Terrific Wimbledon final

What a match it was - Federer V Nadal yesterday was truly awesome. All talk of Nadal being a novice on grass and Federer unbeatable on the surface nearly went out of the window yesterday - Nadal looked the better player for most part of the thrilling 5 setter. Federer was clearly rattled, lost his temper against Hawk-Eye and nearly blew a golden chance to equal Borg's 5 consecutive wins at Wimbledon.

Vijay Amritraj on TV said it best - he said Nadal on grass has done much better than Federer on clay in the French.

By the looks of it, Nadal seems to be transforming into a more complete player and a genuine threat for Federer in all surfaces - he is no longer just the king of clay. As Federer himself graciously said after the match, he had better collect as many wins as he can before Nadal starts winning everything in sight.

Lastly it was very refreshing to see Nadal being utterly gracious and well-mannered during and after the match, crediting Federer as a true champion. Wonderful ambassadors for sport - both these men. Great to watch.

Wimbledon and the rain

Two articles on Wimbledon this year the rain that has plagued it - one superb one on rain affecting sport in general from Simon Barnes here, and one from Martin Johnson - typically ha ha funny. Sample this -

Is it possible that Wimbledon fortnight is now beginning to impact on the British public as tennis does for the other 50 weeks of the year? Judging by the absence of queues yesterday morning, even those people who are prepared to risk lumbago and pneumonia after spending the night on a soggy pavement for the chance of seeing an Ova playing an Eva on Court 17 have given up.

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?

Long time no write

Apologies to the millions who keep visiting this site - have been AWOL, caught up with work, family, kiddo and general inertia - in the reverse order. While I was away, lots happened in the cricket world - India lost the Test series in SA after threatening to make a fist of it with a historic win to only chuck it all away ridiculously, then won two ODI series at home, and promptly did the unthinkable and got knocked out of the World Cup well before time. DISASTER!

Well, shit happens - but nothing more depressing than Woolmer's death. How SAD is that? I truly hope that the culprits are caught, and then made to suffer a horrible death themselves.

The World Cup was a major fiasco in many ways - and not only because India didn't bother to turn up. Read Simon Barnes for a wonderful summary of what went wrong.

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!