RAMYA KRISHNAMURTHY writes from Bangalore: I first saw images like the ones above during the first Test match against Pakistan in Delhi. On the fourth or fifth day. Shoaib Akhtar, battling yet another injury, was taking a breather on the sidelines. Yuvraj Singh, who was not playing the Test, and Murali Karthik were alongside.
As the television cameras kept panning on to the playful trio, the tiger sat harmlessly on Karthik’s knee relishing the attention being showered on it. Then Yuvraj, being the good Punjabi, thrust the toy into the lens of the camera. Shoaib was unusually demure. The way it seemed, the tiger belonged to Karthik.
Oh, well, an orthodox leftarm spinner is just the kind of guy to be carrying a soft toy in his kit, I thought to myself. Till…
Till I saw this picture in the papers this morning. Either Shoaib has borrowed the soft toy from Karthik (unlikely) or the soft toy belongs to Shoaib (more likely).
Either way, I’m wondering, what makes the fastest “bowler” in the world—the mascot of male aggression, who chucks beamers, slaps coaches, beats up colleagues, swears at rivals, takes drugs, gets into fights—want to be seen in public and on television with a soft toy?
# Is it just to show off? A photo-op for cameramen especially when he has not really set the stadiums on fire?
# Or is it to show that he has a soft side to himself? That beneath the tough exterior, he is as human as all of us “at the end of the day”, and that he is not afraid to show it?
# Is he the metrosexual speed demon, a cricketing version of David Beckham, appealing to Barbie doll loving women? “Darling, tough men don’t play with paddington bears.”
# In school, we used to hear that Rahul Dravid, while growing up, slept with the cricket bat next to him. Is the most charismatic star in the Pakistan team so friendless that he has to take a soft toy to bed each night?
# Is Shoaib surreptitiously promoting a product? Has the sale of tigers shot up in Rawalpindi? Has BCCI, which got so antsy about Shah Rukh Khan promoting OSO, taken note?
# Or has Shoaib Akhtar, like most cricketers and cricket fans, just not grown up?
# Or is it a freudian slip? Tiger, feline, cat….
Of course, Shoaib Akhtar must be saluted for being so un-selfconscious. And our men must doff their Mysore topis to him for having the courage to be doing something so unmanly and having some “fun” in the process? But would Imran Khan, the man whom Shoaib Akhtar has compared himself, have been seen with a teddy bear or a tiger?
Would Joel Garner or Jeff Thompson? Viv Richards or Andrew Symonds?
Would Kapil Dev?
Photographs: K. Bhagyaprakash/ courtesy The Hindu (top) and PTI (below)
would ramya krishnamurthy be seen with a stuffed tiger???? this article is absolute rubbish, on par with stuff the news channels call ‘breaking news’
Ramya,
I have nothing to say, but I sure smiled when I read this article. Hope the smile is contagious enough.
SN.
@ Adi baby
Since you can’t read the “tongue in cheek” category, permit me to doff your “Mysore topi” to Ramya K for at least bringing a smile on the lips of churumurians complaining about an overdose of Narendra Modi and IT.
This is an interesting, unusual piece …Need more of this offbeat stuff.
it’s always nice to touch and hold something soft.
Very clearly its a stuffed Leopard, not a stuffed Tiger!
Ramya, in her hurry to make an article out of these snaps failed to remember how our national animal looks like!?
They must have been feeling nice to touch something ‘SOFT’ than Cricket Balls.
Ramya seem to have lost between those touching.
Shoaib must have been refused sex in India. This is his way of getting some
And besides…Bhais will be Bhais…
Maybe he is one of those people who believe that their stuffed toys are alive and engage in conversation and other stuff with them.
Sir Vibhudi Aatmapudi has a hole in his teddy!
quicky..thats a quick wit
See those spots? Yeah, those. That’s a leopard not a tiger. Tigers have stripes. This one has spots. Leopard.
And in any case, Shoaib does enough damage to himself on his own for the media to join in. In quite a tight corner, isn’t he? He’s in the news when he beats up Asif and he’s in the news when he plays with soft toy (and what’s wrong with having a bit of fun anyway?). He’s in the news when he does dope and he’s in the news when he does charity.
Leave the guy alone. Cricketers are athletes not gods and demons. Stop wasting you journalistic talent to cover drivel like this and go do some real sports reporting like why the pitches used in Kolkata and Bangalore were the way they were, especially when (almost) our next stop is against Lee and Tait on a hard MCG pitch.
this is a rubbish useless article…
hi Ramya ,
I think some people can’t take the fact in their stride that there’s always a soft side even in the toughest guys and that shows the human portion of a person . The only fact which I found by your article is that YOU CAN LOVE AKHTAR, YOU CAN HATE AKHTAR BUT YOU CANNOT IGNORE AKHTAR.