Next Man In

Senna - a review

2011-06-12T16:36:00.002-07:00

May 1, 1994. I remember that day so clearly. I was 12, at a summer camp in Madras. I was busy adding finishing touches to an oil painting when one of the guys rushed into the room announcing that Ayrton Senna had suffered a terrible accident. Senna who? I had no clue who he was. Schumacher, Damon Hill and Nigel Mansel were the only names in Formula One I recognised. Nevertheless, I headed to the TV room and saw the wreckage at Imola (San Marino), the Brazilian driver being airlifted from the track.

Later that evening, everyone’s worst fears came true. The accident was fatal. BBC showed images of grief in Sao Paulo. Senna’s parents wept. There were no cheers for Schumacher when he stood on the podium. I wasn’t going to forget the name thereafter. Senna’s story had to be told, and the documentary Senna has done justice to that, 17 years after his death.

Senna isn’t necessarily tailored to the F1 fan. The challenge facing director Asif Kapadia and writer Manish Pandey was to make it appealing to people who don’t follow the sport or haven’t heard of Ayrton Senna. Kapadia, in a recent interview, said he was a sports fan, but not a fervent follower of F1. Interestingly, that may have been a saving grace while making the film because his lack of affiliation to any racing team made it more balanced and unbiased.

The film is more than just a chronological look at Senna’s career. It’s primarily about the man behind the helmet. Senna had several qualities that made him such a compelling personality – passionate, feverishly patriotic, religious, articulate, suave, controversial, competitive, emotional, compassionate - the list goes on.

Nothing sells like controversy (after sex of course), so the bulk of the film focuses on his complicated relationship with Frenchman Alain Prost. Their ‘stormy marriage’ arose out of a strong respect for each other. Handshakes, verbal volleys, uneasy compromises – they had it all. For someone like me, who doesn’t follow F1, this subject was indeed fascinating. On the contrary, a fan may have a different view on its portrayal.

Then there’s the simmering tension between Senna and Jean-Marie Balestre, the FIA president. Balestre was very friendly with his countryman Prost and it’s believed that Senna was put off by this. Senna and Balestre didn’t always see eye to eye on rules and playing conditions. There’s the famous scene where a peeved Senna storms out of a meeting, at the height of his rivalry with Prost.

Kapadia had a wealth of precious archival footage at his disposal, including that of holiday pictures sourced from Senna’s family. The challenge was to put it together and the film scores thanks to its slick editing. Significantly, Kapadia opted not to adopt the classic documentary style with face-to-face interviews and narratives. Instead, the interview excerpts run in the background and complement the pictures, rather than driving it. It’s almost like a first-person’s account of Senna’s life. Senna’s soundbites and insightful views on topics such as religion, Prost, poverty in Brazil etc enhance the film.

The film also doesn’t delve deep into his accident and what caused it. That would have taken the character away from the film. Senna appeared troubled before the race. A day earlier, Austrian driver Roland Ratzenberger died while qualifying. The day before, Rubens Barrichello had a close call himself. These incidents shook him. In that air of morbidity, a less than peaceful Senna got into his car. They say he had a premonition about his death. We will never know.

Senna’s best quote was saved for the end. It flashes back to an interview where he was asked to name his most memorable rival. His answer was intriguing. It wasn’t a household name. Instead, he goes back to his go-kart days in the late '70s and names a driver called Fullerton. Why? “Because back then racing was fun. There was no money, no politics.”

Watch the trailer here.

An evening with The Voice

2011-05-08T16:24:00.000-07:00

The Doors wanted him as their lead singer after Jim Morrison succumbed permanently. Queen knocked on his door after they too lost their celebrated frontman, Freddie Mercury. He had no idea of The Doors’ offer until very recently, to which he said, “it just blew my mind” (remember, this was the early 70s). Queen were much luckier, and it was a decision they’d never regret. The man in question is popularly known as The Voice – Paul Rodgers (Middlesbrough's gift to music).

At 61, his vocal skills haven’t deserted him. His star value hasn’t diminished from the early 70s when he belted out vocals for Free and then later with Bad Company. It was hardly surprising to be part of a near sell-out crowd at London’s Royal Albert Hall on the 27th of April, a date I had marked out in my calendar way back in December.

A year ago, had someone told me I’d get to see my rock idol on stage I would have laughed. Having endured terrible luck with rock concerts in Bangalore for four years (none of the bands that toured were to my liking), I least expected my luck to change very soon. It was worth the wait.

It was quite surreal sitting in an audience of 40-50 + year olds and more. Many looked like Rodgers’ loyalists since their college days. There weren’t too many 20-somethings like me, but it was nice to be outnumbered for a change.

The show opened with Paul’s daughter Jasmine, singing her soulful numbers, guitar in hand. She may continue to live under her dad’s shadow for a while still, but she’s on her way to carving an identity for herself. A talent to watch.

Next up was Down n Outz, a band fronted by Def Leppard’s Joe Elliott. The band sings covers from Mott the Hoople, a British band from the 70s. The songs weren’t as electric as Elliott’s stage presence, but nevertheless it was an incredible treat for me to see my second-favourite rocker on stage the same night.

After a 20-minute wait which seemed like an eternity, Rodgers finally stormed the stage with the Free hit Walk in my Shadow, followed by Wishing Well (one of Tony Blair’s favourites). The crowd, chained to their seats all the while, suddenly was on its feet. Save the best for last. The heart-stirring romantic number Be my Friend brought out the best in his vocals. The duet with Mica Paris made it seem like they’d love each other even after they turn into fossils, but the energy was amazing.

Among the Bad Company hits, Feel like Making Love was a big hit among the ladies. Running with the Pack, Rock n Roll Fantasy and Mr Big got the oldies on their feet. The song that involved a great deal of audience participation was Shooting Star, followed by All Right Now, one of the greatest rock anthems of the 70s. At this stage, my voice deserted me.

There was a pleasant surprise when his Bad Company mate Mick Ralphs appeared for a cameo for Can’t Get Enough of Your Love. The song I’d all been waiting for all night was Fire and Water (a Free hit) - an extended version with Jason Bonham (son of legendary Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham) in his element in the end.

Rodgers rounded things off with The Hunter. He looked fit enough to sing for 3 more hours. Incredibly, the evening had elements from my top 3 bands – Free/Bad Company, Def Leppard and Led Zeppelin. Couldn’t have asked for anything more!

If there was one thing I’d have changed, it would be the venue. Make no mistake, Royal Albert Hall is magnificent with the best acoustics, but it’s not ideal for a rock concert. The average booty-shaking fan is always caught in two minds - whether to stand up and let fly, or respect the person behind you and sit down like an obedient school child. It made Joe Elliott seem like he stumbled into an opera audience.

Solitary Man

2011-04-11T11:31:00.001-07:00

Cast - Michael Douglas, Mary Louise Parker, Danny DeVito, Susan Sarandon

They say the true test of a person’s strength and character is his/her ability to bounce back from setbacks, whether self-inflicted or not. Solitary Man is the story of a man who fails miserably in that regard. Miserable, because he went down without a fight and in the process, damaged his reputation almost to the point of being irreparable.

What isn’t miserable, however, is Michael Douglas’s truly captivating portrayal of Ben Kalmen, a businessman who once had it all. Kalmen made his millions as an automobile magnate, until he led to his own undoing by getting involved in shady deals, which led to stints in the slammer. It cost him his marriage, and the sudden fall from grace meant he was about to face his biggest challenge yet – re-establishing all the trust he had frittered away.

But was the path to recovery achievable? Certainly, had he not succumbed to guilty pleasures. Kalmen was blessed with charm and the gift of the gab, but those virtues were also his biggest enemy. He had a roving eye, and his obsessive skirt-chasing – the central theme of the movie – tarnished his reputation even further.

At the start of the film, the 60-something Kalmen shows positive signs of reviving his business by taking the help of his girlfriend’s dad, an influential man in the auto industry. His girlfriend, Jordan (Mary Louise Parker), trusts him and he tries to return the favour by using his contacts to get her admission in a leading university. But Kalmen’s propensity to self-destruct shakes the foundation of that neatly woven network. He betrays Jordan’s trust by sleeping with the one woman he should never have laid his hands on.

On more than one occasion, Kalmen shows his weakness for women almost a third his age. He befriends a college student, Daniel, played by Jesse Eisenberg, who seemed like he was just dragged out of the sets of The Social Network to play another nerdy undergrad. Kalmen tries to teach him the art of picking up women, while Daniel listens with awe, oblivious of his ‘tutor’s’ shady past.

Throughout, Kalmen’s a man in denial. He fails to acknowledge his lack of focus, and does nothing to fix it. He fails to return the affection of his doting grandson, and that affects his relationship with his daughter, who’s quickly running out of patience with his lack of commitment to his family. Besides Daniel, his only other friend is Jimmy (Danny DeVito), who runs a diner. His ex-wife (Susan Sarandon), remains civil with him, but deliberately distances herself from his issues.

Solitary Man is not a sad story. It shows how things can go wrong if you fail to prioritise properly. It is a compelling character study of a 'flawed' charismatic man. He is in other words an 'endearing asshole'. You don’t know whether to feel sorry for Kalmen, or despise him. This is where Douglas scores, and the producers also need to be applauded for arranging a worthy ensemble.

Click here for the trailer.

Commentator in hot water after referee jibe

2011-01-20T17:36:00.000-08:00

Wednesday night’s Teeline Cup match was rocked by controversy off the pitch with the likelihood of a libel suit being slapped on a television commentator by the enraged referee.

Jeremy Loudmouth, the ex-England international, often never far away from a ‘scrap’, told a record worldwide audience that the referee Anthony Harcourt “only wanted to get his name etched in record books for being the first referee to call a penalty in Teeline Cup history.”

He was referring to an incident in the ninth minute into the second half. Print FC defender Kanishkaa Balachandran tried to intercept a kick from the midfield, only to find himself inside the box. The foul was reported contemporaneously and the defender readily admitted his mistake without dispute.

There was enough evidence to suggest that Harcourt’s adjudication was fair and accurate. The overhead blimp camera confirmed that Kanishkaa was at least 3 feet inside the box when he made contact.

But Loudmouth suggested that Harcourt only had ‘personal glorification’ in mind. The referee was ‘hot under the collar’ when later informed of the jibe and told the Teeline Cup’s official website that he would “seriously pursue damages.”

“I face the prospect of being disparaged by my peers and shunned by right, left and straight thinking members of the society,” a seething Harcourt said. “I will leave no stone unturned to see that justice will be done.”

It would be hard for Loudmouth to rest on the defence of justification or fair comment, considering that Harcourt complied with the laws. Besides, Print coach Carl also has a shorthand note of his comments, which could be key evidence if she testifies.

Luke Hanna QC, the tournament’s chief legal brain, stopped short of confirming a formal libel suit.

“Let me remind you all, gentlemen,” Hanna told a media mob outside his Regent Street office, “that this case is not yet ‘active’ so anything you publish now could create a substantial risk of serious prejudice.” He vanished before one of the journalists could read out Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights.

It was a comprehensive 8-5 come-from-behind win for Print FC. However, it was a forgettable day in the office for Kanishkaa. The 28-year-old Indian import, who was described by a leading journalist as a “floating red shirt who occasionally touches the ball”, conceded two goals, before fouling. Broadcast's Arya Yuyutsu, whose shoelaces refused to cooperate for most part, somehow netted the penalty kick.

What's ailing Australia?

2010-12-31T05:02:00.001-08:00

Five years ago, in this blog, I predicted that the Australians will get a hard lesson in reality. That their dominance would have a shelf life was unthinkable back then. Two years hence, after walloping England 5-0, I repeated that to three colleagues at The Tavern (one of whom was an Australian), only for it to be promptly disputed. Now we know who had the last laugh.

Australia are feeling the pinch harder now than ever before. A seven-match losing steak in internationals was followed by an Ashes defeat at home for the first time since 1987. Following the retirements of several stars, the transitionary period wasn’t expected to take long. But recent performances have forced the selection committee to think harder than ever before. While they’ve done reasonably well to find capable replacements for McGrath, Hayden, Langer, Gilchrist and Martyn, they’ve let themselves down rather embarrassingly with Warne’s.

The developments since Warne’s retirement has been downright farcial, with calls for him to make a comeback. The man himself was amused. They were prepared to listen to everything he said – even a casual suggestion was enough for them to handpick a club cricketer who was unknown to the senior team. While Michael Beer didn’t make the final XI, it didn’t hide the fact that the spin cupboard was bare. The muddled selection policy on spinners is one of the major reasons for the team’s downfall.

In 2008, during Australia A’s tour of India, I interviewed three spin hopefuls fighting for a single spot in the Test team – Bryce McGain, Jason Krejza and Beau Casson. All three were humble enough to admit they weren’t as good as Warne, nevertheless, were delighted at stepping into his shoes.

It seemed safe to assume that at least one of them had a long-term future. For once, even my predictions were wrong. When the Tests began in India, Cameron White was suddenly the primary spinner. Krejza took eight wickets in an innings on debut in a losing cause, but it was good enough to guarantee at least five more games. He played one more Test and was discarded, because of his expensive economy rate. His replacement, surprisingly, was Nathan Hauritz, since he didn’t figure in India.

It indicated an open-book selection policy, yet, lacking in direction. The rest of the spinners probably didn’t know where they stood. Hauritz is no Warne either, but at least he was given a fair run. The one virtue which fetched him a lot of success was his willingness to flight the ball and tempt the batsmen into lofting him. He converted a potential weakness into his strength.

He wasn’t always consistent but he was by far the best slow bowler in the country. Many were left bewildered why he was out of contention for the Ashes. Anyone who could grip the ball like a spinner stood a chance of getting selected. Xavier Doherty couldn’t make an impact and was dropped for a bits and pieces spinner in Steven Smith. Steve O’Keefe and Jon Holland are the others who have figured in recent months.

Other factors have also contributed to Australia’s overall performance. Ponting’s petulance in the field, arguing over a shot-down referral reflected badly on the team’s image.

It isn’t the lack of self belief that’s putting the team down. The selection committee doesn’t believe in the players enough.

Greetings from Bury Park - a review

2010-12-23T17:11:00.001-08:00

“Having stumbled in the dark for so long, on that September night I was blinded by the light. Everything significant that I did or achieved in my life in the years that followed had its roots in the emotions I experienced that evening. That night Bruce Springsteen changed my life.” – Sarfraz Manzoor

Bruce Springsteen is a working-class hero who sings for the masses. A patriotic rockstar whose songs represent the western blue-collar worker. What he didn’t know, during his peak in the mid 1980s, was the profound effect his music was having on an adolescent British Pakistani boy in Luton. The young boy began to treat Springsteen’s words as gospel, and with it came the euphoric realisation that his own life mirrored Springsteen’s in many ways.

Greetings from Bury Park is the absorbing personal memoir of Sarfraz Manzoor, the London-based journalist, broadcaster and author. It’s a tribute to the two men who shaped his life – his father, and Springsteen. Each chapter is aptly named after a Springsteen song, describing a different stage of his life. Sarfraz traces his journey from Pakistan to Bury Park - a Luton neighbourhood populated with immigrant Asians - and beyond. Call it fate or a divine coincidence, the title is named after Springsteen’s first album – Greetings from Asbury Park. It was in Asbury Park, New Jersey, where Springsteen’s career took off.

Sarfraz’s confused and enigmatic relationship with his father is the central theme of the book. His dad, Mohammad Manzoor, was part of a flood of first-generation Asian immigrants in England in the 1960s. These men took the bold move of setting up shop in a completely new country, despite the cultural and language barriers they were to face. Mohammad was working in the production line at the Vauxhall car factory when his family joined him in 1974, 11 years after he left Pakistan.

Their early years of poverty and struggle were similar to many other working class families. All four kids had to supplement the family income when they were old enough to find work.

It didn’t quite fit into Mohammad’s plan of searching for a better life abroad. No amount of hard work or struggle fetched him the returns he wished for. It made him grumpy and frustrated. But his bigger battle was not with himself, but with coming to terms with the changing trends in the youth, starting from his own home.

The book captures the cross generational conflict between himself and his children. A fiercely conservative man and a strict Muslim, he expected his kids to fall in line with his principles. Protecting the family name and honour was a touchy topic. His archaic rules didn’t go down well at home. He refused to let his daughters go to university. Marrying outside the community was criminal (Sarfraz went on to marry a Scottish woman). He had rigid rules about money. It pained his children that they could never keep the money they earned. Everything had to be surrendered to a central kitty, from which he would decide how it would be used.

For solace, Sarfraz turned to Springsteen’s music. He was introduced to it through his Sikh friend Amolak. Both came from similar backgrounds and Sarfraz formed an instant bond with his friend and Springsteen at the same time. They hummed songs together, discussed lyrics and dreamt of attending concerts together, which they eventually did. Both adored Springsteen with fervour.

Sarfraz and Springsteen had a lot in common. Both came from working class backgrounds and their respective relationships with their dads was fractious. Springsteen’s dad was an unhappy bus driver who always went into his shell and never encouraged his son’s musical ambitions. He could never accept that his son had a dream. Sarfraz’s dad never understood his son’s fixation with Springsteen and blamed it as a disturbing influence from his white friends at school. He was also not very convinced about Sarfraz’s plans of getting in to documentary film making.

Springsteen sang about life and the people around him and Sarfraz saw a connect. It was his liberation. He was privileged to hold Springsteen’s guitar in a concert while he changed his shirt. During an autograph session, Sarfraz asked Springsteen to do an acoustic version of a song and Springsteen actually did it live on concert. Sarfraz was overcome with emotion and he broke down.

At that moment, Sarfraz’s dreams came true. The same couldn’t be said for his dad, who died before he could fulfil his. It pierced Sarfraz that his dad’s life was taken away at 62, just when he could afford to retire and start enjoying life more. He wanted his children to form successful careers and not end up at the same job at Vauxhall. He died the same week Sarfraz had his first article published. He never saw his son flourish. He never went to Mecca as planned. There was a pall of guilt around Mohammad’s deathbed. Sarfraz realised his father was a hero figure who braved so many challenges for the sake of his family’s betterment. Sarfraz describes his emotions in a touching tribute at the end of the first chapter.

The book is also about Sarfraz’s position as a ‘true Muslim’ and the insecurities of being a Muslim in the era of 9/11 and 07/07. He dares to enter the US to shortly after 9/11 and tells the suspecting immigration official that he’s there to see Springsteen – the plain truth. The officer smiles and stamps the passport.

The book is in essence a childhood memoir, the study of the people around him and of course himself. He has the humility to admit his own failings, letting down his brother Sohail after the father’s untimely death. The solemn episodes aside, the book has its amusing anecdotes as well, like when he first discovered pornography as a teenager and was nearly caught peeking at the Page 3 girls of The Sun. Sarfraz’s lucid style, engaging storytelling and most importantly the way he links his life story to popular culture give the book the edge over other memoirs.

My top five Springsteen tracks:

1. Human Touch
2. I’m on fire
3. Walk like a man
4. One step up
5. 57 channels

Click here to watch Sarfraz's BBC documentary, Luton Actually.

What the fuss is about football

2010-11-20T10:43:00.000-08:00

Let me be honest with myself here. I’m not a football fan. I cannot claim to be much of an enthusiast either. The interest rises along with the hype every four years when a World Cup comes along. I’ve never felt the excitement and fever pitch that grips people in club football. Perhaps influenced by cricket, I’ve always had an affinity for country v country. That could explain my relative lack of interest in the IPL, a tournament which in my opinion is a necessary evil for various reasons. That’s a topic for another day.

Back to football, I don’t play FIFA like many Indians do and claim to be football fans thanks to Playstation. I don’t hit sports bars specifically to watch Arsenal v Man Utd or spend hundreds on merchandise, or paint my face with a country’s flag, only to wash it off the next day and erase it from memory, like a one-night stand.

Blame it on cricket, but I’ve always found it hard to give equal attention to two or more sports at the same time. I landed in England at the closing stages of the cricket season and at the peak of the football season. With several months to kill, I decided to find out what the ruckus was all about. When in Rome, do as the Englishmen do.

Sheffield has two teams, neither of which are in the premiership and still some distance away from qualification to the EPL. One of them, Sheffield Wednesday, is currently in a debt crisis, with one potential bidder pulling out of the race. Fans are angry and demand change soon. It’s the last thing an underachieving team needed.

A couple of weeks ago, I came across a neon sign near my university about Wednesday’s next game against Hartlepool United, a team or town I’d never heard of. Nevertheless, I decided to go for it and managed to find two classmates, both Wednesday fans, to tag along with. My last live football game was way back in 1993 (India v Cameroon) so this was my first in England.

I ended the 17-year vacuum at Hillsborough, the home base of Sheffield Wednesday. It’s strange that I picked a stadium with a morbid past – in April 1989, 96 Liverpool fans were killed a stampede in a FA Cup semi-final. It is still the worst ever football tragedy and among the worst in sport.

My mental image of live football in England was about screaming fans and hooliganism (no offence meant, but blame the media for that!) but as I approached Hillsborough, there was barely a ripple. Something’s got to be wrong, I thought. Perhaps it was the context of the match and the opposition. This was not the EPL, but the Johnstone Paints Trophy, a league tournament.

Only two sides of the stadium were packed with spectators. The other two were practically empty. You could count the number of loyal Hartlepool fans who bothered to show up. Despite the unexpectedly low turnout (10,500), the atmosphere was by no means dull. There were enough Wednesday fans to make a noise and chant the team song and Michael Sembello’s Maniac (from Flashdance). A Mexican Wave was out of the question though.

What surprised me most were the Barmy Army chants. I was under the impression it was solely reserved for the English cricket team. Anything motivational goes. Having braved the cold, you might as well shout something to keep warm.

The match was expectedly one-sided. Neil Maller scored a hat-trick to make it 4-1 for Wednesday. When Hartlepool scored, the silence was surreal, for me at least. It was quite a good goal, one of the best of the evening, but the lack of any applause took a few seconds for me to register that they had actually opened their account.

Perhaps it’s my cricket watching experience speaking here. Having watched most games in Chennai, which has one of the most sporting crowds in world sport, it’s natural to stand up and applaud the opposition for a good bit of cricket. Not quite the same in football I’m afraid. Thank goodness I barely moved, or else I’d have risked being glared at (possibly beaten) by Wednesday fans or being shipped by parcel to Hartlepool!

The experience was worth every bit of the 5 quid I paid. Ten times that amount will give you a ticket to an EPL game, which I hope to experience while I’m here.

Crucifying the Pakistan players alone won't help

2010-09-04T05:35:00.001-07:00

Ban the players if you want. Slap the heftiest of fines, crucify them, burn their effigies and do whatever a melodramatic, impulsive subcontinental cricket fan would do to express his anger against a fallen hero. It’s easy to assume that such displays of rage will effectively seal the match-fixing/spot-fixing crisis for good. The main accused – Mohammad Amir, Mohammad Asif, Salman Butt and Kamran Akmal – will understandably be going through the most harrowing of experiences, whether they are guilty or not. Salman Butt himself didn’t vehemently deny the charges of fixing, which perhaps lends a lot of truth to the allegations. The players will be remain pariahs till they are proven innocent, assuming they are given a fair trial. But an important question needs to be asked. Are the players the root cause of the problem? And what of the men managing them?

It’s open knowledge that the Pakistan Cricket Board has hurtled from one crisis after another, barely recovering from any, not because of the presence of an apparent devil in its offices in Lahore. It’s because they bring it on themselves, lending itself the name Pakistan Chaos Board. Over the last ten years at least, successions of regimes have been guilty of crimes ranging from player mismanagement to financial irregularities and much more. The current regime, under Ijaz Butt, is no better, if not worse than their predecessors. If the governing body of cricket in the country works in such a dysfunctional manner, how then can we expect the players to be disciplined in such an environment?

The BCCI itself may not be streets ahead in terms of credibility, but as an organisation, it has a better structure compared to the PCB. The reason cricket continues to thrive in India is because of the sheer numbers, and of course, money. The aspect of finances and player earnings has created a huge gap between players from India and Pakistan. Pakistan players have been denied IPL riches since its second season for a variety of reasons, which has left them considerably poorer than their India counterparts. Therefore when the opportunity presents itself to pocket generous quid by bowling no-balls, even if it’s of no consequence to the result of the match, the temptation is too much to pass by, especially for players like Amir and Asif, who’ve probably never seen that kind of money before.

Both have had similar upbringings. Both hail from villages in Punjab, brought up the hard way, impressing coaches and employers with their sheer natural talent. They may have developed early as fast bowlers, but at the expense of life skills and not being able to distinguish between what is moral and immoral. They may not have had a privileged education in school, and that brings with it a sense of innocence and naivety when it comes to dealing with bookies who look to exploit that weakness in them. Recently, the BCCI talked about getting Anil Kumble to teach the young Indian players life skills and soft skills. Is the PCB doing anything like that to train its own players, who desperately need it?

The board has time and again pushed major issues like match-fixing under the carpet, hoping that it would fix itself. They are also the masters of “forgive and forget” – just look at the number of former players implicated in match-fixing, who have senior positions in the team and the board. The team manager Yawar Saeed himself lost a lot of credibility in sri lanka last year when a bookie was allowed to mingle with the players in the same floor of the team hotel. But that wasn’t considered as a sackable offence. If the players require strict policing, there seems to be no mechanism in place to keep an eye on their movements, however claustrophobic. As a result, mistakes get repeated.

Before the PCB punishes its players, it needs to take a long hard look at itself. Ijaz Butt’s high-profile hirings have ranged from questionable to downright wrong. He sacked coach Geoff Lawson soon after he took over, and then fell out with Javed Miandad Aamer Sohail and Abdul Qadir, who all held top positions in the PCB. The security disaster in Lahore when Sri Lankan players were attacked exposed the board like never before. In this oppressive climate, how can the national team perform consistently and concentrate on the field?

The volatile fortunes of the Pakistan cricket team mirror that of the country itself. Floods, blasts and assassinations have led to more negative press than ever before. The PCB needs to be revamped right from the top if the cricket scene is to get better. In this time of crisis, only one man seems the logical choice to run it. He commands attention and respect, has an immensely successful career to back his case, suave, articulate, dashing, a born leader, and never short of a blunt opinion or two – IMRAN KHAN.

Oriya food in Orissa? Tough...

2010-03-25T03:53:00.001-07:00

On top of every traveler’s wishlist is to sample the local cuisine. It’s a little difficult when your options are limited, like if you’re a vegetarian, trying your best to respect your roots (pun unintended). But what the heck. You can at least tell your grandkids one day that you survived on salad in Japan (my grandpa actually did this!)

Getting the best out of the local flavor was uppermost in our minds when we set foot in Orissa earlier this month for a whistlestop trip, which included, foremost, attending my grandpa’s doctorate function in Cuttack, and the touristy stuff at Puri and Konark. It was the first visit for me and my sister, and all we could think about when the train pulled over at Bhubaneshwar, was food. I know looks can be very deceiving. Don’t ask me where it disappears after I swallow!

When we hopped onto the cab, the first question we asked our escort was to recommend a good Oriya restaurant, the more downmarket the better. But since we had to call it an early night, we decided to try our luck at XIMB, the B-school where we were staying. We stepped in to the dining hall with glee, only to discover Chinese food. Chinese! Ugh.. Ok, whatever.

The next day, at the convocation in Cuttack, we got a little more inquisitive with the locals we interacted with, but for some weird reason, they didn’t share our enthusiasm. One of them said matter-of-factly, “Oh there’s a good South Indian restaurant just five minutes from here.” We cut him short and exclaimed, “South Indian! Are you freaking nuts!” Ok, we didn’t actually say that! But in our minds, we did. Better luck next time. We had lunch at the popular Bombay Hotel in Cuttack which served Gujarathi food minus the meetha. Seemed incongruous, but it was quite a decent meal in the end.

We were confident our luck would change that evening, closer to the Oriya heartland. Or so we thought. On reaching the hotel in Konark, we were given the rather pleasant news that the restaurant was closed because they were busy catering to a wedding reception at the lawn. You can’t be serious, we thought. Which godforsaken place shuts its dining room to its own guests? We looked up at the board which read PINKY WEDS PRIYAS and contemplated what to do next. There was an option, though, to gatecrash the wedding for a free meal! It was an opportunity to relive the scene from Three Idiots and the setting was just perfect – there were three of us after all. All we had to was masquerade as idiots, pretending to be long-lost acquaintances of either Pinky or Priyas, if we could separate the two, going by their names.

Fearing we would be kicked out of the wedding and the hotel, with the prospect of a night in the streets of Konark, we set out looking at other options. We were already pushing our luck, as it was beyond 10. We checked the nearest hotel, only to be told that it was too late. In the dining room was this burly guy who just did a bottoms-up on an Old Monk half. My mom and sister wanted to run! I turned to my right and saw a woman in a skimpy outfit with a year’s supply of make-up, accompanied by a sleaze bag of a guy. We’d raided a prostitution racket! Seacrest, OUT!

Our hopes hemorrhaged as we drove past every dhaba and whatever else which had put its shutters down. We had almost resigned to a dinner of grapes and bananas when we spotted a hotel with its neon lights on. Our hopes crashed again when we saw the owner get ready to leave for the night. We explained our situation and miraculously, he agreed to serve us. Overwhelmed by his generosity, we hopped right in. It was like a slummy, highway hotel but we weren’t complaining. It was a Marawadi hotel, not Oriya, but we didn’t care. We were starved. In the dining room, we were forced to watch a local televised dance show, before one of them switched to a typical saas-bahu serial. We were treated to the serial’s climax, where the mother in law circled her eyeballs at least five times in utter shock and disgust, all along thinking she’s the best actress in the planet. That amusement was followed by a dinner which surpassed our expectations. We tipped them generously and in a rush of overwhelming happiness, I nearly petted a stray dog.

It was only in (aptly named) Puri where we finally experienced our first Oriya meal the following afternoon. At Mayfair, a non-ecofriendly eco hotel, we did a Control F on the menu for “Oriya” and ordered daalma, dahi baingan and another mixed veg dish which I can’t exactly remember. It took us two nights and the better part of two days to wait for satisfaction… something to write home about.

The story of Marcus (the illness that nearly swallowed him)

2010-01-02T11:44:00.001-08:00

There were attributes that made Marcus Trescothick inimitable when you watched him bat. His lean 6ft 3 frame made him an imposing structure at the crease, more so because he maintained a dead straight posture. Then, just as the bowler delivered, his posterior would protrude – taken out of his own coaching manual. Observe closely, and spot the cocky, Jack Nicholson-like expression on his face, as if international cricket was child’s play. Then, with minimal footwork, he’d effortlessly send the ball scurrying away to the boundary, blessed with the gift of timing.

For Marcus, it was his confidence at the crease which set him apart from the rest. The cocky expression led us to believe that he could continue batting in his sleep. But looks can be deceptive, and in Marcus’ case, terribly so. It masked an illness which had silently plagued him, caused him to suffer emotionally, attacking him in places where eyes and television cameras are not allowed. It all came to a head in 2006 during the India tour, when he quit the tour midway on the pretense of picking up a ‘mysterious virus’. Confusion, speculation and rumours spread wide about the actual reason for his sudden departure. Months later, the truth came out that Marcus was suffering from serious depression, caused by the pain of separation from his young family, associated with long cricket tours.

Marcus chronicles his illness in graphic detail in his autobiography, Coming back to me, which is probably the most compelling book written by a modern cricketer. Compelling, because it reveals a different, and rather disturbing side to the player we never thought existed. The negative effects of the demands of a senior international player only add to the intrigue. Nearly half the book is focused on the illness, it’s origins and the disturbing behind the scenes events which culminated in him quitting international cricket in tears at the start of the Ashes tour in 2006. It’s stories of pain and human suffering, which (unfortunately) sell, just as much as juicy details of extra-marital affairs and infidelity which several sportsmen have been guilty of in the past.

It must have taken Marcus a lot of guts to shed his humility and come clean about his suffering. Marcus, alongwith Michael Vaughan, transformed England’s batting post 2000. His presence at the top made England believe they could compete against anyone, anywhere. And it all came to an abrupt end. When he departed, the country realised just how much they had missed him. There were pleas for a comeback, but Marcus had made up his mind – he wasn’t going to take it anymore.

Homesickness had dogged Marcus right from his junior cricket days, but back then he’d grit his teeth and eventually get over it. It was only a sign of things to come. The serious effects started to appear when his wife Hayley suffered from post-natal depression herself. The thought of her suffering, with a baby in tow, made Marcus jittery at the start of the South African tour in 2004.

But the start of the end of his career happened a year later in Pakistan. When he visited the earthquake victims in Rawalpindi, the sight of young children writhing in pain without a clue if their parents were dead or alive made him think of his own little girl and he subsequently burst out crying. During the first Test in Multan, which was progressing very well under his captaincy and batting form, he received a disturbing phone call from his wife.

Her dad had suffered a nasty accident at home when he fell off a ladder and was knocked out unconscious, lying in a pool of blood. With CCTV cameras around the house, Marcus could watch the footage in his laptop. That night, in his hotel room, he watched the images of his father in-law’s fall over and over again for nearly 45 minutes in agony. It was unbearable. His wife pleaded with him to return and it sent him into turmoil. With Vaughan injured, Marcus had taken over the captaincy and was the most vital cog in the team. Should he give it all up or stay on for the sake of his country?

Rather surprisingly, by his own admittance, he turned her down. He writes: “Was my response motivated by selfishness, by a sense of duty that now seems comically warped or just by not wanting to confront what I might find when I got home?” It didn’t go down well with her and Marcus, gripped with self doubt, reconsidered his decision. But following a conversation with Vaughan the following day, he changed his mind again. His decision to stay on in Pakistan for the whole tour is something - he admits - he regrets till this day. When he arrived at Heathrow, his daughter barely recognized him. That incident was the catalyst for the implosion in India a few months later, in a Baroda hotel.

The sight of abject poverty and homelessness in the streets of Baroda triggered off another swirl of negative emotions, bringing back memories of the earthquake. In Mumbai, before the Baroda trip, he woke up one night in a cold sweat and collapsed face down on the bathroom floor. The symptoms were far worse in Baroda, where he broke down one night while talking to the team doctor. Nothing worked, from tranquilisers to acupuncture. Marcus describes this nightmarish experience in heart-wrenching detail in his book and I’d rather not get into it here. He dragged himself to the ground the next morning, before breaking down again, in front of his team-mates. There were no two ways about it. He was headed home.

Not that the symptoms vanished as soon as he returned. It was still hell. He writes: “My brain was in frantic, panic-stricken overdrive; sliced into a 1000 pieces by sharp thoughts shooting this way and that.” Oddly enough, he wasn’t even aware he was suffering from depression till a doctor in England diagnosed it. In fact he was in denial about it. He later realized that the illness wasn’t just for weak people.

It took a few months for him to pick up a bat again and resume his England career. But the curiosity over his condition heightened in the media and that was to be his biggest challenge in the summer of 2006. He had agreed to an interview to Sky TV and even discussed how best to tackle the sensitive questions. But at the critical moment in the interview, he masked the truth and revealed nothing about the horrific events in Baroda. All reports of the “mysterious bug” seemed like pure hogwash and it was a source of major embarrassment for Marcus. It prompted false rumours about his marriage. In the chapter “The Lie”, Marcus aptly describes the interview as a “masterpiece of misinformation.”

His counseling sessions continued till he made himself available for the Ashes in Australia, convincing everyone that he was fine, comforted by the thought of his wife and daughter joining him later on tour. But the shivers and anxiety attacks started again. He threw in the towel midway through a practice match, burst out crying yet again in the dressing room and told his wife to cancel her plans. He was coming home, for good. At that point, he had all but officially called time on his England career.

However, it didn’t stop him from scoring loads of runs for Somerset and he’s currently in the form of his life. He made another attempt to leave England shores for a pre-season tour of the UAE with Somerset in 2008 but got cold feet again and sobbed at Heathrow, in public. He summoned the courage to fly to India for the Champions League but left after a couple of games. It was simple. There was only one place, and that was home.

In the closing chapters, he elaborates on the dangers the illness can cause when ignored and also states some common misconceptions about it. When extracts of the book came out, he received several mails of sympathy from fellow sufferers. It was no surprise he won the William Hill Sports Book of the Year 2008, because the jury knew Marcus “fearlessly tackled one of the great taboos of elite sport.”

Six years was too short a shelf life for who I consider as the best English batsman of the decade. Should Kevin Pietersen’s form drop dramatically at some point in his career, Marcus Trescothick could be one of the few players (not sure of the number) in modern English cricket history never to have been dropped on form. It’s a reputation he will look back upon with a sense of pride.

Australia's freefall

2009-08-26T12:39:00.001-07:00

Readers of my blog will probably recall a piece I’d written four years ago about the likelihood of Australia slumping in international cricket. In that period, Australia have not only conceded two Ashes series, but have also plunged to No.4 in the latest Test rankings. At the start of the decade, it was blasphemous to even suggest that they would one day have to concede their No.1 ranking, which was considered their birthright. The monopoly has ended, and the realisation of being reduced to lesser mortals was plastered across the glum faces at The Oval, hands folded and defeated.

It was a shock Ricky Ponting and his men had seen coming. The 2005 Ashes defeat threatened to knock them off the perch, albeit briefly, before normal service resumed. Just when obituaries were being written, they stormed back in the Super Series, demolishing the World XI, before caning England 5-0 at home in 2007.

Australia had turned their arch rivals to dust in the most convincing manner, but the celebrations had more than a tinge of sadness. When Ponting walked up the podium in Sydney, after the final Test, there was a lump in his throat. When he spoke, his voice choked. His best and most trusted aides had called it a day as the series progressed. Damien Martyn announced a sudden retirement after the second Test before the bombshell arrived. Justin Langer, Glenn McGrath and Shane Warne had all announced that it would be their final swansong. Ponting knew the road ahead would be rocky and that the seismic changes within the team would seriously test his managerial skills.

There was further evidence of that slump when India defeated them last year, before South Africa raided their own backyard. They hit back on the return tour of South African earlier this year and the picture looked rosy all over again. But the budding romance was nothing more than a passionate fling, which lasted just two Tests. They were hammered in the third Test and the one-dayers before ingloriously bowing out in the first-round in the World Twenty20.

The exodus was bound to bite them, sooner rather than later, as I’d predicted three years ago. It’s not to suggest that the players they’d picked for the Ashes weren’t world class. They were hard done by due to poor management. They were within their rights to gripe about the umpiring in the two Tests they lost, but Rudi Koertzen’s blunders didn’t turn the series. It was that of team selection which cost them.

Australia’s fortunes in England depended on the potency of their bowling attack. With Mitchell Johnson not at his knuckle-breaking best and Brett Lee unable to get match fit, the team faced serious questions. Why was Stuart Clark introduced so late in the series? Why was Nathan Hauritz not persisted with for all five Tests? Johnson had a terrific game at Headingley but just one good match out of five doesn’t cut it.

This is where the retirements of McGrath and Warne stung. It hurt the most when Australia failed to close the deal in the tense moments at Cardiff. Clark, considered the nearest substitute for McGrath, was mysteriously benched for the first three games. Hauritz is no Warne, but he performed above himself at the start of the series, despite rubbish being thrown at him from the media and the public. He ought to have played at the Oval, but omitting him on a dry pitch, with the ball gripping and turning, will haunt them no end.

His omission reflects on the lack of confidence the country has in its spinners. It also reeks of insecurity. Last year, three spinners landed in India with the A team, competing for Warne’s place. None of them were on the plane to England. Jason Krejza was dropped after taking eight wickets on debut, Bryce McGain was dumped after being caned in Cape Town, and Beau Casson was plain forgotten. Hauritz was suddenly the new messiah, who unfortunately had to twiddle his thumb in the deciding Test.

Australia still have the manpower to be a leading Test side, provided you mix them correctly. Ponting assumed his experiments would work and tried to convince the public that everything was fine. But it was just a façade. It was as if the team was in a state of denial throughout the tour, when it was clear that some plans weren’t falling into place.

I’m no Australia fan, and I must admit it’s a gratifying feeling watching other teams play catch up. Watching the new Australia fight it out was best summarized by the journalist Christian Ryan, who wrote a piece for us five months back. It goes: “Lately when he bats, Mike Hussey's hands squeeze his bat handle so tight you expect to see toothpaste spurting out the top. In the great lake of sweat on his forehead you can almost make out the bowler's reflection. Watching Hussey concentrate - concentrate so hard that sometimes he forgets to blink - is one of the many little fascinations of witnessing Australia's cricketers right now. They are all having to concentrate.”

Incidental to Transcendental

2009-07-22T05:42:00.000-07:00

The setting couldn’t have been more idyllic. The wholesome goodness of the Maitreyi Vedic Village, near Pollachi (TN), hits you as soon as you walk into this ashram, which has a curious blend of generosity and simplicity. The misty Anamalai Hills form the ideal backdrop. There’s real purity in the air here. It’s where people from all walks of life (and the walk is mostly barefoot) converge for one basic passion – meditation. The surrounds inspire you to shove chaos out of sight and mind, find peace, and converse with your inner self.

This eco-friendly ashram teaches a form of meditation known as Transcendental Meditation (TM), created by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, made famous to the Western world by The Beatles, particularly George Harrison.

We had an interesting meeting with one such practitioner over the dinner table. Mr Suresh* has been practicing TM for over 35 years, much of it under the guidance of the Maharishi himself. He held an important portfolio with the central government, one which would have guaranteed a cushy life after retirement. But in the early 90s, Suresh gambled with his career, despite the fact that he had a young family to support. He decided to take a two-year sabbatical from work to migrate with his family to Netherlands to work for the Maharishi, where he was then based. Suresh’s bosses turned down the leave request and warned that if he took such a step, his job would be in grave danger. The fear of disciplinary action didn’t deter him and he went ahead with his bold plan. Retirement was still a long way off. Would he regret this decision for the rest of his life?

He explained his dilemma to the Maharishi, who matter of factly replied saying he wouldn’t lose his job. How was he so sure? “That’s the power of TM,” Suresh told me. “You wish for something, it will come true through TM.” The stunning turnaround in fortunes for Suresh on his return to India was something he would never have gauged and it had us listening in amazement. Not only was his job intact, he also gained a double promotion! The Pay Commission had meanwhile revised its rules on government pensions for those who skip years of active service, which meant that his pension wasn’t affected either.

Inspiring enough? Perhaps time to find out more about TM.

For a person like me, with brief forays into the world of spiritual rejuvenation, I thought to myself: Time to make the switch from Incidental Meditation to Transcendental Meditation.

* name changed to protect privacy

Not the Melbourne I knew

2009-06-18T01:49:00.000-07:00

As I write, for all you know, a helpless Indian student is getting bashed up somewhere in Melbourne. His dreams trashed, his confidence and ego scarred for life, the sacrifices his family must have made in financing his foreign education all down the drain. The thought of where his immediate future lies is just as depressing as the graphic image of him lying in a coma surrounded by tubes and drips. The scenes over the last few weeks has made us all sick in the stomach and it pains me to write this because I can scarcely imagine this is the same city I swooned over, nine years ago.

Back in 2000, I made my first and only trip to Australia. My sister Kadambari had gone to Melbourne for her masters in international business at Monash university. Me and my mom set off for a three-week trip in May, just when autumn was setting in. We stayed with her in a two-bedroom student-type accommodation in the north-east suburb of Kingsbury, bang opposite La Trobe University. Through the eyes of an 18-year old kid, Melbourne looked a dream, with its efficient transport system, squeaky clean and neatly planned suburbs and opulence near the city center. Add the whiff of cool air and you just wanted to hang out outdoors the whole day.

We spent a weekend each in Sydney and Phillip Island, leaving the weekdays to explore Melbourne. My sister would leave for work/uni early in the morning and the two of us would cook, clean and set off after lunch. We were the prototype of the typical tourist – maps and guide books in hand, asking people for directions and help in bus/train and tram routes. And we were never left disappointed or insulted. The locals didn’t see us as encroachers – they sometimes went out of their way to guide us. The politeness was touching.

A lady at a posh boutique store in Flinders Street was kind enough to draw out a map to help figure our way through the complicated business district. We once hailed a cab to the Imax Theatre and nearly shrieked at the sight of the driver – a 40-plus hippie who looked doped from head to toe. If looks could deceive. He was the friendliest bloke - gave us tips on how to get by, asked about our stay, recommended places to visit. The lad at the convenience store near our house would never fail to say “hello, how are you.” The lady at the information desk at Flinders station always patiently answered our questions – no matter how dumb they were. A cab driver in Sydney asked if I was in town to catch the AFL game. I said no, and we ended up chatting about cricket. At a lonely subway near Jolimont, I was slightly intimidated at the sight of a massive, rugby-toned guy in khaki pants walking in the opposite direction. He held out something and asked, “Hey lad, d’ya smoke?” I don’t know what crap he offered me, but I just smiled and politely turned him down. Cut to the present and he’d have stabbed me.

The only time I encountered rudeness of any kind was in St Peters station in Sydney. I was a bit lost, not knowing which train to take and the guy behind the counter appeared to look at me as more of an intrusion than a customer. At least he led me to the right place.

The courteousness took me by surprise. Melbourne was THE friendliest place I’d ever seen – if it wasn’t, the swarm of Asian immigrants (esp the Chinese and Koreans) would have cleared out long ago. The attacks on Indians may be entirely racially driven, and if it’s true, it would be a sad reflection of what the city has become. The victims claim that they never instigated or provoked the attacks. A section of drunk, unemployed youth in the city have let their tempers flay and used cowardly means of letting out their frustrations. We hope it’s only a minuscule percentage of the population.

A lot of overseas Indian students hail from small towns and villages who sometimes fail to understand what dignity is all about, especially in another country. They can be loud, brash, show no respect to road signs, traffic signs or public manners. It can be putting off for fellow immigrants as well, but do any of them deserve to go through this torture? It’s a haunting thought for my sister, who was in their shoes, in the same city which taught her how to stand on her own feet.

And the legacy lives on...

2009-03-07T02:33:00.001-08:00

When a cricketer (professional, wannabe, pretend, fraud) gets hit on the box, or should I say unmentionables, the pain invariably reverberates through the television, blacks out your senses and flings you in the sea of pity. The former England batsman turned commentator David Lloyd once said it’s the one injury which brings tears to your eyes. Nobody’s had it worse than him on the cricket field, at least in an international game. Just don’t remind him of Perth 1974, when Jeff Thomson got one to kick up off a good length and…… you can finish the rest.

The box guard, or in other words the abdomen guard, is the first piece of equipment you need to insert or strap on before padding up. Now there are two types of abdomen guards – the one with suspenders and the one without. I’ve always felt comfortable with the former, but given that I hadn’t had a decent nets outing since I was 17, I had no option but to borrow one from the general kit. Disgusting, but true.

After excavating the kit, I found to my outmost horror, three box guards without suspenders. This can’t be true, I thought. How on earth am I supposed to go out there and bat? Summoning the courage, I bravely slipped one in and padded up. The ‘pretend’ batsman (I fall under that category), was too shy to admit his predicament. I ambled down the pitch, adjusting my trackpants in two-second intervals. O dear Lord what have I gotten myself into?

As the bowler ran up, a prayer flowed from my lips. ‘Please let him bowl a wide ball.’ Unanswered. The ball pitched in line with the offstump and, thank heavens, I defended it somehow. The guard began to slip. Drat! A quick adjustment of the tracks and it was back in position. Or so I thought. Nagraj came on to bowl. The ball landed in line with middle and on first impulse, I moved away and missed. The ball just sailed over the stumps. Next up was Prem, the quickest of the lot. The damn thing was slipping away again! Freak! I backed away and the ball cut back in and crashed onto the offstump. Strike one! Then came Sajan, who bowls, rather chucks, offspin. The ball landed just outside off and, assuming it would miss the stumps by a mile, I shouldered arms. I looked back and saw my offstump cartwheel back by four yards. Unbelievable. And as expected, the guard slipped away again.

There was a serious wardrobe malfunction happening on the pitch and it wasn’t funny. My endless backing away made me the prototype for the world’s worst tailender. No surprise though that my blog’s called Nine, Ten and Jack. Chris Martin would have batted better than me.

I adjusted my tracks for the 200^th time and resumed the humiliation. A yorker then flattened my offstump. I finally managed to connect a half volley, a tame scoop straight to short cover. Then chopped one onto the middle stump. In hindsight, they might as well have bowled to three stumps instead of a 6 ft 2 walking, trackpant-adjusting apology of a batsman. The uncensored stumps-expose show finally ended after five death-defying minutes. The dreaded inside edge onto the crotch never happened as well and my legacy was protected after all.

After the ordeal, I headed to the sports shop and promptly demanded a guard with suspenders. We were playing an intra-office match the next day and I was determined not to suffer another series of Kramer bloopers in front of the entire office. I was slated to bat lower down the order, which gave me ample time to pad up. So there I marched with my stuff about a mile away from the pavilion, choosing the most secluded bush to start the formalities.

A quick check. No women around. Back to work.

I strode out and positioned myself at the non-striker’s end as the batsmen had crossed. My flatmate George was on strike. He pushed the ball past midwicket and set off for the single. For some godforsaken reason, he called for the second. ‘Are you crazy?’ I saw who the fielder was and didn’t bother stepping out. But he was halfway down the pitch. I had to be the sacrificial lamb. Helpless, I was short of my crease by a furlong. Kramer Moment No. 76. Run-out without facing a ball. In hindsight, I needn’t have bothered wearing the stupid guard.

The forces from above didn’t just stop there in conspiring against me. I lost my phone the previous morning and shortly after a draining defeat in the match (my only contribution was sprinting from fine leg to long-on at the end of every over) I was diagnosed with malaria.

The curse of the soap-box shaped abdomen guard, as I chose to call it.

But on the bright side, the Kramer legacy lives on.

Tyagi's test

2009-01-15T07:47:00.000-08:00

A profile of Sudeep Tyagi, the UP fast bowler. He was superb in his opening Ranji season but flopped in the next.

This appeared in Cricinfo. Click here.

Stats but no story

2009-01-11T03:44:00.000-08:00

This article was originally published in Cricinfo. Click here

It may be received wisdom that sportspersons are best off not having their life story told, or telling it themselves, when they are still in their prime, but surely exceptions can be made for players like Mahendra Singh Dhoni. Since he broke onto the scene in 2005, Dhoni has biffed bowling attacks, solved India's once-perennial wicketkeeping problem, taken over the captaincy in all forms of the game, warmed hearts with his speeches and captivating smile, and in short transformed himself into an icon. And he's only 27.

Dhoni's story is one that will never fail to inspire. He stands at the epicentre of the influx of small-town boys into Indian cricket's mainstream. He is a hero to middle-class India, and his tale deserves to be known in comprehensive detail, though he may be only three years old on the international cricket.

Captain Cool: The MS Dhoni Story is perhaps the first biography of the cricketer to hit the stands. It is not authorised, and unfortunately Gulu Ezekiel's only interaction with the player seems to have been a conversation at the boundary edge during a Duleep Trophy game in Amritsar before he made it to the Indian team.

What shapes a biography, especially one where the writer has not had access to the subject, are inputs from the player's friends, family, colleagues and acquaintances. There is very little evidence of those here. Dhoni has several to thank for his rise, including his parents; the generous proprietor of a local sports store in Ranchi who supplied him with equipment for free; his sports coach, who advised him to take up wicketkeeping instead of football goalkeeping; and many others. It would have been nice to hear their side of the story. His batting style, famously, does not come out of a coaching manual; reactions from those who oversaw his formative years would have been interesting.

Large parts of Captain Cool consist of summarised match reports, including those of some games that didn't involve Dhoni. The long introductions and backgrounds to the World Cup and the World Twenty20 give one the impression of reading an encyclopedia of cricket, with bits about the protagonist, Dhoni, somewhere in the middle. Ezekiel does justice to two of Dhoni's most important early knocks - his 148 against Pakistan and 183 not out against Sri Lanka. Again, however, the lack of inputs from the player himself, especially about some of his intriguing and instinctive captaincy moves during the ICC World Twenty20 final and the CB Series finals, takes away from the accounts of those games. One comes away wishing certain chapters, like the ones on Dhoni's early years, were documented in greater detail, at the expense of some of the descriptions of matches.

The most notable feature of this book is that it's loaded with stats and can serve as a ready reckoner on Dhoni's achievements, including those in his CK Nayudu- and Cooch Behar-tournament days. The prose is measured and fluent, and Ezekiel's uncomplicated style makes the book a swift read.

As Ezekiel concludes: "It has been a long journey from Ranchi to superstardom but there are still many miles to go before he can be considered a true legend of the game." True, there should be plenty of achievements to look forward to, and Dhoni may well pen them down in his own words someday. This book, unfortunately, is by no means the definitive account of the man behind the superstar image. Given his prodigious achievements, he deserves better.

Captain Cool: The MS Dhoni Story
by Gulu Ezekiel
Eastwest Books, Rs 150

You may be going, you're not, no actually you're going

2008-12-29T09:23:00.000-08:00

It’s been three days and I can still scarcely believe I’m here. At times of recession, the world works in mysterious ways. A journalist friend of mine from CNBC, Ashwin, recently posted this message as his status on Facebook – “bad times for the economy mean good times for business journalists.” He may as well have mentioned cricket journalists too.

I’m typing this from my dad’s place in Colombo. How did I get here? It’s quite simple really, but at the same time rather complicated, quoting what Capt Haddock repeatedly said when asked the same question in Tintin’s “Land of Black Gold.” I was originally marked out to do match reports for the Bangladesh v Sri Lanka series (happening in Bangladesh) off the TV. Now, allegedly because of the economic slowdown, television companies are starting to pick and choose what matches to cover. Nimbus have the rights to cover Bangladesh cricket but this series clashes with the Indian domestic season, for which they too have the rights. Saddled with the embarrassment of ‘riches’ they decided to sacrifice the Bangladesh series for the sake of the Ranji trophy, leaving us in a total fix.

With no television coverage in India, the top bosses were forced to look at alternatives. I’d resigned myself, rather reluctantly, to do reports off the scorecard from Bangalore and I can tell you it’s not the most enviable task. Things changed when I received an unexpected phone call from my boss one afternoon giving me the heads up to go to Sri Lanka and cover the series off TV. One of our scorers, Raghav, was already sent to Bangladesh to look after the scoring. But we weren’t sure yet if there was coverage in Sri Lanka, as it seemed even they weren’t terrible enthused about the series.

About 24 hours passed and still no news. It was safe to assume I wasn’t going at all but it still wasn’t final. Was I going or not going? I was in a very similar situation in June when I was asked to head to America for an assignment in our ESPN offices, which never happened. I felt like Ishant Sharma before he finally became a regular member of the team. Ishant for a while was India’s emergency fast bowler. It seemed like he received countless SOS’s to get ready to fly out each time a Zaheer Khan or a Munaf Patel pulled up with injuries. Invariably, he’d stay put in India. Now Cricinfo had its own strikingly-similar Ishant – another tall lanky beanpole with a long beakish nose! All I needed was shoulder length hair and a Delhi accent.

I was instead deputed to cover Tamil Nadu v Bengal from the ground in Bangalore. Hardly a few hours had passed since play had started when I was asked to pack up and leave the same evening for Colombo. Apparently a broadcast deal with a local Sri Lankan channel was sealed at the last minute. I rushed through my tea report, packed up my laptop and tried explaining my sudden departure to a couple of bewildered journalists. And so I dashed off to the office to take my ticket, flung some clothes in my bag and headed to the airport to take the 9 pm flight. My dad was only too happy to hear of the change of plan. It’s still quite baffling that the company is sponsoring a guy to fly to another country to cover a series few people even care about. But what the heck.. I wasn’t complaining!

Of course, there had to be a Kramer Moment somewhere! I’d gotten so used to arriving in Colombo from Chennai that it didn’t strike me I departed from a new city. On arrival, I waited like an eternity for my luggage. I started to wonder if some creeps were screwing with my bag. I glanced up at the screen and realized I was standing beside the wrong conveyor belt, which was for the Chennai flight which arrived at roughly the same time! No wonder the co passengers looked so unfamiliar. I felt like such a dumbass. Well given my past history of ‘absent mindedness’, this was hardly surprising. (Jaya, I know you’re smirking)

Five tracks

2008-11-30T09:33:00.000-08:00

I whacked this idea from The Hindu, where their in-house writers list out their top five music tracks in contemporary music. Here's my own list of favourites.

Tracy Chapman – Fast car (1988)

In the pre-satellite television days, the Grammy awards nomination special was an annual event for all of us. One evening, we gathered in front of the television and saw Tracy Chapman introduce herself to the world with the most soothing and heart rending track in memory. The guitar track at the start makes you want to grab that instrument and start playing. The song is of a tale of struggle. It’s the story of a young working class couple who struggle to make ends meet with the longing that things will pan out better over time. The girl wants to escape her sick, alcoholic dad and stay with her boyfriend but is restrained by the fact that her mother has abandoned the family at the time of crisis. Left with no choice, she drops out of school and works at a convenience store. The couple eventually run away together but life doesn’t promise to get any easier. She takes charge of their relationship, both financially and emotionally, but her meager income isn’t enough to get them out of the shelter and in to the suburban home of her dreams. To complicate things, they have kids and much to her dismay, finds that her man doesn’t show the commitment expected of him to her and the children. The car is the song symbolizes freedom, the freedom to break away from the shackles and rediscover one’s personality. The chorus of the song sums it up.

So I remember we were driving driving in your car
The speed so fast I felt like I was drunk
City lights lay out before us
And your arm felt nice wrapped 'round my shoulder
And I had a feeling that I belonged
And I had a feeling I could be someone, be someone, be someone

The song won Tracy the Grammy for the Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. Watch it here.

Bruce Hornsby and the Range – Every little kiss (1986)

Bruce Hornsby stormed the music world when he was named the Best New Artist in the 1987 Grammys and his debut album, The Way It Is, went multi-platinum. The search for that album spanned two countries and a handful of cities but I finally managed to acquire it four years ago. The song, Every Little Kiss, is the best romantic song I’ve heard and its theme is something we will all relate to. It’s the story of a long distance relationship, of a lonely hardworking man whose heart pines to speak to his woman thousand miles away. The piano track at the beginning sets up the rest of the song perfectly, which has a finger-clicking beat, and the song has a southern American folk theme with a mixture of jazz. Like Fast Car, this is another story of longing to be with someone, but times are tight and he sits in solitude after a long day working at the docks and lets his mind wander. Watch it here.

Hysteria – Def Leppard (1987)

Rock for a change. I was hooked to Def Leppard in the early 1990s when they released Adrenalize but I discoveed this song only in 2000 while surfing channels late one night. The self-titled album Hysteria is their most iconic, going multi-platinum and topping the charts in the first week of its release. Every song had the potential to be a hit single. The song has a feel-good factor to it, has an uninterrupted flow and the chorus is uplifting. The video is typically 1980s, with its misty look and slick editing. England has produced some of the best bands in history and these guys from Sheffield rank at No. 1 for me. Among the five songs listed here, this is by far the most popular. Walk in to any pub or night club for evidence. Watch it here.

Building a mystery – Sarah McLachlan (1997)

Vocalists from Canada have almost always been overshadowed by their neighbours. Like her contemporaries Celine Dion and Shania Twain, Sarah McLachlan has carved out an identity for herself as one of Canada’s finest female artists. While Celine and Shania chose to go commercial, Sarah stuck to her roots, which is more folk rock/pop. Her uniqueness lies in her mystical and endearing voice. Building a Mystery is about a woman intrigued by her man and she seeks to find out what he’s upto. It’s this very curiosity that draws her to him. She knows his outward image is just a façade but his inner self is well shielded. Rather than being intimidated by his cryptical ways, she sets off on her own journey to discover him. The tone and rhythm of the track is so relaxing that it can be used as a stress-buster. It drifts to a higher pitch towards the end and at that very moment (at the video), she unravels the mystery. The lyrics also have several curious verses, almost as if to imply that he’s setting out to create a new religion.Watch it here.

This song won her the Grammy for the Best Vocal Performance (female) in 1998.

Walking in Memphis – Marc Cohn (1991)

A legendary one-song wonder. A song that inspired several other covers and remixed versions by Cher, Lonestar and Dave Matthews Band (supposedly) to name a few. The theme is in the title itself – Memphis (Tennessee) is the birthplace of Elvis Presley. The narrator sees the ghost of Elvis and threatens to scale the walls of Graceland to follow his idol. Nobody except himself can see him. The middle verse of the song describes Memphis more in detail and towards the end asks the listener “do you really feel the way I feel.” The emotion and nostalgia Cohn feels for Memphis comes out in the lyrics and the piano tracks complement it. The black and white video also featured among the Grammy nominees of the year and he picked up the award for Best New Artist. Watch it here.

Cher’s cover (1995) is just as good and has a perkier beat to it. While the ending in Cohn’s version is more conventional, Cher’s ends abruptly. She doesn’t want her journey to end and can’t get herself to go beyond “put on my blue suede shoes”, following which she ducks her head to her knees.Watch it here.

Those that nearly made it:

Bruce Springsteen - Human touch

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers - Learning to fly

Goo Goo Dolls - Name

Fleetwood Mac - Gypsy

Tracy Chapman - Crossroads

Kramer Moments

2008-10-15T11:37:00.000-07:00

Those who’ve visited my profiles in orkut/facebook/cricinfo would have noticed a reference to the name Kramer. In case u didn’t know, Kramer is the clumsy, accident prone, overconfident, lanky doofus in the hit comedy series Seinfeld. Kramer is undoubtedly everybody’s favourite in the show; slapstick comedy can never fail right? It’s by no accident (pun unintended) that I’m very similar to that character. That’s right. I am a bit of a klutz. My 6 ft 2 gawky, wiry frame makes me an easy candidate for the occasion trip, slip, hits on the head, the spilt drink, highly exaggerated reaction and so on. And all of it is natural. Nothing is put on. I’m the president of a two-member group called the Ku ‘Klutz’ Klan so if there are any clumsy oafs reading this now, feel free to sign up.

The nickname Kramer set in while I was in Mumbai, where I was at my comical best. The best Kramer Moment was at the NCPA when I slipped and fell backwards on a wet floor trying to negotiate my umbrella and the wind which threatened to blow me away. The umbrella flipped the other side and the wind probably propelled me also forward, causing me to lose my footing! The frequency of Kramer Moments may have reduced over the last couple of years, but the occasional goof ups are still there.

I recently went on a trip to Goa with a gang of 14 and there was plenty of entertainment around. Well, a bit of entertainment came at my expense. That’s right, the trip was partly remembered for a succession of Kramer Moments. It was hilarious! It all started on the first day when I dropped Tarun’s camera, under the influence of a ‘bit’ of alchohol. The lens broke so that was the end of that. The next day, I tripped over some wires, knocked over an ashtray from the coffee table and made a mess on the floor (it wasn’t cleaned till we left!). About 10 mins later, my coolers slipped out, I juggled with it for a few anxious seconds before dropping it on the road. Later that day, I sat on a go-kart, turned back to tell one of my friends to take snaps, only to promptly touch the engine and suffer a burn. The worst part is, the attendant warned us just seconds before to watch out for the engine at the back, like the Volkswagen. That stupid scar was an eyesore which didn’t leave me for a few weeks. And you guessed it, I finished last! Loser!

The deadliest Moment was reserved for the next day. Five of us hit the hotel pool. The floor beside the pool was so slippery that an accident was begging to happen. If only we knew beforehand who the unfortunate soul would be. As I walked across to the other side, I shared a joke with Pradeep before ZZZZZIPPPPPPP!!!! I slipped and fell backwards, Captain Haddock style, and found myself flat on the floor before I could blink. My lower back (thankfully) took the impact first before my head took an equally sickening blow. As I lay down dazed, Tarun, Danny, Praveen and Pradeep gazed at me as if I had passed out.

Somehow, I managed to find some humour in the situation. I said, “You know something guys, it’s not always funny being Kramer.” When I finally gathered myself, I added, “Well for a change K knocked some sense into his head.” And we all had a nice laugh after that. It took me a while to come to my senses after that blow. While playing catches in the pool, a flat throw from Pradeep slipped through my butter fingers and socked me on the nose. That was the ‘nightcap Kramer Moment’ to round off the trip.

Goa brought back memories of another succession of legendary Moments, this time of far more serious proportions. I’ve decided to take the liberty to relate this to the rest of the world, although a select few already know about it.

It happened three years ago during my part-time theatre days in Madras. As an actor, it was my first public performance – a short comedy skit called Arabian Nights. The event that evening was a supper theatre show at a Mediterranean restaurant called Cedars, a large independent house with an outdoor space, very similar to Opus in Bangalore. I played the role of a geeky American tourist (called Norman) who walks into a souvenir shop in Arabia, flips for the veiled woman behind the counter and communicates with her through an interpreter who doubles up as a tout. I won’t mention their names because they’re on facebook too! For the moment, let’s call the girl Florid Queen (Norman’s nickname for her in the play).

After one rehearsal, we began the show. All went well for the first few minutes when suddenly, I messed up my lines. There was a deafening silence when I realized I had actually jumped the script by a few minutes! Shock and horror. It was obvious to my fellow actors and director I had committed, what seemed at that time, a costly gaffe. For a second, I seriously wanted to run. Luckily I had the presence of mind to improvise, something I had picked up during an actors’ workshop some months before. So I quickly came up with my own line and brought the play back on track and the audience, thankfully, sat innocently following every word believing it to be a part of the script. Phew!!

Temporary relief, as I was to find out later. The obvious Moments were waiting to bite me in public. And man did it hurt. There’s a scene where I lunge forward to kiss the girl (no, we don’t actually kiss!) before the interpreter clears his throat to distract us. As I bent forward, TINNNNGGG!! I knocked down the flower vase on the table! I think I heard a chuckle from the front. Oopsy.

As I stepped backwards to make an emotional exit from the shop, I failed to watch my step and nearly fell backwards as I lost my footing on the bench (erected as a makeshift stage). The sound of the rustling leaves was quite deafening. Now I really wanted to dash out of sight. But the audience hadn’t seen the last of the klutz yet. As I made my way to the exit, TTTRRRRIPPPP!!! I tripped over the base of the door and was flung forward! God! I had seen the worst. I felt like a scumbag of the first order as I walked up the stairs to the green room, speechless. For the next half an hour, I had my forehead pressed on Florid Queen’s lap till I snapped out of the blues. I suspect I have my poor director a sleepless night and the artistic director of that group (no I cant mention his name either) had a nightmare and thanked me profusely for it the next day!

On the bright side, we had seen the worst that night. There were no such goof ups during the three public shows. All relatively flawless performances. Thank heavens!

Into the Wild

2008-07-14T00:29:00.000-07:00

Adventures don’t necessarily follow a definitive script. Sometimes, the lesser the time spent planning, the more the excitement and anticipation of what lies ahead and who you eventually meet. One young man in his early twenties chose to live life in these terms, renouncing whatever he had in his singular goal to live off the land and converse with nature.

Into the Wild, a bestseller by John Krakauer, is the true story of Christopher McCandless, a driven individualist who backpacked across America and lived in the alpine confines of Alaska, his promised land. While the country is full of backpackers with possibly, similar adventures, Chris’s story is one which not only inspires but also makes one wonder if the word ‘danger’ ever found a place in his quest for self discovery.

The circumstances which led to his journey were puzzling. Hailing from an upper middle-class family, Chris graduated from Emory University, Atlanta, in 1990 and was set, at least according to his parents, for a career in law. The first sign of his peculiar behavior was evident when he arrogantly rejected his father’s offer to buy him a car. Material possessions and the prospect of spending the rest of his life in the concrete jungle suddenly meant nothing to Chris. He felt suffocated in the same universe which existed in his mind but not in his heart. Filled with ecstasy, he donated his life savings to charity and left his apartment to start a new life as a tramp, without anybody’s knowledge but his.

His family had to contend with his disappearance when the police discovered his abandoned car in the middle of the desert. Since there were no signs of a struggle or possibly murder, the conclusion was that Chris was out there somewhere. He changed his name to a fictitious Alexander Supertramp and slowly began letting strangers into his life – a South Dakota farmer fascinated by Chris’ plans (played by Vince Vaughan), a middle-aged hippie couple in California who treat him as their own son, a wild Danish couple camping near the Colorado river, and a gorgeous 16-year old who’s totally smitten by him.

While his parents remained dumbfounded by his behaviour, his sister Carine (also his closest confidante) managed to make sense of it. This is where the film scores – the script. Concise, yet powerful narrations by her give a moving account of how a family secret shattered Chris, and that his escapade was an act of revenge. Here’s an extract:

My parents understood that a fine crystal glass had to be cared for. When it came to my brother they did not seem to know or care that their course of secret action brought the devastation that could cut them. These revelations made his entire childhood seem like fiction.

Did Chris jump the line with his stubbornness? Here’s what Carine had to say.

He could have hung up if it wasn’t me. Why didn’t he write a letter? It hurt a little. He knew I loved him enough to bear with me not knowing. I knew it was more than rebellion which drove him.

Through his journey, Chris kept a diary, His inspiration came from the works of his favourite authors Jack London, Leo Tolstoy and Henry David Thoreau. He mentioned of how the freedom and simple beauty was too good to pass up, and that the best moments were when he was penniless. Walking past a coffee house in LA, he gives a disapproving look to a bunch of yuppies having fun. That showed just how disconnected he was with the future originally destined for him. He pictures himself, decked in a blazer, waving at the disheveled tramp across the window but the tramp cares less to acknowledge that.

He finally makes it to Alaska and camps on an abandoned bus – the only sign of civilization on the horizon. Chris finally lives his dream. It makes you wonder whether he lets his exuberance get the better of him and if he ever considered the consequences of his actions. Would his family welcome him back? Would an apology from both sides settle the issue?

Besides the powerful acting, there are several features which carry the film, like the screenplay which switches between his time in Alaska and mainland USA. The length of the film might seem as a drawback – it’s 2 and a half hours – but you get the feeling the director Sean Penn deliberately did it for the viewer to understand Chris’ character better, make sense of his nomadic lifestyle and to appreciate the wilderness. Emile Hirsch is flawless in his performance as Chris, as is Hal Holbrook, who earned an oscar nomination this year for the best supporting actor for his role as a lonely old man who finds emotional companionship for the first time in decades. The music is another stand-out feature – both the background score and vocals by Eddie Vedder, Pearl Jam’s frontman. The title track “Hard Sun” by Vedder keeps playing in your ear. Penn as a director, has created a masterpiece with a touching script, the effective usage of slow motion to capture the emotions and great camera work to complement the script.

Since I haven’t read the book I obviously can’t comment on any possible discrepancies. But it’s not one of those movies you can see just once and I’m placing this in my top three, after Forrest Gump and The Shawshank Redemption.

Must cricket be the new football?

2008-02-25T05:32:00.000-08:00

February 20, 2008 was a day to get the calculators out. With every bang of the hammer at the IPL auction, international cricketers across the world linked to the league found out just how much they were worth. The results were met with complete gasps and a sense of amusement. Dhoni was the first to cross the $1 million mark and Ishant Sharma, now only in his second tour with India, was the fourth most expensive player at the end of the bidding. Yusuf Pathan, with just one match for India, was valued way higher than Ricky Ponting while Michael Hussey, who relentlessly toiled for several seasons to break into the Australian team, ended up being a last minute inclusion. Cricketers were being sold like stocks and not for the first time, money took precedence over cricket.

The IPL has been perceived as a revolution of sorts for cricket, not for the millions of dollars being spent in sprucing up the lives and recognition of obscure first-class cricketers, but for the introduction of a new module never seen before in cricket. In modern sport, football is undoubtedly the market leader when it comes to embracing the ‘club culture’ or ‘city loyalty’ and the IPL is a means for cricket venturing into the unknown. The question is whether the same module can be applied to a sport like cricket, which is truly nationalistic.

The harsh reality in India and several other Test playing countries is that the domestic game continues to wilt due to low spectator turnout and lack of an appealing brand value. This is in complete contrast to football, the world’s biggest sport, where regional loyalties hit fever pitch. For example, Manchester United v Arsenal gathers much more hype and anticipation than a friendly between England and Brazil. The English Premier League (EPL) remains one of the toughest leagues in the world but the national team hasn’t lifted the World Cup since 1966. The Spanish La Liga boasts of one of the most sought after teams, Real Madrid, but Spain have barely gotten close to winning a World Cup.

While it’s still early days yet to jump to conclusions of cricket following a similar trend, there is an example in the recent past which proves how over experimentation can backfire. In 2005, the Super Series between Australia and a combined World XI team was a slap in the face of the ICC thanks to the lopsided results. The World XI side just couldn’t click as a unit and no amount of encouragement from the captain Graeme Smith (which was accompanied by sniggers from two leading Asian players) could push the rest to exhibit the same sort of pride which normally drives them when representing their countries.

The IPL is, in a large sense, an extension of the Super Series with the concept of combined teams boasting of several international stars and current Indian players. Till a few days ago, it was almost taken for granted that Indian players based in the IPL cities would represent their respective franchises. The auction witnessed a sort of cabinet reshuffle with Delhi’s Ishant Sharma turning out for Kolkata and Mumbai’s Rohit Sharma representing Hyderabad. It will take some getting used to for someone like Rohit who has been long adored in the Mumbai cricket circles and the butterflies will flutter in his stomach when he emerges from the visitors’ enclosure at Mumbai’s Brabourne Stadium. Another pertinent question is whether the more expensive overseas players manage to justify their monetary worth with their on-field performances, with the full knowledge that they’re not representing Australia or New Zealand. Brian Lara, who retired recently, was nothing short of the disaster in the ICL despite the hype surrounding his inclusion. The ‘rebels’ on the other hand found solace in the league and gave their best. Will other recent retirees like Stephen Fleming and Glenn McGrath get sucked into the same trap as Lara? Only time will tell.

Tournaments like the IPL seem ideal for has-beens and players desperate to resurrect their domestic careers at least and earn a livelihood they would never have dreamed of. But in the age of excessive cricket, the IPL is just an add-on to an already cramped schedule. The prospect of playing a tournament which lasts 44 days in the peak of summer in India is daunting enough to drive players into extinction.

Two teams, Africa XI and Asia XI stepped into a furnace in Chennai last June and played out back-to-back one-dayers. It was complete madness for the third match when six African players reported sick. The IPL’s Twenty20 format offers some respite, but it doesn’t mean the cramps won’t set in every now and then. Injuries are on the increase, thanks to the punishing international calendar which barely allows for sufficient periods of recuperation. John Gloster, the physio of the Indian team, wrote a scathing report recently revealing that almost all players were guilty of carrying injuries or niggles while playing and stressed on the need for rest. While the players ought to be laying their feet up, in pops the money and riches in the form of the IPL. A player who complains bitterly of burnout and fatigue and yet turns up for an English county or a Chennai SuperKings isn’t doing himself or his country any favours. The shelf life of a player only reduces, to be brutally honest.

The IPL for all its worth may turn out to be an overnight success, but its relevance in the long term needs to be looked at. Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket in 1977 was born out of pure necessity, at a time when cricket desperately needed to move on from the archaic establishment. The Stanford 20/20 came about to uplift a sagging domestic game in the West Indies, much like the Premier Hockey League in India. The IPL was born out of pure competition, from the ICL, a league treated like an evil step child by all cricket boards, none more so than the Indian board. Contemporary cricket wasn’t crying out for change in the first place. The IPL just adds an unnecessary layer of make up to a spruced-up face.

Sydneygate

2008-01-11T05:59:00.000-08:00

So much has been said and written about it. World news has been pushed to the background in every news room across the country; cricket experts have been summoned to debate the issue, effigies are being burnt and the Indian board has joined the chorus of the Indian public by threatening to call off the tour. The pressing question is whether the horrendous umpiring and ban on Harbhajan Singh for racial abuse required such a harsh response. Is the Indian board playing big bully again? Have their actions been justified? Did the ICC merely succumb to its economic powerhouse?

If cricket’s just a ‘game’ then India should jolly well stay back and fight it out in the remaining games instead of acting like quitters. But cricket’s more than just that. If key wickets are either lost or reprieved due to horrendous umpiring standards, then all protests are justified. The same goes for a player to be suspended for 3 matches on the basis of rather flimsy evidence. Taking these blows lying down would have been a bigger defeat than the match itself, let alone the series.

Lets take the issues one by one, starting with the umpiring. Steve Bucknor’s umpiring blunders always seem to have the ‘India tag’ to it, something that’s run for more than a decade. The fact that he has been a repeat offender on several occasions involving India is enough for one to draw conclusions that something is terribly wrong. The nick which deflected off Andrew Symonds’ bat, when he was in his 30s, was obvious enough for an onfield umpire to raise the finger. Bucknor didn’t budge. Later, an appeal for a stumping off the same batsman went unheeded. The third umpire isn’t there to test the field umpires’ credibility. Was Bucknor trying to protect his honour by stubbornly refusing to call for the man upstairs? What then, was his intention? Rahul Dravid is not one to react after a dismissal. An edge off the pad through to Gilchrist (the bat was a mile away) was good enough for Bucknor to give him the marching orders.

This was obviously the last straw for India. India could have saved the game if Dravid stuck around longer. Letting Bucknor off the hook for the umpteenth time was never going to be entertained and the BCCI rightly stepped in with the demand for his removal for the Perth Test. Sure, India have the muscle power few other cricket boards have across the world. My opinion is, when national pride is at stake, then flex those muscles as much as possible.

India’s reaction was a retort to the way the game was conducted. Captain Ricky Ponting’s reaction after an Indian journalist questioned his honesty was sickening. Claiming a catch after clearly grounding the ball was a blatant disregard for the spirit of the game. While he remains a terrific batsman, his actions were a throwback to the late 90’s when Ponting was hauled up for a bar-brawl in Australia and earlier in Calcutta as well. His uncouth reaction after Javagal Srinath apologised after hitting him on the visor, in 1999, made it seems as if India were up against a street fighter. No wonder past Australian greats are upset with him and his team after the most ‘undeserved’ of the 16 wins on the trot.

Another who should cop plenty of blame is Michael Clarke. Claiming a bump catch against New Zealand recently put a big question on his honesty and his reputation took a bigger beating after celebrating another such catch against Ganguly, another dismissal which cost India the game. The bigger villain in this piece is umpire Mark Benson, who mysteriously took Clarke’s and Ponting’s word on the catch and not the third umpire’s. True, the captains had agreed before the series started that the captain would have the final word on contentious catches. Ganguly knew what he saw and rightly stood his ground. Nowadays, it’s hard to trust a fielder’s word on contentious catches, especially in a tension-filled last day. Clearly, Benson should have known better and should have taken a second, if not a third opinion. Ganguly said exactly that a few days later during the tour game in Canberra.

Umpiring aside, the issue which has thrown everyone into a frenzy is that of the racial charge and the conduct of the match referee Mike Procter. At the time of confrontation, none of the witnesses who were called to testify were within audible distance of what was said. There is speculation that Harbhajan may have said “Teri maa ki…” , which Symonds may have heard as “monkey”. How then, does Procter base his judgment on one man’s word against the other? Australians have gotten away with murder so many times and the three-match ban was injustice to the core.

Summing up, I personally feel that aggrieved teams should be allowed to protest against a particular umpire if his actions threaten to disrupt the spirit of the game. Case in point – Darrell Hair and Sri Lanka. Bucknor’s removal was a good move by the ICC, a refreshing one after their pathetic handling of the World Cup. However, the BCCI acting like spoiled brats over the Harbhajan issue, despite the ICC granting an appeal on his ban is a disturbing development and could set an unwelcome precedent. The board has continued with its threats if the issue isn’t settled soon, throwing the one-dayers in jeopardy. Harbhajan’s innocence is pending proof and until the verdict is out, the board should shut up let the games go on. Malcolm Speed, the ICC’s CEO, clearly said that they can’t draft separate rules for India alone.

There is however one thought which has crossed my mind several times. Had India drawn the Test, would the reactions have been the same?

Lee's cameo, the eighth rule, and a Fanatical flop

2008-01-05T19:49:00.000-08:00

The Week That Was - latest Cricinfo piece

Going under cover at SSC

2007-12-17T01:59:00.000-08:00

When England are in town, you know it. It's a sight to behold in each of England's winter tours and I managed to chat with a few of them during the second Test against Sri Lanka at Colombo SSC. Downed a couple of glasses as well,just to blend in :-)..

Innocent love

2007-12-07T03:34:00.000-08:00

Haven't you often wished for an interesting co-passenger while travelling? Invariably, you end up with the most boring creatures who barely acknowledge your presence, and the courteous 'hello' and smile remain unreturned. "To hell with everybody, you'd think," "I'll just mind my own business and crash."

As usual, I went with zero expectations while travelling to Madras 10 days back on work. I boarded the A/C compartment and barely settled into my seat when the guy next to me smiled and asked if I was Kanishkaa. Nope I'm not that famous yet! Obviously he had read the reservation chart.. Perhaps he was expecting a girl, which plenty of people have done before on reading my name.

We started chatting about work etc. I found out that he too grew up in madras and was fond of cricket. The subject remained with cricket for quite a while. When the train halted at cantonment, i turned to my left and saw this tall, fair,attractive lady take the side berth.

Trivia: When was the last time a beautiful stranger sat beside me on a trip?

Never.

At first glance, she looked about 27-28. She had straight jet-black hair, wore a white top with a shawl over it, slender blue jeans which showed off her slim figure, and to top it all with a face to make a few heads turn. She took the seat in front, fiddled with her mobile phone while we continued our conversation, and then there was me glancing in her direction every few seconds...

Just as we were about to retire for the night, she spoke: "Excuse me (laughs). I couldn't help but overhear you guys talking abt cricket."

I smiled back and proudly told her where i worked. She explained she worked in a management training company in madras which specialises in organising team building exercises for companies. Apparently Tendulkar and few other India n cricketers had spent time there as well. While the rest of the compartment had switched off, the night was still young for the three of us.

The incredible bit was yet to come. As the conversation drifted into where we studied etc, I said i passed out of Loyola College 3 yrs back. Then, in the most matter-of-fact manner, she said," Oh...my son studies there too."

Son?? For a second i wondered if she mixed it up with a Loyola school in jamshedpur. She laughed and continued, "He's doing his final year in economics." Sensing she had us zapped, she went on," He's 19 now... I had him when I was 16!"

16??! My jaw dropped..was this lady serious? all the while she looked good enough to have a 19 year old boyfriend. The first thing that came to my mind was the serial Gilmore Girls, the story of a single mom who had a daughter at 16 and raised the kid all by herself in a small town. It was too bizarre...perhaps the real-life Lorelai Gilmore was sitting in front of me.

She seemed to enjoy narrating her fascinating story. She said it all started with a romance back in boarding school. "It was all just innocent love. We just decided to get married and our parents agreed." Super cool. All the while, we never stopped smiling in disbelief. The questions flowed: But you were just 16....how did u manage? Was it hard? What abt ur studies? and his?

She said, surprisingly, that they managed just fine.Not bad at all, given that the husband didnt just vanish into a black hole, running away from the responsibility. Not quite Gilmore Girls but still.

What was it like from the son's point of view? A college guy with a mom who's 35 and dad who;s 38. "We three are thick as thieves. We hit the disco together in madras often. The only place he doesnt want to be seen with me is in college!" I understood that and laughed.

I saw shades of my mom in her now. They simply had to shake hands. Anybody's who met my mom raves about how she gets younger with age, some refusing to believe she has two 20-something kids. I told her that as well.

The tone had now reduced to a whisper, fearing the rest wanted to throw the 3 of us in the luggage compartment! Back in bed, still dazed, I glanced at this amazing woman and shook my head, the smile refusing to leave my face. In this day and age of late marriages, is there a place for young, innocent love in middle class India? Maybe not.

'You're a freak, man'

2007-12-07T03:27:00.000-08:00

The world is getting so small, at this rate you would be lucky to find enough space to fit your little toe.. No I don't mean that literally of course, but I'm talking about coincidences. A few days back, an incredible thing happened at home and the incident only reinforces the thought that the unexpected can sometimes be found waiting on your doorstep. Here's the story....

We often have friends of ours crashing for a night or two at our place. My flatmate George had a friend over from Delhi and her colleague, (HIS name will be revealed later :-)). Both were organisers of an american jazz troupe touring the country, now stopping over at Bangalore. Incidentally, it was held at Opus, my favourite hangout place. Both arrived late the night before, by which time I'd crashed. I left early the next morning for work and couldnt meet either of them. I went for the concert later that evening, a last-minute decision. So there I was, the landlord, and I couldnt identify even one of my guests! The thought was just too hilarious and when i recounted this incident to my mom later, she cracked up....legend I am :-)

Anyway here's where the whole thing gets freaky. The next morning at around 11, the guy knocks on my front door. He's tall, fair with striking features. When i see someone for the first time, I generally try to figure out who he/she resembles. Here's how the conversation went:

"Hi, I'm Kanishka."

"Oh hi man, I'm Jivraj."

Now for a moment i paused and just looked at him for a few seconds with a wry smile on my face.

"Jivraj. Hmm... There's only one other Jivraj I've come across."

"Why what's his full name?"

"Jivraj Singh."

Now he breaks into a smile....

"I'm also Jivraj Singh!"

You've got to be kidding me, I thought. I sensed some sort of connection here so i had to dig a little deeper...

"Are you from calcutta by any chance?"

"Yes!" he said.

I was almost there.....!

"Did you live in a apartment called Uttarayan?"

"Yes! That's right!"

Oh my God! I closed my mouth and couldn't believe this. I rushed to George's room and told him I actually knew this guy.. just what were the odds? a thousand thoughts raced through my head. It was unbelievable. Here's the connection...

Back in 1999, I spent a month with my aunt in Calcutta. We were staying in a building called Uttarayan and one day i spotted a few young kids playing cricket. I went upto one of them - a young sardar kid wearing a turban - and asked if i could join in. He introduced himself as Jivraj Singh. He was related to one of my old classmates so that's how the memory of him stuck on.

When i left the city, naturally I would never have imagined meeting either of those guys again. All i had was the memory of a short 12 year old kid clutching a bat. 8 years later, he suddenly surfaces, in my house! and he actually remembered me after a while.

George was totally freaked out on hearing this. A few months back, he discovered that one of this good friends from college happened to be one of classmates from school. In this age of short memory spans, this was totally whacked out...

Shaking his head in complete disbelief, he looked up me and said with a bemused expression," Kanishkaa, you're a freak, man! really.".....

The tragic genius

2007-04-23T11:11:00.000-07:00

I turn to my right and look at a poster of a player who once was. A friend of mine told me recently over the phone that he was the last of the West Indian legends and it was true. A few months back, Brian Lara said that he had it in him to play till 40, and if he had his way, he could have. It’s widely believed that he was nudged out by the selectors, who were penning the script for Life After Brian, but the pain of another depressing World Cup exit pushed Lara to the limits and it was time to go. Hearing Lara mention the word ‘quitting’ isn’t entirely new for those who’ve followed his career for the last 12 years. Only this time he meant it for real.

I must reiterate here that Lara was never a slouch, or a quitter in the negative sense. It is to his own misfortune that he belonged to an era when West Indies were on the decline and a man of his genius didn’t deserve such hardships. He played out his first five years in a relatively carefree era in West Indies cricket, though the public seemed oblivious of the fact that the most significant natural resource in the West Indies known as Talent, was already on the wane. In 1995, the blindfold was tied around West Indies cricket, which has till this day been groping in the darkness in search of a revival. In this period, Lara thrilled and spilled in the most enigmatic manner possible.

Ironically, the trouble started after he blasted the world record 375 against England in 1994. A few weeks later, he broke the long-standing first-class record with 501 for Warwickshire and it seemed the first time he’d ever had to deal with success of such proportions. Unfortunately, he allowed the success to get to his head and was confronted. A couple of years later, he confessed to an English journalist that he didn’t like the idea of being scrutinised. Even during his dream debut county season, he was called a ‘prima donna’ by his maverick captain Dermot Reeve, and an off-field showdown was the last thing he needed.

Back in 1995, Lara sensed that West Indies cricket was descending into panic and insecurity and was among the first to raise the issue on behalf of the rest of the team. A fellow team-member remarked how brave Lara was to attempt that. However, things weren’t so smooth during the tour of England when he walked out of the team after a stand-off with captain Richie Richardson, exclaiming “cricket is spoiling my life”. His ‘retirement’ lasted just two days as he was coaxed into returning by the West Indies board. It was a tour of extremities, considering that he’s blitzed three centuries in successive Tests and clocked over 700 runs in six games.

The one blotch in his career, as far as his cricket goes, was captaincy. Unlike Clive Lloyd, Lara didn’t quite have the resources to lead as several mediocre players came and went. During tours there were occasions when he’d appear aloof, figuring out ways to bring some unity into the side. He had three stints as captain, though it seemed like it was thrust upon him in the last two occasions, purely because West Indies had nobody else to turn to. In his first captaincy tour came the first of player strikes, with the team camping at Heathrow airport en route to South Africa over payment issues. He quit the captaincy after a drubbing in New Zealand and went on a sabbatical for a few months.

That period was an all-time low for Lara, and he described his captaincy term as one of “moderate success and devastating failure". Already on the brink of slipping away yet again, he sought help from a psychiatrist in America and was also encouraged into returning by Dwight Yorke, the Manchester United striker and a close friend from childhood. He returned, much to the relief of cricket.

Fortunately, his reflexes remained and was still the same player from the old. Sir Garry Sobers offered a simple tip on altering Lara’s technique, which led to an amazing series in Sri Lanka in which he scored 688 runs in three Tests. What set him apart was the way in which he dominated the best spinners in the world, and Bob Woolmer, the late Pakistan coach, remarked recently that Lara had the ability to read the spin as the ball left the bowler’s hand, allowing him time to step down and thwack big sixes or check his stroke if required. Those reflexes remained, despite his age, when he slammed 400, and during his domination of Pakistan and South Africa in the home season of 2005.

Contract disputes and other off-field incidents marred Lara’s occasional brilliance on the field. There were fleeting moments of success, like winning the Champions Trophy and other encouraging performances in one-day tournaments, but the blame lay on the entire team for failing to maintain any consistency, and it would be unfair to blame Lara alone.

Remembering Lara for his records wouldn’t entirely do justice to his contributions. I would rather side-step his scores of 375 and 400 and instead remember him for his 153 against Australia at Bridgetown in 1999, which would rank alongside Dravid and Laxman’s ambush as among the best match-winning knocks of our generation. Drubbed 5-0 in South Africa, followed by another collapse in Trinidad, Lara starred in one of the best comebacks ever witnessed.

In the end, Lara didn’t deserve the system and neither did West Indies cricket of the post Viv Richards era deserve him. We’ve seen the exit of the most schizophrenic cricketer in history and the world will only be poorer without him.

Good riddance for good reasons

2007-03-27T11:54:00.000-07:00

Before the World Cup began, 17 year old Tamim Iqbal wouldn’t have made it to any World Cup fantasy league teams. The fact that he is the younger brother of Nafees Iqbal, who opened for Bangladesh recently and the nephew of Akram Khan, the former Bangladesh captain, was his only claim to fame. On March 17, 2007, against a listless India, he came into his own. After lashing a few boundaries square of the wicket with ferocity, he decided to play it straight for a change. Zaheer Khan charged in from round the wicket and Tamim, sensing a home run for the taking, stepped down and thwacked a decent delivery way over long-on, with the ball landing on the parapet of the top tier. It was a statement of intent like no other. India didn’t realise it then, but the ‘shot of the tournament so far’ was the bullet wound for India’s shortlived campaign.

Hard as it was to take, one had to accept that India were woefully exposed. After the loss to Sri Lanka, even the most stoic of men couldn’t help but reveal a side to them none of us wanted to see. Fans have a right to be upset, but the way in which certain groups abused their freedom of expression - burning effigies, posters, pelting players’ houses – made me sick. Worse still, there’s nothing in the law which reads out the Riot Act to these publicity seekers. Who would want to trade places with a cricketer at this rate?

Contrast this with the reaction in our office. It was obvious that India didn’t play like they deserved to go through. Barring a few, cheers went up each time Bangladesh scored a boundary and edged closer to nudging India out. After going down to Sri Lanka, India were handed the begging bowl, and to expect Bermuda to pull off an ‘upset’ against Bangladesh to give India a back-door entry into the Super Eights would’ve been as humiliating as a first-round exit. As cricket writers, we obviously cannot echo the ire of the angry Indian cricket fan with a partisan viewpoint. We have to conform to ethics, channel our frustrations in the right areas and not allow the blood to rush to our fingertips. We are trained to give credit where it’s due and accept that the better team won.

Hearing about those outward reactions brought out the broad distinction between a cricket fan and a die-hard Indian Cricket fan. Both express themselves through the heart and their emotions switch between euphoria and disappointment depending on how the team performs. However, it is the level of cynicism which varies. A cricket fan looks at defeat in an objective manner, vents his anger in a dignified way and accepts it as just a game. The die-hard variety sell their souls to the game and at times commit atrocities to put the image of the country to shame. A cricket fan puts a difficult chapter behind him and focuses on other deserving teams instead of snapping ties. If only all fans can reach that level of maturity…wishful thinking!

So how did India sink so low? The most glaring deficiency was in the fielding and fitness. The team is ageing and the limbs are getting tired. In the Australia-South Africa game, the South Africans saved around 50 runs in the field. Shane Watson’s lightening direct hit to run AB de Villiers out and turn the game around is the standard that’s expected. Watching India concede the same number of runs in the Super Eights would have made us the laughing stock. Leaving Kaif out of the squad and Dinesh Karthik on the bench (both quick fielders) was like an accident waiting to happen.

Off the field the Indian board will come under plenty of flak and rightly so. The punishing cricket calendar, with meaningless off shore matches thrown in for monetary gain – have fatigued the players and some sympathy needs to go out to them. Fortunately, this early exit gives the side a precious couple of months to rest and recuperate, provided the roof over their heads is still intact after the battering.

Wholesale changes in the team and support staff may not be the solution. Greg Chappell may have had enough, and his contract is running out of patience rather than time. My hunch is that Dravid will continue as captain, purely because there is a paucity of players with good leadership and tactical skills. Handing the captaincy to an ex-captain will be a step backwards. I’m not sure if Tendulkar or Dravid even want the captaincy. It’s probably high time that Tendulkar’s name is inscribed on the axe and going by reports, India is finally waking up to that reality.

Perhaps getting kicked out is the best thing that’s happened to Indian cricket. There is a big lesson in this for the corporates and sponsors who've invested crores on the presumption that the team will go the distance. That is the equivalent of drafting your own arrest warrant and what’s happened is an embarrassment. In such a case, less is always more.

Cricinfo at the beach in Goa

2006-12-20T02:47:00.000-08:00

All photos courtsey Will Luke.

Resort - Dona Sylvia

Andrew Miller swings

Anand Vasu bowls to Jenny

George 'Nandro' Binoy at play.

Sunset glory

And there's me

Cricinfo article update

2006-12-20T02:37:00.000-08:00

Links to articles in Cricinfo over the last month or so:

The Week That Was

Dinesh Karthik interview

India v South Africa one-dayers stats preview

India v South Africa Tests stats preview

Bangladesh v Zimbabwe bulletin (1st match)

Another Bangla bulletin

Another small stats piece

Leaving Bombay

2006-11-05T10:00:00.000-08:00

After 11 months, it's time to pack up and leave again.One company, three offices and with it,three cities.Is there any term like 'internal globetrotting'? If not,I invented it right here! Having lived at home till 23, if somebody told me a year and a half ago that I'd be shunting around like this, I would've laughed.

It does take some getting used to, but for any person with a decent lifestyle,Bombay is the best place in India to be. It gives you the kind of freedom to be the way you want to be, and nobody else gives a damn.Sure it's crowded,jammed,fetid, manholes waiting to suck you in every few meters.Yet, life goes on at an amazing level of efficiency.

The first hour of my arrival on the afternoon of Dec 27 gave me many reasons to detest the place.With large luggage in hand and a vague idea of where my office was, I hopped onto a cab and the driver took advantage of my pathetic Hindi and dazed expression, literally taking me for a not-so-jolly ride, for which I shelled out a bomb.With still no clear idea of where my office actually was, I couldn't make calls from my mobile.Never had I ever had such a laborious time trying to make a local call, so I just walked upto a bunch of hep guys and girls outside a mall and borrowed a mobile phone!All the while I wondered how I managed to land here...

Well I quickly realised that only a fool would retrace his steps after that.The one thing this place teaches you is humility.You may have had the comforts of ur own car or bike at home, but here, you do what the common man does.One thing I'd miss is hopping onto a crowded local train,snaking my way through humanity of such overwhelming proportions which seem to defy every theory of space.Thank God I'm thin!

Other memories? Quite a few.. the Bryan Adams concert,raucous beer-guzzling evenings at Adarsh ( a bar near our office) and Mondy's,Jamaican wine sessions at home,living with whacky flat-mates (they say the same abt me), office cricket, covering the Ranji one-day finals and three practice games before the Champions Trophy,chatting up with some interesting journos,doing an audio feature with Tony Greig,hanging out with my mom's old friends,spending evenings in my friend Sriram's place eating delicious south indian food,table tennis with colleagues, slipping and falling backwards outside the NCPA, (the strong wind blew me in one direction and the wet marble floor had other plans. it was hilarious!), catching the morning shows at the multiplex sitting on a cosy cushion with my feet up...

The move to Bangalore should also be equally fun, bringing a lot of us closer home.The shift was necessitated by cost cutting more than anything else, as the prices here are ridiculous.With the migrant population increasing day by day,the city is seriously bursting at the seams and it's high time India finds an alternative to Bombay.In a way, we are doing a favour to this city by leaving.It's wierd saying that, but it's true.

To be frank, I'm not too thrilled about leaving Bombay so soon. A few more months would've been ideal, personally for me as I'm leaving some emotional baggage behind...Anyway, it's time to start again. It begins in Goa, where we have a three-day editorial conference, giving us a chance to meet all our colleagues in person for the first time. Then it's time to hit the beach, and then the bar.

Domestic cricket goes hep

2006-09-26T07:35:00.000-07:00

Two posts. The first, a BCCI press conference at the Cricket Club of India (CCI) about domestic cricket.

Read it here

The second, a brief series history between India and South Africa

Read it here

Coaching the young guys

2006-08-31T08:55:00.000-07:00

Couple of new posts. This one is an interview i did yesterday over the phobe with Lalchand Rajput, who played for India in the 1980s. He is the coach of the Indian Under-19 team so got some stuff from him. Read it here

The second is a staty piece on England v Pakistan. Read it here

Whose fault is it anyway?

2006-08-27T04:40:00.000-07:00

In the fourth day of the fourth Test between England and Pakistan, umpire Darrell Hair accused Pakistan of tampering with the ball, which is illegal in cricket. Pakistan protested, refused to continue and forfeited the Test. This was the first ever forfeiture in an official cricket match

It seemed a bizarre experience watching an England-Pakistan series go by without incident, given the fractious relationship between the two sides in the past due to ball tampering and other issues of cheating. Then the fourth day of The Oval Test happened. Darrell Hair’s allegations of ball tampering reopened the old chapter of racism in cricket, and we’re all convinced that we haven’t seen the last of it.

It was an evening of varied reactions, over and under. Pakistan dragged the delay after tea much longer than they intended to; Hair seemed in a daring rush to remove the bails and grab the next flight to…wherever; the ICC well…hardly seemed to react in the first place. And the crowd didn’t know how to react simply because they had no clue.

The crowd had every right to feel aggrieved that they were being swindled after Pakistan refused to continue. The players were faced with the dilemma – whether to play for pride or their nation’s honour, and they ultimately chose the latter. Doing so at the expense of the paying public and paying scant respect to the laws of the game may not be the best idea, if one’s intentions were to maintain smooth public relations. Imran Khan and Javed Miandad, two former Pakistan captains, criticised Inzamam for forfeiting the game. Their views brought out the transition made by the current Pakistan team from those of the past, which we as Indians once chose to hate. The old Pakistan would certainly have trooped back into the field and played with a jihaadi spirit, with or without a tampered ball. However the current Pakistan may lack of bit of the old fighting spirit, but there is an element of honesty in this side, unified by Islam. Clearly, Inzamam is responsible for giving this team a credibility not associated with teams of the past.

But the main question is – what prompted Pakistan to take such drastic steps, for a punishment of (a seemingly minute) five penalty runs? The blame could well lie with adjudicator himself – Hair. His notorious reputation with subcontinent teams seems a likely reason. Having courted controversy with Muralitharan before, the Pakistanis could have sensed another ‘Hair controversy’ brewing and showed their solidarity by refusing to comply with the penalty. Had it been another umpire, I’m not so sure if we would’ve witnessed similar scenes.

Another question – how guilty is Hair? Or is he guilty at all? Sky had 26 cameras to zoom in on every nostril at the ground, but there was a 27th camera – Hair’s pair of eyes. He claims he spotted something illegal none of the other cameras picked up and he acted within the law to convey his suspicions. But the fact that he didn’t instigate a particular player doesn’t give any credence to his allegations. The ball could’ve easily been damaged after hitting a sharp object on the boundary but there’s no solid evidence to prove that. The least he could’ve done was to issue a warning, at the same time respecting the laws and maintaining the spirit of the game.

The ICC certainly has quite a task in identifying the biggest culprit. A few needless comments in the aftermath have added further twists. The first is Bob Woolmer's defence of the practice of ball tampering, saying that bowlers should be allowed to do as much gardening with the ball as they please, in order to make it less of a batsman's game. The second was Hair's offer to resign in exchange for half a million dollars. Both these could be perceived as admissions of guilt. Perhaps Woolmer really felt that his players really were guilty. Perhaps Hair was suddenly gripped with self doubt. The questions will continue.

Oh and just in case we all conveniently forgot - Mohammad Yousuf scored 631 runs, Ian Bell scored three centuries in as many matches and Monty Panesar took 17 wickets. This really wasn't a series worth remembering for the wrong reasons.

Straight drive

2006-08-17T04:01:00.000-07:00

A couple of pieces in Cricinfo.The first, a press conference at the Sheraton with Javagal Srinath, Laxman Sivaramakrishnan, Ayaz Memon and Sanjay Manjekar discussing the now defunct tri-series in Sri Lanka(talk about joblessness!). This was a publicity thing by Ten Sports where they recreated Straight Drive, the analysis show. And they were kind enough to give us all freebies..a t-shirt (which doesn't fit) a watch (which does) and a pen (which i hope still writes). In the first draft, there were so many sentences starting with "Srinath felt..." it got really hilarious This was co-written by my colleague Sriram Veera.

Read the article here

The second - on last-ball six thrillers. anyone wishing to relive the nightmares of Javed Miandad's six may read this one.

Out of the waiting room

2006-07-31T06:12:00.000-07:00

I write this a while after India made history in the West Indies, winning the Test series 1-0 and having the last laugh. For some it was a 35-year wait. For some, it was 20. For me, it was just 13 ( I started following cricket from 1993) – minuscule in comparison, but it almost felt like 35. When the ODI series was lost 1-4 so unexpectedly, I always had an inkling that the West Indian joyride would be short-lived. My optimism, when it comes to cricket may not always be consistent with other things in life. It even takes me by surprise sometimes. I kind of had a last laugh of my own – a few of my colleagues were convinced we will choke in the final Test, like we've done so often. The law of averages seeks to get the better of most people, but my glorious optimism kept me afloat. So what if we threw it away in Pakistan and against England earlier this year? We are a better team than that.

Watching the action at the oddest of hours, all I kept thinking was – ‘God please not again!’ I thought about Barbados in 1997 when a target of 120 seemed like a chasing the Holy Grail. I thought about Jamaica in 2002, when it was a typical case of ‘if only…’. If only we batted on for another 15 minutes, the rain would have saved us. (Legend has it that it rained for 14 days after that). Both those occasions led India to return home disappointed. The relief this time was palpable all around.

Rahul Dravid’s heroics on a seemingly dreadful pitch showed the gulf between the good and the great. It’s clear that he has been the best Indian batsman around for a while and NOT Sachin Tendulkar. It just irks me sometimes that fans time and again continue to be in a state of denial about his form. Frankly, I don’t blame the guy. I quite sympathise with Sachin – it’s been hard for him, given his various injuries. Maybe it’s time he seriously thinks about quitting. 16 years in the game is hard enough for a body to take. He should call it quits if another injury like this crops up.

Dravid fulfilled a dream which was not just his, but also of Sourav Ganguly’s. Sourav started the winning habit, and I really wonder if he sent out a congratulatory note from England. I wouldn’t be surprised if he did. He may not be around, but his spirit is.

The series result probably didn’t fully justify the way we played. In hindsight, we should have wrapped it up 3-0. We were unlucky in the first two games, when impenetrative bowling and rain cost us. Going in with a bowling attack of Munaf Patel, Sreesanth, Vikram Singh and Pathan should at most be a one-off gamble. Hopefully the others will get fit soon.

It was good fun being at work while the matches were on, though I did only a few night shifts, managing the site during the day mainly. It reminded me of my BPO timings, but that’s where the similarity ends! My colleague and roommate Siddhartha Vaidyanathan was away in West Indies and he had the time of his life covering the tour. I was amazed at the work he has done.

Guest article - When the first train shook

2006-07-15T04:35:00.000-07:00

The papers are still full of it. As I write, there's another bomb scare. I wasn't around anywhere near the blood and gore of July 11. But I do know somebody who was - just two compartments away from the first blast. Gayatri Makhijani, who did a brief summer internship in our office, was on her way home from college when she heard that deafening blast, and later gathered the courage to write about it. This is her story in her own words...

I took the 5:50 Churchgate - Borivali train with a friend yesterday. We were tired, and clambered in, once the rest of the crowd had hurried in for a bit of place to sit. We took our usual place near the door, plugged in our earphones, and made little conversation. There were far too many sweaty, oversized, middle-aged women around us, and like I said, we were tired. The wind picked up a little, as the train gathered speed, and in the seats behind me a bunch of women were celebrating a co-passengers birthday, with cake et al. My friend alighted at Bandra, I just hung up on the cellphone with my driving instructor, and moved closer to the exit. I couldn't wait to get home and use the swimming pool, talk to a friend or two, and get some work done. But, that was all to change. Within a few moments, I heard the loud sound, that'll probably stay with all of us who heard, for a long time.

At the exact moment that I heard the sound, I was listening to Sting's "Fields of Gold" and reading a friend's text message. I was thinking of happy things and love. In retrospect, it would've even been a perfect moment to die. Forgive me, if i had to die, I'd want to die, happy.

All I really saw, was the woman in front of me faint, almost fall of the train. In words of stammer she said something about bodies flying. And me, with the deafening sound, I really did think the train was going to be on fire. And I didn't move. Funnily, so. We helped the women who fainted, and chaos prevailed. The train authorities screamed to us to stay on, the passengers were pulling us off. I took a hand, I'll never see again, and jumped off onto the tracks. The women around me were crying, I was alone, and no one had any idea what was happening.

And then, I saw two compartments away from mine, the Gents First class. Roof burst, broken windows, blood and gore. But what'll stay with me, is the image of men flung to one side, struggling to come out. The singular image of a bunch of people in the wrong compartment at the wrong time, pushing for thier lives. And voices screaming for water, help, sirens, ambulance noises, kindly people from the nearby slums. I eventually made my way on the tracks, with a few people, managed to get a rickshaw and reached home three hours later, from a place thats normally half an hour away.

All I really did was give a few people a ride. In retrospect, I wish I'd done more. Instinct then, however, only told me to run. For life. I didn't get in touch with anyone until half an hour later, and by then my body was shaking. It never really did stop, until much later at night.

I came home and saw the full impact of all that happened. It sickens me, but what puts me off most, is gibberish about the resilient Mumbaikar. If only we had a choice. If only the people who fanatize their religion, play political games, and dictate our lives gave us any choice. We still have our money to make, our college to go to, and you ain't going to come do that for us. We're not even asking you to, but why go screw it up in the first place. Hell yeah, we're strong, who gave us a choice.

And the good mumbaikar, we hold you high in our eyes. But the bad Mumbaikar? Who stripped the bodies of every gold chain, piece of money, and clothing? Who crowded the decaying bodies in dingy rooms? Piled for people to sift through like yesterday's vegetables. And those men and women with their words of wisdom?

Thank-you. Thank you very much I say. We're still going to take that darned train, and fight for one inch of space in that over crowded compartment. You killed what little innocence, we had left. Oh and, put some fear into our mundane everyday-ness. Thank you.

Ganguly in one para

2006-07-12T05:28:00.000-07:00

I had to come up with a quick one para description of Sourav Ganguly's career for some pitch Cricinfo was doing for MTV. This was a couple of weeks back but I have no idea where this has gone. It had to have a light-hearted, humorous touch to it. Here goes...

One can say that scripting Sourav Ganguly’s cricketing career so far is hardly different from doing so for a melodramatic pot-boiler. The characters would not be fictitious and the events wouldn’t be purely coincidental. The speciality of Ganguly’s story lies in the events which started over 15 years back – brother replaces brother in a Ranji Trophy final which sends the family into minor paralysis. An immediate call up to the Indian squad in Australia didn’t keep the heart beat down either. However, the realisation of being a mere passenger- cum drinks-carrier didn’t enthuse him too much, which led to a nasty report from the manager. He vanished, reappeared four years later and gagged all those who spoke of his selection due to an ‘unfair’ quota system by scoring a century on Test debut at Lord’s. Another ton followed and it was the mother of all comebacks in sport. Finally, Sachin Tendulkar found someone to delegate work, and the runs flowed from Ganguly’s bat - with silken drives and delicate lofts. This prompted Rahul Dravid to compliment – ‘in the off side there is God, and Sourav Ganguly’. But when there is controversy, one might find it hard to miss him there. Once handed the Indian captaincy – what he later called the toughest job in the world – it was hardly smooth sailing. His resolute backing of young players and aggressive approach was wrongly portrayed as arrogance. Chairs in match referee cubicles in international grounds could well have had his name inscribed – often found guilty of poor over-rates and dissent. His enviable success as captain often camouflaged his dwindling form with the bat. The came the spat of our times – with Greg Chappell, the India coach, who declared Ganguly as a disruptive influence. Now sacked from the squad, his family sought the spiritual powers for a miraculous recall. “Sourav will be back in action any time between July 15 and October 15”, spoke the divine astrologist!

Maximum City - Bombay lost and found - by Suketu Mehta

2006-06-20T02:41:00.000-07:00

Profiling a city like Bombay in the most comprehensive manner takes journalistic brilliance and guts and that is what Maximum City is all about. Suketu Mehta's work is the result of an adolescent wish to pay a tribute to the city he calls home.

Reading through, the one thing that strikes you is the wealth of information he managed to elicit from the most prized of sources. Not just content with getting accounts from third party sources, he speaks directly to actual killers belonging to the underworld gang, finding out what drove them to kill. Mehta follows the movements of one such person from each field - starting with an underworld fundamentalist guilty of bloody murders in the 1992 riots - an honest police chief's emotional and daring bid to clean up crime amidst plenty opf corruption - a bar dancer who uses her seductive looks to fight a troubled past - an acclaimed Bollywood director who confesses how is he forced to shed his idea of 'quality entertainment' to suit the wishes of the masses - a struggling actor determined to make it big in cinema against his family's wishes - an ordinary computer programmer who describes life in the slums and how his family yearns for a better life and curiously struggle to adjust to a bigger space.

Mehta goes a step further, diligently tracking the progress in each of their incredible lives. You have to wonder - Just how did he do it? The most amazing aspect is how each managed to disclose their most personal confessions with so much trust, without giving the impression of perceiving it as an intrusion. The author even - by choice, witnessed some of the most brutal interrogations of thugs by the police chief, quietly making notes on the side.

Though many names were changed on the reasons of anonymity, a few well known names have been mentioned here - Dawood Ebrahim, Chota Shakeel, Bal Thackeray,Vidhu Vinod Chopra, Sanjay Dutt, Hrithik Roshan to name a few. Mehta in fact co-wrote the script of Mission Kashmir, which was quite an interesting chapter to read.

Where the book lags, in more than a few places, is the overdose of detail. This is particularly so in the description of an orthodox Gujarati family performing a diksha, renouncing their luxuries to lead the lives of nomads. The criminal world too runs into pages and pages, where it does get a little dull. Perhaps the more manageable section is the one on bar dancers, where he profiles the parallel lives of two dancers and the reality behind the glamour and money. He strikes an emotional bond with one of them in particular, good enough to satiate anyone's guilty pleasures.

That apart, it is a useful guide to life in Bombay, its idiosyncrasies, its uniqueness, the city's obsession with vada pav, life in the crammed yet efficient local trains, why people refuse to leave despite the filth, dust and grime. What sets the city apart, which adds to its romantic value, is its imperfectness. It is largely an autobiographical account, describing his return from the USA as an NRI, the challenges of setting up a home, pleading with authorities to get things working, tolerating the whims of the landlords etc. What amazed him was how many manage to unearth peace and joy in the most cramped of surroundings. He summed it up brillaintly in the final chapter, where in his own words, says how his characters live out the fantasies of normal people and live on the edge of their seductive extremities. Just imagine so many of them in one city - it sure is mindboggling.

Enter the tadpole

2006-06-20T01:59:00.000-07:00

This is a lowdown i wrote on Dave Mohammed earlier this month in Cricinfo. Read the article here.

An ode to Kamran

2006-02-02T03:11:00.000-08:00

This is a 500-word piece I wrote on Kamran Akmal yesterday which appeared in Cricinfo.It was for our clients HDFC,with whom we have a tie-up to write about the player of the match.Had to quickly come up with something in an hour.It's mostly a staty piece about his innings blah blah.. Read it here.

The links to the other stats columns for each Test are here, for all the stats obsessed junkies reading this:

First Test at Lahore (plenty of grass but none on the pitch)

Second Test at Faisalabad (of all things Dhoni forgot his scrunchie)

Third Test at Karachi (sitting ducks and flying timber)

Thank you Kerry

2005-12-30T06:08:00.000-08:00

The passing away of Kerry Packer,the Australian media tycoon (2nd only to Rupert Murdoch) is indeed a solemn occassion for all cricket lovers.Packer's revolutionary creation,World Series Cricket in the 1970s went a long way in making cricket a watchable game.In the mid 1970s, Test cricket was dying a slow death and with One Day Cricket still looked upon with cynicism,something had to give.

Packer was born into a family of tycoons but childhood was far from happy.His father ruled with an iron fist and Kerry's long battle with dyslexia did nothing to help matters.The family owned the Consolidated Press and Packer took over the television wing, Nine Network.Coverage of Australian cricket was monopolised by the state owned Australian Broadcasting Corporation(ABC).The staid like quality in the broadcast prompted a move by Packer to privatise it, to the extent of competing with other more lucrative sports.Packer's first shot at striking a deal was in 1977 when Nine Network offered to broadcast the home test series.The Australian Cricket Board flatly rejected it.This was a blessing in disguise as Packer decided to turn the tables.

Strange as it seems,cricketers then were dubiously referred to as sport's 'disenfranchised' lads.Working as a professional cricketer was no path to an affluent lifestyle.Packer laid out an offer cricketers world over found hard to refuse.A new brand of cricket was required and World Series Cricket was born.This comprised a one-day series,Super Tests,practice games and the Country Cup.The add-ons captured the imagination- coloured clothing,instant replays,floodlit games..never witnessed before in cricket. The contracted players' pay packets increased manifold.The Packer Razzmatazz comprised 3 teams- Australia,West Indies and a World XI.

The players who signed up however faced the scorn of their respective cricket boards,who continued to pass snide remarks at Packer's innovations.These players were banned from representing their countries in official tests and ODIs,a sacrifice they had to make.Almost the entire West Indies team was missing,Australia had to field a 2nd string side(which led to a 1-5 Ashes defeat).Pakistan too had to bear the losses of Zaheer Abbas and Asif Iqbal.India kept away.The first series was played out in 1977 to partisan crowds, due to the mass confusion among the public on which 'Australian team' to support.The 1978 season was a dramatic improvement in terms of response and ticket sales.Packer was finally able to break even.Some of the most competitive and hard fought battles were seen in the Super Tests,eventhough all records were deemed unofficial.Packer ultimately found justice in 1979 when ABC lost the broadcast rights in 1979 and till date, Nine has held sway.

The least I can do here is to thank the man who dared...the man with the vision to merge cricket culture with pop culture and set a remarkable precedent.

Five Point Someone by Chetan Bhagat

2005-12-23T08:03:00.000-08:00

How sexy is mediocrity?The book Five Point Someone by Chetan Bhagath brings that out,ironically in India's most prestigious,hyped technologically hallowed walls that is the IIT.This is where the thrilling news brought by a fellow peer evokes a response of part jealosy and part admiration.The title clearly specifies that it has no intention of serving as a guide to getting into IIT or how to rise above the competitiveness that drives and kills the lucky ones who get there.It's about the power of screwing up your life and those around you if you don't think straight and its punitive consequences.

Ryan,Alok and Hari slogged their butts off to get in but the thought of sacrificing a social life was hard enough to bear.Therefore 'work less and play more' becomes the norm,showing that it's still cool to hold a consistent grade point average (GPA) of '5 point whatever'(below average in IIT terms).Ryan is the radical ring-leader among the threesome,takes pride in his scheming ways,detests the system and bitches constantly,scores above the other 2 in the looks department,and has well-to-do parents whome he hardly respects.Your heart bleeds for Alok,who's seen more misery and pain than the good life,coming from a family of limited means.IIT is his life and path to wealth,until of course he heard Ryan's plot.His school-teacher mom struggles to make ends meet,with an invalid husband to nurse and a daughter to marry off. Hari is the protagonist,with the book's narrative in the first person.There's an identical pattern in the author's choice in both his books (One Night@ the call centre).This speaks about the character of the author as well,though I'm sure Hari is just a shadow of Chetan Bhagat.Hari,known as Fatso,remains a loser for most part.Perhaps Chetan Bhagat was not too awestruck by his own self as a student.The complication for Hari starts when he literally bumps into Neha,who happens to be his professor's daughter.She is the heavenly embodiment of her dad,who emerged from the other gate.While he struck terror,it only brought Hari closer to her.This was enough to reveal a secret (to Hari) she hid for over a year,which later had her dad bawling like a baby.Tempers flare,emotions go too far and yet,all 3 realise that it's impossible to co-exist without the other.

And there had to be some sex thrown in as well... it pays to be a loser sometimes,really.

This book is a throwback to a slightly older era..the early 1990s.Had there been cellphones around,limbs would've been saved and for all you know,Hari would've been walking down the isle with Neha,with her proud dad looking on.If you don't know what the heck I'm talking about..read the book!

Can we have the venue card please?

2005-12-04T09:06:00.000-08:00

That's precisely how the England Cricket Board(ECB) has gone about pocketing its desired venues for its team's tour of India in March-April 2006.With a country of this size (21 ODI grounds and 9 test grounds),the ECB in all its gumption actually contemplated playing its 2 warm up games in Pakistan!Survival of the snobbiest? (I don't know if there's such a word).All this because the 2 warm up games were originally handed to Jamshedpur and Agartala,not the most fashionable places to play and also where a possible stomach bug is just around the corner.This after a prolonged delay on the part of the BCCI to announce the venues by the end of October so that tour operators in England can furitively churn out the travel plans for the Barmy Army and the fans.This was more a clash of work ethics between the 2 countries.The Brits like to plan ahead,true,and a BCCI official could not fanthom the urgency,given that the tour is months away.One month and a historic election victory later,the ECB is smiling again thanks to the benevolence of Sharad Pawar,who within days of taking over has altered the venues.But is the ECB justified in its snobbery?Maybe so.

The rotation policy followed by the BCCI seeks to give every staging association their due,no matter which side tours.In every BCCI election,it's these staging associations which have the voting rights to nominate the president.For example,if Pawar grants a match in Andhra this season,the association is satisfied.If not,he is practically losing out one vote.Ironically,this policy entails the president to buckle under pressure in order to extend his tenure.One crucial aspect this policy lacks in is common sense and foresight.Invariably over the last 2 years,Madras has landed up with the October-November slot and we know the results of those games,rather the lack of it.Flexibility was sought and Pawar promptly allowed for the provision of swapping the order of the games in the event of rain.

Unfortunately,quality is one term which can't be used to link grounds in India,both near and far-flung.Quality in terms of facilities,accomodation,administration,pop-culture and so on.The one thing common to all is the enthusiasm from the fans,usually cricket starved.Ticket counters host mini-riots and stampedes.If the Barmy Army wants to sample India at its uproarious best,then Agartala should've been retained as a venue.Make no mistake they will also be pampered to death and boosting tourism in India's forgotten parts.In the end,luxury took precedence and the board shifted the games to Mumbai and Baroda.Speaking of the test centres,the bickering over Ahmedabad took it a little too far.According to the UK contingent,the city doesn't quite hit the G-spot.The stadium is among the best in the country in terms of facilities but the absence of an enviable night-life was a turn off.Nagpur was questioned too but that has been retained and Mohali has taken the place of Ahmedabad.

On the one hand it's an eye opener to revamp facilities across the country as Pawar pointed out.At least it will cut out the whingeing.On the other hand we succumbed to the ECB,granting wishes.I do not recall of any other team making so many demands.But if we must make the fixtures opposition friendly,then it must be applied to all and not just for the Brits.
To be fair to Sharad Pawar,all he's trying to do is to clean up the mess left by Dalmiya and gang.Foremost is the TV rights issue.The most pleasing decision so far has been the postponement of the Asia Cup in Feb because of the grueling schedule.Had that gone as planned,we would be seeing 2 Indian teams getting ready.

One Night @ the Call Center by Chetan Bhagat

2005-11-27T03:08:00.000-08:00

A lot can happen in one night.At least according to Chetan Bhagat.His passionate reporting on the current youth culture cannot be understated and he chose a very relevent topic for his second book.This is more as a take-off from his debut novel Five Point Someone (which I haven't read and will do soon).

The author has to be commended for the uniqueness of the prologue.He easily fooled me into thinking that his meeting with a beautiful stranger on a night train to Delhi was real.Anyway,she tells him a story on the condition that he publishes it as his second book.Chetan couldn't resist and there begins a narration from the eyes of Shyam Mehra,a call center executive in Gurgaon,a place floating in malls and call centers aplenty.Shyam is like your 'everyday' frustrated youth,confused about his goals,at times wallows in self pity and his trysts with low self esteem make more than one appearence in this story.He is a make beleive team leader,an anomaly considering his defeatist attitude.There is Vroom (Varun Malhotra),the radical who loves anything fast,can never be trusted with one girfriend longer than 3 months and later wonders why he stays up all night to teach dumb Americans how to use thier microwave oven.A barrage of abuses sets him a frenzy and we see in him an 'angry young man' from a broken home.There is Radhika,a once-upon-a-time hep girl who sacrifices her freedom to marry the man she loves and please her mother-in-law at the same time.When she later starts furiously popping in anti-depressants, you know something is drastically wrong.There is Esha,a wannabe model and runaway girl from Chandigarh who will do just about anything to get that elusive modelling contract.At last there is Priyanka Sinha,Shyam's ex-girlfriend,who announces her engagement to an NRI in America which irks Shyam no end.

This book shows that though working in a call center looks glamorous,there are dark sides.Having worked in one myself for a brief while,I know that there are plenty who desperately need the money.In this story, all 5 agents have their moments of sorrow,rage and nobody seems shy of showing it.I'm not sure if this is a trait among North Indians in particular.Each one has his/her own insecurities beneath those smiles.What I liked was the choice of the protagonist ie Shyam.It's very easy to cast Vroom in that same role,as he seems the quintessential hero.Though Shyam finds it hard to look Priyanka in the eye,he can't help but look back at his past dates with her and how each defining date saw the transition from raw love to the ultimate ugly breakup.All this thanks to her mom's image of the 'loser' in Shyam,much as he sees it in himself.Both Vroom and Shyam have to contend with a good-for-nothing boss,who revels in snatching away the credit for the company website design,which the two have been labouring over for months.Ultimately,the 5 get a phone call from an unexpected source,telling them what's missing in their lives.The Source seems a little far fetched,but that adds to the fun in this book.

For those who beleive that this book portrays reality 100%,then they're thoroughly mistaken.I can say that it is impossible for stuff like that to happen here,at least in Madras.If you beg to differ,please shoot!How easy is it to walk into your boss's room and blackmail him into submission?And is it that simple to use the company car at 3 AM and speed off to a trendy night club in the middle of work,all without permission?And one more thing..how many minutes does it take to type a 400 word letter with the words coming out of your brain?Vroom did it in less than 5 minutes!!

And this brings me back to the opening line..How much can happen in one night?Perhaps a little too much happened here and WAY too much happened that night in The Da Vinci Code.The ending is also a little cliched,probably the author has some celluloid motives in mind.I understand they're making 5 Point.. into a movie soon.

However,its still a good read and the easiest 289 pages to cover in one sitting.People who work(or did) in the BPO industry will love this.I must warn you,you might end up hitting your forehead in the end,like I did!

P.S- You may also read Siddharth's take on call centers in an earlier post.Title- Call Center(June 4 2005)

Cricket imitating tennis this time

2005-11-12T10:13:00.000-08:00

6-1.Now what would these figures best describe?A single set drubbing in a tennis match would be apt.Could this relate to cricket in any way?Today it does.The Videocon Cup India v Sri Lanka series 2005 will hereafter be known as the '6-1 series',as this now stands for India's drubbing of Sri Lanka.

They say that sport makes asses out of critics and it certainly made one out of me.And for a change it felt good to be at the receiving end of it.In my earlier article,I emphatically predicted that Sri Lanka would start out as firm favourites,indirectly meaning that playing 7 one day internationals across India is only a means to an end already taken for granted.The end result was influenced more by the presence of a 'cerebral' firm called Greg Chappell and Rahul Dravid,which contributed to the on-field decimation.Here's a list of reasons why I think Sri Lanka ended up staring at the ground:

=> Pitches: In the subcontinent,all's fair in love and pitches.But how could this be the major contributing factor?A look at the pitches currently used in Sri Lanka will reveal why.They usually thrive on those slow,sluggish surfaces where getting the ball off the square is such an ordeal that guys like Murali and Chandana are virtually unplayable.The recent tri-series exemplified that fact(heck,even Dilshan was spotted taking 4 wickets once).A recent column by S.Rajesh,statistics editor of Cricinfo revealed that slow bowlers end up bowling more overs in Sri Lanka than anywhere else.However in the land of 'umbrella fields' called India,the deal didn't quite work out.Isstead,the ball just followed the bat and landed on roofs.Murali was never a threat.

=> Shuffling: If you score 183* at one drop today,next time your punishment is to watch someone else try to match that.India sent in as many as 5 different guys at number 3,tossing away all carefully laid out plans.It was all trial and less error,thankfully.

=> Dhoni!

=> Hitting targets: In cricket,you don't just meet targets.You also hit them.More than spectacular ground fielding,the Indians just kept hitting the stumps regularly.Kind of like 'never seen before' footage.

=> Contributions: All the guys signed contracts to perform at least once.Yuvraj did.Some were so enthusiastic,they signed multiple conracts.The buzz around the dressing room was, "Have you earned your plasma TV yet?'

=> Jayasuriya: He can call on Ganguly to exchange sob stories.Perhaps he too needs a break.He may never get into a banana boat again till he officially calls it quits but I still think he has the fire to bounce back.

2005-11-06T06:24:00.000-08:00

A long layoff I know.Have been unable to post anything new for a while.The computer at home conked off.Not much time in the office too.Will be back soon.

Redemption for Dravid

2005-10-19T00:12:00.000-07:00

(This article and the previous one 'The Guilty Verdict' were both published in the Daily News Sri Lanka recently)

Set amidst the backdrop of an uneasy truce between Sourav Ganguly and Greg Chappell, the Indian selectors recently handed over the reigns of the India captaincy to Rahul Dravid, India’s long serving vice-captain and specialist stop-gap captain. It’s been a rather familiar sight witnessing Dravid taking up India’s toughest job, second only to the Prime Minister’s, covering up for a captain with a stiff thigh, a fragile elbow allergic to the new ball or for facing the match referee’s wrath due to inefficient time management skills. To be fair to Ganguly, attaining perfection as a skipper keeping injuries at bay is nothing short of superhuman. But time is running out and the doors are slowly closing unless he shows enough batting form to sneak through and grab the last seat.

Dravid’s appointment for the 12 ODIs between Sri Lanka and South Africa showed a curious break from tradition for the selection committee. That he was nominated for more than just one series, as opposed to the repetitious policy of nominating captains series by series, is a sign that a long term goal for Dravid was prioritized. The appointment was born more out of a necessity than anything else. The unpalatable events in Zimbabwe coupled with Chappell’s accusations and Ganguly’s batting form was enough to prove that the captaincy of the Indian team was floating on troubled waters. The tennis elbow injury was purely incidental, which could’ve been a blessing in disguise for the selectors to justify their decision. The selectors did however state that Ganguly’s batting form was of concern and that his future selection will be judged on merit. In other words, a return to the team for the remainder of the series would not be handed out in a platter.

The appointment raises two questions: Is Dravid the best man to lead India? Or is he the only man capable of doing so? In 17 ODIs, Dravid has led India to 7 wins and 9 defeats, three of the defeats coming against Sri Lanka. In tests, the results are even- 2 wins and 2 losses out of 5 games. On the surface, the results may flatter to deceive but it pays to delve deeper into the events which were forced upon Dravid, thereby revealing his plight. Although his first crack at the job came in 2000, the Indian Oil Cup in August was the first occasion when he was officially nominated for the entire duration of a series. However, in the last few months. Dravid has reportedly grown weary of warming the seat for the skipper. Understandably, he was unhappy when news came of Ganguly’s reinstatement for the Zimbabwe tour and the signs were palpable when Dravid refused to grant interviews in that period. Former cricketers like Kapil Dev have expressed their support for him saying that an extended reign as a captain is what he deserves and also serves as a useful tool for conclusive evaluation.

Ganguly’s highlight as a skipper was his passionate backing of new comers as players for the future. He took over in 2000 at the age of 27, when the team was in strife and moulded it into a fighting unit. Dravid on the other hand is currently 32, with a handful of youngsters at his disposal. But his true test will be the handling of senior players, on the wane. Though he is among the senior members of the side, the respective futures of Laxman, Tendulkar and Kumble do look a little misty, given the selectors’ preference for youth over experience, thus mirroring Chappell’s vision for the 2007 World Cup. Tendulkar may have injuries to save face, but his performance in the recent Challenger Trophy in India didn’t really merit a selection, if logical reasoning were to take precedence. But that would’ve been unthinkable, knowing that toying with fragile Indian emotions isn’t always recommended and the selectors can start digging trenches.

Dravid may not possess the same ‘in your face’ aggression as Ganguly but that does not make him a pushover. He has been known not to mince matters even with senior players and demands enough respect. A classical example was when he declared the innings with Sachin undefeated on 194, something of a ‘non-subcontinental’ trait never seen before. There are exceptions though. In the same Pakistan tour in 2004, during a press conference at Lahore after the 4th ODI, he asked for a particular journalist to be shown the door, when he and Inzamam were questioned whether the match was fixed.

On observation, Dravid is more of an academic who can study the mind of the opposition ,along the same lines as his batting. With Chappell’s theoretical approach to coaching, he seems to have found his match, though it remains to be seen whether their respective schemes and agendas can take India forward. His next assignment will be his toughest yet- a 7-match home series against Sri Lanka, the second best ODI side in the world, who clearly start as favourites.

The guilty verdict

2005-09-29T01:22:00.000-07:00

The publicised compromise between Greg Chappell and Sourav Ganguly probably bears the tag of being the mother of all truces in cricket history but a bitter taste in the mouth remains.The truce was forced upon because there seemed no other practical option for the BCCI,the world's richest and probably the most farcical cricket governing body.The fissures within the BCCI have gotten wider and the sticky substance that leaked through those cracks was something more contemporary- a confidential email.The culprit hasn't been nabbed yet so it's ironic to say that everyone's a suspect.

Fingers have been pointed in different directions as to who is at fault in this crisis.Chappell's email had a unanimous conclusion that Ganguly had several flaws to tend to,both on and off the field, and that relinquishing the captaincy was the only solution.Ganguly cannot be faulted for being irked at this shocker midway through a tour.His defiant century at Bulawayo was a little too defiant for comfort but his revelation to the press about being asked to step down was immature.But was Chappell being too obnoxious in his defence?After all, he was appointed with the sole purpose of taking Indian cricket forward,with the 2007 World Cup in mind.With the freedom to adopt a suitable strategy,the inevitable had to be done, even if it meant giving senior non-performing players the nudge.Being servile to the Indian captain and the BCCI was not the proper way.He may have erred in accusing John Wright for being a reletively mute spectator during his tenure and choosing to ingratiate himself with the administration rather than fight it.Certain facts in the email were strongly refuted by Ganguly in the Review Committee,particulary his alleged comments on VVS Laxman's place in the side and 'faked' elbow injury.Ganguly won the battle as far as this was concerned.Chappell's credibility took a dip in this instance.

Shortly after the mail was leaked,leading television channels in India conducted spot SMS polls to get the public opinion on who's winning the battle.Chappell had the edge,given that the India public was growing weary of Ganguly's repeated failiures with the bat.However, Harbhajan Singh's strong defence of his captain may have significantly tilted the scales in favour of Ganguly in the Review Committee meeting.Accusing Chappell of adopting 'double standards'and causing 'fear and insecurity' in the team was a dangerous ploy. Chappell's stint as coach of South Australia apparently wasn't as rosy as we were led to believe.Ex-players described his term as a 'reign of terror' and his overly theoratical approach didn't click.Perhaps Harbhajan has enough to substantiate his accusations though his outburst was out of line and was rightly pulled up for it.
Sourav Ganguly is now under unenviable pressure to retain his place.Relinquishing the captaincy for his own sake is something on the minds of many exept his own.Ganguly did admit feeling relaxed when not the captain.

But what sets this feud apart from the rest?Dressing room feuds are best dealt with behind closed doors.Navjot Sidhu's enigmatic exit from the 1996 England tour has a romantic tone to it because till date nobody knows why.In this case Ganguly was caught in an act of spontaniety by going to the press and the BCCI for betraying Chappell's trust.The BCCI too thrives in creating mayhem.The court cases,elections (rather the lack of it),TV Rights have all been pushed under the carpet.The public has grown tired of demanding more transparency in its operations.Arriving at a truce was the only solution as it was another controvery too hot to handle and that Chappell's ouster or resignation would've been a major public relations disaster.
In a way,all parties are at fault here.

It is a rather queezy compromise and it remains to be seen if we've seen the last of the bad blood.

Guest article- Finding Faith - by Osman Samiuddin

2005-09-26T10:27:00.000-07:00

I always liked the name Yousuf Youhana.If an actor was fortunate enough to have that as his screen name,he'd want to retain it for life,officially.But one such real life hero from a minority community in Pakistan recently converted to Islam and changed his name to Mohammed Yousuf,a name good enough to blend into a pack of million cards,virtually unnoticed. Why did he do it? Was the Pakistan captaincy the main issue? Speculations are still on.
Osman Samiuddin, the Pakistan editor of Cricinfo investigated a trend which has swept across almost all Pakistan cricketers of late,where public displays of faith act as a saviour,particularly for those from less fortunate backgrounds as the player in question.This article peeks into the cultural makeup of the Pakistan of today,something we ought to take note of.Read the full article here.

KP to Warne: "You just dropped the Ashes, Pal."

2005-09-17T03:48:00.000-07:00

Copyright- Getty Images

This is what Kevin Pietersen indirectly conveyed to Warne with his eyes when Warne dropped a 'stander' at slip early in his innings.It took a South African to ensure that the Ashes was snatched away from Australia and handed back to the 'Old Enemy' England after 16 years.
Australia got the slap on the face it asked for when Glenn McGrath emphatically predicted a 5-0 steamroll over the Poms in the pre-July 21 era.When he sent the first 5 batsmen back where they arrived from at Lord's,the shudder around the world was that McGrath could be psychic.Well,part 1 was accomplished as far as he was concerned.The start of part 2 reminded me of a quote from Forrest Gump,courtesy Lt Dan Taylor.It goes,"Watch your feet.U could get yourselves killed". Now the Ashes should not get mistaken for a war,but McGrath committed the 'sin' of not watching his step,trampling over a cricket ball and finding himself on the ground clutching a sprained ankle.Three days and several chewed finger nails later,the teams were even...not without haunting images of Lee and Kasper slipping into the shoes of the ghosts at Durham Castle.Glenn returned for the third at Old Trafford and brought the rain with him,which saved Australia.He missed the fourth and paved the way for Shaun Tait, perhaps the most media-hyped debut I have come across.Hoggard,(who looks more like he rose from a haystack),and Simon Jones literally reverse-swung it England's way again,just scraping through.Mike Atheron's remark to Vaughan in the presentation summed it up: "Ur giving us temporary heart failiure".At the Oval,McGrath had to hide his face in humiliation.
My previous post was about how jittery I was about the Oval test and beleive me I was.Australia were the better team for most part and England were very lucky that the rain and light saved them.Kevin Pietersen proved just why moving away from South Africa was the best decision he ever made.He's the only 'Englishman' in the side never to have suffered the igonomy of living through an Ashes defeat.

Still England richly deserved all the 'over-the-top' celebrations,wining with the PM,Trafalgar Square and the works.At this rate Flintoff will have a colony named after him in Preston.England's hunger to grab the urn was visible more than a year ago,chasing Australia out of the finals of the ICC Champions Trophy.Only two Aussies showed the hunger to win: Warne and Lee.Lee should be commended for his spirit and Warne for taking 40 wickets with a strained marriage forever at the back of his mind.
However,despite losing,this Australian side is still very good and not too many wholesale changes are required.Gillespie could be on his way out and Martyn will feel the heat.Had Hayden not scored,he'd be the first to go.We still have the Super Series to contend with next month.
For millions of Brits, this series proved why life was worth living for.And I extend my gratitude to the guys who made it happen.

P.S- For England fans,here's a treat..Read about more outrageous pre-Ashes predictions.Click here for some fun!

Now to the Oval Office

2005-09-07T03:41:00.000-07:00

Copyright- Getty Images
"In affectionate remembrance of English cricket which died at The Oval, 29th August, 1882. Deeply lamented by a large circle of sorrowing friends and acquaintances, RIP. NB The body will be cremated and the Ashes taken to Australia."
This mock obituary actually appeared in the Sporting Times on the same day,Aug 29th 1882 by an English journalist named Shirley Brookes, lamenting Australia's first ever victory on English soil.There was a reason to be depressed..England failed to chase 77 to win.In the days of uncovered pitches, that was the reality.
Tomorrow,the 8th of September,the Brits have some unfinished business to attend to and have been seeking redemption for 16 years now.Ironically,both teams return to the Oval in South London,the same place where the Ashes was born.

England has gone cricket mad and has successfully displaced football and rugby in the popularity contest.Women have been stung by the hype and the aura of the Ashes,and can't help but stare at Australian wickets falling and Freddie's backside at the same time.Trafalgar Square has been booked for celebrations,should England win; the square hosted celebrations for the 1966 World Cup and Rugby WC wins.
But,is premature celebartion good?I think not.Nothing can be said till you step on the grass and send 20 guys back to the hut.McGrath bullshited before this series saying that Australia will win 5-0.After Edgbaston,he had to start digging his own grave.England have clearly looked the superior side since Edgbaston but a part of me still shivers,being a Brit supporter.Edgbaston and Trent Bridge may have given some people temporary heart failiures and epeliptic seizures and we never know who will end up reading the Declaration of The Ashes in the Oval office in the coming days.

Too bad Simon Jones is out.The guy,who looks more like a bar-room brawler can get any woman he wants.I'm not so sure that Anderson should be taking his place.Since all England need is a draw,I'd settle for Collingwood.Geriant Jones has been 'infuriatingly' good.You pull your hair out when he drops one,and it all grows back so fast when he grabs a spectacular one.Bell is there as a good luck charm,nothing else.
Australia will have to go in with 5 bowlers and include MacGill.This was considered below their dignity not too long ago.Will careers come to an end after this?We'll wait and see.
If God gave me two options, to choose between India winning the Videocon Cup and England winning the Ashes,I'd opt for the latter.Oh ya!To hell with our chokers,for the moment!What say you?...

The Unibic 20/20 Bradman Cup

2005-08-30T10:36:00.000-07:00

We can't be sure if Sir Don Bradman punched a hole in his grave when he heard that his name is now associated with a biscuit company in Australia. But as long as it had some association with cricket in someway, even the Twenty20 razzmatazz, he wouldn't mind I guess. The same company just recently sponsored India's first ever 20/20 Cup in Bangalore. The tournament was spread over 3 days (Friday,Saturday and Sunday) and included a whacked out set of teams- Karnataka(the hosts), Bengal, Air India, Chemplast, New South Wales and World XI. Air India and Chemplast had a few India players and guys from the domestic circuit, so as to even out the strength between all teams. It seemed ludicrously simple to single out World XI as the runaway winners. In the end, the guys wearing the gaudy, hideous red and white uniform had the last laugh.

In one of my earlier posts, I took an objective view on the future of 20/20 cricket and that India would do well with it.Nevertheless, I went over to Bangalore to check it out. This had nothing to do with Cricinfo and I went on my own capacity, as a personal visit. I decided on the Friday ( in the last minute) to pack up and leave the same night and catch the last 2 days of the Cup. Arun, one of my colleagues who went to score the matches(on behalf of the KSCA) thought I was nuts. I was desperate to see some live action so I couldn't beat the urge to see some whacks out of the ground. Air India and Bengal won on the first day and the third game was washed out.
I had excellent seats, right under the hospitality boxes, giving a superb view of the action. As in England, music was played over the loudspeaker by a DJ after every over, boundary,six and fall of wicket. At times the music was so loud and inappropriate that you wanted to fling something. There were funny moments when Sadanand Vishwanath, former India wicketkeeper, (who umpired one of the games) started dancing and got the crowd going. However, in the high of the moment, he ended up giving a 5-ball over and missed 2 no-balls!

The World XI had guys like Hollioake, Chandana, Maharoof, Arnold, Dean Jones ( yes he can still run!), Srinath,Sami and Dhoni. How Karnataka managed to beat them defied me. New South Wales were the duds of the series, losing both games. This was a team without the greater mortals like McGrath, Clarke, Lee. Looks like Australian teams world over would want to dig deep holes in the ground. Bengal got the better of them in the second game on Saturday. But the real fun started when Dhoni walked out to bat against Chemplast. Prior to that, teams scored around 120-130 runs in the 20 overs with only a small handfull of sixes scored in total. But this guy smashed 6 of them in one innings! One hit went out of the ground and into the lawn. Dhoni finished with 91* and kept World in the hunt. For Dhoni alone, this trip seemed worth it. On Sunday, it reached an exiting climax with 3 teams fighting for the final with a Bowl Out. In a bowl out, 5 bowlers from each team get to the bowl to the stumps and the team with the most hits (out of 10 balls) qualifies. For some these guys, especially World, this elementary thing never looked so difficult. Maharoof bowled a bouncer (beleive it!) feet hoping that the ball would defy all laws of physics and land on the stumps from behind the wicket. Man! Karnataka reached the final and lost to Air India, the guys in red.

Overall, it was great fun and a good time-pass. I ended up spending more money travelling within Bangalore than from Madras to B'lore and back.

Biloxi's Fourplay Blues

2005-08-23T09:33:00.000-07:00

The theatre fest has come and gone and I must say it has been quite a huge success,looking at the crowds. I ended up seeing four plays- Fourplay, Creeps, Biloxi Blues and The Final Twist. I feel really guilty that I missed A Heap of Broken Images by Girish Karnad. One act plays are not my favourite, I must admit but this was one with a difference which had the whole town raving about it. What was I doing...well I was tired and hungry and decided to skip. I could've starved a couple of hours more. Too bad...

Biloxi Blues by Evam

Evam has done it again. Another flawless, professional performance. The play, by Neil Simon, is set in a World War 2 army barrack in America. Biloxi happens to be a town in Mississippi. I was wondering what on earth that was. Among all the Neil Simon scripts I have come across so far (though only a few in number) this is defenitely the most penetrative and absorbing. It has a semi-autobiographical element to it and the events in the play and the experiences of the soldiers seem so real. Jimmy,in particular, who played the lead role of Eugene Jerome, was excellent. So too was the Sergeant (played by Michael Muthu). the soldiers too were hilarious in their own ways, with each of their distinct personalities clashing and leading to comical results. The acting was spontaneous and un-accented (thank God!)At many times in the play, we are reminded of the harsh realities of the war. The sound effects and music were appropriate. The use of minimal lighting was also a good idea. The main drawback was the length..the play seemed to go on forever, much longer than the time specified.The backstage movements too were visible during performance, even from where I was sitting...right on the outback. Anyway, Evam will be repeating the shows next month as a full scale production and I highly recommend it for all you guys who missed it. For those unfamiliar with English theatre, this is a great way to start.

Fourplay by Stagefright

Short romantic comedies usually never fail, so it's not surprising that Freddy chose these. Nice title too..fit just perfectly. 3 out of the four plays were good. A Way with Words had a special guest appearence by KK. The script was so typically American,about how love lives just get entangled. The second play, Date with a Stranger was the best among the lot. It's about the most bizarre conversation between two total strangers in a restaurant. Samanth played his part very well. The third play, Barry, Betty and Bill was the weaklink of the night. The script was ordinary and lacked originality, unlike the others. It's about a husband who stumbles on his wife with her lover..the usual. Barring the girl (who was the only saving grace with her acting and audibility) the overall performance was stale. And a rather peculiar costume for the guy..it looked like the wife fell in love with the DHL parcel delivery guy! The only thing missing was a red cap.
The fourth one The Universal Language was interesting and witty. Back to good old David Ives. It's about a con artist who creates a new, whacked out language and fails in his attempt to trick an innocent girl with her money. She ultimately falls in love with the language and he finally gives in. I wondered how the actors got their lines so well, though they were talking rubbish. Freddy was fine( as the con artist) and I must mention, I was very impressed with the girl too (Anoushka). Good casting, Fred.

2005-08-19T07:31:00.000-07:00

Chaps, I'm off to Bangalore over the weekend to catch the Twenty20 Cup. It was something I thought of in the last minute. Looking forward to the World XI side and some great fun. And look out for me if I'm on TV:-)

Another final goes to Ashes

2005-08-11T03:00:00.000-07:00

This was scripted even before the tournament started. India and Sri Lanka would make the finals of the Indian Oil Cup and get the better off West Indies. And of course Sri Lanka would win the cup.How often have they not won it at home in the last 10 years? Just once, ironically against India in 1998 when we won the Sri Lankan version of the Independence Cup. And in the ICC Champions Trophy we had to share the cup with them. Even Australia are still searching for clues on how to beat them at the Premadasa Stadium. If they can't, how can we? The law of averages is firmly on Sri Lanka's side. And there's another curious trend which follows this Indian team whenever they go down south. Since the Asia Cup in 1997, we've always had to come up with extraordinary stuff to get to the final and eventually lose, in Sri Lanka alone. In 1997, Ganguly played a blinder and helped India chase the target in 15 overs (the team was Bangladesh..easy meat) in the penultimate league match. Then in 2001, Sehwag smashed his maiden century off 69 balls to overcome New Zealand and again reach the finals. And just now the West Indies game was a virtual semi-final. All that sweat came down to nothing as we had to endure yet again, 3 different Sri Lankan captains lifting trophys in the last 8 years. Who knows what would've happened if the Champions Trophy was not rained out.
Playing 5 bowlers was a sign of desperation. And why and how is it that J.P Yadav has never got a mention? This nation keeps cribbing about the lack of all-rounders, and here's one man in the form of his life. He may be in the wrong side of 30 (31 exactly) but Yadav was singularly responsible for Railways and Central Zone winning the Ranji and Duleep Trophys respectively. With regular five wicket hauls and a couple of centuries batting on seaming wickets (something unheard of in domestic cricket, till now), he was worth a try. Even Chappell sheepishly admitted it today saying, "Yes we should have tried him". I'd continue with Venugopal Rao and give Suresh Raina another season or two in domestic cricket as he is raw. I'm taking the cue from what happened to Reetinder Sodhi, when over confidence just let him down and the guy no longer figures. Both Raina and Sodhi were stars from the Under 19 World Cup and tagged as all rounders.

Moving to The Ashes now...thank God the Poms managed to square it 1-1. 7 years back somebody tagged Flintoff as the next Botham and was sent scurrying. Now that guy has the last laugh. Freddie is a hero and no wonder they love him so much. Botham set the tone in 1986/87 (when England last won the Ashes) with his blistering 138 at 'Gabba and a 5 wicket haul at the MCG. Despite the win, I'd still bring in Collingwood for Ian Bell. Strangely I've had no support in this cause. From the start, Bell's place was taken for granted in the expense of Thorpe. Is he that special? My colleagues in England say that he's better than Thorpe but I'm not sure as yet. Why wasn't Bell tried out in the ODIs? They tried out Pietersen and it's paying off. Against Aus, you need your best men up front and leaving out Thorpe was a mistake.
BTW, the Brits died of exitement over this win to such an extent that a DVD of the Edgbaston test has been released already, in a matter of 3 days! They have branded this as "The Greatest Test". That can be debated, for I feel that Laxman and Dravid at Calcutta was just as good. Your thoughts please...

Chennai Theatre Festival

2005-08-06T12:06:00.000-07:00

This month rocks.So many plays to look forward to.Madras is hosting the Metro Plus Theatre festival through the first half of this month,consisting of drama troups from Bombay,Delhi,Bangalore and 4 groups from Madras- Evam,Boardwalkers,Stagefright and Madras Players.It's about time this place got more recognition for this art.Bombay and Delhi have often got their full share of the pie as the theatre centres of India (decentralising the National School of Drama is something they are pushing for).And agreed, Bombay has it all.Since Class of '84,I've made it a point to watch all the visiting troupes.Beauty,Brains and Personality is coming up on the 26th.

Coming back to the festival,2 plays over already as I write this- Heap of Broken Images and Creeps.The ones I can't wait for are Biloxi Blues by Evam and Fourplay by Stagefright.Bought the tickets well in advance too.These are must sees.Dance like a Man should be fine too.9 Jakhoo Hill goes on for over 2 hrs!Make sure you have dinner before going.Don't know if I can go for that,time and ticket permitting.

For detailed info on all the plays,here's the website.

The Story of John List

2005-07-31T03:15:00.000-07:00

John List
Five years back, I tuned in to watch Medical Detectives (a crime documentary) on the Discovery Channel, something I regulary do whenever the series is on. This does not mean to imply any fascination of the morbid. These are stories of real people, which an Agatha Christie would have no control over. However, one such story of a man named John List and his dispeakable act in the name of religion,intrigued me (and my sister) like no other. This is his story:

John List was born in Bay City, Michigan, in 1925. Born to strict and fiercely religious parents of the Lutheran Church, John's childhood was confined to a life which never went beyond his books and which forbade any pleasures whatsoever. All the family's activities centered around the Lutheran Church and John was expected to do the same.His mother Alma refused to let him play with other boys and have any social life, which sounds no better than solitary confinement if you ask me. His relationship with his dad soured to such an extent that John was remorseless in the funeral of his father. After a short service in the army, John took up accounting as a profession, given that he was perfectly suited for it, with his bookish personality, attention to detail and an obsession for neatness and order. John married Helen against his mother's wishes and the relationship always remained strained. Helen had a series of miscarriages (and a child from another marriage) which made Alma beleive that she did not belong to the church. Much to Alma's surprise, John and Helen went on to have 3 healthy children. Soon after the marriage, Helen grew frustrated of John's religious activities and Alma's controlling behaviour,which triggered off an addiction to alchohol and tranquilizers. She was diagnosed with Syphillis,and her health deteriorated to such an extent that John had to look after all the household chores. Professionally, John List had a hard time. He was in and out of jobs, not because of his accounting skills but due to his lack of social skills and inability to delegate. His interpersonal skills were so poor that his colleague commented," He would never look you in the eye and say anything." Helen's addictions drained him financially and at one time he feared his family would have to go into welfare. Their house in Westfield New Jersey was in terrible shape, as was noticed by a relative. At one time List was out of work for nearly 6 months,and he would spend his days reading books in the railway station,under the pretense of going to work. Added to that, John had another peeve. He disapproved of his daughter Patty's interest in a career in theatre and showbiz, saying that it was unholy and that Patty would be sent to hell. In November of 1971, the buble was about to burst.List was in severe debt and depression.

Neighbours were suspicious at the silence that hung over the List household for over a month. They then stumbled upon gruesome horror. On the morning of November 9th,1971, after the children left for school, John took out his revolver and shot Helen. He went upstairs to the attic and shot his mother. He shot Patty,Fred and John Jnr(his children) as they returned from school. As the bodies lay side by side, John cleaned up the blood, left the house and began his life as a fugitive. He left a note (addressed to the pastor of the Lutheran church) explaining the reasons for his crime and that had done it in the name of God, for their own good. He just couldn't picture his family living in poverty. He begged for forgiveness.Patty's drama teacher had a suspicion.She talked about an odd conversation with her father a day before the murders.List apparently asked each of if they wished to be cremated or buried.Patty feared the worst.List wrote letters to several people that the family would be on vacation.The teacher often drove past the house to check if all was well.
Detectives were unable to trace him for years. His car was found on the parking lot of New York's JFK Airport.They feared he had left the country. Meanwhile, John List moved to Denver and started a new life as Robert Clark, with a new identity and social security number. He married again and meddled with different jobs,completely oblivious of the crimes he committed.He told his new wife that his ex-wife had died of cancer and had no children. With the police going nowhere, the case seemed closed.

When America's Most Wanted aired on TV to catch missing fugitives, the case was reopened. Frank Bender, a forensic sculptor was called to create a model of how List would have aged after so many years. The model was was startlingly accurate.John's neighbours saw the image on TV and called ther cops. In 1989, John List was arested, 18 years after the murders. He was given five life sentences with no possibility of parole.

John List at the time of arrest
The fact that he committed the murders in the name of religion defies all logic. This was the act of a man who found solace in the Bible.His defence was that he only killed them so that they will go to heaven and killing himself will mean going to hell. He still showed little remorse for what he did. In his note he never had the guts to admit his mistake by writing," I know what has been done is horrible...". Has been done??Does he mean to imply that he never pulled the trigger and that an uncontrollable force took over him?
His dead family must've cheered from their graves when the verdict was passed..finally justice had been done.

Everything official about it

2005-07-17T04:44:00.000-07:00

Early this month the ICC awarded official status to the Africa-Asia one day matches to be played in August. This 3 match ODI series was conceived with the intention of promoting the game in other African and Asian countries like Gabon and Laos. The organisers intend to stage this as an annual event, with combined teams from Africa (SA,Zim and Kenya) playing the Asians. Sounds exiting doesn't it? Now here's the catch:
The ICC in the last few months has been thinking out of the box, so much that the box has lost its significance. Implementing the new ODI rules without a proper trial and consultation with the players is an example. And the latest slogan of the ICC should read "It's not personal. It's all official". The awarding of official status to the Tsunami Appeal match in Melbourne earlier this year rubbed the wrong side of statisticians world over. It seemed absurd to grant official status to a charity match! It didn't seem logical given the circumstances and was contrary to the spirit of cricket. Each run scored, 4 and 6 hit fetched a certain amount of money. The more, the merrier. Fortunately for the victims, the match raked up thousands of dollars thanks to the World XI batsmen who had a bang. In official international cricket, we expect a close competition between bat and ball, each trying to outdo the other. But here, with every boundary hit, even the fielding captain has a reason to smile and feel noble. A bowler who bowls full tosses and gets thrashed repeatedly for 6s is actually helping hundreds of victims, thanks to the money he has raised with his shoddy bowling. In the latest Tsunami game at Lord's it was quite hilarious seeing Lara bowl so many overs and Shane Warne bowling the worst spell of his life. It didn't matter because the match was un-official and all for the good of humanity. And this is precisely why the Melbourne game should've just remained unofficial.
The ICC Super Series in October on the other hand is fully justified by it's official status. This is between Australia and the Rest of the World, or the Best vs The Rest, going back to good old serious cricket and not a fundraiser unlike the others. I have no objection to the status of these games.

Coming back to the Afro-Asian matches, the press release states that 10% of the proceeds will go to charity and the rest will go towards the "development" of the games in the two continents. It sure does paint a rosy picture right? In reality, it's only going to succeed in making the respective boards richer and the benefit countries no different. The forces of capitalism, no doubt. The administrators may have sucked up to sponsors and television yet again, given the amount of revenue it's expected to generate. And were the players consulted? Don't put your money on it. With an unforgiving international schedule to entertain, reluctance will be written all over their faces.
Statisticians, even in Cricinfo, will now have to create new teams....again! Don't be startled if , one day, you see the number of international teams Rahul Dravid would've represented in his C.V when he wraps up - India, Asia XI, World XI, India-Pakistan XI, Right handers XI, Born in 1973 XI etc....

The Shawshank Redemption

2005-07-11T10:07:00.000-07:00

Cast: Morgan Freeman, Tim Robbins

This article was prompted by my friend Siddharth who also wrote a review of this film last month. I must say it's a good idea because after Forrest Gump, this is the second best movie I've seen. I first saw it 5 years back and I've seen it 3 times now. I always beleive that movies should have storylines which bring out realism and make you think at the end, especially dramas. This would explain why I've always avoided the sci-fi Hollywood blockbusters like the Matrix, Star Wars, The Mummy etc.

Set in a New England prison spanning 3 decades(1940s-60s) it tells the story of Andy Dufresne, a young successful banker who was given two life sentences for the murder of his wife and her lover, a crime he didn't commit. He endures several hardships, given his quiet personality and befriends the street smart fellow inmate, Red (Freeman). The warden Norton capitalises on Andy's financial background and lands Andy with a more respectable role in the prison. Andy discovers the corruption and money laundering within Shawshank prison but keeps mum about it for the sake of his freedom.

Coming to the specifics, it's amazing how the protagonist played by Robbins hovers in the background and yet makes his presence felt, given Andy's quiet demeanor. Red, the narrator plays a role which I'd kill for. Morgan Freeman was amazing in his timing and tone. Pity he did not bag the Best Supporting Actor award at the Oscars. The one who impressed the most was the warden Norton (Bob Gunton). The characterisation was just amazing, showing his transformation from a respectable gentleman to a corrupt official. Given his personality, it's hard to dislike the man. Gunton is an example of perfect casting. Brooks (James Whitmore) also stood out.
For the sensitive heart, the movie does have it's disturbing moments, with the violence and the harshness of prison life. The story also shows the downside of being released into the world after spending half your life in confined walls. For Brooks, one small step into the outside world was a bigger punishment and life was not worth living anymore. Andy, all the while charted and executed his escape route using just a hammer, proving that persistence pays off, much to the amazement of Red and the warden. Freedom meant crawling through half a mile of shit and filth. That part is certainly a bone chilling moment. The look on the warden's face with the realisation that Andy got the better of him proved that justice was done, no matter how long it took for Andy.
The film however does have a couple of goof ups. In the murder scene, when Tommy is called to meet the warden, it appears as day time (with the shadows and sunlight) but when he walks out, it's pitch dark. Also since the film was set over 19 years (1947- 1966), none of the characters aged one bit. Perhaps the make up was on a low budget! And just how did the warden's suit and shoes fit so perfectly for Andy? We all know how tall Tim Robbins is, at least a foot taller than Gunton (Warden)!
All right I know I've given out all the spoilers! But for those who haven't seen it, please borrow it because it can change your life, with its inspirational message. There's no better movie to trigger off your philosophical side, trust me.

Cricket imitating soccer

2005-07-03T04:35:00.000-07:00

Recently the ICC announced the new rules for one day internationals (ODIs) which will come into effect immediatly for the next 10 months. They have called this period a trial period, though it is a fair bit risky, considering that domestic cricket has long been the guinea pig as far as innovations are concerned. The public will see it first in the Natwest Challenge on Thursday and don't be surprised if you see both captains looking lost in confusion.

About the amendments, the ICC has decided to extend the 15 over restrictions to 20 overs, where the first 10 ov will see the mandatory field restrictions and the remaining overs will be split into two blocks of 5 overs each at different stages of the innings, depending on the captain's discretion. Frankly, I like this rule because it cuts out the predictability factor, something that always plagues the middle overs of an innings. This rule on the surface stands to benefit the batsman more but a deeper insight will reveal that it's more evenly matched than it seems. With the field up, it is tempting for the batsman to clear it but in the process, we might well have 3-4 cheap wickets falling. On a slow pitch, a quality spinner can stifle the batsman, making singles hard to come by.
The second and most radical innovation is the substitution rule where a player can be replaced by a substitute at any time and the replaced player will not take further part in the match in any capacity. This is where the captain's man management skills will really be put to test. On the one hand this will strenghthen the bowling options, especially the 5th bowler problem. This may also compliment the first rule change I talked about. For example, you can have a Shahid Afridi replacing a player with the field restrictions in the middle overs and he could possibly belt out a quick 30-40 and make all the difference to the end result. On the other hand is the emotional perspective. It's hard enough being dropped before the start of the game and it could be worse if somebody tapped you on the shoulder and said, "Sorry man. Skipper wants you to take a hike because somebody better than you is taking your place". Egos will take a bashing. Just what would happen if Sachin is at the receiving end? A national outcry along the same lines as the 194* decleration will follow. I'm all for strong decisions but can our country take it gracefully?

I must confess that I'm a semi-purist as far as cricket is concerned. However the substitution rule doesn't exite me much. I beleive it's more of a gimmick than a revolution. What makes cricket interesting is that no team is perfect in all departments and it's up to the opposition to exploit the weaknesses. This rule may not allow for such a thing, especially in the 5th bowler scenario. It will take some getting used to for the players and public. I beleive that substitution rule should come into force only in the event of replacing a player who is injured and can take no further part in the match. This will allow sides to field and bat 11 fit players.
Drifting away, the ICC's decision to change the format of the Champion's Trophy to 8 teams is a good one. We've seen far too many boring one sided games against minnows as it only helps perk up the averages of our stars. This should apply to the World Cup too (I'm begging of them to do it) . What's better is that the last two teams will have to fight it out to qualify. The top 6 teams in the ICC rankings will come in as wild cards. So even India is not guarenteed a place! So our guys better buckle up now. So let's look forward to some quality cricket next year in India, as we're hosting the trophy.

Writing this on purpose

2005-06-30T09:39:00.000-07:00

A shot of Arabian Nights
From left: Madhuri(Flora), Samanth(Interpreter), Kanishkaa(Norman)Well we just finished our shows of Doing It On Purpose on Saturday afternoon For those who have no clue what I'm talking about, it was a series of 5 short comedies performed in front of a live theatre audience at Alliance Top Story. And there were cameras too...one handycam and lightning struck not once but several times, not from the sky but from inside. Who let the papparazzi in? We had to.
Our director KK coined the evening Doing It On Purpose, making it a short 1 hour evening of witty comedies mostly by David Ives. The crowds by and large were disappointing, despite the good turnout on Saturday. The Saturday crowd seemed to be the most appreciative, thanks largely to the group of youngsters who laughed for almost every syllable. Arabian Nights was never this slow! Among the plays, my personal favourites are The Great Train Robbery (GTR) and Philadelphia because of the absurd situations the characters find themselves in. The best part in GTR is when Sir Arthur says, " Thieves are plain irresponsible". and how he treats the robbery in the most literal sense.I beleive that the strength of Arabian Nights lies with the interpreter, going by the humour in his lines and movements. The romance does get a little soppy, Mills and Boon type but if the audience liked it, it's fine.

I had really good fun in Arabian, rehearsing with Madhuri, Samanth and Manasi, who had her first crack at directing. Personally I was happy with my comeback after a forgettable debut at Cedars, where I jumped one page in the script, stood for 5 motionless seconds (felt like minutes) wondering what the freaking hell I was doing and then having to improvise and get the play back on track. On the bright side there were some in the crowd who didn't pick it up. My unscripted 'trip' ( just as I left the lawn) was a fitting complement to my nerves. Man now I know what it feels like to be run out in your test match debut. Krish Srikkanth, give me your right hand.
After the highs of Saturday afternoon, I found myself lying flat on the floor in the green room during Oleanna, down with a fever. Life sure is unpredictable.

Footnote: The review of this show appeared in the Friday Review today. Click here to read the full story

Drawing the Twenty20 line

2005-06-18T03:05:00.000-07:00

It's a slam bang variety of cricket with a serious undertone. It has experienced the extremes as far as acceptance is concerned. Discerning spectators welcome it as a cunning invention to a sagging game and purists blast it with more than just a touch of cynicism. And there is a middle-earth with one foot on both sides, torn between the two, yet, with cricket's best interests at heart. When Australia kickstarted their England tour this week with a Twenty20 international at the Rose Bowl, England bowlers Jonathan Lewis and Darren Gough mercilessly ran through the Australian lineup, like a bunch of vehicles jumping a railway crossing with the approaching train just 22 yards away. The result was a shocking 100 run defeat but Ponting could only see the funny side to it. One look at the first line of this article would make an Australian cricketer laugh like there's no tomorrow. Few days and yet another thrashing later (this time by Somerset), the laughter subsided just as quickly as it began.

For the benefit of those not familiar with the concept, Twenty20 is a limited overs version of cricket where each team bats for a max of 20 overs(as opposed to the usual 50), making it a 3 hour slog fest. Batsmen have to attack from the word go, with no time to settle down. It was started during the English domestic season in 2003 and is regarded as a marketing startegy par brilliance, drawing in crowds seen only in soccer and rugby games, singing the tunes of the punchline- "I don't like cricket, I love it!" The craze has spread to South Africa, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Australia with Twenty20 now added to the domestic fixtures. Two official international games have been played already, with Australia thrashing the fashion conscious 1980s Beige Brigade(New Zealand) at Eden Park,Auckland. There's more planned.

Columnists world over have been guilty of wallowing in their own fantasies, calling for a scrapping of the 50 over format and replacing it with Twenty20. Did Kerry Packer envisage this 30 years back? I don't think so. World Series Cricket was a revolution and a revelation but does modern day cricket require another one? It's easy to get carried away. Let's look at the pros and cons. On the one hand, the entertainment and monetary value it yields is unquestioned. There's no better way to spend an evening, even at the expense of cancelling a date with a flimsy "I'm busy tonight" excuse. (Girls, this is a hint! Or just join in). On the other hand, bowlers around the world will be the latest in the list of potential endangered species. And not to mention the recurring crick in the neck (for the poor bowler and non striker) of having to look back high up on the boundary, monotonously after every(or other) delivery. The team physio will be kept busy no doubt.
My opinion is that there has to be some moderation in handling Twenty20 cricket as a regular international fixture. I feel that the current trend of kickstarting a tour/ season by an overseas team with a one-off Twenty20 international (2 is also welcome) is a good strategy. This will act as a feeder service to buildup the interest for the rest of the tour. The new innovations proposed by the ICC to rejuvenate the 50 over format (use of substitutions, splitting the 15 over restrictions into 5 over spells) is enough to keep the anticipation and interest alive. The co-existence of both versions, without one overriding the other is the solution.

(Footnote- Australia just lost one more..to Bangladesh!And the beer remains untouched...)

The Owl and the Pussycat

2005-06-12T02:53:00.000-07:00

Cast -
Felix/Fred: Michael Muthu
Doris : Andrea

Produced by: Boardwalkers
Written by : Bill Manhoff

Regular theatre goers in this city would've noticed an uncanny resemblance between this play and Barefoot in the Park by Evam. The living room setting was similar - particularly the positioning of the doors, the colour of the walls, the kitchen on the left hand side, the giant blowup of the Empire State Building at the background and of course, Andrea.
This two character play is about the pendulum swinging love - hate relationship between Felix and Doris. Felix is a bookstore clerk who likes to pretend he's a writer (he later reveals his real name - Fred) and Doris, a call girl who likes to pretend she's a model and actress. Both characters are extremely insecure about their jobs, yearning for far more respectable professions. Felix gets suspicious of her shady movements and promptly convinces the landlord to get her evicted. She barges into his apartment at 2 AM in a frenzy, cursing him at the top of her lungs, hurling away abuses without a care in the world. Ultimately she parks herself in his apartment indefenitely, given she had nowhere to go. Felix accepts her rather reluctantly, trying to remain straight and diplomatic, despite succumbing to her advances a few times.

The script, though not intended to be a laugh riot, did have a lot of whacky humour in parts, particularly the references to ' the spitting sun ', a curious phrase created by Felix in his writings. Another line- "The disease does not call the doctor" had all laughing. The suicide part was hilarious, where Felix and Doris contemplate the inevitable, yet getting on each other 's nerves in figuring out the best possible method. Felix is about to blow up when Doris gets finicky about her appearence and clothes before taking the plunge. This prompts him to say" You've ruined my life and now you're ruining my death!"
Michael Muthu gave a good performance overall. Andrea impressed as usual although she could have tempered her aggression down particularly in the beginning of the play. Had she slowed down the pace of her words, the anger would've looked more natural. The sets by Michael Muthu himself were impressive and gave it a real living room feel. The Beatles numbers during the blackouts were appropriate , enough for the audience to predict the next track depending on the situation and flow of the story. However the play did drag in parts and a bit of editing would've cut it down to size.

Evam Indrajit

2005-06-05T06:29:00.000-07:00

CAST:
Writer...Sunil Vishnu
Indrajit...Asim
Amal...Ishwar
Vimal...Vivek Hariharan
Kamal...Vidyuth
Manasi...Sheena
Aunty...Premalatha

Produced by...Evam and The Madras Players

A day after we wrapped up Barefoot in the Park by Evam late February, the late Bhageerathi 'Bhagyam' Narayan arranged for a reading of Evam Indrajit,an Indian play written by Badal Sircar.This was incidentally Evam's first ever play when the founders Karthik,Sunil and Preethi were students in MICA.Sure enough this play was close to their hearts.But as we sat around to read, I felt as if I was trying to decipher an abstract piece of art.It seemed excruciatingly vague and boring,seemingly without a particular direction.The play had a message to all of generation Y but I failed to see it.Then Bhagyam popped the question to all of us..."Give me your honest opinion of this play".Opinions varied.My main fear was that it might just fail to connect with the audience, and a rather vast audience too.The setting seemed archaic,the story was disjointed and in the center of it all is one heck of a confused guy called Indrajit.
But did I jump to conclusions too quickly?

The main thing that evoked my curiosity(before I saw the play today) was the overall presentation and visualisation.It was this aspect of the production which stood out.Evam used its creative imagination to its best,bringing a lot of life to a dull script.To start with, the casting was intelligently done by Bhagyam, despite taking the risk of casting two first timers.Both the debut actors, Vivek and Sheena gave no indication of their inexperience.Indrajit's character was portrayed brilliantly by Asim and same for the Writer as well.The chemistry and camaraderie by Amal,Vimal and Kamal was perfect with no instances of any of their cues overlapping.
The choice of music was apt,the traditional Indian classical music giving it a truly ethnic setting.The tabla scores in the middle (by M.T Srinivasan) complimented it.The stage and sets were expansive and yet, simple.The lighting was also executed rather effectively, which ultimately made the play visually stimulating.The video display at the background showing images and words at the appropriate places can make a theatre purist frown,but frankly it added a lot of value as far understanding the script is concerned.

But on the flipside, the script is indeed weak with too many loose ends.The play basically deals with the decisions youngsters need to make regarding their careers,marriage,whether to conform to the rules of the society proactively or not.But you often wonder why the protagonist Indrajit keeps whingeing,whining, looking confused all the time.Why must a person dissect and scrutinise his life in such detail in an already complex world? It almost makes you want to stand up and shout,"Get a life,man!Chill and get back to work".The ending too is inconclusive, with Indrajit back to square one, still searching for the elusive answers.

The message given out by Evam prior to the show was that "this play changed our lives and will change yours too".I don't see that happening in me. Not all human beings are like Indrajit and only those select few who see Indrajit in them can feel the transformation.The punchline of the play is "Your life in 3 acts".I'd change it to "A life in 3 acts".Act 1 is probably the more enjoyable of the three with a lot the subtle humour thrown in.The humour unfortunately lags behind in Acts 2 and 3 where the intellectual matter takes over.
Evam, like any other fledging professional theatre group did the best they could given the vast resources at their disposal.It would be unfair on my part to generalise the entire audience based on my personal opinions.It ain't over till the last review is written....

Bruce Hornsby- Scenes From the Southside

2005-05-30T10:47:00.000-07:00

When success comes early, the biggest challenge is to follow it up with the next venture. This crucial moment can either make or break a long time career. When Bruce Hornsby released The Way it Is in 1986, he was a mere debutant with nothing to lose. However its enormous success came with equally overwhelming expectations. Fighting against the tide of being labelled as one album wonders, a phenomenon which plagues many artists, Bruce Hornsby and The Range released Scenes From the Southside in 1988 (RCA Records).
Realising the need to recapture the commercial magic of the debut album, the band played the master trick by sticking to the conventional pattern, which meant repeating themselves musically. It's easy to earn the critics' wrath for adopting a conservative approach such as this, but it was this strategy which made an impact on their success. As the title suggests, the lyrics by Bruce and brother John Hornsby are centered around the scenario in the southern states. The album however has an equal mixture of rock, jazz and pop unlike the first album.

Bruce Hornsby once again does juctice to his piano skills, showing that the piano scores are just as important as the vocals, each without superseding the other. The best track The Road Not Taken, a love song, is lyrically attractive and a great excuse to take up the piano as a hobby. The Show Goes On (the lengthiest track), has a similar tune. The words describe the process of getting your life back on track after losing a loved one. Not a sad tune by any means, the what stands out in the tune and the rhythm of the track is the sensitivity. Leaves you thinking, definitely. On the other hand is The Valley Road, the fast paced cheerful track with a mixture of piano jazz and rock. It is followed by the usual piano score with a catchy ending. Two other tracks, The Old Playground and I Will Walk With You are pop tracks laced with piano scores in between, supported by a good chorus. In Till The Dreamin’s Done, Hornsby reverts back to his trademark slow romantic tune, curiously it is the only track without a piano score.

Unfortunately the album does have it’s weaklinks with the remaining tracks- Defenders of the Flag, Jacob’s Ladder and Look Out Any Window. Hornsby’s experiments with rock tunes disappoint in all the above tracks, giving it a totally different style and thereby not blending with the rest. Despite that, with 6 good tracks out of 9,the album still scores as a good effort and proving that the band is not just a platinum flash in the pan.

Will Greg make the Grade

2005-05-25T09:09:00.000-07:00

Hey All.Great news. Daily Mirror Sri Lanka has published my article on Greg Chappell.I sent it to Appa in Colombo and the sports editor agreed to put it up(May 24th). My earlier blog piece on Sri Lanka (Sri Lanka-India's Down Under) got published in the Daily News a week back. Hope to send in more stuff in future.Read the full story here
You may be asked to enter a username and password. The username and password(same for both) is kanishkaa2

The Casting Coach

2005-05-19T09:28:00.000-07:00

When John Wright took over as the Indian coach 5 years ago, we witnessed a reversal of the Quit India Movement, 58 years after the famous first one. This was a foreign invasion we ironically wanted and were willing to shell out just about anything to make it happen. Home grown, tried and tested coaches were suddenly out of contention in order to make way for a soft spoken former New Zealand captain, who was expected to take over an Indian side experiencing erratic form. Wright had the attributes of an international coach, with an eye for technology and a no nonsense approach. He and Ganguly had their fair share of ego clashes, with Ganguly's young aggression clashing with Wright's ' by the book' approach. The script worked and it will have to be rewritten once the new guy lands up.

With the coaches interview happening as I write this, the predictions among the media from across the country seem to be centered around two of the contenders- Greg Chappell and Tom Moody. During John Wright's appointment, there were scowls among the smiling faces, raising the unnecessary patriotsm issue..."Aren't there enough guys in this country more than capable of coaching this team?" The reason the Board gave was logical, especially to the Indian context. A foreign coach was sought mainly to avert regional and zonal bias, given the size of this country. Reading between the lines, this statement also implied a seemingly obvious fact, about our in-built trait of sucking up to foreigners. I'm not saying that this is something to be ashamed of, as long as it takes this country forward.
Coming back to the topic, if the above reasoning were to be true, then why invite Indian contenders in the first place? It looks like the BCCI appointed Mohinder Amarnath and Sandeep Patil merely to appease a section of people in order to avoid criticism,something the BCCI is more than used to in the recent past.
Patil pulled out of the race and rightly so, given his commitments with Oman. Patil had the credentials given his experience with Kenya and stood the better chance. Amarnath on the other hand shot himself in the foot at the start when asked about his familiarity with technology saying," I don't have a laptop, I have a lap!" Now what on earth was he thinking, you have to imagine!Cricket coaching and laptops are synonymous terms now and it's hard to put your money on a contender with that attitude. Though I respect Amarnath for his achievements and good nature, India may never go forward this way.

Greg Chappell may not have age on his side but he certainly looks best equiped to coach. Chappell's main challenge will be to prove the theory wrong that great players don't necessarily make great coaches. As a player, he scored over 7000 runs in tests with an average of over 55, 122 catches (a one time world record), captained Australia in 21 wins out of 48, still maintaining that average. Where the Indians can gain the most with him around, as with Tom Moody too, is about the art of playing fast bowling. This will consequently improve their overseas record. Greg was no allrounder though ironically, his best bowling figures in ODIs was against India!Perhaps he can teach them how NOT to play his kind of bowling!
Chappell's knowledge about the scientific aspects of cricket is unparallelled, makes you believe that he has a Phd in cricket psychology. This was evident when he released his book, The Making of Champions which contains research from physiology,psychology, bio-mechanics, nuitrition and management, providing the defenitive guide to coaching. Chappell will serve as both a mentor and father figure. The only problem I foresee (with his appointment) is with certain young players getting intimidated by his presence given the larger than life image he creates(not among all cricket fans though...remember the underarm ball?)

Tom Moody on the contrary may just have the 'approachability' factor working in his favour given his age, 39. Moody was an average international cricketer, who was branded a one day specialist with his attacking lower order batting and medium pace bowling. He can teach the Indians a thing or too about playing fast bowling, given that he was raised in Perth. Moody was also known for his long stint with Worcestershire county and served as the head Coach and Director of Worcestershire. Curiously enough, Moody seems to be the more favoured contender among a few Indian players,giving the committee plenty to think about.
Desmond Haynes is in fact the dark horse in this race.He has a playing record to match Chappell but not quite the same coaching experience.

The BCCI is expected to come out with the verdict tomorrow...yes that's right tomorrow.Oh and don't be surprised if the new coach starts work just a day before India's next series.I quote President R.S Mahendra" What's the hurry? There's plenty of time left."

Match Fixing Minus the Money

2005-05-18T09:34:00.000-07:00

It's Martin Williamson again!This time reliving possibly the most bizarre over of them all.The incident took place during a Shell Trophy game (New Zealand's domestic tournament) in 1990 between Canterbury and Wellington at Lancaster Park,Christchurch.Can you imagine a side delibrately conceding 77 runs in a single over!(No this is not a printing error).The birth of match fixing?We've all probably achieved the same feat(or similar) playing imaginary 'tests' in the downstairs compound or car park where the so called boundary fence is just 6 yards away(or closer)!I was stunned when I saw this bizarre record while browsing through Cricinfo,at the same time seeing an opportunity for Martin to shed some mercury into this incident.Good old Martin was at it again and took the trouble to speak to John Morrison, the man who conceived this tactic.Thanks again Martin! Read the full story here.

The Price of Perfection

2005-05-12T10:44:00.000-07:00

The date: 6th of January 1984, the venue: Sydney Cricket Ground.
Australia had just polished off Pakistan in their second innings for 210, needing just 35 runs to take the series 2-0. Openers Kepler Wessels and Wayne Phillips finished off the formalities. Australia won...but the celebrations were muted,and for a very good reason. That warm summer evening, three great warriors took their baggygreen caps off and rode into the sunset, anouncing their retirement from test cricket. The men were Rod Marsh, Dennis Lillee and Greg Chappell.

It was a shock the Australians were not prepared for. And we must stress on the word 'prepared'. These guys stretched every muscle right through the 70's,striving to topple West Indies out of the number 1 ranking, trying to stop a rampaging Botham who took away the Ashes in '81, and playing with a win at all costs attitude which didn't always go down well with the public (the underarm ball). Now all of a sudden they left in a pile.
What happened soon after was hard to digest for a typical, egoistical Australian fan. Between 1984 and the World cup in 1987, Australia won just 5 tests out of 34, losing 14, drawing 14 and the one tie. This included two Ashes defeats (home and away), anxious moments with 'love to hate' rivals New Zealand, a drawn home series with India (with a little help from their friends- the umpires) and the usual kicking from West Indies. The country with the strongest domestic cricket structure and most professional work and fitness ethics was struggling to keep is head above the water. And nobody expected it to last this long, making Allan Border's task even tougher. Winning the World Cup marked the new beginning, but the years preceding that had plenty of depressing moments and hardship, dramatically opposite to the fortunes of this current team. No one realised that taking away 3 senior members would take the same number of years to rebuild.

It has been proved that any exodus of this kind doesn't augur well for the immediate future of any side. Australia's dominance since 1999 is a sickeningly familiar thought if you're not an Australian supporter. This has prompted a certain columnist (name not disclosed) to suggest that it's best that Australia be withered from international cricket, blaming them for making such contests boring and predictable as well as suggesting that Australia donates some of its gifted first class cricketers to other countries! Seems as though perfection also comes with a price. Let's admit it, they're the deadliest cricket team to walk this planet,reducing other sides to lesser known mortals.But they're not getting any younger either, with as many as ten members of this current side past 30. Sportsmen have shelf lives too(Martina Navaratilova will be the first to challenge that!). Damien Martyn predicted recently that a mass exodus will follow soon after the World Cup in 2007(particularly from Australia), sending out warning signals that the days of the purple patch are numbered.

It's ironic that the Australian bench strength is just as old as the current team itself.Calling these guys as the 'bench strength' itself seems inappropriate in this context. They've served more as contingency players, covering up when the guys from the elite bunch are either injured or rested. And they've proved more than capable of walking into any side in the world- Martin Love,Brad Haddin,Mike Hussey,Ryan Campbell,Nathan Bracken,Brad Williams,Ian Harvey.(Heck,even Bevan and Brett Lee can't get in). The question is whether the selectors are busy scouting around for 20 something talents to assuage a potential slump. Only Michael Clarke and Shane Watson(both 23) figure in this current setup as youngsters. From a purely selfish point of view, it will be a treat seeing this team displaced for a while,just to even things out. It's important that other teams watch out too and not just Australia as slumps can strike just about anybody...even if it demands the removal of senior players.

(Stats provided by Arun of Cricinfo)

Bruce Hornsby and The Range - The Way It Is

2005-05-03T10:01:00.000-07:00

Late one night in 2000,while endlessly surfing T.V channels,my right index finger abruptly stopped moving.It remained in that position for the next 3 minutes,and for a good reason too.A music video caught my eye and the song too was rather unique..a refreshing change from the stuff I was subjected to each day,involuntarily.The man behind the piano and mic was Bruce Hornsby and the song, Every Little Kiss.

Bruce Hornsby was different.His speciality was American folk rock,bordering between country and conventional pop or soft rock.The lyrics in all his songs reflect his love for the country and small town life.Born in Williamsburg,Virginia in 1954,Bruce attended the University of Miami and the prestigious Berkley School of Music.A chance meeting with Huey Lewis kickstarted his commercial career and in 1985,Bruce signed a contract with RCA records which produced the legendary album,The Way It Is. Bruce teamed up with a band,The Range to produce 9 soulful tracks.The world first caught a glimpse of Bruce Honsby when he picked up the Grammy award for the Best New Artist in 1986.

The album begins with the lively On the Western Skyline, a lively rock track. The song describes the gorgeous evening sunset with this catchy line"The diesel rolls in the silhouette...eastbound." A picture of this hovers in the background in the album cover.
The second track Every Little Kiss, one of the best songs I've ever heard,introduces the listener to Bruce Hornsby-the pianist. The song begins with an enchanting piano track and a finger clicking beat. The song describes the pain of long distance relationships and the craving to stretch your hand out to somebody thousand miles away. The track has an inspiring rhythm to it and will certainly leave you thinking for a while in solitude.

Mandolin Rain is for the soft romantic...an ideal track to switch to when the lights go down on a Feb 14th evening.The strength of this track lies in Hornsby's vocals.

The title track The Way It Is still remains as Hornsby's most famous song and everybody's favorite.The lyrics describe the problems faced by the common man in impoverished areas in the southern states,social issues,standing in endless lines,unemployment and the rigidities in the system."That's just the way it is..somethings will never change." The unique piano scores in this track illustrate the popularity of this track. The piano scores by Bruce Hornsby endorse an originality,which cannot be compared or copied.Don Henley utilised these same talents of Hornsby while composing the piano score for his own Grammy award winning single The End of the Innocence three years later.

A Long Race is probably the album's only weak link.Though still a good track in its own right, the lyrics pale in comparison to the rest.

The chorus of Down the Road Tonight seems like one which can be heard around any camp fire.It is essentially a love song with references to the artist's early life experiences.It is a smooth paced track mainly accompanied by the guitar.

If Hornsby had to sing an 'unplugged' version of River runs Low, he'd be forced to sing the original.The track has no drums,power chords..only pure piano and vocals(sorry MTV!I had to flick that line from you). The lyrics are probably the best in the album,which aptly describes a small town and its calm river. He also uses the river to make subtle references to a particular person.

Next comes The Wild Frontier. I'd emphasise on the word "Wild" because that's precisely what the song is...unconventional by Hornsby's standards. Almost every aspect of this track is wild...the lyrics,beat,tune...all seemingly without a particular direction.Hornsby ackowledges this wierd transformation with this line,This ain't my style,this ain't my home. It seems as though Hornsby dreamt of the perfect tune in his sleep,which unfortunately seemed all hazy when up and then desperately pieced together whatever he could remember. Though not a bad track by any means (saved by a good chorus),it certainly needed some tweaking.

The Red Plains is the ideal finale Bruce Hornsby could've picked. A bunch of guys having a good time in a karaoke bar would love to grab a mic and sing this one. This song describes the countryside in its vastness.The final one and a half minutes comprises of a piano score which is worth every single nano second.I can't remember the zillion times I have pressed the rewind button to listen to this inspiring score.Makes you want to zip down the highway with this tune bang on the volume.

I can safely say that this definitely one of the best discoveries I've made. Acquiring this album wasn't easy though. I have to thank my cousin Chetan for shunting between music shops all over Buffalo to get this.

Sri Lanka - India's Down Under

2005-04-24T09:48:00.000-07:00

It's not quite in the Southern Hemisphere to merit such a title.Neither do I have any intention of giving the country an inferiority complex,being a resident of its massive neighbour. As a regular visitor for the last 8 years, the very mention of the place keeps the spirits up. I also have a rather innocent explanation for ripping the title 'Down Under' from the Aussies.

As a young 6 year old pouring over world maps,the sight of Sri Lanka hiding below India made me believe that it was underground!Anyway, all doubts were dispelled once I set foot on the island for the first time in 1997.I was rather fortunate that my father got posted in Colombo as the Special Correspondent for the Hindustan Times(A New Delhi based daily) and has been there ever since. I was taken aback by the greenery and at the same time nervously twitching in my seat,thinking that we were going to land on the palm trees.One foot into the airport and the obvious thought crossed my mind,"Why can't India be like this?"You would witness a kind of efficiency at every stage which sadly seems to be lacking in our administration. My father would certainly vouch for that. It is also among the cleaner and orderly countries in this part of the world.
Now the celebrated conversation starter,"What's the weather like?" Well it's tropical,at times equitorial and the heat is not as unforgiving as Madras.

The people come across as warm and friendly,a rather good reason to visit.But looking beneath those smiles it's hard to imagine the bloody civil war(between the Sinhalese and Tamils) which threatned to split the country for decades.Scenes from 24th July 1983, where all hell broke loose(particularly in Colombo)still rankle in the minds of the citizens and old timers.With both warring parties refusing to budge from their respective stands, repeated interventions from third party countries(Norway and India),peace still has a huge question mark over it. My father witnessed the early days of strife, during his first trip in 1984 criscrossing the country.
After my initial trips,I was often asked the same question,"Is it safe?" I don't blame anybody for asking me that. I can honestly say that it's perfectly safe,as long as you don't intrude into the northern half.Prior to the Ceasefire agreement with the LTTE, security was indeed beefed up with checkposts being a regular feature.Carrying an ID was a must,including keeping your eyes open. Now things have eased up considerably.

Tourism is a major money spinner.. the hoards of European tourists to justify that point.It is basically restricted to the central and southern parts and the diversity within the regions is there to see. Kandy for its breathtaking lake and Tooth Relic temple,Nuwara Eliya for its Victorian architecture and European setting, the ancient Buddhist temples and the sandy beaches along the south western coast. Shunting up and down the Colombo-Galle road is enough to memorise the towns on the way.I have been fortunate enough to visit some of these places more than twice..particularly Galle(an old Dutch town).It's Sri Lanka's answer to Pondicherry.Travel is mostly by road,although I couldn't resist the urge to catch the train(a rather rickety one) to Kandy last year.The tsunami was a bad dream.Reading first hand accounts of survivors staying in the very same hotels I stayed in was scary.It could have easily been me, taking a morning walk along the moist sand.
Colombo has a night life to show off, sparing enough room for all types of personalities to define their way of having a good time.The one thing that needs to improve is the road traffic and discipline, something Madras has an edge over :-)

Sri Lankan's have a distinct originality of their own.A peep into a typical Sri Lankan house reveals their fondness for space,greenery and an eye for cleanliness.Apartments are rarely seen.Guests are pamperred with the traditional string hoppers,hoppers,provided nobody is allergic to a bit of extra spice. It is a very free society where showing affection in public is not a taboo. They have been absorbed by the western culture,at the same time respecting tradition.Cricket proves just how short public memory is, particularly after winning the World Cup in 1996. It's no surprise seeing two warring camps cheering side by side, thanks largely to a man called Murali.
A striking feature is the number of FM radio stations. Sri Lankan's take a liking to retro stuff which is more my style.At times I'd tune in to Lite 89.2(my fav station) with the lights off pretending to be asleep listening to RJ Shanika's soothing voice!

Holding One End Up

2005-04-22T12:40:00.000-07:00

Martin Williamson,Managing Editor,Wisden Cricinfo comes out with a pulsating piece in his regular "Rewind" Column.This features Michael Holding's ripping over to Geoff Boycott at the Kensington Oval,1981.(I'd kill to see a video clip of this!). Regular readers of Cricinfo would have read this before. For those who haven't (and those who already have) here it is! Read on...

Pilot

2005-04-22T10:27:00.000-07:00

Hi All.Well I've decided to start my own blog..finally!..after spending several sleepless 'twenty minutes' of daytime as well as night time trying to figure out the best title and address.Hope this is easy enough to remember.
As the name suggests,it has to do with cricket. Surprised?Those who know me better not be!And there will be other issues covered as well..in a desperate attempt at not being too one dimensional.
Nine,Ten and Jack represent the last three batsmen in the batting order. I've often wondered who this "Jack" is. Can't be this guy,certainly not.

Step Up or Step Down?

2005-04-22T10:15:00.000-07:00

It was a ball meant to be hit.He did what any sane man would have done...stretching out for a spanking cover drive. He then heard a sound where each and every decibel outclassed those eminating from the sea of humanity watching his every move from the stands.Silence followed. Fast forward to a few days later. The ball was pitched close to his pads..a suicidal delivery to any subcontinental batsman. One slight shuffle across and the next thing he knew..his leg stump was pointing towards second slip.
This was the sorry fate of Saurav Ganguly and it still is.

In sport,when luck deserts you,your fans follow suit.High profile sportsmen lead melodramatic lives where the script is in God's hands. Surely enough Saurav does not know what's hit him and why.He has enough to prove that he has embedded something his team was lacking in...spine. India needed an aggressive captain who was not there to make friends with the opposition or administrators.The Ganguly-Wright partnership was just what the team needed,on the same lines as Hussain-Fletcher for England.The younger generation has had the chance to see some monotony being broken...winning test matches away from home.

As critics,are we being fair in in our criticism or have our tolerence levels reached an all time low? The fact is that Ganguly is in the team as a batsman,with the gift of timing.Ironically,his first two innings in tests showed his arrival at the traditional format of cricket.Or did we jump to conclusions too quickly?Slowly, that form seemed to transcend towards limited overs. But after a point it got pretty lopsided.His international centuries tended to accumulate in his ODI stats,leaving the test matche stats high and dry.It's hard to comprehend why his confidence was lacking as a middle order batsman,given that tests allow batsmen to spend time at the crease.Ganguly's footwork was awry,and slip fielders were on red alert.Critics penned the cruel phrase,"The tail begins with Ganguly".
To be fair,there were crucial knocks in between- 144 at Brisbane,98* at Kandy,128 at Headingley and useful partnerhips in West Indies.But these were few and far between.

Cricket does not allow the captain to participate as a twelfth man.A non performing captain of a winning team is easily forgiven.Case in point- Mike Brearley. Ganguly had the misfortune of leading a side showing rather indifferent form since Pakistan 2004. However this is the time for some serious introspection.What irks Indian fans is that Ganguly has not shown the humility to step down in the best interests of the team,that too at the expense of young players desperate to wear whites for a change. A large chunk of the feedback that I received centered around that point. I'm reminded of Mark Taylor prior to the Ashes Series in 1997 where he volunteered to step down as a player/captain after a lean run with the bat.After rather embaressing low scores in the lead up to the 1st test,Australia braced itself for a new leader but a counter attacking 129 promptly put an end to all speculations.Perhaps Ganguly can take heart from that example.

The point is that it's high time senior players step up their performances and stop taking their places for granted.I'm not afraid to say that this applies to Sachin Tendulkar as well,although majorty of cricket fans will beg to differ.As my friend Siddharth stated recently, "Some shock treatment is needed". The 6-match ban on Ganguly is unfair but at least it gives him time to reassess his role as a batsman and work towards earning his place in the test match side.I still believe he has plenty to offer as a one day batsman and as a captain,provided he is selected on merit.
At this moment of strife,Ganguly's on the path of a new discovery...not at finding his glossy form but who his true friends are.