Some good news for Indian cricket at last

Yay, Harmison is injured as well. He is wayward, he is erratic, but he is bloody quick and generates frightening bounce when he is not bowling into the hands of 2nd slip. And we Indians dont dig that too much, no siree! So if Harmy is out of harm's way, Fred is busy collecting "Celebrity Dad" medals and not fit enough to play and god knows what Simon "reverse swing" Jones is upto - India may actually have a good chance in the Test series. Looking forward to it. Hopefully this will be the tour that reverses India's cricketing fortunes, that has got it all sorts of bad publicity.

Woolmer - rest in peace, finally!

Bob Woolmer and his family was not granted a minute of respect, space and decency by the media, the police and the general public. 2 months passed since his death in a hotel room in Jamaica, and all sorts of theories abounded - worse than in an Agatha Christie whodunit. Finally the smug police chief from Scotland Yard recently announced that it was not a murder after all! Something that was leaked (like many other theories) in various English and Pakistani newspapers few days back.

Peter Roebuck summarizes the situation best, painting a grim picture of prejudice and rash judgement that possibly rests in all of us. Poor Woolmer was a forward thinker, and genuine contributor to the game of cricket. I hope the ICC recognizes this and institutes a scholarship/award/something to keep him in public memory for all the good things he has done for the game.

Anisuthide yaako indhu

What a sakkath (fantastic song) this is. I watched the movie Mungaaru Male recently, and the two things that took my breath away were the songs (which are truly awesome) and the locales/cinematography. Coorg and the Jog Falls have never ever looked better than in this movie. Simply spectacular. Every Kannadiga who cares enough about the language and cribs like hell that our movie industry is pathetic (my hand is up as well) must definitely watch this movie. It is a whiff of fresh air, really. More about the movie maybe later, but this song is beautiful. I have been humming this all week. Now thanks to the power of the Internet, I have access to the MP3, the video and the lyrics. Mano Murthy, the music director - take a bow. I wish I could meet him/get to him somehow so I can thank him for a marvellous effort. I always used to be extremely envious of my Tamilian and Hindi friends who got decent quality movies and top quality songs in their native language. More power to Mano Murthy and the Mungaaru Male team - thanks to people like them I have something to fall back upon which is contemporary and classy at the same time and not go back to 1972 to get quality Kannada music.

Bahala chennagidhe sir, thumba maja banthu namge nimma hadugalanna keli - innu heege hosa songs create madtha iri - guarantee Kannada industry kooda chennagi mundhe barathe. Kaitha idhivi navella.

Here is the video of the song (click here if you can't watch it):


Here's the MP3.

The lyrics are below:
Anisuthide yaako indu..
Neeneyne nannavalindu

Maayadaa lokadinda Nanagaage bandavalindu

Aahaa yentha madhura yaathane

Kollu hudugi omme nanna, haage summane

Suriyuva soneyu sooside ninnade parimala
Innyara kanasulu neenu hodare talamala
Poorna chandira rajaa haakida..
Ninnaya mogavanu kanda kshanaa…
Naa khaidi neeney seremane

Tabbi nanna appiko omme…. haage summane

Anisuthide yaako indu…

Tutigala hoovali aadada maathina sihiyide
Manasina putadali kevala ninnade sahiyide
Haneyali bareyada ninna hesara
Hrudayadi naane korediruve
Ninagunte idara kalpane

Nanna hesara kooge omme… haage summane

Anisuthide yaako indu….Neeneyney nannavalindu….
Maayadaa lokadinda Nanagaagi bandavalindu
Aahaa yentha madhura yaathaney

Kollu hudugi omme nanna, haage summane…

Thanks very much Shashidhar Desai for all these links.

No one bloody knows!

That's the beauty of sport, innit? For all the punditry, all the analysis, all the damn experience and been-there-done-that of the experts and ex-players and commentators, beyond a point, in competitive sport (where two teams/individuals have reasonably evenly matched skill and ability), anything can happen. OF course, in this time and age, another caveat we need to add is the absence of dirty money and fixers!

That is precisely what makes us all so attracted to sport - an underdog can win (India v WI in 1983), a superstar can just as easily fail (Augusta this year - no one expected anyone else but Tiger to win on the last day), strange results do happen (India in Aus in 2003-4, India V Bdesh in WC 2007) - that is why for me sport is the supreme entertainment form, not films, not music, nothing.

You don’t know, I don’t know and, more to the point, experts don’t know either.
No one can ever truly be certain about the immeasurable and indefinable stuff
inside. John McEnroe had a flawed technique and a flawed temperament, but he
wasn’t going to let things like that hold him back. The truth is not in our
backhands, but in our minds.

Read Simon Barnes on precisely this subject. Aah, looking forward to Indianapolis and the US Open this weekend. No one can say for sure who is going to win. I am as good at predicting stuff as the experts in the respective sport.

I feel proud and powerful. I feel on par with everyone else. Cool!

Martin Johnson makes me chuckle

I love this guy's writing - he is really funny in that typical Brit way - makes me choke on my coffee and 'chortle' (another typical British word!). I have refered to his articles a couple of times here and here.

His latest take on the Vaughan 'fredalo' incident - no, I was misquoted, complete misrepresentation of facts etc etc when the damn interview audio was right on the Internet for my granny to download and listen to if she cared - is something else.

If England had collapsed yesterday, as they at one stage threatened to do,
Vaughan could simply have said: "I was totally misquoted by David Gower when I
won the toss. There was one phrase in particular which changed the whole
complexion of what I said.
"The phrase was: 'we'll bat first.' I never used
that phrase. I am not pointing the finger at any one individual. Me and Gower
are good mates, but unfortunately the media have seen fit to blow this whole
toss business out of all proportion."

Or this gem about cricketers' columns in newspapers, ghost written with content fit for ghosts:

However, what really made the hackles rise was the way some of Vaughan's
team-mates, with little or no idea of the facts, used their vacuous newspaper
columns - all of them written under the Geneva Convention directive to reveal
nothing but name, rank and serial number - to instinctively suggest that the
cricketing media had nothing better to do than make up mischievous stories.

Priceless!

London 2012 logo cockup

Preparations for London 2012 (the Olympics, for people who live under a rock) have been on for over a year and more now, and Seb Coe, the architect of the winning bid for London has been feted as a superstar. They recently released their logo - which looks undescribably disastrous.

Predictably, reactions have been critical. I cannot believe (like many others) that a design firm was paid 400,000 GBP for this logo design. Am I missing something creative- is it really any good? I think not. They apparently had an animated version of the same, which if shown on TV would trigger epileptic fits! And you thought logo designing was a simple affair. Well, it should be - says Seth Godin, in this lucid post.

I find it hard to believe that a committee would actually approve of this. Imagine the sales pitch by the creative brains of the design agency behind this to the London 2012 committee. Words like futuristic, contemporary, zestful, youthful, vibrant etc would have been used many times over in various combinations.

Will be interesting to see what they do with this now. Will they backtrack and discard this - or put their heads in mud and refuse to see reason?