Graeme Smith Reveals Retirement Plans

Graeme Smith, at a press conference after the first day of the deciding Test match between India and South Africa, has announced that he will be retiring. There was a twist though in store for everyone. As we all know some players have in the past retired from one form of the game or other as they wanted to devote more time and effort to their preferred format be it ODIs, Test matches or more recently T20 cricket. Smith though went one step ahead when he announced, "Well ya, I have decided to quit from all matches which will feature Zaheer Khan in the opposing team. Ya, this will help me focus on bowlers who I am more comfortable against" after having being dismissed by Zaheer for the 11th time in his career.

Saurav Ganguly when told about this development gave his customary look of disbelief by batting his eyelids at the rate of three times per second. "If I had retired from matches played in Australia, South Africa, New Zealand and West Indies, my average would have been much higher. This is not right. Soon you might have people retiring from short pitched bowling" he said, suggesting that he might have considered various kinds of retirement plans to suit his batting average.

On Ten Sports' post match show, Charu Sharma asked Arun Lal what he thought about these developments. Before the camera could shift to focus on Arun, he had fled from the studio.  Apparently poor Arun was too embarrased, knowing very well that no amount of retirement planning could have increased his batting average in Tests or ODIs significantly beyond 26.03 and 9.38 respectively.

In other news, India's best and one of the world's top  commentators Laxman Sivaramakrishnan, has become a potential candidate to endorse  brands such as MRF, Karbonn Mobiles, Citi Group and DLF before the start of the 2011 installment of the IPL. All these companies are in a tug of war trying to get his signature after LS's performance in the commentary box last season. DLF are reported to be in the lead quoting the highest pay rate of 2 paise for every time he says "DLF maximum". But there is tough competition from Citi Group who are prepared to offer him a bottle of coconut hair oil for each mention of "Citi moment of success".  Danny Morrison, Aamir Sohail and Arun Lal have all expressed their interest too, so fans might be better off using the mute button more often this summmer.

Disclaimer: The post almost entirely false. The only accurate piece of information you can take from here is Arun Lal's batting average (Courtesy www.espncricinfo.com)