Cricket And Bollywood

Mahendra Singh Dhoni surely has a charm about him that transcends the boundary of cricket. Ask Deepika Padukone. Well, if grapevine is to be believed – well, calling it grapevine and then begging to believe it is too much -- this model-cum-actress and Dhoni share a mutual admirationand she’s expected at the Wankhede Stadium today for the Twenty20 match between Dhoni’s Daredevils vs Ponting’s Pirates (errr, does that sounding racist?). Dhoni is expected to reciprocate by watching Deepika’s debut movie ‘Om Shanti Om’.

Deepika, daughter of India’s lone badminton star Prakash Padukone, has become a household face, courtesy innumerable commercials and her soon-to-be-released movie against Shah Rukh Khan “Om Shanti Om”.

Dhoni apparently has a crush on the lanky beauty but there are also reports that link ‘Mahi’with Priyanka Chopra. And there also were reports that the dasher from Jharkhand has an admirer in Koena Mitra as well.

Some say there can’t be smoke without fire but I’m not insisting that these are to be believed. Gossips are gossips after all. Following is a list – I can’t call it comprehensive – of cricketer-actress matches, though I can’t take responsibility of authenticity!

*Mohsin Khan – Reena Roy *Garfield Sobers – Anju Mahendra
*Viv Richards – Neena Gupta *Sandeep Patil – Debashree Roy
*Imran Khan- Zeenat Aman *MAK Pataudi- Sharmila Tagore
*Zaheer Khan- Isha Sharvani *Sourav Ganguly- Nagma
*Yuvraj Singh - Kim Sharma *Mohd Azhrauddin- Sangeeta Bijlani

*Ravi Shastri-Amrita Singh *Kapil Dev-Sarika
*Usman Afzal- Amrita Arora *Manoj Prabhakar-Farheen