Courage

We see examples of exemplary courage in our day to day lives. However we have been tuned to see and appreciate only acts of physical courage. A commando facing a terrorist is something all of us can immediately identify with. Would you think the same if I told you about Saina Nehwal rising to top 5 badminton players of the world, or Mary Kom becoming a multiple boxing world champion ?

I am quite sure not. “Hard work , dedication for sure, but where is the courage ? “, I hear you ask.

To continue to believe in your dream when no one else around you does, requires courage
To hold your head high and never waver from your vision even when you stumble along the way requires courage
And to tread a path along which others before you walked and failed requires courage

By this bar, I admire the courage of the above mentioned people.

Being a sports buff, I just happened to choose two random names that came to mind. But tell me, don’t you see lot more examples of courage now around you ?

The Wall ….

Sitting around with a set of impacted wisdom tooth and it hurts like hell. Good time to get back to blogging. Lot of things have kept me off blogging so far, laziness being right near the top of the list.

When the return is after such a long break, how can I not mention the retirement of The Great Wall of India  . Folks, you will realize how good he was only when a bunch of unknown seamers knock us over for next to nothing on the next foreign tour.

Here is a salute to a guy who never gave up
A guy who always put his team ahead of him
A guy who always stepped up to the plate and delivered when the odds were stacked against his team
A guy who never complained
And to a nice guy who finished first

Class is one word that comes to mind when I think of his on field and off field behavior. Little wonder that the class shone through in his retirement press conference too. A very neat piece written by his wife is also worth reading. If Dravid ever pens his Autobiography, you can bet I will be among the first to buy it !!

Now that the wall is gone, whom will we hide behind ?

Lows in sports

How can you tell when a country is going through a low point of sports ?

Would it be when three of the country's top cricketers are jailed in U.K for match fixing, thus confirming what the rest of the world already suspected ? Hmmmmmmm, that sounds bad enough.

How about when you lose in Kabaddi to U.S.A in the kabaddi world cup ?? (I can count like 3 counties at best which play kabaddi, I'm shocked that there is a world cup for this ! ). Man, that must hurt.

All I can do is this: Hahahahahahahahahahaaaaaaaaaaa......

Ad from yester years

Remember seeing this ad several years back. They did not play it very often, but somehow I liked the theme of it a lot.

I could not find the full video, but I think it went something like this ….

In the beginning you just love to play,
because you are a kid, and it's a game.

Then the forehand gets stronger,
and the serve starts to pop,
and the expectation grows.

But you still love to play,

because you're a kid …………... a 27 year old kid,

… And it's a game !!

Sometimes when I watch Sachin Tendulkar, I wonder where he still gets the drive. Maybe he still loves to play because he is still a kid , a 38 year old kid ……. :-)

Hiding behind the wall

One more article on Rahul Dravid, nicely done. http://www.espncricinfo.com/england-v-india-2011/content/current/story/526147.html

The wall

Two well written articles about my favourite cricketer

Dravid's flame still burns - Harsha Bhogle

Dravid shows his greatness - Sambit ball

Got to learn an interesting stat too. Of the 33 hundreds that he has scored, only one has come in a losing cause !!

A legend retires

Oh, but he chucks, they snickered behind him all the time. He just smiled , returned to the top of his bowling mark and revved up another one at the poor batsman.

Muthiah Muralitharan, in my book is one of the greatest spinners of all time. There was a period when I thought he was a chucker, then I saw this program on TV in which they showed the deformities in his arm and how he was able to bowl all the deliveries even with an arm brace. That converted me to a believer.

Murali bowling with arm brace

The amount of vitriol that this guy had to take has been un-believable. Imagine if you came into work and some of your colleagues kept on shouting behind your back that you are a cheater. How long would you last in that company ? 5 days ? one month ? one year ??

This guy took it for close to 20 years and that is what makes him special. Sure, you can poke deeper into his record and say he did nothing in Australia or India. Well, Shane Warne did nothing in India or West Indies !!

And why so much hatred against Murali alone ? Take a look at some of the contemporary spinners in action. All of them having blatant chucking actions. None of them half as successful as Murali though, probably that is why they are being left alone  ..….

 

I’m sure Murali does not care. 800 wickets, somebody beat that first and then let’s talk !Adios Murali, there goes the last great spinner of my Generation. Why would anyone want to watch test cricket now ?

Chokers

However much Graeme Smith and the South African team deny it, the tag is becoming more of a tattoo on their foreheads.

Here is an account of six memorable chokes : http://www.espncricinfo.com/icc_cricket_worldcup2011/content/current/story/508048.html

The Worst cup

Is this the Cricket World Cup or is this a competition to showcase incompetence ?

I thought India and England put in strong claims for the most incompetent performance of the tournament during their match-up. India for miserably failing for most parts to contain England in-spite of scoring 330 odd runs, and England for their classic muck up in going from needing to score just about a run a ball with a ton of wickets in hand, to somehow scrambling to a last ball tie ! Now that would a tough one to better, wouldn't it ?

Hah !! Said Graeme Smith and South Africa . The dreaded "C" word applied yet again. How they managed to lose after destroying England for 170 odd runs, only God knows.

They say that South African team does not like solid food. Why ? Because they are scared of choking on it :-)

England entered again with quite a creditable claim to the King of Incompetent Teams (KIT, I like that !!) with a stunning display of standing-with-your-thumbs-up-the-backside approach when the unknown Kevin Obrien carted them all parts of Bengaluru.

India staked their strong claim for the KIT trophy by thoroughly un-inspiring performances against Ireland and Holland. But the performance that might have sealed the trophy for Dhoni and his team was when they lost close to 9 wickets for 30 odd runs while batting. South Africa did make a valiant effort to snatch the coveted KIT title by tying themselves up in knots during the chase and somehow ending up requiring 14 runs of the last over. But India was too strong, there was just no match for Ashish Nehra that day

Just when Dhoni must have putting his feet up thinking that the KIT is in safe hands, on comes Darren Sammy and the West Indian team. To go from 222/6, needing just 22 runs to win in 7+ overs, they Calypso Kings collapsed to 225 all out. That is right, 4 wickets for 3 runs. Now that is really tough to beat

So the competition is really between West Indies and India now. And they play each other next. Brace yourselves folks, this is the real one. The KIT final !!

Whose name will be plastered on the ICC Wall of Shame ? Let us wait and find out

Sachin Mania …

All I get to hear now is how everyone wants to win the ICC Cricket World Cup for Sachin. Guys, just win it first, ok ? Then dedicate it to your grand-mom, cat, couch , neighbour ……… I don’t care. Just bring the cup home.

My reading is chugging along rather nicely, momentum is everything in reading. So let me keep it going. I decided to get online and check out some new books. Flipkart is a neat little site with a fairly well organized book collection and free shipping.

Now let me see what I want to buy. History , Non fiction, Mystery and thrillers, Sachin Tendulkar, Travel ….

What was that again, Sachin Tendulkar as a book category ????

Surely not !!! He he he , the turbulent week at work is catching up with me. Let me check once more …

No , I was not mistaken. Sachin apparently is a stand alone category of books

Nothing personal against Sachin, top class professional and an absolute legend. But this is taking it a bit too far, don’t you think ?

Bring on IPL, forget the world cup

Let us just forget about the world cup and cut directly to IPL, shall we ? I mean, I no longer have the patience to watch one full day of cricket.

IPL is a different matter altogether. See the brainless auction / salary system that has been devised. A high quality player like Manish Pandey who has not played for India can only earn a max of Rs.30 lakh , where as someone like Saurabh Tiwary , who has played for India for just 3 ODIs suddenly gets Rs.7.2crores ( USD $1.6 million). I cannot understand why everyone was not put under the auction.

Having said this, the auction was perhaps one of the most entertaining ones that I have witnessed, I hope the IPL itself can surpass that.

Well, at least I hope I can see more innovative ads like this one by Virgin Mobile from last year. Sad that this was never telecast. What has happened to our sense of humor ?

And its not over still ….

18 years is time enough, you would think to find a solution to the Ayodhya dispute. But no, Supreme court has now stepped in to defer judgment till 28th. It is done in public interest, they say ..

Which public is this and what interest do they have ? 99% of the population just want to move on with life, we have other things to worry about.

Irrespective of what the court decides, whether to build a mosque or a temple or something else on the site, what likely impact would it have on your or my daily life ?

And everyday the commonwealth games fiasco seems to throw up even more stink. Lalit Bhanot , what an absolute idiot. Thanks for letting me know the difference in hygiene standards between India and rest of the world. I am tempted to deliver the “one tight slap” advocated by MTV , rarely has someone been more deserving than you, Sir.

The number one

After the farcical F1 race last weekend at Hockenheimring and a brutal press conference later ( see especially the section saying Questions from floor in this link), Felipe Massa has now come out and said he is not the number two driver in Ferrari.

Barring Massa, I am not sure how many other people in the world would share that belief. But I agree completely with the temperamental Brazilian. Sure he is not number two, Fernando Alonso is number 1 and 2 in Ferrari !!

Hope someone gives poor old Felipe a hard slap so that he wakes from his state of denial :-(

Tour de France

What better to fill the void left behind by the World cup football, Paul the Octopus , Jabulani et.al than Tour de France ??

Surely one of the purest forms of human suffering that you can witness in sports. 3 weeks of sprints, crashes, lung bursting mountain stages and exhilarating descents. I have been a follower ever since I read Lance Armstrong’s books.

Armstrong, sadly had a disastrous tour this year. But the battle between Andy Shleck and Alberto Contador has been enthralling  so far. I just witnessed a brutal attack by Shleck up the Col du Troumalet that tore up every other cyclist except Contador. After nearly 3 weeks just 8 seconds seperate them. The time trial on Saturday will be interesting. Contador is the favorite on the time trial, but this has been a tour full of surprises.

One of the things that I find very different about cycling is this concept of fairness. If the leader of a race crashes, the rest of the pack would wait for him to catch up. The concept being that Le Tour should be won by the strongest rider, not the luckiest.

The other is the total commitment of the team towards their leader. I saw Shleck’s team mates sacrificing themselves one after the other to set up a brutal pace to propel their man to the front

Both these are quite unlike any other sport that I have known.

Makes for fascinating viewing all the same ….

Sports ?? and Indians ?? No way !!

Honduras, with a population of 8 million can qualify for world cup, not us.  We have 1000 million people in India, imagine that. 1000 million !! We can’t even get past the first round of qualifiers.

Did I hear a voice of objection ? Did someone shout, “But hey, we have Vishy Anand, who is the Chess world champion yet again”, “What about Abhinav Bhindra, gold medalist in Shooting?”, “Haven’t you heard of Geeth Sethi and Pankaj Advani, ace billiards champions ? “.

My point is all these sports are so called “stationary” sports. Any sport that requires us to get off our backsides and move around, we pretty much SUCK royally.

And please don’t mention Cricket to me. It is a more or less a stationary sport. And about 9 countries around the world play it seriously.

In the meanwhile, Switzerland, with a population of 7.8 million has defeated Spain. Slovenia has 2 million people, New Zealand has 4 million, Slovakia has 5 million.

And Mumbai alone has 13 million people.

Where are those 11 folks who can kick a @#$%^& ball ????

Jose again …

Jose Mourinho is back after his Inter Milan won 3-1 against Barcelona in the first leg of their champions league semi-final. When asked by a journalist about some petty complaints that Barcelona had about the loss, he answered

“The way they are, tomorrow we will probably read I am to blame for the volcano. Maybe it is true. Maybe I have a friend in the volcano and I am responsible for that."

Barcelona , of course had to take a long bus journey to Inter to play their match because all flights were canceled due to volcanic ash

I like this guy !!

And its over

Gone are the days when I can come back home , switch on the TV and be entertained by a mindless exhibition of slogging called T20. The end of IPL-3 has left a vacuum in my life, one that I am trying to fill with the new season of Indian Idol :-)

Yesterday’s final was the true demonstration of why Tendulkar (who no doubt of the greatest batsman India has ever produced) is no more than a very average captain. A very average captain, whose stock has been considerably inflated by two of his long time admirers in commentary box – Ravi Shastri and Sunil Gavaskar.

Baffling choices in batting order. MI lost because of those choices and also in no small measure due to fairly pedestrian batting by Tendulkar and Abhishek Nayar. Harbhajan and Nayar are better players than Duminy and Pollard ?? Which book of cricket says that ?

Anyway it is wonderfully easy to be an arm-chair critic , is it not  ? :)

A good blog

If you are keen follower of football , especially the English Premier League, be sure to read Chris Charle’s Blog on BBC. Especially look at the Quotes of the week section.

The irrepressible Roy Keane came up with this during the past week :
"Attempts on goal is like going to a nightclub. You could speak to 50 girls but if you're going home on your own, it's no good, is it? You could only speak to one and go home with her!"
Roy Keane's dating tips and Ipswich's scoring issues!

And one of the reason why so many of us love The Special One : Jose Mourinho is captured in the quote below. This was just before the Champions league match between Mourinho’s Inter Milan and Chelsea, the club he formerly managed.
 "Before the game I know everybody and I love them, and after the game I know everybody and I love them - for 90 minutes I know nobody." 
The one and only Jose Mourinho on his return to Chelsea
(http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/chrischarles/2010/03/quotes_of_the_week_17.html)

Also if you are looking at a humorous round up of the weeks football action, you could do a lot worse than Robbo Robson’s blog.

Non football lovers, please excuse :-)

IPL and entertainment

The IPL has been entertaining me on most days. More than the cricket, I have been impressed with the Adidas ads on cricket. Here are all the three, in descending order of my liking. The music score at the end adds that extra punch

The bowler
He can hit the ball for an eight. He can bat till the pitch grows grass. His coach loves him, my coach loves him. He is strong off the front foot, he is strong off the back foot. He is his team’s best batsman

But right now …. He is in my way

The fielder
I can’t sing. I can’t dance. I can’t climb up mountains. I can’t ride a horse. I can’t swim. I can’t cook.

But sometimes …… I can fly

The batsman
Good advice, bad advice, captain’s advice, coach’s advice, stranger’s advice, dressing room advice, barber shop advice.

But my bat … it is Deaf

Enough of this nonsense

I am tired of hearing “breaking news” about Sania Mirza and Shoaib Malik. I don’t care if they get married or not, it is time for the media circus to end.

Could not care less if Sania went and married an Orangutan instead. Considering the fact that her fiancé has in the past married a woman over phone after seeing her photo, some may argue that in terms of intellectual capacity Orangutan may score slightly better than her present choice.

But that is beside the point. Two adults should have the freedom to do what they want their lives without the disgusting behavior (bordering on Voyeurism) by our media.

Shiv Sena also has made some hay while the sun shined, with Bal Thackeray claiming Sania would no longer be an Indian if she married Shoaib. Possibly he has overlooked that fact that Shoaib had married Ayesha Siddiqui first, who is an Indian. I don’t recall him writing an article saying Ayesha is no longer Indian, maybe someone can refresh my memory.