Very cleverly positioning himself as a “mole within IPL, armed with a MacBook Pro” etc, he has lead the online junta by their noses. Not naming any direct names, he has used clever behavioral metaphors to build convincing maps to real life personnas.

Wednesday, today, is the day he has promised to reveal himself to a whopping followership of over 7000 net junkies, cricket lovers etc. The world probably is hitting his blog crazy every minute, wanting to be the first to get this revelation of a man who has turned the world of media, audiences, and so on, followers to the most highly valued game in the Indian sub-continent, into a bunch of sheep, bleating and pleading, pleading, for his next cheesy, raunchy post.

His disclaimer is loud and clear. That all “All characters appearing in this work (blog) are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and unintentional.“.

So that’s good enough to exonerate him from most libel claims that people might be trying to pin onto him. His use of words like IPL, or Mumbai Indians etc, will really not land him in the soup. After all, any author can weave a story around an event right and call it a “work of fiction” and get away with it, right? Dan Browne got away with using the word “POPE” in his Angels and Demons and got away with it.  Jeffrey Archer has used White House characters, and gotten away with it.

So why not FakeIPLPlayer?

What has he done that’s libelous? Nothing at all … He has not really stated what team he belongs to beyond providing clever metaphors and event tracks to lead the people on.

I also think that rather than harm, this blog has boosted IPL ratings to some extent. I for one, have gone back to see characters, especially to connect their supposed metaphors with the original and have a good laugh. The FakeIPLPlayer has not really done an Equation saying X player = X nick. For example, “a former test cricket player, who will always remain a former test cricket player” is the kind of leading on that one is talking about.

Appam Chu**ya has been the STAR of this blog. This nick has caught fancies of millions with immediate connections to a player who has a darned high irritant recall due to what public calls kiddish antics and weird behaviour.

I think the FakeIPLPlayer is a brilliant author in the making, aware of literary turns of expressions, and more importantly, aware of the fine line between pure fun, and libellous slander. He ROCKS.

There is no way anyone can pin a libel action on him, IMO.

Sanjeev Sarma