Saturday, January 19, 2008

So what ho ?

And pigs can fly and the sun rises in Western Australia. India just beat Australia in their own backyard at Perth. Perth - the so called grave of cricketers from the sub-continent, on what would be the bounciest wicket in Australia . Pakoda Kadar, ex student of RKM Vivekananda College and currently Bullet enthusiast called to ask me for status of the requirements from my last blog post.

1. A double century by one of the fab 4 whacking the famous 4 pronged attack to all corners. If it is a certain Mr. Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar it would be a repeat of 1992 .

No double century from anyone . Not even a century. The highest score from Dravid for 93.

2. An opening dash by Viru .

There it was . Perth seemed to suit him

Also the interesting exchange.
-> Viru to Kumble - One more over to Ishant Sharma . Ponting strike pey hai.
-> Kumble - ek aur daalega.
-> Ishant Sharma - Haan ek aur.

This after Ishant worked on Ricky Ponting in the morning for 8 overs making him play , miss and get hit on the body was the reason for this exchange. 3 balls later Mr. Ponting was trudging back to the pavilion wondering if a certain H Singh had come out as I Sharma.

3. A 5 wicket haul for Harbhajan Singh (including the wickets of Ponting, Clarke, Hayden, Symonds )

Damn! he was dropped.

4. A century by Anil Kumble

He got a pair but then he got 6 centuries of wickets. Wicket 600 came up and yesterday he learnt how to get the leg break going . The leg-break turned. Way to go, Jumbo may you confuse more batsmen now with actual leg spin rather than flippers, top spinners and wrong 'uns .

Monday, January 14, 2008

Tranquility on the Expressway.

Driving back from Bombay on the express way at night is quite a tranquil experience. For night birds like me its easiest to finish dinner in Bombay and then drive all the way back to Pune under 3 hours instead of waking up early in the morning and driving back. Accompanied by music , your own merry thoughts about life and the flashing lights on the expressway make for a mesmerizing drive.Throw into this heady mixture, races between 2 juggernauts in the first gear on the ghats at a top speed of 25 kmph, the weaving indicas and qualises trying to make their way past these juggernauts, the sneering corollas and the sedans trying to push their way past your humble WagonR , the hulks of Volvo's which refuse to let you overtake and threaten to push you out like a fly and you have a delectable drive. As an added bonus you can add Mark Knopfler, Pink Floyd, Coldplay and a variety of other artists crooning and make you feel at the top of the world. Once in a while you floor the accelerator, watch out for the response and then utterly enjoy in the thrill of what is essentially a union of man's thoughts and the machine's actions.

Thanks to the number of trips I have done to Bombay in the past few months especially to Powai and Mulund I've now been able to mark out the fastest route to the Eastern Expressway from Pune. Also one knows the turns and the curves pretty well that handling the WagonR is quite a pleasure these days. However as they say, all good things must end soon and I should enjoy the last few months of driving on this expressway.

Saturday, January 12, 2008

Monkey business.

Journalists should possibly stop covering the big Sydney imbroglio that led to Peter Roebuck calling for the sacking of Ponting as captain in what was the most hard hitting article I have read in the recent past and brutally honest. The funny bit was opinion polls suggesting that the Australian public was quite with the popular sentiment as in India. The other funny articles online include one by Pranav about one-tup cricket as is famous in the various terraces of various apartments in every Indian city.

The latest in what seems to be an unending discussion on what was possibly said drags Andrew Symonds poor mom into the whole discussion. I wonder what levels will journalism stoop to in this case. There even was talk in Australian papers about Indian arrogance with the ICC . The funniest part of the decision was the apparent contradiction in Mike Procters statement.

The whole thing however has put a different perspective for the Perth test. I wonder what would happen there . Will it be played in complete silence ? Or will Australia continue with their mental disintegration to have some of it dished back at them . I still remember the seminal 2001 series where the Australians first got the mental disintegration dished back at them and famously got Steven Waugh out. I can't find that particular issue of India Today but I remember how India started giving it back to Australia since then. Ofcourse the funny part according to a lot of legends has been that Australia have behaved like cry-babies and only the Indian captain and team have moved on with their heads held high. Certainly Australia are going to have to think a lot about what they want to do or show in the future. There has been a very strong statement by Anil Kumble about the spirit of the game and that has been made in such a statesmanesque fashion that everyone is thanking their stars for him being appointed captain instead of Dhoni.

Lots of people have talked about how India is using its arrogance thanks to it having the richest board . Its interesting to note that none of these folks question the US dominance in the world economy. Money does speak. This series is financially lucrative to Cricket Australia - make no mistake about that . Even if the team leaves early and India has to pay out the money , there would be no issues since the payout would happen , India would invite Pakistan over or have a tri-series with someone else in India and make up the moolah. Its high time the ICC started giving some respect to India for the amount of commerce it is bringing to this game. Otherwise how do you expect the market for this to grow ? The biggest migrants in the world today happen to be the Indians and the Chinese and this is the way that cricket will spread with the Indians playing it in different parts of the world. So the spirit of the game and all is fine but treat India with some respect. The BCCI doesn't demand it , many times the BCCI blunders in the ICC with short term commercial gains in mind but its high time the ICC, Australia and England got off their high horses because they started the game. England might be the birth of cricket, but today crickets home lies in the maidans of Bombay, the streets of Ranchi, the beaches of Madras and the bylanes of Jalpaiguri from where the next big cricketer would appear.

Finally what every Indian fan would like to see in Perth -
An Indian win comprising of :

1. A double century by one of the fab 4 whacking the famous 4 pronged attack to all corners. If it is a certain Mr. Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar it would be a repeat of 1992 .!
2. An opening dash by Viru .
3. A 5 wicket haul for Harbhajan Singh (including the wickets of Ponting, Clarke, Hayden, Symonds )
4. A century by Anil Kumble

Friday, January 11, 2008

R51 RIP - Welcome T61

So, its finally done - the good old R51 that I used at work decided to conk off making a weird noise something like a "platch" and I had to sadly put it away to rest yesterday. Within a couple of hours I had a shining new T61 that is much faster, lighter and more powerful than the R51.

However I have feisty running on it and getting sound working on a T61 using feisty is quite a painful task and I don't yet know how to make it work. In addition to backing up and reorganizing all the data on my old laptop its going to be a while before the T61 starts playing any music. Anyways RIP old one . I shall quite miss the brick .

Saturday, January 05, 2008

Double Standards.

Harbhajan Singh gets pulled up for a verbal altercation with Symonds started with what Tendulkar calls an amusing heckling and every Australian wants to brand any conversation that any cricketer has with Symonds as being of a racist tinge. I can't understand how Symonds feels that there's a racist tinge to everything said against him , is it his own insecurity that makes him and others around him view anything said against him as racist ?


Ricky Ponting is given out and walks out showing his bat to the umpire, shows dissent with the decision and gets away with nothing at all . 4 umpiring decisions go against India and we don't complain and the ICC does nothing at all. One never thought about these things earlier , but such behaviour by ICC match officials is getting routine and unacceptable. I think this is utter nonsense and if Harbhajan Singh gets pulled up , India should walk out of the tour.

At the end of the test match Ricky Ponting says "I hope this match is remembered for the cricket that was played. Yes, there were a few controversies by the side but the match itself was played in the right spirit and I hope it continues,"

I say my foot - Is he referrring to another form of "spirits" which are liquids of an alcoholic nature ? The match would be remembered for the cricket that was played by one team with 11 members who tried to play cricket and the other team which left behind what is basic etiquette in only what can be termed its greed to win . The next time Australia visits India - you can be sure that the crowds are going to boo them , there would be monkeys hired and brought into the grounds and loudspeakers making monkey chants.

However the question of the day was "The Australian Prime Minister visited the Sydney Cricket Ground wearing a monkey suit (Thats a Tuxedo, in a language known as Australian) . Now does that make him a monkey ?"

The end result is that the papers are reporting that Bhajji gets a ban whilst we look forward to playing more games with cheats , who think that if someone questions their integrity one has committed a sin. Words don't mean much ,tis actions that count and from todays actions I think Mr. Pontings credibility and the Australian cricket team's integrity is at an all time low.




Wednesday, January 02, 2008

2008 - here we go

So it is the night of the 1st ( lets not say first night for obvious reasons :P. ) and I couldn't sleep . So, 2008 has arrived and with it all the cheer and joy. Let me first blog what I did on the night of the 31st. Sat at home, read the Da Vinci code, listened to music on my new ipod nano and slept on time . Did not turn on the tv to watch all the NDTV 24x7 programmes on what happened in 2007 et al. Now, folks might wonder why did one do this ... I was just about tired after that trip to Goa where we had a lot of fun and then promptly caught the flu which left me coughing and sneezing all day today . Sitting at home, drinking kashaayam and doing nothing much else for the whole day.

The other fun part about New Year's is making resolutions that you break the next day. Now that is as traditional as the Sun rising from the East I guess. So lets see... What are to be my New Year Resolutions ?...