Weekend

Weekend, I attended the Open Rasika music concert. Show was hosted by Sun TV Fame Vijay Sarathy.

I do have my inhibitions when it comes to celebrities; however it just took a second or so for my preconceived opinions to fall apart. The moment I started to talk with Vijay Sarathy, I realized that I was wrong, I thought about my blog where I have spoofed about him. He was down to earth and spoke to me like good old friend. In simple words, he was just like you and me partying. It was a pleasure meeting Mr.Vijay Sarathy S/O Late Actor Capt. Sasi Kumar. When I went to say hi to him he greeted me by name and surprised me. He talked about my PADAL album and told me that Shankar Nagarajan [H1Bees Inc and OPEN ] had given the CD to him the day before. He had no problems in spotting my milk dripping face[seri seri]. He also congratulated me on the album.

Open organization - when it comes to organization skills Open member are the best. 800+ tickets were sold out in a matter of a week. And besides they were able to raise lot of money for their charity. Open volunteers made sure artists, musicians and [VIP Visitors like me [alambal alambal ] got everything we wanted [dinner, Snacks etc]. We had lot of fun Back stage.

The light music show started on time and was a general mixture of new and songs from 80s, few in the collection were dusty as they were picked from the attic. My vote to the best song goes to "Athangara marame", tight and picture perfect, second place goes to the tough cookie “Minsara kanna” from Padaiappa. Awesome!

Onto next, you might want to turn on the A/c or a fan before you read the rest of the topic - Cricket.

I really do not know what Mr. Vengsarkar and his cronies are up to? Vengsarkar & co, notorious for dropping pearls of wisdom on poor form & performance yadayada selects Virendar Sehwag while a consistent player like Badrinath is dropped. Just few years ago, Ganguly was unceremoniously yanked from the team, Dravid took over the mess created by the selectors and now Dravid gets the same treatment. As if this was not enough, Kiran “f..everyone thrice or ” More , categorically stated that Ganguly had no chance for a comeback etc, but Ganguly fought his way through, Today the same “More” guy is complaining against Vengsarkar. All said and done, the bunch of losers have unceremoniously dropped another Icon of Indian cricket and shame on you Mr. More, you started this nonsense.

When you open the windows operating system the top left corner will always have an Icon called “My Computer”, if you are a windows user you would know the importance of this icon. Dravid is more or less like the “My Computer” icon for the Indian team. It comes to rescue during system crisis. Dilip “the self proclaimed Cricket” Sarkar of India has commented that Dravid is an one Dimensional [CNN-IBN] and to justify his claim he picks one Mr. Virendar Sehwag, whose scores when lined up resembles 1-800-376-763 [1800-DropMe]. I guess Viru has the blessing of some top BCCI officials, there is no chance for him to qualify on merit.

In general the senior cricketers issue is getting really nasty. Imo, until we get proper numbers against them I would not consider Sachin, Ganguly and Dravid as liabilities. Calling a Person with 10k+ runs as one dimensional etc cannot be tolerated. I see a clear cut personal vendetta. I am sure Dravid has few dirty reasons for stepping down from captaincy and it is high time for him let it out.

Basically players regardless of seniors or not have no support among themselves and they don’t dare to rub the board on the wrong side. K. Srikanth did it and he was promptly fired. This fear among cricketers helps the board. BCCI uses restrictions and Gag orders on players to cover their mess. The Cricket boards in India are corrupted to the core. There is a lot of push and pull; here is a proof that system is corrupted. I did not make this up, I quote from Cricinfo.org. Arjun Yadav first came across as a promising batsman coming through the age groups, but eight years since his first-class debut, the promise is yet to transform. Strong performances in age-group cricket had earned him a place in the Indian Under-19 team for the World Cup in 1999-2000, but he did not play a single match in India's victory there. Since then he has been a fairly regular fixture in the Hyderabad team, and has been picked for zonal and India A squads. Over seven seasons of first-class cricket, he has managed an average of 28.51. He has scored just 2 centuries.
did I forget - his middle name “Shivlal”.

Indian Cricket should be run by paid professionals so that they can be held accountable on failure. The stupid “honorary” hog wash has to go; if the team fails, fire the morons who picked the team and then penalize the players. Kiran More & co selected teams but the poor captain gets sacked. How to make the selectors accountable? Why there are so many players from West Zone? Can a selector be part of any cricket academy? Who audits conflict of interests? It is about time for a transparent selection system in India. Current board is run by shameless people destined to kill Indian cricket once for all.

Cheers!.

ps: I wish the so called seniors - Sachin, Ganguly, and Dravid openly talk about such practices and let the cat out of bag. As of today more than their batting average this will do a lot of good to Indian cricket future.

ps2:S. Badrinath: 54 matches and averages about 56.94 with 12 centuries and 17 hundreds, poor Badri was never considered.