Hope At Last, I thought. But...

...it ended up as Hope All Lost for KXIP.

I am a firm believer of cycles - if something goes up, it has its time to come down at some time in the future. On that game at Eden Gardens, there was this nice stat on Dada which said that he was one of the three batsmen (whether in KKR or across the IPL3, don't know that) who has a strike rate of less than 100. Then that one over of Ojha corrected that anomaly.

Sachin used to gift his wicket to every left-arm spinner plying his trade - remember Ray Price, Mohd Rafique... and in contrast, Ganguly has buried many a left-arm spinner's careers in the real estate beyond long-on and deep mid-wicket.

The week that was in IPL3:

• Last week saw some big wins from the teams both in terms of wicket margins as well as run margins. Shows that the game is turning to be more digital with lesser and lesser shades of grey in between
  
• DC is running out of steam
• KXIP's signal strength is at a death-whisper level
• KKR is flashing in the plan along with CSK; while Dada is conspicuously present with his gung-ho comments, Dhoni is definitely absent in many aspects - batting, captaincy, winning... Tells you much about the fact that a captain is as good as his team's performance!
• Murali and Malinga are flying the Lankan flag high while Vaas, Sanga and Mahela are trying extremely hard to bring it down!
• Gambhir called the Royals as duds and promptly got reprimanded by the Commissioner - Lalit Modi that is! Heard that Gauti will not be allowed to speak for the rest of IPL including the call at the toss! He will tap his head for "Heads" and do a coily-motion with his hand from the posterior to indicate "Tails"
• Except for Bhajji and Karthik the Indian team for T20 failed consistently last week
  

Answer for BQ-8:

The answer is Batsman No. 8. Not 2 or 7 or 11. Finally good response to the quiz. Seven, oops got it wrong, eight got it right. Bhargav, Bob, Guru, Ishan, Rambo, Siva*, Sivasubs and Yadavalli are those magnificent seven! Kudos, fellers.

Now on to BQ-9:

What is the correct - or the more common, form of this re-written idiom?

• One suffering from macular degeneration is guiding one with less than 10% normal vision

Answers to the usual mail box.

PS: SPK is at $13.70 and will make it to at least 25, I hope.