Kapil urges MBE to try Dhoni

After reading Dhoni's candid interview with Anand Vasu, in which he, very modestly, claims he is one of the team's best sloggers, Kapil decided to renew his call for Dhoni to be appointed as Captain of the Indian team. In a blank call to Greg Chappell MBE, Kapil had nothing more to say on the matter.

We contacted Kapil for a candid telephonic conversation and the great howler duly obliged. While taking swings at everyone from the deep bunkers he had shot himself into, Kapil pulled no punches on why he believes Dhoni is the perfect man to lead India. Following are excerpts of the nonversation. We have deleted all the questions we asked the great howler for fear of being ridiculed. For entertainment purposes, only, Kapil's responses, are all there in their unedited form. Over to the great howler.

Kapil: I've always believed in the value of hard work. The only thing that get's you far in life is hard work. Intelligence is a highly over-rated quality. When I see Dhoni, I see myself. I fail to see why Greg Chappell MBE does not see me or, for that matter, what I see. It's very unfair on the MBE's part to not try some of the experiments I am proposing. After all the pasta he has fed our boys, the least he can do is experiment with a diet of Dhoni.

Sehwag's mother was telling me the other day how Sehwag had suggested she go down the order of importance and let his wife open the innings. In my days as a cricketer, I never dared to play with my mother's position. Any suggestion that I experiment with her in different positions would have made me shed tears larger than a crocadile on television. If Dhoni is made the Captain of the Indian team, he will unify all the players under their mothers and bring back the sense of security this team has lost under MBE.

While Kapil was yammering on about Dhoni, we sneaked away, unnoticed, to ask Rahul Dravid, the current Indian Captain, for his views on the renewed call from the great howler. As is his wont, Rahul refused to take any risks on a sticky wicket. Every delivery we sent down his corridoor of uncertainty was left with a raised bat of quiet certainty. After being faced with 30 minutes of stonewalling, we decided to get back to Kapil to check on how he was doing with our dictaphone.

When we returned to the bunker we'd left Kapil with our dictaphone in, we fouund our dictaphone rolling in the aisles and Kapil nowehere to be seen. After a few momments of grappling with the hysterical dictaphone, we managed to get it to play back what had transpired. We'll leave you with what we think sums up exactly why it's high time, we think, the arrogant MBE must pay attention to Kapil.

Kapil: I urge the government of India to intervene in this serious matter. The security of the country is being sabotaged by this foreign hand. When players in the Indian cricket team feel insecure about their places, the national psyche is seriously damaged. I'm not quite sure what that means, but I read it in an analysis of the state of Indian cricket by Boring Majumdar, Rhodes scholar and research fellow at Latrobe University in Melbourne.

All I'm trying to say is this obsession with experiments can have very serious consequences if it is not reciprocated by the other side. I find this one-way relationship of such inconvenient experimentation very heart-breaking. I think it's high time I cry. Maybe then people will take what I'm saying seriously. And so saying, I am crying... By which time, our trusty dictaphone had well and truly lost it and made its way to roll upropriously in the aisles of insanity.

When we met Boring Majumdar for his take on the great howler's take from him, Boring started to take out some very dense files from under his arm and looked like he was about to launch into a speech on the tiffcussion between Kapil and Experiment Nation. We left our dictaphone to suffer the insufferable bore and skipped off for an evening of Sheila-hunting in one of the many cafes that dot the lovely city of Melbourne.