10/29/07

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.

10/22/07

aNne na 5th pass, neenga 10th Fail

Hope you remember the comedy episode featuring Gowndamani and Senthil. Let me remind you, Gowndamani will claim that he is 10th failed student while Senthil will keep debunking him by stating that he is 5th passed.
Ricky Ponting: We trashed you in F50,
Dhoni –it no fluke that we are the T20 champions [ aNne na 5th pass, neenga
10th fail anne]

This is exactly how I felt when I heard Dhoni talk during the T20 award ceremony. Dhoni forgot the fact that he was also the captain for the F50 side that was beaten left, right and center. The victory march and over flowing money made no sense. Harbajan was paid Rs. 1, 00,000 for what? For his pathetic bowling and behavior all through the series, he should be fined 1,00,000 instead. Murli Karthik , Sreesanth and Pathan were top wicket takers, in fact Yuvraj got more wickets than the so called top spinner from India,. Harbajan Singh – o:54 m:1 r:261 w:3 - 2/43-was his best and averaged 87.00, meaning he 87 runs per wicket. If this is not costly, I do know to define costly. If you want to drop and get fresh legs, bones and brains, he should be the first candidate.

Batting numbers: Yuvraj totals 192, thanks to the 121, rest of the games he made 72 runs, his average [32.00] is just 0.25 above Ganguly [31.75]. Dhoni, the Indian team captain follows with gap of about hundred runs from the top score. Uttappa played 6 games and averaged 33.x. Gautam Gambir played 3 Games and averaged 8.5 while Dravid played 5 games and averaged less than 11 runs per inning. Finally the top scorer - Guess who? One Mr. Tendulkar scored about 278 Runs with an average of around 40. A single T20 win seems to change people’s view quite drastically, what the heck? Indians are going to play to their Arch rivals, and then fly to Australia;

All mighty Vengsarkar is all set to fire people and he could sneak in is prodigy bowler – the one and only Ajith Agarkar who was seen in the dugout during T20 game. I am really worried that he might get the ticket to Australia where he has a history of generously cooking omelets for the entire team.

The rumor is that hot metal rods in various sizes have been placed in ovens and Kilns all around Australia. These rods will enhance the process called “Pumpesthanu”, a form of “Physocis” therapy designed by Dr. Saranavan, a world renowned Phscartrist and Dr. Bradley’s only student. This therapy is expected to be tested on Men in blue during the Aussie Summer.
Beware Team.

10/15/07

The T20 UtopiaMyopia

What happened to the T20 utopia? Can’t the celebrities from the T20 winning line up score 6 runs per over? What else should the openers do? Irfan has realized his past mistakes and values his selection. He did his job perfectly.

When Dravid walked in the morning I spotted a change in his dress code, he had replaced the number on his back with new logo that looked like a Red Bulls Eye Target symbol. Dravid made life easy for Vengsarkar and his cronies. Like a bird on a political leader statue, Dravid kept dropping sitters. No doubt Dravid is an excellent player and IMO, technically the best from the Indian soil till date. The problem is he needs time for his technique to kick in. In today’s cricket settling time is considered as a taxable luxury. More than team India, Dravid cannot afford it anymore. Dravid should slowly let go the grip on one day games and I feel Dravid should be rested and given time to recoup for the test matches where he is still an invaluable asset.

Sreesanth, I had hopes for this guy, he looked good and has some mojo to do well. However for past few matches my opinion seems to change drastically. I guess it is time for Sreesanth to change his profession. A good carrier for him is ensured in spray painting. He sprays the new ball in every geographical direction possible. At times the software that keeps tracks of the ball losses its direction and get confused and displays another cricket pitch on the left side. Sreesanth also dropped a catch when Symonds was on 2.

Bowling takes the blame while some inexperienced captaincy popped up from Dhoni. When Murali Karthik and Harbajan were bowling well, Dhoni changed and gave the ball to Yuvaraj. Yuvraj from the word go broke coconuts, using them Simmons squeezed out as much of chutney possible. Then Dhoni took Yuvraj out and gave the ball to Tendul who was bowling well but Dhoni changed and gave the ball to Zaheer, Zaheer added more to the chutney pot. The last 5 overs tilted the game towards Australia.

A note on Harbajan, he is an overestimated Spinner and there are others sitting on the bench or on the national cricket circuit better than him. He is been ineffective and a disappointment every other series. If spinner fails on an Indian tracks, where in the world he is going to shine? The Middle order trouble continues for India, Sachin and Ganguly provided the team with gritty platform but an avaricious Yuvraj failed while Uttappa trying to regain this place played few good “cricketing” [Thanks Rameeze Raja] shots, but it is the Australian composure that took the game away from India.

And for Indian fans, let us console by selecting our feeling(s) on cheering for a team that lost the game from very good winning position?
(A)Atrocious
(B) I am sick and tired
(C) (a 4 letter word) Cricket
(D) All of the above and a full page of your own reasoning + bad words from Indian languages generously sprinkled.

10/11/07

Duck De India

Being the cricket world champ is one part of the achievement but maintaining the status is much bigger a deal, this demands a lot of will and commitment. Australians are super powers of cricket and damn! “they know to maintain the status.”

Yesterday, Australians codified how to win the game while hopeless (Duck De) India meticulously engraved - How to lose the game hands, legs and other body parts down.

It was quite a pathetic start. What worse can happen? No I am not talking about L.Siva or Arul lals commentary. The 2 of the top 3 security net was back in the pavilion for Zero. Work Experience for the top three sums to about 1000 games but in first over India lost 60% of the experience. 10/3 in the first few coupled with fantastic bowling - Indians gave up then and there. Tendulkar was the only player from India who negotiated the pinpoint Australian attack. He played quite remarkably. His drives were classics and quite a delight to watch. Only persons without any kind of cricketing knowledge would raise their voice against Tendulkar. Irfan chipped in few runs while the last wicket partnership tried to restore some pride. The ball that got Tendulkar was a real beauty from Brett Lee.

Yesterday’s game also exposed who plays better swing bowling. The spell of Lee and Johnson proved that much celebrated Yuvraj, Dhoni and Uthappa do not have the technique and temperament to play quality fast bowling. Siddharth of Cricinfo.org mentions Uttappa was out for poor LBW decision, IMO, it was plumb - Uttappa was moving like a crab sideways right across the line and was caught like a deer at the headlight. I really doubt his technical ability to deal fast bowling under swinging conditions.

What was the reason for the loss? Poor planning Or Poor batting or Poor bowling or poor selection committee members or people like Nirjan Shah running the show? I am wondering with such a pathetic inexperienced team how in the world Vengsarkar can make stupid statements about dropping senior players. His warning to the senior players was quite stupid and arrogant. One does not become a senior player over night, a long tenure of effort and commitment gets you the title. That needs to be respected not insulted.

At least now stop the yell and scream over youth, put the T20 world cup on EBAY and start focusing on the Australian tour, if not we are in for more shocks and think about this - next month Team India will be floating on the Australian blue lagoon – result could be brutal than yesterdays.

Ps: Please check this excellent article by Anand Vasu on CricInfo ; Very well written.

10/5/07

Game Day , Ind vs Aus.

The same old story continues, Harbajan, it does not matter how much he contains, he has to pick wickets. Until then he is ineffective. Yuvarj and Tendul over used, while Sreesanth celebrated Holi in October, he was spraying the ball in every possible direction. Batting wise, Gautam Gambu , one more talented player whose talent can only be spotted by Ravi Shastri and Vengsarkar. The powerful Ninja opps Niranjan Shaw , one among top BCCI chamchas mentioned to the press that Gangully was not rested, he was dropped. The only mistake Gangully did was being the top run getter in recent times. Yuvraj played quite well, however in my opinion he slowed down a lot when he was nearing 100. Once upon a time, long ago Indian team had a powerful natural slugger called M.S. Dhoni. Currently on team India’s behalf a missing report has been filed.

Drop the (senior) trio is the new slogan; it is only the senior contribution that won many 50/50 games for India in recent times has been comfortably forgotten. Just because a so called young team won 20/20 (game of sheer chance) writing off the seniors is foolishness, a systematic transition plan would do good for the future.

During my Chennai trip, I watched lot of Cricket on TV. Experience of watching cricket on TV in India is simply Awful and terrible experience. Whenever a batsman scores a four or a six or a 50 an annoying cartoon appears from nowhere and dances to badly composed music. As if this is not enough, more the bowler the broadcaster will be waiting eagerly for the final ball of an over. The telecast is cut when the final ball leaves the bowlers hand. We go to commercials, mostly the first ball in the following over gets yanked. Poor Harsha Bogle and Sunny will be discussing very seriously on cricket etc, suddenly the Air Tel Theme music will be played over their voice with Air Slide. Totally Disgusting! , this becomes worse if it is through DD, Commentators alternate languages; joke is that they do the commentary from the studio.

Yesterday I was watched the game on ZEE Sports, the new Indian sport channel in the US. Zee sports placed their own loud promotions in between every over and made a mess of it. The volumes levels of live telecast was about -2000db while the commercials were set to +2000db, waking up everyone living in my zip code. At 2.00am a moronic voice would suddenly scream and threaten you - Subscribe to ZEE sports call 1800-I-SHALL-IRRITATE-YOU till then. Zee and dish network Dudes don’t get it all, the only folks watching this badly made plug is the “Subscribers”. I wish Zee sports reduce such pathetic self-promotions during live Cricket broadcast. It is more annoying than the help cartoon that popup in MS office products.

EAS Prasanna commenting on Indian bowling has predicted complete shutdown. Indian team looks all set to go back to its popular “We will always suck” mode. 6-0 is on cards.

10/2/07

Game Day , Ind vs Aus.

1st One day saved by rain, but Varuna failed to save India in Kochi. The match started 30 minutes behind schedule. A jam packed stadium filled with picturesque Kerala color. Zaheer khan and the volatile home town boy Sreesanth gave the start.
Ravi “recorded message” Shastri would quote “What doctor had ordered” Australia lost 2 quick wickets, acting captain Gilly gone for a Duck. Indian Fans waving flags and holding banners that contained recipes for Cooking Kangaroo Curry. That was it for next 20+ overs things were slow and Aussie regained their grounds.

The cocky Symonds, Uncle Hayden and little Clarke launched their popular mental disintegration using verbal abuses. On the Indian side, Sreesanth and Harbajan made generous contributions to the verbal abuse fund. All this happened knowing that that Match referee Broad is not so broad minded. Broad often suffers from Dyschromatopsia , the new ICC building fund is all set to be funded using the abuse fund collection, principle donors would be Harbajan and Sreesanth. Symonds would escape unhurt, he was equally guilty.

At around 30 over mark Indian bowling was like Tamil movies, - a joke -. There was no plan or approach. Powar with his red glass looked like “kandaaaaaaaaasamy” was totally ineffective. Harbajan rather than taking wickets, was aiming at containing runs. Moreover he did not bowl dosras, thanks to Chris Broad, who was watching him closely via a special camera hidden inside umpire’s hat. Broad has already reported twice about Harbajan’s action. The rule is if White men don’t get the spin, it is termed chucking. Indians once gain let Australia score about 300+.

Gautam Gambeer did not trouble anyone, Uttappa joined Tendul and blasted some runs, Aussies baited Tendul perfectly and got him out. Uttappa suddenly remembered that this was not 20/20, he got out. Instead of Rahul the Ex-Captain,Yuvaraj “Sixer” Singh walked in, it is to be noted that BCCI paid Yuvraj one crore extra for his 6 sixes, is this not encouraging individualism? Yuvraj played careless and over confident strokes. Australians had a plan for him too and he was taken out in no time. Dravid and Dhoni tried to revive by using various methods ranging from CPR to Defibrillator but Indian top order went into a complete Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation.

Dhoni stayed till the end and added a half century to his statistics. A powerful straight drive by Dhoni landed directly on Sreesanth head [non-striker], a powerful blow , poor Sreesanth - hope he is ok, may be his tantrums gets fixed so that he can focus more on his bowling. Sreesanth reminds me of Randy Moss.

Aussies are one up; their bowling was disciplined to the core and their spinners were better than Indian spinners. One good example was Australians bowlers bowled without a deep fine leg. The fine leg area was wide open and very minimal runs were scored in that area. No room for donkey drops. Dhoni also removed the deep fine leg, but at once, Kandaswaaaamy [Powar] and Sreesanth broke a sack of coconuts and gave about 20 runs [per ball]

T20 champions were day dreaming. I expected the T20 world cup synergy to carryover but gosh! I guess I forgot the fact that “Australia is a better team” - No arguments.

Good day,

ps:Kadasaaaaaaaaamy: A new movie in making - Vikram in zillion getup.One of the getup had a crazy headlight like red color eye mask [close to what Romesgh Powar wears.]