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!