Shaken and stirred: cricket's latest addition to up the glam quotient hasn't gone down well © Aneesh Bhatnagar

Don't come round here no more
They came, they shook, they were told to go away. Cheerleaders shaking pom poms and more are common at certain American sports venues but they haven't - in the land where Bollywood has churned out giddy gyrations, bikini cholis and Mallika Sherawat - been taken to kindly, at least in certain centres. A furore has raged across the country over cheerleaders this last fortnight, and most Indian Premier League franchises have now asked the girls to cover up. One team, the Delhi Daredevils, even plain stopped them from performing at matches. It all started with plenty of pomp - 12 Washington Redskin girls were brought to Bangalore by Vijay Mallya, the owner of the Royal Challengers - but has since fizzled out. Not much to cheer about.

Catch and release
You can't keep a bad man down. Handed a five-year ban by a PCB disciplinary committee for criticising the board after not being offered a contract, Shoaib Akhtar has now been cleared to play in the lucrative IPL - good news for the faltering Kolkata Knight Riders franchise. The controversial Pakistan fast bowler will resume his career outside the country, while a tribunal considers his appeal. So Shoaib's being banned all right, but not till he makes a pile of money. Ah, justice is so sweet.

Picture imperfect
In what is further evidence of the role corporate entities play in today's game, Reliance Industries, owner of the Mumbai Indians franchise, pulled all advertisements for the side that featured Harbhajan Singh's mug. Surely the Indian offspiner is feeling the reverberations of his 11-game ban, which came after he assaulted Sreesanth. Reliance felt it would have been "unethical advertising" to have Harbhajan in ads for games he wasn't playing. Harbhajan's name has also been removed from the team list in the franchise squad's website, but his photos still figure in the photo gallery. Needless to say, Sreesanth isn't downloading any for desktop wallpaper.

Indian Friendly League
Amid slapping rows between team-mates and expectations of Symonds and Hayden v Harbhajan version 4.0, one man has stepped forward and vouched for how friendly the IPL can make people. Daniel Vettori, who played all of two games for Delhi, believes the tournament can foster sincere friendship and do away with sledging. "You got to know a lot of guys more than you ever thought you would," Vettori said after landing in London. "You got to know them as people and therefore that takes a lot of the rivalry out of it. I think you'll still play hard cricket. But I think a lot of situations will be defused because one guy knows the other guy because they played with him or someone else in the team knows them pretty well and they can say, 'Well, this is probably where he is coming from.'" And they said money can't buy you friends.

And the non-IPL news of the week slot features ...
Essex team-mates and flat-mates Alastair Cook and Mark Pettini, who have their own darts shirts. Yes, darts shirts. "That was an unexpected present for me from Swampy [Pettini] when I got back from New Zealand," revealed Cook this past week. "We both have our nicknames on the back of our shirts - mine being Alastair 'Bed and Breakfast' Cook and Mark's being Mark 'In the Madhouse' Pettini. There is even a lovely caricature on my shirt of me cooking on a barbecue using a cricket bat!" For the uninitiated, both are darts terms - 'Bed and Breakfast' being a score of 5, 20 and 1 and 'In the Madhouse' being when a thrower needs a double 1. Bulls eye.

Quotehanger
"This is not cricket. This is the greatest divide between the rich and the poor. With that kind of money, you could have built another cement factory."
Jaswant Singh, leader of the opposition in the Indian parliament's upper house, criticises the IPL

"Violence between players? Scantily clad cheerleaders? Toss in a rant by Charles Barkley and three minutes of commercials for every 45 seconds of actual game time and cricket may finally be ready for a mainstream American audience."
The Los Angeles Times warms to the idea of Twenty20 cricket after hearing about the IPL

Jamie Alter is a staff writer at Cricinfo

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