Wicket Maiden! Pretty Preity Zinta

Bollywood can wait. And also all speculation about marriage to beau and industrialist Ness Wadia. Right now, cricket is on the pretty Preity Zinta’s mind. And not just cricket, but more specifically who are the players she and her franchise of Ness, Karan Paul and Mohit Burman can bag for their Mohali team in the Indian Premier League’s forthcoming T20 championship. The ICC-approved, BCCI-organised tournament gets underway in April, and over 44 days and 59 matches, eight teams will compete for the US$ 3 million prize money. The Mohali team, God bless, has the mercurial Yuvraj Singh as its captain. IPL’s rules state that any Team India player in the tournament must play for the city that represents his home state to increase fan support and local interest. So, Preity & Co get Yuvraj. But the composition of the rest of the team will be known on Wednesday when the eight franchisees bid in the auction for the 16 players that will make up each of their respective teams. Preity, who visited Mohali yesterday, is naturally nervous. She declared that she had put “half of her hard-earned money” into the IPL. “I’m not as rich as the other people, I don’t have IPOs, I don’t have public money,” the actress is reported to have said. But... she has also believed that until you go to the edge of the cliff, you will never experience the thrill of life. And her heart wanted to feel the thrill, so she plunged into the IPL with Ness, Paul and Burman. What is delighting her additionally is that her Bollywood buddy Shah Rukh Khan has also thrown his heart into the IPL ring and now is part of the franchise that holds the Kolkata team. And as for the in-controversy, out-of-form Mohali captain Yuvraj Singh, Preity wants a team with heart and sportsman spirit, not necessarily heroes. “Who can forget the six sixers he hit in the T20 World Cup,” she is supposed to have said about her skipper.