Thank you for inviting me to give the MCC Spirit of Cricket Cowdrey Lecture. It is indeed your honour and privilege that I am addressing you today and talking on this stage. I am, as you are aware, deeply involved in shaping the game into what it is today and I do believe that you must all bow before me. However, since I am humble to a fault, you can remain kneeling.

You must all know that Mr. Tony Greig was supposed to deliver this lecture but because of some, ahem, unfortunate events, he is not here with us today. However, I do have the transcript of the speech he intended to deliver. I will modify it of course, for there are points that I blatantly disagree with and it is only fair that you listen to my version because it is infinitely better. Just like the IPL is infinitely better than Test cricket.

Tony Greig wanted to talk about him ditching the English captaincy and going on to side with Kerry Packer. Yawn! No one wants to listen to that now, do we? So, I shall duly skip that part. He does touch upon some salient points with regards the World Series of Cricket:

WSC ensured cricket reinvented itself to survive the changing world;WSC was the jolt the administrators needed, and it flagged the message that they were substantially under-selling the sport to the television stations;Players immediately received substantially more money at both Test and first class level, which increased the longevity of their careers;Companies saw value in using cricket as a marketing tool;TV coverage improved significantly, which increased interest in the sport;Night cricket created a new audience, both television-wise and at the ground, and generated significantly more income;WSC revolutionised cricket pitch preparation through the drop-in pitches;Cricket’s success inspired other sports to imitate cricket with things such as TV coverage and sponsorships.

Now, I sincerely believe that Mr. Greig, employed an excellent typist to type out this note but unfortunately, I am very disappointed in the major flaw that he overlooked. Surely, he put WSC where he clearly meant IPL. I mean, just replace WSC with IPL in the above few points and you will know what I am talking about.

Colin Cowdrey embodies the spirit of cricket, Mr. Greig goes on to say. I beg to differ. I believe that Mr. Vijay Mallya embodies the spirit of cricket. I mean, look at any after party and you will be hard pressed to not find Mr. Mallya, Mr. Mallya Jr. or Kingfisher. Sometimes, a noxious combination of all of them. However repulsive that thought might be, it is undisputable that he has indeed embodied the spirit of cricket and we are in his debt (Some of us, literally. I still owe him a bit of money but let’s not go into that).

Mr. Greig goes on to say that Yehudi Mehuin said something about God approving something of Beethoven and then humans creating cricket and God approving it. I humbly accept all this praise. The human that he is referring to is of course, yours truly and I think Sachin approves of it. So, that’s settled.

So anyway, Mr. Greig rambles on and on and honestly, I think you’d rather watch these great cheerleaders dance than listen to his lectures. But he does touch upon my favourite hashtag of twitter, #bleddyBCCI, and in this, he has my full support. I too believe that the BCCI is evil. I wholeheartedly agree with this and that was part of the reason I accepted this invitation to speak on his behalf. I will not really delve too much into it and can see that many of you are fidgety already.

So, on to the final part of my speech, I would just like to touch upon the spirit of cricket. We all believe that the game should be played in the right spirit and sportsmanship must always prevail. It’s just not cricket, is a phrase that has come to symbolize anything that is not cricket. The spirit of cricket shall ensure that it will continue to remain cricket and not not-cricket.

In conclusion, I would like to thank you all for being a wonderful audience and would also like to say that I will indeed be signing autographs (on anything that is not a blank paper, for I fear what you might do with it) after this speech.

A couple of things to finish off. One, whenever I mean cricket, I mean, of course, the IPL for anything else is, in the spirit of cricket, just not cricket. And lastly, contrary to what Mr. Srinivasan thinks, cricket is not an IPL match played between two teams with CSK emerging the champions.

Good night ladies and gentlemen.

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