Is ‘Fake IPL Player’ faking it?

It’s just five days into the IPL and we already have a superstar; his name –FAKE IPL PLAYER. Don’t be surprised— he is undisputedly the biggest hit of this year’s IPL, as of now. But the big question is: who is this superstar? No one knows, but he has a fan following that’s sweeping the cricket crazy nation. I feel as if I’m writing on a fairy tale, for what has transpired in the last few days is nothing short of one. Here is a ‘man’ who has blogged himself into superstardom. Cricket experts have ridiculed his identity by saying that this must be someone from the non cricketing world playing pranks in order to come into the limelight. All said and done, the man has surely come into the limelight with his blog www.fakeiplplayer.blogspot.com. He calls himself a Kolkata Knight Riders team player but we’ll call him Mr. X as we try to unravel his identity.

This is how Mr. X defines himself: a fringe player who is sure never to get a spot in the playing eleven. A player whose assistance to the team can be utilised at best in serving drinks. Hence he has decided to utilise his talent in using his new Apple MacBook Pro notepad, which he always carries in his kitbag. He says he is tall enough never to go unnoticed but has miraculously escaped everyone’s notice. This master of the blogging world has disintegrated the whole Knight Riders team by leaking out secrets of team meetings, strategies and the confidence of each player. He has not even spared the commentators and some members of the media by delving deep into their off field “affairs”. The media has begun analysing him more than the teams and the Knight Riders have started a hunt for the suspect by interrogating many of their members, including Sourav Ganguly. For a team which has already been through so many controversies, this latest tale must be making quite a few hit the roof.

So what is the X factor that’s catapulting Mr. X to limelight? His use of language and his manner of describing situations is awesome. While I was going through his blog, I could not help but laugh. The entire blogging community seems to have become his fan and is egging him for more posts. His manner and sense of giving nicknames to players is amazing: Appam ***tia for Sreesanth, Lord Almighty for Ganguly, Big Sister for Shilpa Shetty and Phoren Babas for Mccullum and Buchanan.

As we try to gauge his identity it seems as if even a Sherlock Holmes like approach would prove inadequate in unmasking the mystery man. On the surface it’s very easy to believe he is from the KKR, but if we take a closer look the picture becomes hazy. He says a strict vigil is kept on the team but still he manages to blog even from the coach’s laptop. As I was reading one of his posts, a newer one appeared. And the time at which it was posted matched with the US eastern conference time .This prompted the detective in me to think that Mr. X might have telephoned the content to his ‘ally’ in the US for the creative man there to frame the story. But an alternative theory suggests that the time may have been pre-programmed to mislead us.

If he is a KKR member, his stories are first hand information. But if he is not, his manner of concocting stories out of nothing deserves a Nobel Prize in Fiction. At the moment, whoever he is, Mr. X is holding the upper hand in the thinking game. But once unmasked, he is sure to lose all his shine with interest. In the mean time, let him continue to entertain his ever increasing fan club with snippets like Bub-lee and Babli. I don’t need to reveal who these are— you all are interested enough to find out. As I sign off and get myself involved in finding new theories about the identity of Kolkata’s hottest property at the moment, you can enjoy his stories and harp on some Page 3 gossip stemming from them.