Netherlands - the land of Milk farms and its Amul connection - Will Abhinav Mukund replace Gambhir ?

IPL 4 is drawing to a close.  There are only 2 matches left.  MI play RCB to determine who would challenge CSK tomorrow.  What will people who had all been watching IPL do from Sunday ?

Rotterdam is the largest port in Europe.  Besides having Rotterdam, Holland is famous for cattle, dairy and milk products.  Holstein cattle is a breed of cattle known today as the world's highest production dairy animal.  Holland is commonly the region of the western part of Netherland but also used to refer the country of Netherlands – the Dutch country.   When I wrote about Ryan ten Doeschate and posted a photo, some of you would have observed that he was sporting ‘Amul brand’

The KNCB [Royal Netherlands Cricket Board] is older than BCCI, founded in 1883.  They have a victory against England in T20 and one over Bangladesh in a onedayer.  They played in ICC World Cup 2011 in our poll.    In the WC, team Netherland was sponsored by an Indian company – yest our own AMUL – the largest food brand.  They sported Amul butter on their playing kit and on training apparel throughout the WC.

The utterly butterly delicious Amul is the brand of Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF) -  India's largest food products marketing organisation. It is a state level apex body of milk cooperatives in Gujarat which has 13 district coop milk producers’ union; 2.9 million of producer members; 15322 village societies and has total milk handling capacity of 13.07 million litres per day.  The players from a top milk producing Nation were sponsored by another giant milk producer..

The casualty list of IPL is soaring.  On the one side we saw players like Lasith Malinga, Chris Gayle preferring IPL as against playing for the Nation, then players like Dhoni, Sachin, Zaheer,   who were in the thick of IPL deciding to rest; Virender Sehwag was injured midway.  Now after the qualifier match day before – Gautam Gambhir the selected captain is on the injured list.  He has a shoulder injury reportedly sustained during WC final, but saw him in good stead throughout the IPL but aggravated badly forcing him to miss the West Indies tour !.  He has been advised four to six weeks' rest by Andrew Leipus, the Kolkata Knight Riders trainer, and could even miss the subsequent tour of England.

It is not the players alone to be blamed, it is they, the BCCI and IPL franchises who have unabashedly displayed that the lure of money is the priority than the National duty !!. 

Newspaper reports cite the letter of Leipus as stating that Gambhir felt acute pain in his right shoulder while landing on it in the field at one point during the World Cup final against Sri Lanka at the Wankhede stadium on April 2. Subsequent scans have now revealed a serious injury that would require him to avoid throwing or batting for four to six weeks.  But that sour shoulder did not prevent him from being sold for the highest value and playing for KKR in all matches.  There reportedly is also a mention of a chronic groin injury Gambhir has been carrying for 2 years.  How and why these were not made known to BCCI earlier and why was he selected as Captain for the forthcoming tour remains to be answered.  This is not the first time that players carry on with niggling injuries without disclosing and sometimes return midway.

One’s misfortune [was it self made ?] brings charm for another.  Suresh Raina might take the leadership role.  The squad as of now is :

Gautam Gambhir (captain), Suresh Raina, Parthiv Patel (wk), Virat Kohli, Yuvraj Singh, S Badrinath, Rohit Sharma, Harbhajan Singh, R Ashwin, Praveen Kumar, Ishant Sharma, Munaf Patel, Vinay Kumar, Yusuf Pathan, Amit Mishra, Wriddhiman Saha (wk)

The vacancy created by Gambhir might go to Abhinav Mukund, the aggressive left hander from Tamilnadu who earlier plays for CSK but did not figure in a single match this version.  Born in 1990, Abhinav Mukund is a prolific scorer in the domestic.  He has a 300 not out to his credit in Ranji.

Regards – S. Sampathkumar.