Cricket World Cup: Poonam Pandey Riding Piggyback on Team India

One thing’s for certain.

We all know who Poonam Pandey is—now.

She’s that little known Kingfisher model who promised to strip nude if Team India won the World Cup.

I’m a serious kind of bloke, and it got me wondering immediately why Ms. Pandey would want to do this. And just who Poonam Pandey was.

Is she one of those Page 10 celebrities who frequent Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meets? A relapsed alcoholic?That would explain it.

No, you idiot, it’s the free publicity.

Maybe she’ll get a two-bit role in a Bollywood movie or in a prime-time soap.

If you need lessons in joining the bandwagon or riding piggy-back, look no further than Ms. Poonam.

Ms. Poonam has requested the BCCI to make arrangements for the ‘great tamasha’ in no less than the Wankhede.

Logistics should not be an issue for the BCCI or the ICC. It’s child’s play.

Again, the serious bloke that I am, I recall how when ‘the sexiest man alive’, Richard Gere, pecked Mademoiselle Shilpa Shetty on both her cheeks in a public display of affection, there was huge national outrage. Pictures and effigies of Gere and Shetty were burnt. Gere’s arrest was sought.

The Poonam Show

No such uproar this time. I guess cricket is really a religion.

I know that Ravi Shastri and Wasim Akram would be more than enthusiastic about having Poonam on their show "Shaz and Waz”. She could revive the whole concept.

She could prove to be the catalyst for better times.

For those who came in late, Shaz and Waz was a show co-hosted by the named protagonists, where three young nubile lady contestants would would be voted on by  television viewers as to who should be grilled by S&W for their due 15 minutes of fame. Their knowledge of the game was usually restricted to how ‘hot’ some cricketers were.Unfortunately, for Shaz and Waz, the named cricketers were never them.

Though I was not a great fan of the show, it had its moments.

The lasting impression I had was of two oversized, overweight gorillas on the wrong side of 40 in undersized half-sleeved  T-shirts, slobbering over a pretty young thing (PYT). No matter how hare-brained the PYT, she would always come out smelling like roses.

If the young thing was of Indian origin, the usual reason given for being there was that “Pappa or Mamma or my friends thought it was a great idea.”

Sub-text: “Who knows, I could be the next Katrina Kaif.”

If I had asked Sunny Gavaskar what he thought or what advice to give Poonam, he would have been terse and laconic:

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