“I want to buy a Hummer from this money,” was what the Indian spinner Harbhajan Singh had to say before the start of the IPL. The Turbanator was being paid Rs 3.4 crore to join the Mumbai Indians and wanted to spend it lavishly by buying his dream machine - the off-road vehicle manufactured by General Motors.
Nothing wrong with that, but then happened the slapgate which not only dented his image but also the Hummer he had planned to buy.
“He won’t be able to buy it now,” said the people closely following the career of Indian cricket’s new ‘bad boy’.
“He won’t be able to buy it now,” said the people closely following the career of Indian cricket’s new ‘bad boy’.
History was repeating itself. Something similar had happened 25 years ago. With his team in the final of the 1983 World Cup, Malcolm Marshall, the late West Indian fast bowling great, had announced (and apparently, even made the down payment) his plans to buy a BMW. West Indies never won and what happened after that is now part of cricketlore.
But, the Jalandhar lad has proved everyone wrong. One of the first things he did after landing in Colombo for the Test series vs Sri Lanka, was to visit the local workshop of the company which converts Hummer from left to right hand drive.
“Harbhajan came along with Zaheer Khan and Venkatesh Prasad to our workshop. It was Muralitharan who had got in touch with him and also Suniel Shetty (one of the two prominent personalities from Bollywood other than Sanjay Dutt to own a Hummer). We have almost closed the deal. We are giving him a discount from the normal price of US $ 96,000. He would, of course, have to pay a heavy excise duty to get it on the roads of India. In fact, he is also planning to order a truck from us with lots of modifications,” said one of the company representatives.
Well, Hummer boy Harbhajan, nobody minds you buying the monstrous, heavy-polluting vehicle. Till you keep on troubling the batsmen and excelling in the field.
No comments:
Post a Comment