Blogger, IPL’s biggest hit

Even as the general elections head towards a climax, there’s another poll unfolding — in cyberspace.
Between Saturday and Monday evening, nearly 29,000 readers of fakeiplplayer.blogspot.com— an Indian Premier League (IPL)-related blog that has spawned a cult following within the country and the Indian diaspora — have cast their vote to decide whether the mystery writer should reveal his identity or not.
The unknown blogger may not have turned out even once for his Kolkata Knight Riders team owned by actor Shah Rukh Khan, his rib-tickling posts have endeared him to thousands of fans, and attracted coverage by prestigious newspapers such as Britain’s Telegraph and Independent.
“You rock, dude,” is one of the most common refrains among fans, an overwhelming bulk of whom now wants to know who the cricketer-writer is, or if he is a cricketer in the first place, given his “mastery” over the English language.
Interestingly, the poll process has been initiated by the blogger himself, who goes by the moniker FIP (Fake IPL Player) and describes himself as a no-hope bench-warmer in a team that is at the bottom of the IPL heap with three measly points from 11 outings.
According to latest reports, nearly 19,000 blog fans or 64 percent of the total “voters” had plugged for the faceless writer’s identity to be revealed.
The popularity of the posts stem from FIP’s wicked wit, tongue-in-cheek sexual innuendoes, juicy details of players’ drinking binges or womanising, and outrageous nicknames for fellow cricketers, the support staff, team owners including Shah Rukh, and IPL bosses and commentators.
Wrote he after a particularly humiliating loss that fuelled talks of staff sackings: “While our fielding coach was busy browsing naukri.com, our Throwing Coach accusingly glared at our wicketkeeping coach every time Skipper and Buddhiman Baba (Brendon McCullum and Wriddhiman Saha, both wicketkeepers) had their slip-ups in the outfield.”