Hindustan Times
IPL blogger and us
Each blog post averages around 1,000 comments and there are scores of other blogs living off it. What is it about fakeiplplayer.blogspot that makes it so popular?
It’s cheeky, irreverent and deliciously scurrilous. It goes where no journalist – print or television – can, or perhaps will, ever go. And that is the secret of its astounding success (meteoric, if you prefer cliches). Have you seen it? Check it out: fakeiplplayer.blogspot.com.
We had him on Hindustan Times Page One twice – first when we just heard of it, and the second to inform its cult-like followers all was still well with it, the blogger was safe, and hammering away at his next blog.
The blogger claims to be a player of the bottom-of-the-league team Kolkata Knight Riders and that’s how he accesses its team meetings and the intrigue that’s supposedly happening behind locked hotel doors.
It opens up parts of the cricketing world fenced out for most of us earlier –the team meetings, the dressing room and, the most tantalizing bit, what players do after stumps (no milk-and-bed routine here).
He exists surely. And his blog has been a major highpoint of IPL 2, which has been a little colourless so far – it’s picking up lately but the experience has been nothing like the inaugural season.
But for fakeiplplayer, Season 2 would have been excruciatingly dull. For the record, the major players are Bhookha Naan — a controversial head coach — and Lordie – a former Indian captain.
Bhookha Naan is the villain with his flock of hangers-on and Lordies is this lonely ranger who is battling for his honour – he can’t let another Aussie walk all over him.
The latest twist in the story is that the flock around Bhookha Naan is thinning. And Lordie is playing the statesman, strategizing a rescue plan for the team. The owner is back in India on a dancing assignment.
The blogger remains unidentified. There have been speculation about his identity, but no one has cracked it yet – a former Indian team batsman remains a prime suspect, apparently because he writes well.
The blog is very well written, not something you could associate normally with cricketers past and present, and is funny. It’s a minor achievement to go through it without at least a smile.
But my point is something else. The blogger, fakeiplplayer, is changing the way people follow cricket – they will not be satisfied any more with mere match reports, interviews, stats and expert comments.
They are getting all that anyway – from live coverage and the analysis and more that come with it. There is an overdose of all this in fact, with more of the same stuff coming in the newspapers next morning.
Fakeiplplayer has brought them now a ringside view of things that makes everything else pale in comparison. They will settle for nothing less. It’s not my case to follow the way shown by fakeiplplayer.
But wouldn’t you like to read about strategy sessions? Or about heated team-meeting exchanges? Or how about whom the players are seeing, seriously or otherwise? Why not? Deepika Padukone did get written about a bit in cricketing columns before she moved on to entertainment-only pages.
The writer of fakeiplplayer.blogspot takes it to another level, which may not make sense on sports pages. But, hey, their partying does make for interesting reading.
Everyone is following the exploits of the Sheikh of Tweak, for instance, and Kishan Kanhaiyya. Specially the young rookies who have stepped out of India for the first time – “they are looking for some crumbs to fall by their bedside”.
I can see some serious sports editors cringe in horror with what this blogger is doing to sports reporting – they may rightly argue this is not sports at all – but can you really look the other way and ignore it all?
(7 votes, average: 5 out of 5)
Loading ...Posted by Yashwant Raj on Thursday, April 30, 2009 at 10:10 pm
Filed under Media · Tagged Hindustan Times, HT exclusives, IPL, Kolkata Knight Riders
The blog i amazing. I wish he had a guidebook of nicknames though. I havent yet figured out who kishan kanhaiya is. Sheikh of Tweak is still easier :D, so is Peter ka beta!!
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yashwant raj Reply:
May 1st, 2009 at 1:21 pm
kishan kanhaiya is a former cricketer turned commentator — should be easy to guess now
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Bloggers are becoming real trend setters…the best thing about blogging is honesty…straight out of your mind…thats what makes a blog worth reading:)
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yashwant raj Reply:
May 1st, 2009 at 1:23 pm
yes, true — and some like fakeiplplayer just rock
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hi. the ignorant me, just heard of him today. but im absolutely loving it. man this guy is good. and has guts (if hes for real that is)
http://mywriterkeeda.wordpress.com
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yashwant raj Reply:
May 1st, 2009 at 5:28 pm
enjoy
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have fun
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[...] colleague Yashwant Raj has written about the mystery blogger who writes an often spicy but always an insider’s account of the goings [...]
here is some news on the IPL blogger — he will disclose his identity after the last match of his team — and will then retire from all forms of cricket — what a pity
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I dont think he is a kkr player.
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yashwant raj Reply:
May 3rd, 2009 at 5:32 pm
really? why?
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You know what? I’m really jealous of the guy. In two days he did what I could not do in two years! I run a moderately popular cricket blog and it’s not a fiddle faddle either. The Times (London) listed my blog in ‘Best of the Web’ and ICC blogrolled the stuff. And here you have the Fake IPL Player taking the blogosphere by storm. Incredible!
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yashwant raj Reply:
May 3rd, 2009 at 5:37 pm
you will remain the best som. but any lessons here from what fakeiplplayer has done? the kind of stuff that people want to read — beyond analysis, stats and expert comments. I think the reason why the blog is so popular is the newness of the information there. New stuff — what happens at team meetings, the intrigue, a tour of the dressing room — the pep talk etc, etc. what do you think?
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Earlier, i did not take it seriously. Only yesterday after going through ur blog, i scanned couple of writings posted on the fakeipl….. Needless to say, i was impressed. It was engrossing. This particular blog is caple of changing the cricketing details in times to come. Thanks u and even the mysterious blogger.
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yashwant raj Reply:
May 3rd, 2009 at 9:15 pm
truly path-breaking reporting
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Yashwant, you hit the nail on the head. It’s important for us, the bloggers, to learn the lesson From Fake IPL blog. And I can’t agree more that bloggers need to see beyond news, stats, expert comments etc, for which there is this mainstream media.
When I started my blog, I made it a point that I would always look for the lighter side of what is arguably the most rule-complicated game. (I know there are people who would hang me if I call cricket a game. Well opium of the masses, if I can borrow it from..was it Groucho or Karl Marx?)
It’s not that there was no aberration. I occasionally broke into an elegy when a Kumble retired, foaming in the mouth claiming his career was a triumph of the trier. But by and large, I have maintained the funny side of it and I must admit it’s rewarding.
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yashwant raj Reply:
May 10th, 2009 at 7:58 pm
i didn’t mean it for only bloggers but also us journos — we need to do more to remain relevant to fans and readers
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