Members End: Voldemort, Malfoy, Dumbledore and Harry

Sunday Times

TELFORD VICE, Johannesburg

Just when you thought India’s bumptious cricket bosses could not get any more bumptious comes the news from the land of bulletproof bumptiousness that the Indian Premier League (IPL) has made itself the competition whose name shall not be spoken on the internet unless a pile of money in rights fees has changed hands. Any resemblance between Srini and Lord Voldemort is, apparently, coincidental. So, if you read online of something called the “Indian T20 League”, know that you are reading of the IPL. Similarly, teams called the Delhi Daredevils and Royal Challengers Bangalore still exist. It’s just that, on the interwebs, they have to be called nothing more than Delhi and Bangalore. And if you’re wondering why the world’s leading news agencies - Reuters, Agence Franse Presse and Associated Press - are not reporting on the tournament or providing photographs, now you know: they wouldn’t cough up the rights fee. Whatever next? Will we be ordered, under threat of legal action, to find uncopyrighted ways to refer to Dale Steyn and, say, the slip cordon? How about “the Tattooed Terror” and “many a slip twixt ’keeper and gully”? One of these days, cricket reports could read more like crossword clues.

There’s no keeping a confirmed doos down. Kevin Pietersen, for instance, tweeted a selfie this week of the captains of all eight of the teams playing in the, umm, Incredible Pyrotechnic Loudness. All good. Except that K bloody P - who leads the side that represents the nation’s capital, the outfit coached by Gary Kirsten, the franchise whose initials suggest a large bra ... ag, stuff it, the Delhi Daredevils - is the only bloke in the picture whose face is not partially cut off, obscured or out of focus. Malfoy, is that you smiling front and centre?

Before Wednesday, Jacques Kallis had not picked up a bat in anger since February. But there he was, in the purple and gold of the best team Shahrukh Khan’s money can buy, thrashing 72 off 46 balls against a side from that other big Indian city - mum’s half the word - whose attack bristled with Zaheer Khan, Lasith Malinga, harbhajan Singh and Kieron Pollard. Clearly, Dumbledore’s spell to make Kallis forget who he was worked a charm.

Not even Harry Potter would have saved the Media XI from a double whammy of defeat against Cricket SA and Momentum last weekend. Two pulled hamstrings ... Sixteen dropped catches ...