"IPL is now a well established product on TV."

- Kunal Das Gupta, head of Sony TV India, as reported by Business Standard, 20.4.08.

Yes Kunal, a well established product less than 48 hours after its launch. Just one of the many cases of hyperbolics and just plain bollocks accompanying the birth of the Indian Premier League.

As I write, Delhi are 48 for 1 after six overs against the Deccan Chronicles Chargers, and presumably cruising to victory in Game Seven of the Indian Premier League. There's a lot to observe and a lot to talk about. Lots to blog about over the coming weeks if I have the time and maintain the energy.

I'm not a supporter of sporting boycotts in most cases. The exceptions can be distilled down to two types. One, where discrimination and exclusion is inherently carried out by the host sporting body (eg. apartheid-era South Africa). And two, where the host nation is in such a repressed, run-down state that playing international sport in those surrounds would be grossly immoral (eg. Zimbabwe, North Korea).

Boycotts of the Olympic Games are almost as old as the modern Olympics themselves. Think of Irish athletes refusing to compete in the first London Games and you realise that 2008 is the centennial year of the Olympic boycott.

I'd have no problem with tight security for the Olympic torch if it were being relayed from Olympia to Beijing by the shortest, fastest route. But for the torch to be protected by a phalanx of police and armed guards while on a ceremonial jog through London and San Francisco, that is the height of absurdity.

No, wait a minute, the height of absurdity is to hide the torch for forty minutes and change the route at the last minute so that no one actually knows where it is. As happened in San Francisco today.

The awarding in 2001 of the 29th Olympic Games to Beijing was always a troubling decision. Having accepted it then, we have no real reason to get uppity about it in 2008. But nothing justifies the politicised sideshows.

There was a time when Charlton Heston, who died yesterday at the age of 83, was a hero of mine. Then I began to appreciate some of the subtleties of screen acting. And well before he became chief evangelist for the Gun Lobby. In the tradition of my Jack Palance obituary, here is my Top Ten List In Chronological Order of my favourite Charlton Heston screen appearances:

West Indian batting star and Bangalore Royal Challenger-to-be Shivnarine Chanderpaul had a great 2007 by any measure. He averaged 111 with the bat in Tests, and 76 in one-dayers, where his output included four centuries. A worthy winner, it would seem, of the West Indies Players Association's awards for Test player of the year, ODI player of the year and West Indian International Cricketer of the Year.

Chanderpaul collected all three major awards at the WIPA's annual gong show in Trinidad on Sunday night. One thing, though. On Saturday he turned out for Guyana at the start of a four-day Carib Beer Series game against the Windward Islands at Providence Stadium. Chanders had a good afternoon at the crease. At the end of play on Saturday he was 78 not out, sharing an unbeaten 151-run stand with his captain, Travis Dowlin.

And then on Saturday night, he packed his bags and flew to Port-of-Spain. Without telling his team management.

Sheraton Bowling Club secretary Rick Eyre said they were immensely appreciative to BP South West Pacific (Ltd), Sheraton, and Kundan Singh who all stepped in to assist the minor sport.

"The Fiji bowling squad to the recent world bowls championship received $5000 from the interim government," Eyre said.

(source: Fiji Times, 22.3.08)

Let me just say at this juncture that I have never been to Fiji, never played bowls, never run a sporting club, and never stayed at a Sheraton.