story. I might be mistaken but as far as I know Vijay Amritraj is from Madras and though he might know Hindi, I am not sure he would be very comfortable swearing in that language. For another thing, he was known to be a perfect gentleman and very well behaved on court.
I read an article in the mid-nineties about the mid-field conversation in Kannada when we had Kumble, Dravid, Srinath, Venkatesh Prasad & Joshi in the team. Also heard a similar story when there were 5-6 top Karnataka players in the mid-seventies (Prasanna, Chandra, Vishwanath, Patel, Kirmani , Sudhakar Rao, Binny) in the Indian team. None of these mentioned expletives.
Of course we have also regularly heard Hindi & Punjabi used by some Indian and Pakistani players and Marathi used between Bombay players.
During one infamous tournament, coulb be the Titan Cup in 1997 (infamous because it was really the apogee of match-fixing), there was a moment when Venkatesh Prasad bowled one down the leg side and the batsman (I forget who) flicked it past short fine-leg.
As Prasad walked up to the top of his bowling mark, Anil Kumble who was at mid-on asked why he didn’t keep the fine-leg deeper if he was going to bowl hit line. “Yeh, avanu beda anthane, kano,” Prasad said loudly, obviously of the captain, Sachin Tendulkar.
KP, Can you write in detail about the Match fixing episode and how it all began? how did you unravel?
Hello Mr KP,
I have been reading your writeups on BMIC. I have to say that you have lot of prejudice. When you are giving a clean chit to NICE, is it based on your findings that they have not stuck illegal deal with the government or through your own investigation?
If you have made any efforts to approach the PWD or KIADB and go through the records, your perception will change. It is a fact that the government had a major defeat in courts. But that doesn’t mean that NICE is right. You may write comments sitting in a corner of Karnataka. You have every right to express your opinions. But you cannot say what you write is truth. Dig more deeper into the issues before you jump to conclusion.
Shama