Where do India go from here?

The ODI series lost 4 zuk, and everyone expects the Tests to be a lot worse. What can India do from here? Is it time to play Lele and say 3-0? I hope not, and I don't think so. India have some things going for them, and if I can wear Chappell's hat for now, here's what could and should happen:

a) India have struggled on this tour because of the batting blow outs. For us to do well in the Tests, the no-longer-the-most-powerful-batting-lineup-on-paper should fire. Realistically, only Dravid and Tendulkar have the goods to consistently deliver. But you cannot rule out Laxman and Sehwag coming good in one-off innings. Remember what happened in Aus in 2003-04 (the series Kumble wants India to replicate here) - Dravid and Laxman got runs, Sehwag scored in 1 match and Tendulkar scored in 1 - and we drew the series that we could have won if Bhajji was around in Sydney. In short, what we need is for Dravid and Tendulkar to score 350 runs each in the series, and for Laxman and Sehwag to score atleast 300 runs put together. If this happens, India can provide their bowlers with a target, and set up matches for draws and wins. Don't expect Ganguly/Jaffer/Dhoni to bail you out - these 4 guys need to score. If they don't, we will be mauled.

b) Can Jaffer and Sehwag do what Akash Chopra and Sehwag did in Aus '03-'04? If these two guys can together play out just 1 session every match (yes, just 30 overs combined will do for now), that will go a long way in helping India draw. If they take the shine off the new ball, India's middle order gets that platform to take on the Nels and Steyns of the world. It is bloody critical!

c) The bowling is looking just about ok. Sure, they are inexperienced, but what to do - we are like this only. I would, for the first Test, pick Pathan, Sreesanth, Kumble and Zaheer. Hard on VRV, but we need batting depth please, and there is no guarantee VRV will be the same bowler in the Tests that he was 1 week ago in the practice game. Can these 4 guys pick 20 wickets? Maybe, maybe not - but there are in with a chance. If India get the runs on the board, Kumble can come into play on a hot day, and Zak and Sreesanth can be useful with the new ball. Of course we are risking Pathan as 4th bowler, so that means Ganguly, Tendulkar and Sehwag have to bowl 20 overs for no more than 70 runs. Tough ask, but no choice, really. Once the batting settles, we can then drop Pathan for VRV (a better wicket taking option), or even go for Bhajji.

d) Catch anything that comes your way, please! The one thing Chappell can control directly - please ensure that this is pukka. If it is not, we are finished. Dropping Kallis on 10 can be dreadful.

e) Their batting is weak - except for the last game we had them struggling in every ODI. Smith is struggling against Zaheer, the middle order is not in great form, and only the lower order (Boucher/Kemp/Pollock) are scoring. Hopefully Kumble can account for them. Make early inroads, and we can put pressure on their batting.

f) We need some bloody luck. No shoulder before wicket decisions against Tendulkar please, and please let it rain now and then, especially if we are struggling. If there is no rain, let it be so bloody hot that any moisture and grass disappears quickly, so India have only the bounce to counter, and not the movement.

g) Back to Tendulkar - I am sure he has taken Lara and Ponting's recent scoring achievements on board, and can feel them breathing down his shoulder in the century making leaderboard. If he can score 400 runs in the series, how cool will that be? The pressure from the media and BCCI will reduce dramatically, the mood of the nation will lift a lot, and the coffee will taste a lot better. Tendulkar may never tour SA again - that should spur him on to show them why he is the world's best batsman.

Are the above probable? Sure they are. If they do happen, India can come back with a decent result. If they do not, finis.

Ok, so where's my money? SA to win 1-0. Hope I am wrong, and we can win a Test atleast.

England and what might have been

Couldn't stop myself from repeating "what might have been" and "if only..." a 100 times today while watching Monty and Harmison dismantle Australia with some good Test match bowling on a flattish first day wicket. Of course I am referring to that damn blow out in Adelaide, where England did worse than India could ever manage, and got bowled out for cheap on the 5th day after dominating 4 days, and then letting Aus rattle up 5 an over like they were sucking on an icecream!

If only England could hold their nerves on Day 5, if only they did not allow Warne to swarm all over them, if only KP restrained himself from playing that sweep so early on...

It would have been 1-0 going into Perth, and all to play for, especially with Aus bowled out for 244. Anyhow, all is not lost yet - if England can win this one (they have given themselves every chance), it sets up Melbourne and Sydney beautifully.

But I love the English fans - some of the comments on the Guardian/Telegraph blogs are hilarious. Here's one super pessimistic fan:

If we manage to score 400 quick runs in our 1st innings, and bowl out the Aussies cheaply on day 3 to give ourselves a 150 run chase in two days...

... we will still have 6 sessions left in which to humilate ourselves with a dreadful batting collapse.

Still, got to be optimistic.

Fantastic stuff - but can't blame him after Bizzare-O day in Adelaide.

Dream day for Monty

Very few days can be as amazing for a cricketer as Monty had today.
Imagine the backdrop to this - you are not picked for the first two matches of your first Ashes series, even though the entire world thought you deserved a place ahead of Giles. The coach is perhaps the only one against you. The clamour is so loud for you to come into the team, it almost feels like Superman being kept out of the team. It adds so much unnecessary pressure on you, and this is still your first season in international cricket. Finally the team management picks you, but on a pitch that was not so long ago known for pace, bounce and 6 byes!

You see the pitch, and you think - of shit, this is batting paradise and Ricky Ponting's lip smacking can be heard in your dressing room. What do you do then?

Why, go out there and pick 5 wickets, of course! What amazing stuff - fairytale innit? Speaks a lot for his temperament, his ability, and above all, sheer bloody luck. He has the mojo now - send him in next to bat I say!

Ripley's believe it or not!

Indian cricket can fill up one whole edition of Ripley's. Who would have thought?

Dada back! To the Test Team! To shore up the batting on bouncy pitches in South Africa!
Harsha Bhogle and Sambit Bal summarize an unsummarizable situation the best they can. I cannot even begin to comprehend what is happening.

I truly hope that somehow Ganguly gets a swinging hundred or two in the Tests, but I will not be holding my breath. A not-so-good month and a bit in prospect for the Indian fan, I suspect.

Aah, Adelaide

Such wonderful memories from 3 years back - the venue of one of Indian cricket's most famous wins.

- Aus ending Day 1 seemingly unstoppable at 400/5, with Mr. Ponting at 176*.
- Kumble picking 5 to restrict them (!!) to 556 and not 700.
- India ending Day 2 at 180/4 - struggling, but a promising partnership between that old pair of Lax and Rahul. Aus always are wary of these two guys in tandem.
- Dravid's magnificient innings of 233, getting India very close to Aus' first innings. Lax scoring another century V Aus.
- No Warne, no McGrath - MacGill hammered, and so were the rest.
- Where did Agarkar get that spell from? 6 for fucking 41?? Never before, never after. Whatever he does from then on end, he will always have this spell to think back upon and smile.
- Complacent Aus - all out for 196. But would that have happened if not for Sachin's two magic deliveries to get Steve Waugh and Martyn out? I doubt it. Remember, Sachin was struggling getting into this series, and didn't fire with the bat. But try keeping him out of the action!
- That level headed man again - Rahul, holding the chase together and getting us home with 72 n.o. Sehwag threatened to win it in a few overs before getting carried away. Tendulkar played well, but Laxman's flurry of boundaries finally eased the pressure off. How they missed Warney.

Wow, great time was had by all Indian fans.

Can England do the same now?

- McGrath and Warne are back in the team and tormenting England. However, Pigeon seems to have an injury, and Warne was far from his best in Brisbane.
- England can score heavily here - and if they do, they can put pressure on Aus. India showed how. 2 guys need to score big, and the others need to chip in with 30s atleast.
- If Agarkar can take a 6 wicket haul, so can Freddie/Harmy.
- All is not lost even after conceding 400 runs on Day 1. India showed that in Adelaide.

Please England, do this for the neutrals. Draw the series going into Perth, thank you very much.

We probably don't deserve a good cricket team

Not after this and this anyway. Shame on us!

Truth is, we are not as good as the media and public expectations are. We are a middling team with youngsters who have never ever encountered conditions like those in SA. Remember, no team has done well in SA except perhaps Australia. Sure we can do better, but nothing deserves reactions like those occuring in India at the moment.

To add injury to insult, Dravid is out of the next two ODIs. That is a severe blow, and it is now surely time for Sachin, Sehwag and Kaif (the three most experienced batsmen) to score 200 runs between them. Dhoni has shown the world (and proving me wrong in the process) that what he lacks for in technique he makes up for in spirit - hopefully that will rub off on a few bowlers as well. India may not win a single game in the ODI series, but if they are seen as improving, that can augur well for the Tests to follow.

Come on you guys - dig deep, and show them what you got!

1-0 Aus

Well well - this Ashes has started like all others in recent living memory - an easy peasy Aussie win. It was quite boring to watch, to be honest, except for one brief spell when KP and Vollingwood took to Warne and co. Freddie appeared weighed down, and that can't be good for the team. However we clutch at straws, and most of England's top order got some runs, so hopefully Adelaide will see them scoring heavy. How they can take 20 Aus wickets, though, remains a major concern. Especially if Harmison insists on bowling direct to second slip.

Speaking of which, do make it a point to read Martin Johnson wherever he writes. He is bloody funny - and his take on Harmy's wonder ball first up at the Gabba made me forget that India are playing woeful.

Maybe it was Harmison simply being prescient, because it quickly became obvious that the sooner the ball found its way into Flintoff's hands, the better.

Read his articles in the Telegraph, and the Age. Also make it a point to follow some comments on the respective blogs - good banter for a neutral to enjoy without being too emotionally involved.

And yeah, India lost, again. They should not have - not after having SA at 70 odd for 6! But they did, and quite badly. The heat is well and truly on at home - politicians are debating it in Parliament, the BCCI is adding more pressure by sending additional monitors, and the team management is doing the morale of its batsmen no good by picking a standby wicketkeeper over 3 established bats. They better turn it around quick - can't be easy though.

Business as usual in the Southern Hemisphere

- India get hammered against SA
- Durban gets another sub-100 score from India
- Only Sachin and Rahul look anywhere close to being capable of facing up to the music
- SA has a truckload of pacemen who can deliver chin music
- India's spinners struggle

- Australia mount yet another 300 plus score on Day 1 of a critical Test series
- Ponting hammers yet another century in Australia. He is probably the best player of pace bowling in the world
- England come a cropper yet again on Day 1 of the Ashes
- Brisbane looks beautiful and bloody hot

Who says sport is unpredictable?

Lara the megastar

Watching Lara take on Kaneria and gang as I write this - the effortless ease with which he can turn it on is just way too amazing. He is 58 off 46 balls, and the ability to find the gaps and also clear the outfield is unparalleled.

I was listening in to the Cricinfo Roundtable discussion, where everyone (Ian Chappell, Wright, Ravi Shastri and Tony Greig) ranked him as the best in the world. Their assessment was based on the fact that he dominates better than everyone else (read Sachin and Ponting), he looks great while in full flow and has done it better than everyone else against all attacks, against world class spin and in all conditions. I agree - but not fully.

At his best, he is the best in the world, no question about that. If there was a one off match against the best from Pluto, you would probably pick Lara at his best (or Ponting on current form). However, if you wanted someone to play the entire year against all forms of opposition and want consistent aggression and class, you would pick Tendulkar at his best (which means the late '90s). Lara is the one-off maverick, Ponting now is the big match bull, and Sachin is the consistent high class performer.

Update 2: Still going strong, our man. 165 not out at a run a ball. His manhandling of Kaneria and Shoaib Malik is outstanding to watch. How can we forget one of his greatest abilities - to be able to convert 100s into big, big ones. 400, 501, 375, 277...
Update 1: 4-0-6-6-6-4 off one Kaneria over before I could finish the post above, and he has rocketed on to 92 off 63! Lara added 40 runs before I could finish one blog post. Can anyone else do that in a Test match?? Away from home??

ICC Champions - not so bad after all

The event is proving many sceptics wrong, completely by accident. Bad surfaces usually create interesting matches. Throw in other factors like the dew, and you are bound to get a few upsets, strange matches and unpredictability. We now have a situation where there is every possibility that a major cricket tournament being held on the slow, low pitches of the Indian subcontinent may well have no semi-finalists from Asia. Who would have thought that was possible?

My money was on Sri Lanka going all the way, and there are out of the tournament already. Pakistan are being Pakistan - blowing hot and cold. India struggled to a loss against the Windies yesterday in a bizzare match yesterday, and now have the huge task of defeating Australia to go through.

On most of these pitches, a score of 250 seems to be a high score, and the dew is messing up the captains' minds more than anything else. No one really knows how this tournament will pan out in the end - which suits the ICC well. The pity, of course, is that this came about completely by accident - if the ICC could change anything, they would have asked for pitches where 300 was the minimum the team batting first had to get. So in a strange fashion that is unique to cricket, the tournament is better off because of the lack of quality in the pitches.

Last observation - Manjrekar got it right, cricket in India is no religion. It is Indian cricket that is the opium of the masses. Embarassingly empty stands greet every other match. Blame it on the ticket prices, blame it on saturation-level cricket on TV, blame it on big city distraction - it indeed looks ominous for cricket in general when ODIs in India are played to empty stands. I could actually see many empty seats yesterday when India played WI. Now that was unthinkable! Strongest statement yet by the fans that the administrators better get their house in order - i.e. quality over quantity, better pricing and value for money in the stadium, and most importantly - focus on the cricket, not merely on the finances.

You Tube - an unbelievable story

Can you even begin to believe this? 2 young buggers like you and me go to a dinner party in SFO, shoot a video and want to share that with friends. They try sending email but it just keeps bouncing back. They try to upload it on the Net, but it is too much of a hassle. What would you and I do? Just say, fuck it, not worth the damn effort. What did these guys do? Go into their garage (probably the garage does the trick!!! - did too with HP, Google etc) - and came up with a simple technical/user-driven solution called You Tube. If you don't know what they heck You Tube is, you must be living under a rock or something. They built an easy-to-upload and use video sharing site, and brilliantly, developed the concept of community around it. People could share videos, comment on it, blog about it, swap it around etc. Suddenly, in America and rest of the broadband-driven world, people started watching and sharing TV soap clips, porn, sports clips, porn, funny home videos, porn at their convenience - not when the big networks wanted them to watch. How cool - but since all of this was for free, what next? Businessweek asked this question a few months back, and concluded the article, well, without a serious conclusion. How could they monetise this please?

Well, they did, and how! None other than big daddy Google paid a fuckintastic, unbelievable, crazy 1.6 billion $ (yes, with a b, not a m) for this! The damn founders are bloody 29 and 27 still! The rest of the world is shaking heads with disbelief. This cannot be true.

Take a look at these buggers - the founders who suddenly are richer by atleast 200 mill $ each! Appropriately, in a you Tube video. That could so easily be you, me, or the class back bencher from your school/college. No one can be so damn smart/lucky - whichever way you look at it!



So how will Google recover that money? It is a lot of money by even Google's standards. Obviously their strategy is to monetize the millions of visitors' eyeballs with the video version of Adwords. How it will pan out is a billion $ question. It is one thing to have unobtrusive text ads, quite another to put video ads on a home video of 3 chicks dancing the Ho Dance in Chelsea! And what about copyright problems? A huge % of videos are in clear copyright violation - but hey, that is the Net isin't it? Interesting, very interesting.

By the way, one of the founders (Steve Hurley) is a design guy - logos and stuff (did the design for Paypal), and the other dude (Chan) is a techie geek - comp. science etc. No MBA, no nothing. Just an idea, the guts to do it, and the vision to expand the horizons, the right environment (Silicon Valley, the VC network, the concepts etc) and sheer luck. Wonderful stuff!

England football = Indian cricket

I always drew the parallel between the passion England have for football (passion is too mild a word perhaps) and how Indians feel about cricket. That was a reasonable no-brainer to deduce. Dileep Premachandran here takes that further, and provides a wonderful point of view - the England football team is in fact very similar to the Indian cricket team. His arguments are persuasive - hanging of the hat on one or two matches (India V Aus 2001, Eng V Germany in Munich), 1 World Cup win last century each, focus on megastars (Tendulkar/Dravid, Gerrard/Rooney), Chappell/Eriksson, and more recently John Terry and Dravid.

Beautiful, isn't it? In fact the one major difference I see here is that atleast English fans have one of the world's best domestic leagues, where they get quality football every week, whereas us poor Indian fans just get to watch one team battle it out. A lesson there for all concerned?

The ODI debate

Rohit Brijnath is one of the best sports writers around - based in Australia now, it is unfortunate that he does not write more regularly on Indian cricket/sport (he does have a weekly in the Hindu, and occasionally in BBC website, but little else). I remember his Sportstar writing vividly, and wasn't he a host of a TV sports program on DD many moons ago?

Please take the time off to read this wonderful piece on the glut that is one day cricket.

The entire conversation of cricket has altered. Debate on footwork or whether spinners should toss the ball up has vanished, an old appreciation slowly leaching out of the stadium. Instead, we are now a reactive audience.

The world's finest batsman once is now Tendulkar one day, Endulkar the next. Sehwag is God with every six and devil when caught on the boundary. Captains are hailed at 20 overs and heckled at 40.

There was a time when I remembered everything there was to remember about every cricket game played, especially if India was involved. I don't, anymore. When did Dravid score an ODI century last? When did Kumble last pick 4 wickets in an innings? Do you remember a recent McGrath ODI spell where he took out the top order cheaply? I don't. I know that generally India are losing more than they are winning - but I don't immediately recall what the scoreline was when Pakistan came to India in 2005! You know things are getting out of hand when you start forgetting India - Pakistan encounters.

Mercifully, my Test cricket knowledge has remained reasonably intact - obviously because India plays very little Test cricket nowadays, and personally for me Test Cricket is quite enjoyable.

Look, I am not being this snooty English-media fed bugger who claims Test cricket is the ultimate, and everything else is hogwash. I think one day cricket and Twenty20 cricket are very entertaining, and are responsible in more ways than one for reviving Test cricket worldwide. My grouse is with the quantity - which has a serious effect on quality. Cricket series must have a meaning, a set routine and must build on a sense of anticipation. There must be something more than just the day's match to play for. When India played the Test series in the Windies this summer, they were playing for a first series win outside the subcontinent for donkeys' years. Now that is memorable. Contrast that with when India played in KL later on in a tri-series. Contrast that now with the Ashes - with a 100 year plus history. The World Cup has huge merit - and so will the Champions Trophy - only if the ICC got its scheduling right. I am also looking forward to India touring South Africa this Nov - to see how Dhoni, Raina and the young uns cope on the first real test of pace and bounce. The ODIs and Tests there will be exciting to watch.

It does not take an advanced degree in space research or the intellect of Duckworth and Lewis to come up with a schedule that provides meaning and context to bilateral series for both Tests and ODIs. Then, and only then, will every ODI played have relevance and meaning tonight's TV analysis and tomorrows' screaming headlines. I shudder to think of what will happen if and when countries start scheduling stand-alone Twenty20 tri-series in Papua New Guinea just because they have the weekend off.

Less, sometimes, is really more.

Good old Pakistan cricket

"If God wants I will obviously lead the side one day."
Mohammad Yousuf bypasses Pakistan's national selectors
- Cricinfo

Pakistan cricket - What would we do without them?

3 captain changes in 2 days, the Chairman resigns 2 months before his term expired, the Manager sacked, the Assistant coach sacked for no apparent reason, some more office bearers resign/sacked, rumours about the suspended captain also being sacked, the first Test match forfeit ever, ball tampering/match fixing/ [replace with scandal of the season], fervent calls to God at the drop of a hat/player or grant of a Man of the Match Award, the President/Dictator for Life having a say on their arch-rivals' hairstyles, ex-greats sniping at each other, current prima donnas strutting around like Brit rock stars - it has them all!

I feel for the average Pakistani cricket fan - infuriating does not begin to describe what it must feel like to support this motley crew.

How sad was that engine blow out?

Did you watch the Suzuka F1 yesterday? Did your gut wrench? Ugh it was sad wasn't it? I am a big time Schumi fan - so I definitely felt bad that after leading so easily and taking a big step towards winning an unthinkable 8th World Championship, the damn Ferrari engine (which has been so unbelievably reliable) had to blow up at that bloody race!

Schumi, who has won pretty much everything there is to be won in F1 many times over must have felt immense disappointment - here was a championship that was gone for all money 8 races ago, and then to script an amazing turnaround on your last year on the circuit, and to see your prized asset - the Ferrari reliability - fail when comfortably in front of your closest rival - that feeling is something I wish I never have to experience.

What makes it worse is that the whole thing was being set up beautifully for a winner-take-all in Brazil. Now Alonso has to pretty much turn up and win the Championship.

It definitely ruined my day.

Big bad world

14 countries (6%) done, 200 odd to go! The world is a huge place, and here's where I have been. Neat tool from here.



create your own visited countries map

Here's what I would like it to be in a year's time please, thank you God! No, not asking for much- just 16 more, including a lot of them small ones in the West Indies.



create your own visited countries map

The Tendulkar myth

You know what I really hate about Tendulkar scoring a century? The attitude of many of my fellow countrymen - who immediately go 'oh, so what, India will now surely lose' - like it is a siamese-twin type occurance. Tendulkar century - India lose - joined at the bloody hip!

What utter bullshit - I feel like screaming. Heck, I have, many times over the years.

Yesterday was no different. Our man scored a wonderful century not out while everyone around him in his team struggled. Remember, he was coming back from a 6 month+ layoff. India notched up 309, with Sachin getting nearly 50% of the runs. Trigger enough for the blue blooded Indian fan to all but hand over the winners cheque to the Windies - why? because Sachin scored a century, so surely, but surely, India will lose!!!

Just when the match was shaping up nicely with the Windies taking the battle right up to the Indians, the heavens opened up, giving Duckworth and Lewis a chance to weave their sheer magic and brilliance again - and India actually lost. Did I sense a whole bunch of guys going - there we go again, see see India lost, you know why - because Sachin scored a century!

Here's my point - what the f*@$ can Sachin do to prevent Mr. Rain God from making his presence felt? I realised, 10 minutes of spleen-venting later, that I was cutting short my time on Planet Earth. I therefore turned to Encyclopaedia Cricketica - i.e. Statsguru. Some fiddling around gave me the stat I was looking for. Here goes -

Tendulkar has scored 40 centuries in ODIs (yes, that many. No, no one is close. The next highest, if you must know, is a gentleman called Ganguly, at 22)
India have won 28 of those matches (yes, that means 70%. yes, a significant number)
One no result, so India have lost 11 of the 40 games (27.5% of the games - yes, a big enough number, but not as big when you relate it to context of the strength of the Indian team over the years and the sheer base on which we are operating - 40 games is a lot of games).

Granted, Lara, Ponting, Jayasuriya and even Ganguly have much better winning percentages, but they have all scored half the number of centuries notched up by Sachin. That is staggering, and the percentage is not vastly different (Lara 85%, Ganguly - 81%, Ponting - 80%, Sachin - 70%).

So please, Sachin haters, appreciate the man for what he is worth. India wins much more often when Sachin scores a century. Let him go for it - ok? Good for your health and mine.

The real thing

Awkward pitch, with many balls keeping low, and many others rearing chest high from good length.

Tendulkar wannabe #1 (Sehwag) - clean bowled playing back to a pitched up ball that kept low.
Tendulkar wannabe # 2 (or Sehwag wannabe #1 - Dhoni) - clean bowled playing back to a pitched up ball that kept low.

The current God in the batting line up (Dravid) - LBW, playing back to a pitched up ball that kept low.

Tendulkar - 100* and going strong (as I write this).

Ashes fever already

The Ashes is over 2 months away, there is an ICC tournament before that, and Australia are engaged in an ODI series in KL as we speak - but England and Aus cannot wait for the Ashes to start. Nothing else matters to England - though Australia seem to care that little bit more about the World Cup. ICC Champions Trophy - what's that now?

The Internet is buzzing with stuff re: the Ashes - yesterday England announced its team (on the anniversary of last year's fantastic series win at the Oval). I personally cannot wait for the Ashes - it will be terrific to watch, if England turn up fit and fine. English pundits are a bit worried - Boycott does not rate England's chances that highly, Mike Selvey is worried that England are carrying far too many players recovering from injury (why is that such an English trait?) - but the best writing on the Ashes this year will be from Tim de Lisle, who will be blogging on Cricinfo. I love his writing, and the blog format will encourage him to be more opinionated and incisive. Good fun, all of this!

I hope Australia stack up their online presence soon - Ian Chappell blogging will be great to read, as long as he does not mention Dougie Walters! Ian Healy can be counted upon to be to the point, and Mr. Steve Waugh must please get his hands dirty on the Internet.

My early prediction - Aus win this 3-1. All other caveats and disclaimers and what-ifs will come later.

A superstar if there ever was one

'Great' , 'superstar', 'genius', 'legend' - words used so loosely we don't even know what it signifies anymore. Dhoni has been called all of these, and he has not even faced quick bowling in Aus/SA yet. Sania was called all of these - and she is struggling to get past Round 1. The England football team (and Gerrard/Lampard/Beckham) were elevated to planetary status but couldn't make any impression in the World Cup.

However, one man richly deserves all these words - in fact they should perhaps retire one of these words along with him - so it is not used like confetti. M. Schumacher announced his retirement yesterday, and the world he dominated will never be the same again. To win one race in a sport that just 20 can participate in is great - but to win 7 world championships, to be on the verge of winning the 8th, to be on top of his art for over 15 years, to dominate and to be more hungry than fitter youngsters and to generally be synonymous with a sport where luck plays such a huge part is nothing short of genius.

Yesterday's race was indicative of his presence. Even though he qualified second behind Kimi, there was somehow a feeling of inevitability that he would get eventually win - which he did comfortably - timing his pits perfectly, generating the fast laps when it mattered (when Kimi pitted) and just pulling away easily to win.

Yesterday's press conference was also very instructive of his achievements. Flanked on both sides by teenagers in a sport meant for drivers like them, he clearly showed the world why he is special.

I got initiated onto F1 like many boys my age thanks to the nature of the sport - adrenalin, speed, glitz - I stayed on because of Schumi. And I am not the only one.

That is the man's power. A superstar if there ever was one.

Lage Raho Rajkumar Hirani and gang

I have pretty much stopped watching movies - too long, too hackneyed, too boring, too crowded, too braindead for my liking.

However, we went yesterday to Lage Raho Munnabhai and boy, did we enjoy it? Hilariously funny, thought-provoking, fast-paced - excellent movie. The hero, in my book anyway, was the director and screenplay writer - Raju Hirani and a dude called Abhijat Joshi. Kudos, gentlemen - to have the balls to write a script like this, weave in Gandhiji, make the whole thing contemporary, add humour, keep the pace going for 3 hours, and make it appealing to SEC A guys like wifey and me, as well as lower SEC junta in rural Bihar. It requires a special creative talent to make something like this happen.

If you haven't watched it, please go. I recommend a good multiplex, buy some good food and drinks, pay a bit extra for good seats and indulge yourself. We spent a good 600 Rs for food, parking and tickets - can't think of better ways of spending that money.

Sonia - please don't come to Blore

Apologies to my massive reader base for disappearing from these pages for a while - things have been very hectic at work - air travel in India is marginally better than tooth extraction, and I have been doing a lot of flying lately.

I chose to venture out this Sunday in Bangalore - and regretted every single moment of it. Sonia and her cohorts vandalized Bangalore, screwed our already-overflowing roads, and created enough havoc on what should have been a peaceful Sunday. A journey that should take 15 mins took 2 hours. A stranded few still haven't reached home!

200,000 people with nothing better to do were shepherded into government buses, tempos, rickety vehicles with 3 1/2 wheels and tongas - all with the promise of 100 Rs, some food and lots of illicit liquor in packets (sarai). I bet my bottom paisa that 98.25% of the attendees wouldn't have understood a word of the pearls of wisdom spouted by the lady with the accent.

I spoke to a guy who was asked to come, but refused - he was very happy because his neighbours went, saw and came back thirsty - let alone sarai, they didn't even get a glass of water to drink.

What a strange country we live in - where 85 year old people come in from far-flung villages to watch an Italian-turned-Indian dole out some shit for TV consumption. And the lady had the gall to criticize the current Govt. for showing apathy towards Bangalore's infrastructure problems.

Madam, you are part of the problem. Please conduct such rallies in some remote village - don't add to the mess that we are in already. Please don't come! Please!

Too much of a good thing!

All year long, the Brits long for the freakin' Sun, struggling to keep the cold out and struggling with the miserable rain. And now they can't stand it when the heat is on. These Brits, I tell you! 36 degs and they want out. Please come to Delhi in the summer, dearies - 47 and counting will make you all yearn for peak January winter.

As Obelix says, these Britons are crazy!

Thank God for British humour

In a bloody mad world, where cannot-be-rationalized shit happens (Zidane's head butt, The Mumbai serial bomb blasts and the Israel-Lebanon-Hezbollah conflict), I sincerely recommend a strong dose of good old Brit humour to make sense of it all. Call me escapist, but if the damn terrorists (and the apparently accused - like Zidane was) could read up such stuff, they would have far less time to create damage.

Thank you, Martin Johnson, for livening up cricket, and life, for me!

The hell hole called Koramangala

Koramangala used to be a very beautiful, very posh and very nice extension of Bangalore 10 years back. I remember my first job in Bangalore, with the office on the main Koramangala road just 200 meters from Raheja Arcade. The road was spacious, not too much traffic, the restaurants were great and it was a place one aspired to come to/live in/hang out etc. The travel time from my home to Koramangala (distance ~ 12 km) was not more than 30 mins.

Come 2006, and one visit to Koramangala is enough to convince any die hard city slicker to dump it all and move to the Amazon with a fishing rod in hand and Odomus in the pocket. Getting into Koramangala from any side is pretty much impossible. Try the Dairy Circle route - the flyover (which took 100 years to build) has cleared up that junction, but has pushed the traffic jam to just after the flyover ends (opposite Christ College). 30 mins is on par to cross Christ College and the Forum at peak hours. Try the Indiranagar side, from the Inner Ring Road. Just after the Sony Showroom, be prepared for undefined traffic logjams (could vary from 30 mins - 1 1/2 hrs) between Canara Bank and BDA Complex and beyond. Try Silk Board and Madivala - same bloody story, and the oneways don't help either.

Net net, the only option is perhaps a drop from the sky via helicopter.

What's happening (according to me anyway) is that flyovers are being done on all sides - Dairy Circle, Silk Board and Indiranagar Inner Ring Road - but the heart of the matter is left undisturbed. Traffic has grown exponentially, and the roads within the locality have remained the same. This has led to a logjam that logically cannot be cleared unless traffic reduces, because there is no place to expand roads!

Why, oh why did this come to such a pass?
The supreme irony, however, is that 2400 sq feet sites go for anything between 1 crore - 1.5 crore now. Surreal, crazy, simply unexplainable!

Yay a significant series win overseas

- At last - something to savour. A serious Test series win overseas against meaningful opposition.
- History will probably forget that this Windies team was one of the weakest ever.
- History will forget that we could have won this 3-0 atleast.
- Dravid was an absolute colossus - really!
- Kumble was terrific throughout - amazing how he can keep churning out performances like this when it matters, and increasingly overseas as well.
- Poor Sachin - missed out this series, and may actually end his career without ever being part of a team that won overseas.
- Ganguly who?

No, this is big. This is real big, for a starved nation. Why does it not feel so? Is it me? Is it the football? Is it the awkward timings of the matches? This must be BIG. I guess it will be, soon enough!

What do I know about football?

Nothing at all, absolute zilch!
After all, I predicted foolishly that Riquelme and Messi and Crespo would be the attacking force that would put German aspirations to rest. How was I to know Argentina would prefer the defensive tactics usually used by Germany and Italy? What do I know?
Was I crazy to assume Rooney, Gerrard and Lampard - absolute stars for their respective English clubs where they scored goals at will - would be able to even half-replicate that form in an England shirt? Of course I was - and I was plain stupid to ignore England's terrible penalty kicking!
However, my biggest blunder has to be the absolutely naive assumption that a bunch of 11 brilliant footballers should make a hald decent team with attacking intentions. Wrong, plain wrong! Ronaldinho/Ronaldo/Adriano/Kaka/Robinho simply cannot score when they play with each other against a half decent organized team, evidently!

So there you have it - 3 of my 4 predictions went totally awry, and my grandmom predicted Italy would win, so that is no consolation.

What do I know about football? Or was the penalty shootouts football at all?

The World Cup will pan out this way

30th June -
Germany V Argentina - Argentina win 2-1, Riquelme and Messi play huge roles - Messi as sub after Germany take the lead. Germany heartbroken, but Arg too good for them.

Italy V Ukraine - Italy win easy this time (for a change). Shevchenko goes off injured/subbed in second half. Italy win 1-0 but never troubled.

1st July - England V Portugal - The 3 Lions win, thanks to an inspired Rooney and Gerrard performance. Gerrard scores, and so does Rooney, and Portugal finish up with 10 men or lesser.

1st July - Brazil - France - Brazil win, quite easily again. Henry fails to inspire and still goes on complaining. Zidane's last game for France is disappointing, and Ronaldinho scores his first of the World Cup.

Semis:
4th July - Argentina V Italy - Argentina win, but deep into extra time. Dogged Italy defend like hell, and show zero initiative upfront. Argentina squander numerous chances, but come through somehow, like in the Mexico game.

5th July - England V Brazil - England's teetering World Cup campaign finally ends at Brazil's hands. They put up a good show, but Brazil has too much firepower. Beckham gets sent off, and England lose 2-0.

Finals:
9th July - Argentina V Brazil - Finally, Argentina manage to pull it through with better defensive discipline. Ronaldinho V Riquelme is the contest of the World Cup, and even though Ronaldinho triumphs, his forwards let him down. Argentina score of their only available chances and win 2-0.

There you have it now. I have it all worked out!

Don't write England off just yet

The English press is great fun for a neutral with more than passing interest in the fortunes of England's sporting adventures. It is a no-holds-barred exercise - the team is either the best in the world, or the absolute worst. Every single thing is analysed threadbare in a style that is quintessential English - I love lapping it up, and it obviously does not get bigger for them than the World Cup. Do read the Guardian/Times/Telegraph for fantastic coverage of the World Cup - well worth your time.

I saw the England-Ecuador match yesterday, and England did nothing much to prove my billing that they, along with Brazil and Argentina are the favourites to win. However, I still back that suggestion. Reason is, they have the potential. Lampard is still struggling to do anything meaningful, but we all know how lethal he can be. Rooney is just about coming back into full fitness, and we all know the magic he can conjure from nowhere. The killer of course is Gerrard, who is probably one of the best players in the world. His impact on this World Cup has been very marginal, but he can burst into life, ignite England, and demolish the opposition in a snap.

Add to that the fact that Portugal is missing several key players after a terrible match up against Holland (Deco out to suspension, Figo very likely out due to head butt, and Ronaldo most likely out to injury) - and England can still make it to the semis. At that stage, you would be foolish to write off a team that has Gerrard, Rooney and Lampard in it. Moments of inspired football can change the course of the game, and England are way off their peak still.

Damn you Indiranagar Flyover

Damn you UP State Bridge Corporation - how the hell did you get the contract to build the flyover, and why the heck did you abandon it midway through? I don't care much about late payments, no payments, labour unrest, excessive monsoons, tsunamis, Katrina and the like. These are all part of being in the construction business, and if you cannot manage it, too bad, get out of business. You have no bloody right to inflict unbelievable misery on lakhs of us every single day for the last 3?4? years!

Damn you BDA for letting things meander along for so bloody long. Damn your bloody deadlines which are not worth the paint used on the boards put up around the site. You now mention 30th June (4 freaking days away!) for completion of the main flyover. I will swear off every single vice I have if that happens! And I urge fellow Bangaloreans to save your lives and not go on it even if they do open it up - guaranteed mishaps ahead!

Damn you politicians - you go to Delhi so bloody often, but don't realise how badly behind you all are compared to that city. Flyovers are not drugs that take 12 years of testing on freaking animals and humans before release - they usually take no more than 6 months to complete, not bloody 4 odd years with no end in sight.

Damn you Manmohan and HDK - why do you launch new bloody projects like the Metro and the Electronic City flyover when you haven't come close to completing projects started last century? Can you imagine the mess this city will be with similar project management and pace? The whole city dug up for the metro, labour unrest and delayed payments, political opposition and therefore unfilled holes all over the place - a sure recipe for mass scale migration from Bangalore to Bagepalli or Chitradurga!

Damn you all!

Many top teams still in first gear

The World Cup is underway - and bleary eyedness is underway. The second game starts at 930 PM - very bearable and watchable, but the last match of the day starts at 0030 IST and is out of reach for me so far.

Yesterday was a half-decent game of football - more notable for the spirit shown by the Aussies. Have you noticed how often we mention the Aussies and spirit in the same line when we talk sport?!? Brazil won 2-0, but it was a laboured win. People will write that they are too old/sluggish/blahblah - but end result is that they are through to the next round having won both matches. Same goes for England - struggle they did, but two wins out of two with Rooney getting back after injury can't be that bad.

Argentina has impressed so far, but in a tournament this size, what is more important is to win when it matters - at the business end of the tournament. I think Brazil and England have not yet shifted gears. I rank Argentina very highly - Riquelme is an unbelievable player, and so is Messi.

In my book, the World Cup will be won by one of these three teams.

We should be winning this

Good job India to come back from a bad position to turn the screws on the Windies, and reach a stage where one good ball could have won the match. Bad job India for getting into such a terrible position early on in the Test AND not being able to finish the tail off.

The truth is that India are the superior team and should win the series. That we managed to dig a big hole for ourselves, and then somehow clambered out of it does not take away from the fact that we are better ranked, better equipped and SHOULD WIN! It's all fine to say that we should be happy with a draw and the boys fought well, but we really should be winning this!

Sexy Test match cricket!

Yay - Test match cricket is so so wonderful in its entirety. Stretches of play during the game may not be so cool or even boring to many, but looking at the bigger picture of the game in Antigua, after the pendulum swung this way and that, it is still anybody's to lose. Wonderful, innit?

And just look at the Sri Lanka performance against the English side who looked unstoppable last year at home. Of course, different matter that England should ideally stop playing anyone else but Australia - they just don't seem to care about anyone else. In fact, England should not play any other sport in a World Cup (of football I mean) year. Every one is so obsessed on the metatarsal that broke, I don't think too many tears will be shed if England lose today, and then go on and lose to Pakistan (which looks very very likely with Freddie hobbling).

Central A/C for a city

Bangalore is centrally air - conditioned. Middle of summer in most parts of India - but Bangalore is an unbelievable 24 degs at noon, and a chilly and nippy 18 at night. No a/c required, no fans needed, blankets are out in full force and early morning walkers wear jumpers and woolen mufflers!
Take that, Mumbai/Delhi/Chennai and bloody Hyd!

ODI Facts of Life

India lost 4-1 to the no-hopers Windies in the Carribean, and much breast beating has started, including the now-familiar cries to bring back Ganguly, Kapil Dev and CK Nayadu. So a team that had a stupendous ODI run in the recent past has been brought back to ground level with this 'shock' defeat. However here are a few facts of life in the ODI version for India:

- ODIs are not very predictable. On your day, you can win, irrespective of how good or bad you/your opposition is. It is just the way it is - unless you are Australia, wherein you win much much more than you lose because you are so bloody good.
- India are always very very strong in home conditions. Remember, the great ODI winning streak was accomplished in India (V SL and SA), Pakistan (pitches similar to Indian ones) and back in India V England. India are historically not so good at adopting away from home.
- India is not alone in being unable to adopt away from home - again, except for Aus, most other teams struggle while travelling.
- India has a very inexperienced team. The bowling attack is young and green, and the batting is not that much different. They will need time and experience of losing overseas to pull up socks.
- India looks much more fitter on the field than ever before. The buzz is better, the fielding is sharper, and they look like a team.

In summary, what I have been trying to say here is that India are not as good as the home results indicated, nor as bad as the Windies loss denotes. We are a middling team, along with a bunch of other teams - but still a far way away from Australia at their best. However, we are looking up - a young team that can only get better as they learn more. We can win the World Cup, and so can a bunch of other teams. The blocks are in place to be built upon for March 2007, and the rest us upto that elusive commodity called LUCK.

The other India

You and I don't belong to the real India. We are 'First/Second World' citizens living in a Fourth World country. Well, a significant majority of our wonderfully diverse country is Fourth World. When I say you and I, I mean people who have the time, money and ability to access the damn Internet and blog on crazy topics that don't mean a thing to a billion of my fellow countrymen.

Read this great article in the Business Standard if you don't get what I mean. Some stats from the piece that puts the whole reservation thing into a very different perspective:

- 49% of ALL births in India happen to girls below the age of 20! How shocking is that? How absolutely pathetic is that?
- 125 million (!!!) children have near zero access to any school education. So much for a shining India and an economy growing at 8% p.a.
- Atleast 60 million children do not have access to two meals a day.
- 49% of Mumbai, India's richest city with land prices rivaling New York and London, live in slums!

Shocking, mind numbing and I feel ashamed. Can I do something about it? Can you? Just a little?

Bizzare end to the Premier League

Spurs and Arsenal were in a neck-to-neck race to finish 4th in the EPL - thereby securing the last slot to play the Champions League next season, potentially worth over 30 million pounds to either club. Yesterday was photo-finish day and as it stood, if Spurs had won away at West Ham, whatever Arsenal did would not have been enough. However, in a crazy turn of events usually not associated with one of the most professional sports leagues in the world, 10 members of the Spurs football team got up sick in the tummy! And all this after staying in a plush hotel in London at 400 pounds a night. Of course it is unfortunate, but begs the question - on perhaps the club's MOST important day ever, how could an entourage of professional dieticians, coaches and the like allow this to happen? Goes to show that sometimes, SHIT JUST HAPPENS!

Anyhow, as it turned out, Arsenal won handsomely at Highbury (last game there incidentally) on the back of a fantastic Henry hat-trick, and Spurs looked downbeat as they lost 2-1, thereby relinquishing their 4th position. The unkindest cut of all of course was that Arsenal are their absolute arch-rivals - who hate losing out to each other more than most. Poor old Spurs - who now have to wait another season to have a go.

I can't help thinking about the uproar if something like this happened in India to a visiting team like England. All hell would have broken loose and the sub-continent would have been branded as the worst place to tour after Siberia! As I said, sometimes it just happens, even in 5-star hotels in London.

India was Australia's Ashes? Really?

So claims Hayden anyway. Read this interview where he talks about the actual Ashes, how "God" in the form of an errant Duke ball played a significant part, and also about India. One small part of me was chuffed to read how important the India tour of 2004 was to Hayden and the Aussies - it really was a mission for them, surely the Final Frontier. They did remarkably well against an Indian team that was probably playing from memory of two remarkable series (Aus 2003-04 and Pak 2004). I was intrigued to check out Hayden's averages for the series - just 30 with one 50, a far cry from his previous India visit in 2001 where he became Matt the Bat. So for him to rate the 2004 series as one of the best memories speaks volumes for what it meant to the Aussies. So that accounts for the chuffed bit.

Of course the other larger part of me couldn't help but think how we have slid as a Test side since the 2004 Pak tour. Many in the team probably thought in their minds that a draw in Australia and a win in Pak meant mission accomplished. Aus came much better prepared than ever before, board politics raised its ugly head during that series, and perhaps that was the beginning of the end of the Ganguly-Wright era. This triple whammy hastened the slide, which we haven't recovered from. An unpardonable series draw against Pak at home and a loss away, and an unbelievable series draw against England B means that we are now miles away from being the Test squad that Hayden and the Aussies so respected and wanted to beat. Heck, we are not even a strong force at home these days!

Sure, the ODI revival is very commendable. The team looks young and refreshed, and we have enough utility players to be serious contenders for the World Cup, the ONLY ODI tournament that really matters, to me anyway. Test match victories are the real thing - they last longer in memory and are especially sweet when achieved overseas. Adelaide 2003, Sydney 2004, Pak 2004, Headingley - these moments are what give me the buzz, of course along with WC South Africa 2003. I was too young when India last won a Test series outside the subcontinent ('86 England) - so I desperately hope and pray that we get back to the Summer of 2004, when we were really Australia's Ashes!

Premier League rights get sold

The EPL rights for 3 seasons starting 2007-08 concluded, with Sky and Setanta sharing the spoils. For people unfamiliar with the topic, Sky has held a complete monopoly on EPL broadcasting ever since the Premier League started 13-14 years back. However, with England part of the EU, the Premier League was forced by the EU to break up the rights to ensure that all the rights do not end up with one broadcaster. Many expected Virgin-NTL to win atleast 1 package, but the Irish company Setanta has walked away with 2 packages, thereby getting the rights to broadcast 46 games. Sky gets to broadcast the remaining 92, importantly including the 38 first picks.

The overall package went for a staggering 1.7 billion GBP, a growth of nearly 70% over the last 3 year deal. This apparently includes rights for all media - it is now upto Sky and Setanta to monetize broadband rights etc for their packages.

Amazing that when there is a huge hue and cry in England regarding the ECB's sell-out to Sky that resulted in cricket disappearing from terrestrial TV, there was not a whimper when the entire EPL rights went to two subscriber-driven pay channels. Sky does not come cheap - Sky Sports will set you back by 40 GBP a month for 12 months, and that does not guarantee all EPL games as well. You will have to cough up atleast 7 pounds a game for over 50 games on Prem Plus on a pay-per-view. Setanta will not be any cheaper, but the English seem prepared to pay, and watch. But that's the power of the game. Can cricket in England also command such consumer buying power?

Mysore, get ready

You won't know what hit you as IT-rich Bangaloreans will hit you with all our might. We will take your roads, your real estate, your hotels and your cute tonga gaadis. We will bump up prizes sky-high, making anything unaffordable to anyone but the Maharaja and the geeks. Your maids will demand twice the money for half the work, and your sons and daughters will start dating at 14 1/2. No more sleepy afternoons sipping chai and sutta please, 'cos we will demand world class service at dirt cheap labour rates. Mysore, get ready to get raped!

We know, because Bangalore went through exactly the same thing some 10 years ago. Bangaloreans are still gasping for air that does not exist thanks to the mega boom in the city. Now, with the Bangalore Mysore road much better than ever in its history and the BMIC roads coming up, Mysore will become another extension of that monster city called Bangalore.

Mysore, beware!
Sigh!

God I love Bangalore #1

The weather in Bangalore is a major attraction. I simply love the weather here, which I believe is the best in the world - never tooo hot, and never tooo cold. Take this week for example - temperatures touched boiling - 37 degs for the last few days. Just when we all thought it was getting unbearable, it is raining now - bringing the overall temp down many notches. God, I love Bangalore.

Ah to be in England now

...and to read screaming headlines about the state of English football. Last week must have been from editorial heaven for the press hounds in England, what with:

- The FA surprisingly offering the England manager job to Luis Scolari of Brazil, only to be famously turned down by the non-English speaking manager. He actually cited the English press and the constant intrusions as one of the major reasons for rejecting the offer.
- Chelsea winning the Premier League twice in succession, only for their unbelievable manager to throw two medals (the original and a replacement one) right into the stands during the victory ceremony, and then going on to announce that Chelsea was the worst club in the world to manage! Only Mourinho can do this, and are the English journos loving it or what?
- Rooney going ahead and doing what every single English football fan was dreading for the last 6 months - getting himself injured with 6 weeks to go for the first World Cup in many years where England had a decent chance. Without Rooney however, it could only be one thing - Disaster - as Gerrard put it mildly.

It's all happening in England right now, and the World Cup has not even started.

Last chance for a significant overseas win?

Tendulkar, Dravid, Ganguly, Kumble and Laxman have been the core of the Indian Test team for over a decade. While these guys have been at the top of their game and have been acknowledged the world over for their abilities, the one big gaping hole in their CV is a significant overseas Test series win. No, Zimbabwe does not count, and Pakistan '04 is still sub-continent.

I am certain these gentlemen feel it more than most - Tendulkar may have been the best batsman in the world over the past 15 years, but the dearth of away wins takes away some sheen from his reputation. Same with Dravid, perhaps the best No.3 in the world in a long time. Of course, the reasons are plenty - foremost among them being the lack of bowling firepower and batting nous on pitches where the ball bounces and seams more than at home. However, history won't bother going into details - it will go by the dismal away record and hold it against these great cricketers.

Of the 5, Ganguly has been discarded, but the others are still in with a chance to rectify the record. The upcoming West Indies tour may perhaps be really India's best chance to notch up a significant overseas win. Critics will claim that beating the Windies is not what it used to be, but for an underachieving team like India, it will count as a major achievement. Dravid got it right when he said India cannot go into this tour as favourites - simply because they have never managed to pull it together overseas. Bar the Aussie tour in 2004 where they were breathtaking against a McGrath and Warne-less Australia, they have let themselves down badly.

So a series win in the Carribean will be a significant achievement for the team. Also, this tour gains lot more importance because it may well be the last chance for the Indian stars to win anything away from home. India tour South Africa in Dec this year, and even the most ardent Indian fan cannot hope that India will win there. The pitches there are bouncy and pacy, and India is still not equipped enough to handle that. India tour England in June 2007, and England will start that series as huge favourites. India then tour Aus in Dec 2007, and Aus at home are simply awesome.

If you consider the age, career stage and circumstances of Tendulkar, Dravid, Laxman and Kumble, I don't see most of them carrying on after Dec 2007 - which means this Windies tour could really be their last real chance! Will this be on their minds? You bet! Will they dig deep and pull India through?

Absurd land prices in Mumbai

I fell off my chair when I read this some days back - an apartment in Nariman Point Mumbai was apparently sold at a rate of Rs. 60,000 a square foot! Just close your eyes and imagine 1 square foot area - enough for you to keep, well, one foot in it. 1333$ for that piece of land is nothing short of stupid, wherever in the world, let alone Mumbai.

The city has a few things going for it perhaps, but a lot going against it. Mumbai definitely is not worth such high prices. How can anyone afford it in a city of 13 million where over 75% can only dream of clean drinking water and a roof on their head?

It happens only in India!

Keep it up Mumbai

I was scared to go to Mumbai, almost a year after I last went there. That day was July 26th - when the famous cloudburst took place. That day I spent 17 hours in a taxi, without a drop of water to drink, nowhere to piss and nothing to eat. That was perhaps the most taxing day of my life, but I couldn't help but look at with awe and more than a bit of shame (cos I was gutless!) as millions of people waded in waist deep/chest deep water with dead snakes and buffalos for company to go home to their kids and ailing parents!

Mumbai's infrastructure was woefully exposed, nowhere more so than the airport, where I spent a further 12 hours sitting on a trolley - stinking like the dead buffalo I saw floating on water some hours back.

However, the airport today has undergone a reasonable transformation. The departure gates look swanky, an Internet cafe actually works, there is choice for food and coffee, and it does not look like a cattleshed anymore. So well done, whoever was responsible. I had read somewhere that no more work would be done on this because they had given out the modernization rights to an international consortium. Evidently not, and thank goodness for that.

Even the roads were much better than I last saw them - no traffic jams today - and I travelled from the airport to Colaba and back twice over. Mumbai seems to be slowly but surely getting its act together again - or did I compare today with perhaps Mumbai's WORST ever day last year?

The ideal coaching structure

Prem Panicker is terrific - he has clarity of thought that few possess. Read his post on Cricinfo - especially the bit about coaching. Copy - pasting that bit here - nice, simple and quite easy to implement, if anyone cared to. What we have instead is a hapazard coaching structure, good in a few states, terrible in most others, and no consistent structure to evaluate and rank prospects.

...a good starting point would be to implement and fine tune a pyramidal
coaching structure, with the schools, colleges, maidans and local leagues as the
broad base, and age-limit, district and state-level teams the stepping stones to
the top.

Today, systematic coaching begins only at age-level cricket, or later,
by which point you've learnt all the bad habits anyway, and you've left the
coach nothing to do but tinker. Against that, consider a system where there is
one national coach. Under him, and interacting with him on a regular basis, the
state coaches; under this second tier, the district coaches; under each district
coach, assistant coaches in charge of school, college and league-level cricket.

The benefit of such a system is in uniformity – since each tier works
in close cooperation with the one immediately above, players working their way
up the ranks won't find themselves spun around in circles, encountering new
methods at every step. The obvious add-on to that is continuity. The
direction of a national coaching academy cannot be a political favor handed out
in return for votes; surely it is ridiculous that the NCA has, since its
inception, had its chief changed after every BCCI election? The director needs
to be a paid professional, appointed for a specified duration, given a clear
brief, and the authority to carry it out; with that responsibility comes its
corollary, accountability.

The academy needs to be a year-round enterprise – a school that
functions for a fortnight or a month in a year is not likely to throw up
scholars of any quality in any discipline; cricket is no exception to that rule.
The national academy needs to plug in to the others dotting the countryside.
Coaching today has been turned into a cottage industry by former players, all
lobbying their respective state governments for land and facilities, setting up
their own little operations and doing their own thing irrespective. Which is
fine – but a national academy at the head of a loose confederacy of such private
enterprise could be the logical next step.

I have seen India's future

I saw it in Delhi, Noida and Gurgaon. The infrastructure in "New" Delhi is good, and I can see visible signs of it getting even better. Flyovers actually get done, roads actually get widened, and street lights really work. The metro is apparently on par with the best in the world, and with reach and coverage improving, more and more people will start using it. The Delhi - Greater Noida Taj Expressway (6 lanes each way) is on par with anything I have seen anywhere in the world, and the AIIMS flyover better than any other flyover I have ever seen. Gurgaon office buildings and malls could really be in Hong Kong/London/Melbourne.

A Delhi veteran was telling me that the first major improvement in Delhi occured leading up to the Asian Games in 1982. The next wave is now, again leading up to the 2010 Commonwealth Games. Sport as economic driver - fantastic, just fantastic!

A true Kannada icon

True blue Kannada icons are hard to come by - and there was no one bigger than Dr. Rajkumar. After struggling for the past couple of years due to a weak knee and heart, the megastar passed away yesterday.

Critics have questioned his contribution to society, and have carped upon the fact that he could have done much more. My counter is this - how many people in this world have the power to provide 3 hours of joy multiple times over to 50 million (5 crore) people? Whatever anyone does is never enough, but to his credit, he has done more than most to bring some joy to people, and united a large population desperately looking for a leader. And while his superstar peers, MGR and NTR took the political route and did enough harm, Dr. Raj shunned politics when all he had to do to become Karnataka CM was say yes.

Generations have grown up watching his movies, and his talent and dedication is undisputed. I remember some of his movies, but I remember his songs that much more. He has been a part of my growing up. It is common knowledge that his sons have damaged the Kannada film industry, but Dr. Raj himself has never been tainted by any scandal, always dignified and humble. I am no rabid fan of his, but I felt bad yesterday. We may never see anyone like him again.

He meant something to all of us in Karnataka.

Salman > over 100 burnt to death

Meerut witnessed a tragedy yesterday which will certainly recur in India many times over. Utter disregard for health and safety norms, unbelievably lax security and zero value placed on human lives. If I had my way, the persons responsible would be peering into a gun squad right about now. It is the responsibility of the Government, local authorities and police to approve of any such congregation - and I am sure they have guidelines for safety. The issue is that these rules are flagrantly violated by paying a piddly sum of money to the people who matter.

The bitter irony of the whole incident is that the Fair was called "Brand India Fair" - Brand India will always go up in smoke, killing innocent Mr. and Mrs. Gupta and their two little kids, who just wanted to enjoy window shopping of unaffordable ACs, plasma TV sets and microwaves from multinational brands!

But this, like countless other incidents, will pass! Our media ( especially the TOI) has better things to focus on - like the jail sentence handed over to that serial culprit Salman Khan. Today's front page in the Times of India devoted bold typeface 100 font for that verdict, and a smaller section to the 50 plus killed in Meerut. Clearly shows where their priorities lie.

Shameful!

Traffic

Blore: Indiranagar - Home - 15 km - 1 hr 15 mins
I can probably walk/cycle back home and reach faster. But I'll probably be run down by a bus or auto! Aargh, damned if you do, damned if you don't.

State of Bangalore on CNN IBN

I got back to Bangalore today after a 6 month stay in the UK. Good ol' Blore hasn't changed much really, the heat was tolerable for April, and the traffic just the same. I was browsing the telly today, and got my first real glimpse of the new 24/7 channel CNN IBN. They are running a special on Bangalore, and today's program was a talk show in front of the Vidhana Soudha about the 'State of Bangalore', a poll sponsored by CNN-IBN-Deccan Herald-Radio City-Udayavani-Le Monde-Playboy (ok, I made the last three up!). Commendable initiative by a news channel wanting to do something different, or so I thought. Here are some observations:

- Rajdeep Sardesai conducted the program in his usual in-your-bloody-eye style. I was concerned for Ram Guha and Ramesh Ramanathan, who were in serious danger of having their eyes gouged out by Rajdeep's rapier-like hands. There are many who like his style, but I don't. His confrontational attitude, over-the-top bluster and talking down style pisses me off. Methinks he tends to become larger than the interviewee and the issue on hand. But hey, he is probably better than most others we see on TV in any case, so I just have to live with it.

- Rajdeep continuously mispronounced 'Bengaluru' (pronounced Bengal - uru) as "bungaluru'. It may not seem to be as big a crime, but when the topic of discussion was the renaming of Bangalore as Bengaluru, he had no excuse for this mispronounciation. Lack of homework, or didn't really bother!

- This was my first glimpse of Kumaraswamy speaking in English. It was apparent to everyone that he was struggling in the language, but instead of helping him out (he is not on the podium for his English, but his views on policy and future direction), Rajdeep barely got him to say anything coherent, cutting him abruptly, cracking jokes which HDK couldn't get, and basically wasting a perfectly good opportunity to get him to talk about the plans.

- The AC Nielson poll was quite shoddy, to say the least. Ram Guha said as much, and Rajdeep tried to cram so many questions into a 1 hr program that no one issue was highlighted and discussed even in cursory detail.

- Dr. Rajkumar was voted as the most important Bangalorean according to the poll, with Dravid coming in 2nd and Kumble 3rd. However, instead of calling someone from Dr. Raj's family, they honoured Kumble on stage, with no explanation offered as to why Dr. Raj was not being honoured. Nothing against Kumble, God knows he deserves it all, but why not call Dr. Raj's sons or associates, or do a video recording of an interview with the ailing actor himself?

My first viewing of CNN IBN was quite disappointing. I really did not see anything here that wasn't similar to that on NDTV already. The Bangalore initiative concept is laudable, but execution left a lot to be desired IMHO. But what do I know?

Terribly disappointing

Not the best day to be an Indian cricket fan - the capitulation under pressure was quite sickening. I feel for the skipper Dravid - his 100th Test (ok, 99 for India and 1 not-so-super Test) couldn't have gone more disastrously for him. He got the decision after the toss wrong (surely it was a team decision with Chappell in tow), and a situation where all India needed was a draw to win the series turned into a series draw that feels like a loss, just like against Pakistan at home.

A positive move to go with 5 bowlers will roundly be criticized, but as Dravid rightly said, that is the way forward if we have to win more Tests abroad. The strategy was right, the execution went horribly wrong. The shakiness at the top of the order is more than worrying now - we need more runs in all conditions from the rest of the top order. Poor Dravid can only do so much!

Freddie must be over the moon at the moment, and it is indeed a fantastic performance. Great spirit shown by England to overcome the injury crisis and a deserving series draw. Debutants were successful, discards returned and shone like they had never been away, and the experienced hands stood up when it mattered. Terrific team performance!

End of the day, spirit was what was the difference between the two sides - England were prepared to fight it out longer than we did.

Ugh, this feeling sucks!

Selling-out of the heartland

Simon Barnes is one of the best in the business - of writing, that is. His articles on sport in the Times (of England, not the tabloid in India) are great reads. Do read this one on how every sport tries to change its core to attract the 'non-fans', and in the process runs the risk of alienating the heartland (the hardcore fans of the sport), and also the dangers of pandering to a fickle audience who may leave if they find something sexier the next week. He cites examples from baseball (designated hitters in the American League who replace pitchers), football (penalty shoot-outs) and of course Twenty20 cricket.

Hat tip to Cricinfo for the link.

March Madness on the Net

Anyone who has been to the US can vouch for March Madness - the NCAA college basketball competition that kicks off every spring. CBS has the rights for this high-profile tournament, and has decided to put the first round matches on the Net, FOR FREE. Currently most online sports are pay-per-view or subscription based. Reason - the number of Net viewers were not large enough to get advertisers to fund the programs. However with the Net growing rapidly as a mainstream medium in the US, CBS reckons there is a sizeable audience out there who will watch matches on the Internet and therefore advertisers will be interested in. Of course, the beauty of the Internet is that viewers can watch the match they are interested in, which works beautifully when there are multiple matches in progress. I remember the NBA launching Broadband TV funded by advertising sometime back. Clearly the US is the best market to launch advertising-funded streaming sport given broadband penetration and Net usage levels. This is more evidence that the Internet as a viable business model is back!

Cricket is wonderful at both ends of the spectrum

Yesterday and today have displayed cricket at its finest - some people just don't get how a game played over 5 days can be terrific, and how a smaller 1-day version can also be breathtaking at the same time. The bottom line is that the game is fundamentally great - it just requires two evenly matched teams giving their best on the field to make for a wonderful spectacle.

I cannot describe SA's successful chase of 434 aptly - it was just crazy. I was thanking SA for letting Ponting score 164, thereby reducing the painful World Cup 2003 memory for Indian fans, but what Gibbs did was outrageous. Some will criticize this run-a-thon as being too batsmen-centric, but don't tell me this was not exciting. Cricket needs to find a balance between bat and ball, but what happened at the Wanderers did cricket great good - no doubt about that.

At the other end of the spectrum was India's wonderful win against England in Mohali. A rain-affected match that everyone expected to end as a draw sprung to life thanks to India's young and old - Munaf Patel and Kumble. India's wagging tail and England's collapse in the 2nd innings left India with few to get, which they did. What was especially pleasing about this victory was that it was achieved not on a dust bowl under oppressive heat and inhospitable conditions. Mohali is one of India's best venues, the weather was more English than Indian, and the pitch had enough for the pacemen to get it to rear and bounce, for batsmen to play their shots and for spinners to get turn and bounce. As David Gower said, it perhaps was as close as one can get to the perfect Test Match pitch - that's what makes this victory special.

Will this win make the Indian authorities realise that India does not necessarily disintegrate on a pitch with some pace and bounce?

434 successfully chased! Still can't stop shaking my head!

Indispensable --> bad

Every cricket team needs the ultimate talents - the players who are so good they can win matches singlehandedly, and are talismans for their teams. However, being too good can also be detrimental to the team in the long run. Here's how.

Australia have two absolute gems - McGrath and Warne. One of the best pacemen in the world and the best spinner ever have made Australia the champion team of the last few years. However, they are both in the final lap of their careers andAustralia don't have ready replacements. As India proved in 2003-04 Down Under, England in the Ashes and South Africa now in the ODIs, Australia is eminently beatable without these guys. Since they were the best by far, they rendered themselves nearly indispensable, and Australia are now suffering. The Aussies pride themselves on a strong domestic system that keeps a strong bench in place - in fact it was proved when they dropped Mark and Steve Waugh and kept getting stronger! However, McGrath and Warney are in a different league, and being match-winning bowlers, the task is that much tougher for Australia.

India had one such guy not too long ago. A Tendulkar-less India in the 90s was worthless. Indispensable is too meek a word to describe what he was to the team. However, thanks to a revival under Ganguly and Wright, the emergence of Dravid and now Sehwag, and Tendulkar's own injury problems, we do not collectively self-immolate when we see an Indian XI without Tendulkar. Surprisingly, India has managed to handle the transition better than Australia. It helped perhaps that Sachin is not a match-winning bowler - it is probably tougher to replace champion bowlers than batsmen! Or is it?

The West Indies have the one and only Brian Lara. He is so unbelievably good that without him, the Windies are sometimes worse than India at football! The team even with Lara is terrible most times, but you can't blame Lara for that. They have not found a replacement for him yet, and poor times for the Carribeans seem set to continue.

England have never had that problem for a while. Throughout the 90s they were a mediocre team that had county tigers who got injured if there was a strong wind in the area, and had no super-talents. However, that seems set to change - Freddie Flintoff is the mascot of a new-look England team that can hold its own against all comers. Sure, Harmy can bowl fast and KP can bang it - but if Freddie had gone home before the first Test with the rest, India may have had to just turn up to win the series. Can you imagine a Freddie-less England travelling to Australia and winning a Test? No chance! Freddie has reached indispendable status. How England manage him and without him will determine long term success of the team.

Sri Lanka also have two megastars without whom they are a mere shadow - Murali and Jayasuriya. The back up options for Murali are meagre at best, and the line up without Jayasuriya is still not strong enough. Can Sri Lanka find a few players who can fill in the blanks?

South Africa managed reasonably well without Donald - Ntini and Pollock filled the breach nicely, and the team was always blessed with all-rounders who collectively contributed.

I guess the secret lies in the SA/India method - teams should aim to build a bunch of players who can collectively match the talents of their reigning superstar. To get another Tendulkar is a futile search - but by developing Dravid/Laxman/Sehwag, India have enough batsmen to be prepared for the eventuality. Similarly with SA and Donald. Aus have failed to build back-up bowling options who have the experience and ability to step up to the plate.

Online DVD rental in Bangalore

seventymm has launched an online DVD/VCD rental service in Bangalore. On the face of it, it looks like a service that would work in Bangalore - the city has a reasonably young and large Net-savvy population with time and money on hand to watch DVDs/VCDs.

This idea is a straightforward copy-paste of the Netflix and Screenselect model. In fact, their website features look strikingly similar to that of Netflix, whose co-founder is on the advisory board. Further indication there are and will continue to be many more ventures that start in emerging markets that are direct replicas of proven business models in the West. seventymm has got funding from Draper Fisher Jurvetson, the VC firm that has made lots of money from Hotmail, Skype, Baidu and Overture.

Here's what is interesting about seventymm though - the pricing. I am sure they would have done their research, but the pricing looks shockingly high. 200 Rs a month for 4 movies (2 at a time) or 550 Rs a month for unlimited movies seems high enough, but the bummer is the registration fee of 500 Rs and a refundable deposit of 2000 Rs! Whatever the heck is that for???

I think the pricing is high is because of competition. These guys compete with the neighbourhood VCD/DVD rental shop, who merrily rents out pirated stuff for 10/20 Rs a movie. Even though it is for a day, quality is suspect and all the titles are not available, the price difference is considerable. No normal person will watch more than 10 movies a month (even that sounds too high) - which costs 200 Rs. max. There are many such VCD shops who offer free delivery and pick up services as well, so that benefit is negated as well.

In my opinion, if seventymm can shake off the security deposit and reg. fees, the game changes a bit. What are they scared of - someone not returning 4 DVDs?

The other issue is of personal pick-up of DVDs. In the US and the UK, customers have to mail back the DVDs in a pre-paid envelope. That makes it a lot easier to coordinate logistics. In traffic-crazy Bangalore, if they promise to collect DVDs at a particular time of day and don't turn up, that just leads to utter confusion and dissatisfaction.

I hope this works - the convenience is definitely there, but as with most other things in India, price and execution is critical. I don't think they have got it right so far.

Test for Dravid and Flintoff

This Test match is turning out to be a classic - at the end of Day 3, England are ahead by 71, and assuming 10 and 11 don't add too many for India, England have 180 overs to make something out of this match. Kumble and Kaif did fantastically well to get India close to the England total after a great swing masterclass from Hoggard to make the match interesting. India's batting collapse was saddening, but the spirit shown by the lower order was heartening.

Now with 2 days to go, Dravid will be tested - how does he set fields for this England batting lineup? Does he defend the runs, or does he attack with his spinners? I guess a bit of both. It will be interesting to observe how he goes about marshalling his attack tomorrow - and whether India will miss another bowler again. Can Kumble and Bhajji run through the England batting line up and give India a smallish target to chase?

Freddie will be tested like never before as captain. He is surprisingly ahead after 3 days - but does England have the courage and talent to go for the win? Do they have the firepower to get atleast 350 ahead by tomorrow, and then bowl India out in a day or lesser? Will he encourage his batsmen to attack? Whatever target he sets for India, will he back his bowlers to get 10 more Indian wickets on Day 5?

Fantastic Test cricket - any result is possible. More power to the bowlers, I say.

Sport can change lifes

Oh yes it does!

It can create a sense of belonging and identity among a completely disparate cross section of a country/region/city/family - just observe any public place when India plays cricket (or when England plays football, or the Yankees are in action). Complete strangers get along famously, united in supporting a bunch of athletes giving their best on the playing field. People huddled around TV sets or in pubs and bars, cheering and agonising together - very few other social activities can generate such a feeling.

Sport taught me the value of teamwork. The camaraderie that comes from playing a team sport with a bunch of blokes every evening is irreplacable. The winning feeling and the lessons learnt from losing help me on a daily basis.

And yeah, if you do play sport, it helps combat obesity and shitloads of other diseases.

Freddie as captain

You always get the impression while reading Freddie interviews that what-you-read-is-what-he-really-is. He comes across as a fun-loving beer-swigging typical English bloke, difference being that he happens to be very very good at his sport.

He now has been asked to captain his side in a very tough tour, but there is not much of his team left to captain. Trescothick had to leave for personal reasons (what's with the English and personal reasons?), Vaughan's career is hanging by the thread with yet another recurrence of his knee problem, and Simon Jones goes back to his favourite place - the hospital. With Giles still in England recovering, that's 4 of England's Ashes heroes out without a ball being bowled in the Test Series.

India look overhelming favourites now on paper - but it is not a done deal yet. If Harmison and Freddie can get the ball consistently at throat level - which is a very tough ask in these conditions - I think England have a chance. That, and can their batsmen bat patiently enough and not sweep every bloody ball bowled by Kumble and Bhajji?

I have been waiting to see our batsmen face up to genuine pace at both ends, and I hope the series is interesting. I am frankly bored of India - Pakistan now!

Sky bags it in the UK

I had written earlier that Sky may well lose out on the rights to England's tour to India because of price. Turns out Sky called Nimbus' bluff, and finally managed to bag the rights for apparently 10 million GBP. It does look like Sky had to pay more than they wanted to pay, but they also secured a 4 year deal in return. According to the deal, they get exclusive rights to England tours, and have to share the feed with an Asian population-focused channel like Zee/ARY/Sony for the other tours. Nimbus would have wanted to get a lot more than 10 million GBP for the England territories, but probably got a lot more than that Sky would have offered initially if they hadn't raised the Asian channel bogey! All in all, an interesting negotiation that most probably ended with both being happy and sad at the same time.

The happiest are the English Sky subscribers who were petrfied that they will have to buy some vague channel (Zee/Sony/ARY) they only knew existed, just for this series. Sky seems to have got 4 of their commentators (including my favourite - Nasser Hussain) - so the stage is all set for viewers in the UK to watch their favourite team lose to India:-)

Stars to look out for

Check this video of the U-19 World Cup finals out (thanks to Manish of Sightscreen) . It is so very refreshing to be able to watch youngsters untainted/not blinded by stardom and international pressures doing what they do best. Piyush Chawla and Anwar Ali Khan caught everyone's attention, and this video clip illustrates why.

These two guys will surely play a huge part in the next few years. I can't wait to see Chawla in action against England - maybe his chance will come in the ODIs. He is also handy with the bat and is a terrific prospect for an Indian team that will have to live without Kumble very soon.

This World Cup U-19 finals really reinforced the old order - India is still capable of generating great spinners, and Pakistan has a conveyor belt of pacemen and swing bowlers. India have taken the 'youth' route and blooded U-19 performers consistently (Pathan, Kaif, Raina and now Chawla) - will Pakistan do the same with Anwar Ali Khan and the left-armer Jamshaid (who was obviously inspired by Mr. Akram)?

Category: Cricket

BCCI TV deal and UK after-effects

Nimbus has bagged the global media rights for Indian cricket for the next 4 years (till Mar 2010) for an unbelievable sum of 612 million $. This article neatly gives us all the gory details.

This deal clearly shows market forces at work (well, mostly). A bidding war was engineered by the BCCI with 'transparency' the buzz word - ensuring that all bidders had to up their bids in the fear that they could very easily screw up their entire business model for the country if they lost! The fear of losing was perhaps just as important as the price of winning. I expected Zee to win the bid, but now that Nimbus has the rights, expect them to sell it piece-by-piece to Zee to start with, and perhaps launch their own channel down the line. In fact, HarishThawani has gone on record saying that all options are open.

Here in the UK, the cat has truly been set among the pigeons, with Sky's so-called monopoly for overseas England tours under serious threat. It looks very likely that Zee/Sony/Ary will bag the rights. Thankfully the BBC Radio deal seems to be proceeding smoothly, with TMS agreeing to pay 1.7 million $ (1 mill GBP) for the series. Thawani has stated that they will grant highlights to either Channel 4 or Five, thereby satisfying the terrestrial lobby. If Sky do lose out, this will be the first time in many years that they are not telecasting a major live cricket series. Unless Sky dig deeper into their substantial pockets and cough up the moolah, my money is on Zee picking up the rights in the UK by paying some incremental money over and above the India rights.

Nasser Hussain is fantastic

In my opinion, Hussain is one of the two best commentators in World Cricket.

Hussain understands modern day cricket, thinks and speaks like a captain, and puts the viewer into the captain's mind and tells us what the players out there are going through mentally and physically. We do not want 'star' commentators who tell us that the ball is racing away to the boundary in 10 different ways - we can see the damn thing for ourselves. Nasser adds value, to my viewing anyway.

Today's break-time show on Ten was case in point. His views on bowling coaches was terrific. Everyone and his dog says cricket teams need bowling coaches. But Nasser explained in 2 minutes what a bowling coach can do - with a 'for instance'. Having seen Troy Cooley work, he said that Cooley's role is to track how many overs each fast bowler bowls in internationals AND county cricket. He monitors their body weights, their off-season work, their fitness, their run ups and works out a program to make sure that youngsters coming through (like Freddie, Harmison some years back) peak at the right time for the Tests and important ODIs. His point was that India has RP Singh, Pathan and Sreesanth - all 20-21 years old and promising - but they can so easily go off the boil like Nehra, Zaheer and Balaji did in precisely 6 months.

For India to be winning consistently, Nasser made the point that come Nagpur 1st March, if England win the toss and bat, India want these three bowlers fresh and raring to go, not tired and sluggish due to workload in Pakistan and improper recovery in the gap between series!

Now that put things into perspective for me like no one else had. You do not need 1000 word articles and countless interviews by ex-cricketers extolling the virtues of fast bowling coaches - simple, clear and articulate thinking is what is needed. Hussain provides that to the cricket viewer.

Oh, and Ian Healy is the other one who does this to me - and entertains while at it.

Category: Cricket

World class sports stadiums

Breathtaking stuff here - a Businessweek slideshow of some of the best stadiums in the world. I personally loved the Allianz Arena, the Cardinals stadium in Arizona and the Beijing Swimming Center. Of course, Dubai being Dubai - anything is possible, including snow and ice in the middle of the desert! Amazing stuff.

Unfortunately I haven't been to any of these stadiums - more entries in the to-do-before-I-die list!

The best stadium I have seen so far is the Cardiff Millennium Stadium. Amazing design, easy to access, awesome atmosphere inside (a Wales home rugby game is an experience) and bang in the city center. The MCG is just awesome and imposing - but I haven't seen a game there, so I can't rate it. 100,000 people on Grand Finals Day or Boxing Day is something I don't want to miss.

Category: Sports