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HAPPY DEEPAVALI to only those who did not make loud sounds on the last couple of nights. Loud sounds include letting off bombs, gargling in public, burping outside the window and singing Tandoori Nights openly.Since it’s Diwali time, it’s good to open your heart and start on a clean slate. I’m going to let you in on my secret. No and it’s not that I am a middle-aged woman or that I wear tights when I’m alone or even that at 37, I can’t grow facial hair.

In fact, my secret is that I batted at the number 3 position for India and made 23 Test centuries and averaged 47:24. This meant, I often displaced Dilip Vengsarkar and Jimmy Amarnath from the team. I did all this on my balcony and the packed stands that bore witness to these facts were made up of my Beagle Figaro and my budgerigar Brutus.

Last week, I got a chance to powwow wi-th the ’83 World Cup winning squad in Dubai’s Atlantis Hotel. A word about the hotel, first. It’s not located in Atlantis and secondly, it’s about half the size of the entire circumference of the earth. Now, since Vengsarkar was missing, I decided to come clean to Jimmy Amarnath about my secret.

And I was taken aback when he said, “But sonny, I know that you are often mistaken for a middle-aged woman and that you prefer to wear tights and of course, everyone knows that you still can’t grow facial hair”.

Then I crept up and told him about what happened at the balcony. Amarnath reacted with a scream,

although that might have to do with the fact that I may have bit his ear whilst violating acceptable proximity en route to spilling the beans.

On my way back to the hotel room, I bumped into Kapil Dev literally. After we both got up I decided to tell him about the 435 test wickets I took ... in my garage. As he made me carry his bags back to his room, I couldn’t help but feel that Kapil Dev and I had made a ‘connection’, sealed with the 10 Dirham tip he gave me.

As I left his room, I saw Sunil Gavaskar amble by ... it’s time to mention the building compound....