Harbhajan sues Broad for plagiarising dodgy hat-trick

Ever vigilant in looking for ways to improve cricket and save it from a fate worse than Prashant Vaidya's run-up, the ICC has come up with another proposal that they're hoping will bring audiences rushing back to the gentleman's game.

"After mucking about by eliminating runners, introducing multiple new balls and endlessly tweaking those useless Powerplay rules, we believe that we've come up with a killer idea - all-new batsman and bowler descriptions to spice up the game," said former West Indies great and chairman of the ICC cricket committee, Clive Lloyd.

"Until now, we've only called bowlers 'left-arm medium fast' or 'right-arm offbreak' and so on," he continued. "While this does convey some information about the bowler, we felt that there's room for improvement - so we're introducing more detailed descriptions. For instance, from now on Harbhajan Singh will be referred to as 'right-arm surviving on past achievements', Sreesanth as 'right-arm, so unpredictable he's practically schizophrenic' and Stuart Broad as 'right-arm excessive appealing'. It will bring an added dimension to cricket.

"How I wish we had this system back in our playing days," said Lloyd, turning nostalgic. "We could have referred to Malcolm Marshall as 'right-arm badass', Madan Lal as 'right-arm ROFL' and Merv Hughes as 'right-arm fat'.

"Hey, did you notice that all three bowlers in the previous quote had names beginning with M? 3M," he pointed out gleefully.

The announcement has left TV production companies scrambling to get the new descriptions in place so that they can be integrated into broadcasts. For the current England-India series, work has already begun. Ishant Sharma will now be described as "right-arm WTF is with that haircut?", Tim Bresnan as "right-arm mild resemblance to Michael Madsen" and MS Dhoni will be "right-arm yeah, right".

Harbhajan Singh, who recently issued a legal notice to a liquor company regarding an advertisement that allegedly poked fun at him, has now sued England bowler Stuart Broad for copyright infringement.

"I got an umpire-assisted Test hat-trick way back in 2001. Stuart Broad has copied my effort without prior permission - which is a clear violation of copyright. So my legal team is working round the clock to make sure I get proper compensation," said an angry-looking Harbhajan at a specially called press conference.

"In both hat-tricks, the middle dismissal was an lbw that was clearly not out. And what's more, both dismissals involved me, Harbhajan Singh. It's painfully obvious that Broad was inspired by my earlier effort, and, like a Bollywood music director, blatantly copied it," claimed the Indian offspinner.

"In fact, this is an insult to every Sikh spinner who ever got a dodgy decision in his favour. It shall be avenged," he added, needlessly dragging BS Bedi and MS Panesar into the controversy, but leaving out Sarandeep Singh, who nobody can recall ever having taken a wicket.

When asked if he was better off focusing on cricket instead of wasting his energy on pointless legal wrangles, Harbhajan snapped back: "What energy? Lawyers are a dime a dozen these days - even Dave Richardson is one."

Harbhajan's bizarre legal activity has sparked off an epidemic of similar lawsuits. Apparently Sourav Ganguly is suing Suresh Raina for copying his technique of taking his eyes off the ball when hooking, John Lever is suing VVS Laxman over the inappropriate use of Vaseline on a cricket field, and Chirayu Amin is suing the Asia Cup for being something nobody really cares about.