Watch this Political T20

The Political T20 game's up. The track at the Vidhana Soudha promises to be fast-paced, with uneven bounce. The weather for the D-day - Oct 3, is as uncertain and fickle as the English weather, mostly cloudy, but the shining sun likely to make an impromptu visit. The opponent teams, the holders of the CM's trophy, the JD(S) skippered by CM HD Kumaraswamy, pitted against current hot favorite, the BJP, led by Dy. CM BS Yediyurappa. By all reckoning, the BJP is expected to bag the CM's trophy, but not for nothing is politics described as a game of glorious uncertainties.

And it is precisely from this that the veteran player of yore, former Prime Minister HD Deve Gowda, takes his inspiration from. Twenty months ago, in a "glorious" turn of events, his party won the CM's trophy, with the tacit, rather explicit, understanding that it would hand over power to its coalition partner, the BJP, but twenty months hence, events have become increasingly "uncertain". The gate of governance beckons Yediyurappa, but the slog overs remain, yet to be won over. And at the death, the JD(S) has called in the master of the end game, its patriarch, Deve Gowda, to take strike, and bat(ter) the BJP out of the game.

Sometimes, a game is won by all the best moves made off the pitch. So the JD(S) - and the BJP both are doing just that. The Gowda clan has upped the ante about the dangers of giving "real" power to the "communal forces", HDK's ministerial colleagues insist on playing under HDK as captain, and Deve Gowda has taken the war to the central BJP. On its part, the BJP is banking on its friend turning foe playing the game in the gentlemanly spirit, and adhering to its promise of handing over power. However, things are not as transparent as they seem on the saffron front. For instance, days before the D-Day, one of its Ministers, Sriramulu, filed a criminal case against HDK, alleging that the latter had hatched a plan to kill him.