Outside The Line is a terrible cricket blog.
It is infrequently updated.
It goes on far too many irrelevant tangents.
It uses profanity as a crutch and shock value as a currency.
It abuses its meta-consciousness and treats it like an end in itself.
It steals all its images and never attributes its sources.
It ignores its commenters.
It regularly refers to itself in the third person.
It claims a plural voice when its byline is virtually always the same.
It uses self-consciously big words and pretentious diction.
It hides behind the cloaks of anonymity and low page views to take easy potshots at more established writing figures with no time or ability to respond.
Its subject lines never have anything to do with its posts.
It employs cheap typographical skills, like selective italics and one-phrase paragraphs, to create rhetorical emphasis, instead of relying on good flow and proper word choice.
It promises a lot but seldom delivers.
It disappoints time and time again.
But at least it can still sniff out a Happy Gilmore reference like a juicy truffle every time one appears.
After Virender Sehwag's 60-ball century in the 4th ODI between India and New Zealand, for example, Sidharth Monga recalls an old advertisement where Sehwag -- channeling his inner Kevin Nealon -- describes his batting philosophy:
The ball is supposed to live outside the boundary, send it there.
Its bags are packed. It has its plane ticket. Bring it to the airport.
This is a cricket blog?
Posted by: jrod | March 17, 2009 at 10:00 PM
Doesn't sound like cricket blog!
Check out ORKUT Community & Support Indian players:
http://www.orkut.co.in/Main#Community.aspx?cmm=60391870
http://ipl-cricket09.blogspot.com/
Posted by: Kaveri | March 27, 2009 at 11:16 PM