My favourite Hindi Poem

World Champions of cricket...also of being cry babies!

In the India vs Australia match of the DLF cup, one thing was highlighted. Australia might be the World Champion team right now, but they are also the among the worst(if not THE worst) when it comes to having sporting spirit.
In my opinion, the Indian team deserved to lose. Yes, you read it right, any team whose top order cant show any sense of purpose or determination in chasing as miniscule a target as 213(especially when the innings total of 400 has been reached four times!) deserves to lose.
But, in my opinion, Australia didn't deserve to win! In fact they won by default. I was totally shocked at the behaviour of the Australian captain Ricky Ponting. His display of anger at Sachin's wrong dismissal being reversed just went onto show how much of a cry baby he is! Is this the same person who was upset because he was run out by a substitute fielder? I wonder how he would have reacted if he had been in Sachin's shoes at that time! In fact it shocks me that Ponting was allowed to get away with a behaviour like this, when this was the third occasion in which he had shown dissent and argued with the umpires!
And then, with a captain like this, who can blame the wicketkeeper and the rest of the team for going up in appeal for Harbhajan Singh when there was not as much as a faint sound that came there. In fact, it might have proved to be a good thing that Gilly wasnt playing, coz knowing how much of a fair player he is, he wont have appealed on the non existent nick, and Bhajji might just have given India a deja vu and taken it to victory....
But well thats one thing that we will never know............

PS: Dinesh Mongia, after the match, went on to say that he "had faith on the tail" and that he knew "they can throw their bat around". I got quite confused by this, if he knew they could throw their bats around then what faith did he have? Didnt he realise that throwing their bats was not the call of the hour? Couldnt he have given them the simple instruction to defend and play along the ground each and every ball that they faced?! If only he would have had that much common sense, he might have been called a "match-winner" today. Alas.....

One Genius Retires, Another Returns

bye bye Schumi is passe,
Welcome back Sachin is IN!
What an innings vs WI it was. To call it a masterful knock would be the understatement of the year. It was a perfect innings, with one slight blemish right at the beginning. The best thing about the knock was not how Sachin paced the innings, or how he carried his bat(stayed not out till the end) throughout the innings, neither was it the way he exploded in the end to carrry India over the 300 run mark. The best part about that innings was that it was an answer to all the critics who have managed to voice their opinions on how Sachin is now "past hist prime" et al. And What an answer it was!






Many a times it has been said that Sachin has not performed when required from him, well Sachin performed when it was required. The only batsman to support him was Irfan Pathan and Sachin relished the opportunity to accomplish his 40th century. Alas, the critics still had their say because ultimately India lost the match[more about the insanite of D/L in this situation later], but in the third match of the series Sachin delivered yet again, this time the only suport he got was from Harbhajan Singh, who is usually known for his ability with the ball turning and sometimes for throwing his bat around for getting some quick runs. On this occasion it was able support for Sachin, getting a few good shots, some clean hits down the ground as well, giving Sachin much needed support and a good stand. Ultimately it was this stand that took India to somewhat modest total, and ultimately it was Deja Vu for the West Indian team supporters (1983 WC final).
The best part in yesterday's innings for me was not how Sachin held his ground but the anguish when he got that freak dismissal. There was huge disappointment written clearly on his face. That to me shows that this man is out there and he is VERY HUNGRY for runs. May he get thousands of more runs and may he take India to many a series win(WC 2007 Included). Amen!

Coming to the Duckworth Lewis rule, In my opinion the latest rule change from ICC, cutting down of minimum length of innings to 20 overs from 25 for application of D/L, is totally insane. Mainly because the first 20 overs are the ones that the fielding captain chooses to use the Power plays, therefore giving the batting team a chance to take risks and get some quick runs. In future it would hold teams in good stead, if they would delay their power plays in rainy weather so as to avoid falling behind in the net run rate.
What, in my opinion, would be a much better thing to do in rain affected matches is, to take the score after the same number of overs from both the innings and expand them using D/L to 50 overs(to take the exact effect of the wickets lost) so that it is fair to both the teams. If such a rule comes into effect, i believe, it would be a lot more fairer for both the teams, because as of now the declaration of result is more of a gamble! If a team loses more wickets initially, but manages to settle down but just as they were abt to accelarate to reach their target, rain comes and WHAM! they have lost the match.
I think the rules for rain affected matches need a major relook.

But more than that what needs a through look through is the way these tournaments are being organized. Dont localites know what months are parts of the rainy season? Why plan a tournament when such a period is going on? We saw an example of it in Sri Lanka and then again in Malaysia. What baffles me is, that even after the first match was washed out it was well known that there was a high probability of rain for all the matches but only in the evening, so why still continue to hold the matches as D/N? Why cant the matches be shifted to the morning? Or atleast prepone the start a bit so as to get more overs before rain gets a chance to spoil the game

Update: finally the authorities have woken up and the games starting from WI vs Aus(2nd match round) will start 1 hour before the scheduled time.
Note: This article has been written over a large period of time, and therefore there might be some ambiguities in the way things have been mentioned. I started writing this article after the century from the boss, and have finally managed to finish it!

Good bye Schumi

Another legend says good bye.
After Zidane, it is the turn of a much more famous sportsperson to retire, thankfully though, this time there has been no controversy. Atleast not yet.
Schumacher announced the end of his scintillating career after winning the Italian GP, the home GP for the ferrari team. By winning the GP he has not only reduced the lead of current champion Alonso to 1, but has also shown his will that he wants to retire when at the top. Looking at this GP, I dont give Alonso any chance of winning this year's championship. But then I have always been a Schumi fan...
Good bye Schumi, although my heart desires that you keep racing for ever and ever, I realise that it is not humanly possible for you to do so. You have been the one person who got me hooked on to F1, and I have been the biggest gainer from that. I wish you all the very best of luck in your retired life, and also may you win this Championship to go with a BANG!

Time to pull out the kitkats

As the regular followers of this blog(actually i dont even know if *anybody* falls in this category) might already have realised, i have taken a break for blogging for the time being.
This break has more to do with time management problems rather than any lack of interest in blogging, but the good news is that the tunnel seems to be nearing its end, as I can see light very near.
This blog will be very soon be back with new posts.
And hopefully also a bug-fix!(It had been brought to my notice by a friend that commenting option is not appearing,despite commenting being fully enabled through the settings. I guess it has something to do with the template modifications that I have made)

Till then, lets just take a break :)

Update: As you can see, the pending posts have started coming. Not the "latest" issues per se but these were posts that I had started and wanted to finish.
In any case, the break is over :)