Lara or Tendulkar?

This question comes up again and again and people argue with fervour and passion. After all their heroics on the field and careers studded with records, what matters is how high an opinion their countrymen have of them.

Tendulkar is still called Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar in India, while cricket lovers in Lara's home (Trinidad) refer to him as Brian 'Jesus' Lara.

Need I say anything more?

A New Look!

I spent the last evening making a few changes to the template. The blog doesn't look plain and minimal anymore. I had this template altering idea in mind for a long time. I decided against shifting to wordpress solely because they don't allow any changes to their template.

Also changed the title of the blog(as you might have already noticed). I think it perfectly describes my approach to blogging. I don't make any special efforts to organise, refine and then write. Some arbit idea suddenly strikes and I turn it into a post.

Any suggestions, criticism and creative ideas about the new look and title are most welcome.

Cricket Commentary

I had mentioned in the previous post about the India-Pakistan cricket series in Abu Dhabi. The broadcast was only on DD and Sahara. Needless to say, the quality was pathetic. It was almost like watching glimpses of the match between commercials. The sound of the last ball of the over hitting the bat was immediately followed by some dumb DLF commercial. The commercials would go on and on you would invariably miss the first ball of the next over also. So, you had to be happy watching 4-ball overs.

That reminded me of the days when ESPN and Star Sports had the rights for most of the major cricket tournaments going on all over the globe. World Cup 1999, Champions Trophies, India's tour of Australia etc. They at least used to make sure that people don't miss out on the cricket. Their commentary and analysis team, made the cricket all the more enjoyable. Harsha Bhogle was great with all the numbers and statistics and used to raise really good points during the post match and lunch discussions. He was my personal favourite among the Indian lot. John Dykes and Alan Wilkins were also good at anchoring the analysis sessions. Among the former cricketers commentating for these channels, Boycott was the best, as many would agree. He was ruthless and precise but interesting and funny at the same time. He was entertaining without being ridiculous like Sidhu. Gavaskar was also good, though a little biased towards India. Tony Greig and Ian Chappell were good too. I can still recall Tony Greig shouting himself hoarse during the Sandstorm innings by Tendulkar at Sharjah in 1997. I never liked Ravi Shastri, Rameez Raja and Richie Benaud. Shastri's analysis and commentary had no substance, Rameez Raja was too biased towards Pakistan. He was almost like their agent. Richie Benaud is quite popular and respected as a commentator.I hear he was a star commentator for Channel 9. But I personally think, he is plain boring.

The happy ESPN Star days came to an end with Setmax winning the rights for the 2003 World Cup broadcast in India. Charu Sharma was absolutely dumb. I would've had no problems with Mandira Bedi, had she kept quiet. But thanks to the mute button, Extraa Innings was a bearable show. As if these two were not enough to drive people away from the discussions, they hired lots of former cricketers with no brains for commentary and analysis.

Today, we have Srikkanth, Manjrekar, Arun Lal, Laxman Sivaramakrishnan. All of them, bad beyond words. DD dropped lower with people like Atul Wassan and Maninder Singh. Their analysis show was called Fair and Lovely ......... (yuck! Fair & Lovely?!*#$@*), their female host knew nothing about cricket and she was not even worth watching with the TV on mute.

Hindi commentary is the ultimate torture. "Bahut hi powerful shot maraa hai, mid wicket ke upar se, bowler shocked. Behtareen shot tha, fielder ke paas koi chance nahi. Bahut hi unorthodox player hain, bowler ko poori tarah se dominate karte hain, yahi unke game ki speciality hai". If you want Hindi commentary, my advise is to put the TV on mute and switch the radio on. It is true that there are no Hindi equivalents for cricketing terms like mid wicket or gully or slip etc, but they can at least do better than this khichdi.

But with Nimbus having won the bid for TV rights for the coming years, there appears to be no light at the end of this tunnel.

I'm alive: Dead blog != Dead author

What do you do when you are back after playing TT for a long time? You are tired, your clothes are stinking of the sweat flowing out of every single pore of your body and you are feeling as clean as a pig having a great time in the slimy surroundings of the filthiest drain.

You go wash yourself?

WHAT? NO! NEVER! What you do, is to take a look at your keyboard to find that it is already dirty since you haven't cleaned it for the past few months and then settle down in your chair to make it dirtier by typing in a bunch of random words and call the result which appears on the screen, a post on your blog which is all but dead.

For those who are interested in the happenings of my life, here's an update:

1)End sems over. Worst end sems in 2 years, I don't want to think about the grades.
2)The silver lining:
--Managed a B in Algorithms in spite of scoring less than 1/3rd marks in the end sems.
--I finally got the second PT credit. Thanks to Mohit for dragging me along, every morning in the month of March.
3)Finished NFSU2, actually this happened a very long time back, some time in March.
4)Home:
--Satisfied my appetite for ghar-ka-khana fully.
--Slept like a log for 11-14 hours everyday.
--Attended a cousin's wedding and got very very bored.
--Cooked dinner with my sister one evening. My contribution being the dessert.
--Casually told Aai that I tried to suttofy once. Unfortunately, she didn't take it casually.
--Shantaram: A truly great book. After quite a long time I actually spent time thinking about every single sentence and its meaning. I would recommend it strongly to everyone. Don't be scared of the 936 pages, you'll never feel that it is such a fat book.
--TV:It has dawned upon me that TV is an absolutely useless medium of entertainment without ESPN & Star Sports. Priyanka Chopra looks very cute in the new Pepsi ad.
--Couldn't spend much time with friends, all of them either had exams or some placement lafda.
--Did not read blogs for 20 days! That's an achievement.
5)Back to pavilion:
--Project has started, have to finish some initial work by Monday.
--Finished 'A Fine Balance', hated the ending. Otherwise a good read.
--Canteen is working fine, hope it survives after the vacation also, unlike the previous one.
--Swimming hasn't started, was looking forward to that. Let's hope that it starts in June.
--Started watching the Star Wars series.
--Downloaded loads of photos of Melissa Theuriau. Isn't she gorgeous?

The journey back home deserves special mention. People ask me why I prefer the meter gauge train which crawls slower than a snail over AP express. My answer is, if I go by AP express, I would miss so many things, the quiet little Parbhani station and the sweet hot tea served there at 2 in the morning when two coaches wait there for a few hours, the little farms that are spread out on both sides of the track, the trees with kids playing around them, the orange-red umbrellas of the numerous Gulmohars, the bridge over Narmada at Onkareshwar which provides a breathtaking view of the river, the railway tunnel which is almost a kilometre long, the spooky station at Kalakund with no electricity. I also get loads of time to look out of the window and think and read continuously with no one to disturb me.

Miss all these little joys to reduce the journey time by 3-4 hours? Nah!

Nadal beat Federer again at Monte Carlo, I'm beginning to hate Nadal. Schumacher won a Grand Prix after a long time. This F1 season looks like it's going to be close. India managed to square the Abu Dhabi series. Turned out be a pretty good series.

The police and government reaction to the peaceful protests by Medical students in Delhi was enraging. What kind of an HRD minister is Arjun Singh who refuses to meet the people? And we call it democracy! Why does a numb-brain like him, with his feet hanging in the grave (and a head so high up his ***) get such an important ministry?

This post is long and haphazard. But, a post coming after more than a month has to be long and there are so many things to cover that I can't do anything about its chaotic state. Also, there is nothing better to breathe new life into a dead blog than a post where you just let the words flow without much thinking.

And now, it is time to take a shower!