Ashish Nehra… The Pepsodent boy © Getty Images
By UnReal Mama
Please note this is a humour article – work of pure fiction
As police investigators plough ahead with their investigations into the murky nexus between bookies, cricketers, businessmen and cricket enthusiasts, more details regarding the code words used by bookies in referring to cricketers have emerged, thanks to a Wikileaks expose.
“Some of them were obvious such as ‘Pepsodent’ for Ashish Nehra and ‘Rajini’ for Sir Jadeja,” disclosed Delhi police chief, Neeraj Kumar, confirming the contents of the Wikileaks cable, “and some others like ‘Samajwadi’ for Umesh Yadav, ostensibly because Yadavs constitute the vote-bank of the Samajwadi Party in UP, were quite cryptic and we had to double check with the arrested bookies for confirmation. We are still in the process of deciphering 100 more code-words.”
Here is a sneak preview of the Wikileaks cable:
Pepsodent: Ashish Nehra [No explanation needed]
Rajini: Sir Jadeja [used mostly by Chennai bookies while international bookies used ‘Chuck Norris’]
High Jump: Ashok Dinda [Very easy and obvious one, so much so that bookies were contemplating a new code-word]
Pantene: Ishant Sharma [No explanation needed and Delhi police guessed this on their own]
Wolverine: Lasith Malinga [incidentally, all Sri Lankan players were mapped to X-men characters, considering their freakish cricketing abilities]
Samajwadi: Umesh Yadav [rather cryptic. Bookies had a tough time coining a code word for the newly married pacer, until a UP based bookie, Shivlal Yadav, suggested this moniker]
Chinook: MSD [The Indian skipper was named after the American twin engine, heavy-lift helicopter, a sturdy, albeit inelegant, workhorse that does all the heavy lifting to the war front and can be relied upon to deliver under the most trying circumstances]
Maa-behen: Virat Kohli [Easy one]
Haathi: Ajit Agarkar [For huge ears]
RG: Gautam Gambhir [for running out fellow cricketers who might steal the show from him]
Beckham: Yusuf Pathan [earlier referred to as ‘Gunda’ but changed towards the business end of the tournament for his newfound football skills]
Bajrang Bali: Kieron Pollard
12th man: Manoj Tiwary [no explanation needed]
Naakmukka: Dwayne Bravo [for his impromptu pelvic thrusts after a wicket or a catch]
Baby: Piyush Chawla [other code words for the leggie included ‘Cutie-pie’ and ‘Juhi’ also]
Maggie: Rohit Sharma [for his two-minute stays at the crease. Police are also investigating whether the noodle maker could be involved in spot-fixing his innings]
MNREGA: Glenn Maxwell [For getting paid to do nothing. Initially, he was referred to as ‘Benchwarmer’ but it was discarded for being too obvious]
(Originally published in www.theunrealtimes.com. “
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