Saturday, May 31

IPL Dairy - May 31st

Glenn Mcgrath is a competitor, a great bowler, accurate, this, that etc etc. But Glenn Mcgrath is also someone who never kept his mouth shut whenever he was bowling. His sledging of Sachin is well known. His run-in with Sarwan is well known and documented. And in the match vs Rajasthan Royals yesterday, he once again demonstrated why he is at the top of my hatelist.

After Graeme Smith(who was limping as a result of a hamstring injury) had hit him for three consecutive fours, Mcgrath did the worst possible. He mocked Smith and tried to walk with a limp. Smith, needless to say, did not respond. The funny thing is that no newspaper or website has found worthy of putting this in their respective columns. Shame on you, Mcgrath!

Fainted....

The least politicians can do for the people of this unlucky country is to have ministers who do not faint when the finest young officers of the Indian Army are passing out!

Wednesday, May 28

Atif Aslam can't sing

says Sunidhi Chauhan. Yeah right! Try telling that to my wife!

Tuesday, May 27

IPL Dairy - May 27th

Common sense. In the post-match interview, Sachin mentioned this word at least 4 times. Yep common sense! Which is
  • Mr Dilhara "Godzilla" Fernando, that you take a sitter of a catch,
  • bowl straight, especially if the opposition needs just 3 of the last bowl,
  • Field well aka collect well Mr Jayasurya.

It was more like Mumbai loosing(their cool and the match) than Rajasthan winning.

Laloo Jee feels "Dhoni style zyada maarta hai!" and GreatBong's excellent IPL roundup.

Karnataka Election Results - Addendum

In extension to my post about English Psephologists and News Presenter's funny-expression-when-the-BJP-wins, wish to present Offstumped's take on the very soft spoken and very very gay Yogendra Yadav and the CNN IBN exit poll in Karnataka which had predicted the Italian National Congress to victory.

Elsewhere, praise for Modi from India's current Finance Minister.

Sunday, May 25

Karnataka Election Results

It's very interesting and gratifying to watch our "English" Psephologists, News Presenters and Analysts whenever the BJP is winning. They can be divided in three broad categories
  1. Visibly Happy - Arnab Goswami, Swapan Dasgupta, Rajdeep Sardesai(Surprisingly, may I add) & Prannoy Roy
  2. Visibly Unhappy - Sagarika Ghose, Srinivasan Jain
  3. Unhappy but trying really hard not to show aka Frustrated - Barkha Dutt, Vinod Mehta

All in all it is a big step for a party which was called "a party of the cow-belt states" but I don't think they should tom-tom much about it. Later this year they are certain to loose Rajasthan, MP and Chattisgarh, two of which they should.

Good News and Bad News - May 26th

The good news is that both the matches in the IPL yesterday were down to the wire. Chennai's loss means they are still in the hunt. And Delhi's win means that they(Delhi) as well as Mumbai are in the hunt which makes the next few matches very very interesting. The bad news is that Deccan and Bangalore will fight out today for (not) being in the last place.

Good news is that the BJP is leading in Karnataka. The bad news is that they might just be 4-8 MLAs short of simple majority.

Elsewhere : a top sports journalist butters King Khan, Shobha De comments on blogging and Vir Sanghvi writes on the IPL, the best line of which is this

"Thanks to the IPL, cricket is about to undergo a globalised blurring of loyalties in the same way that football has. It’s not that new a phenomenon, of course. There have always been foreign players in county cricket (I assume Shoaib Akhtar picked up that semi-intelligible accent while playing for Glamorgan). But the money that the IPL pays is so huge that county cricket cannot compete."

Saturday, May 24

Kuldeep Dubey

I saw this today after a long long time...laughed so so hard. This guy is really awsome.

Friday, May 23

Gowariker's next is a romantic comedy

with Harman and Priyanka.

Iraq Debate - Letterman Vs O'Reilly

Excellent!

Worst top 10 films


IPL Dairy - May 23rd

Lalit Modi must be a very happy man. Not only the IPL is raking in the moolah, it is also having a controversy every now and then. And our country's hype creating-newsbyte obsessed 24 hour News Channels have been lapping it up.

The latest comes from CNN IBN. King Khan will boycott all remaining matches going forward. As far as I can remember, this issue laid to rest two days back when SRK was given permission to visit the team dug-out. So why this new stand all of a sudden? Now that his team is out of the IPL, is he trying to divert the issue and become the wronged one?

Also, this cheerleader controversy refuses to die. I don't understand. Wizcraft and Kings XI Punjab should own up to it. We, as a country are obsessed with fair skin. Remember those Fair and Lovely Ads 2 years back. So what's the problem is saying that yeah, we asked those cheerleaders to come of the stage.

Lastly, why is this a big deal? Note the language - "...difficulties refuse to go away...". You get contracts. You loose contracts. Has the media not heard of churning, change and competition? And to all these people who talk about Dravid's adaptation to 20-20 cricket, could I please request them to visit Harsha Bhogle's latest?

India's best PM is

Manmohan, according to an NDTV GFK MODE poll.

As per the poll, 27% think Manmohan is the best PM.
22% think Vajpayee is the best PM.
19% think Sonia is the best PM.
But 62% also feel that Sonia is the 'real' PM.
Therefore, 35.74% think that Sonia is the best PM.
Hail NDTV!

Thursday, May 22

Sack the Home Minister

Says The Acorn, rightly.

"Mr Patil’s failings though are not merely in the area of competence. His greater failing, arguably, is in the domain of values. Now it is acceptable—though highly objectionable—for someone to see moral equivalence between the death sentence of an Indian citizen guilty of terrorism in India by the Supreme Court of India and the death sentence handed out to an Indian citizen pronounced guilty of espionage and terrorism in Pakistan by the Pakistani judiciary. But that someone cannot be a member of the Cabinet. There are such things as values: constitutionalism, due process, transparency, independence of institutions and rule of law. If Mr Patil can’t see the difference in the processes that led to the similar result—the death sentence—he reveals a lack of basic values that disqualify him from any position of constitutional office."

Tuesday, May 20

IPL Diary - May 21st

Crunch match today for SRK, Knight Riders and Ganguly, in that order. Warne has already started the mind games - having talked about knocking the riders "out of the tournament". Promises to be a blockbuster.

Monday, May 19

LOL - Amar Singh at Cannes


There is no better paradox than this! I still can't help laughing.

Celebrate rising divorce rates

says Amit Varma. Makes for an interesting argument!

Don't go to the dressing room

ICC Anti-Corruption units tells SRK. I don't get it. How can you ban the team owner from visiting his team in the dressing room or the dug-out for that matter? If the match is to be fixed, it can be fixed in the hotel the previous day itself. What was the ICC doing when Mark Waugh and Shane Warne were providing pitch information to bookies? LOL!

The ICC should definitely ban him for jumping and showing his jockeys.

Sunday, May 18

King Khan having a bad hair day

On CNN IBN's special with Rajdeep Sardesai and Sourav Ganguly. Check at SRK's hairstyle. ROFL.

Real liberalization is the ICL

and not the IPL, writes Gaurav Sabnis. He has a point. But the question is, after the mega-success of the IPL, where does the ICL stand? I guess maybe shifting the telecast to ten Sports might help.

Saturday, May 17

Ping Pong

Matrix Style! Must see...

IPL Dairy - May 17th

The Mumbai Indians are on a roll. The only hitch being that Tendulkar flopped yet again trying a Sehwagesque shot.

Somewhere else, the king of good times' hangover gets over, finally.

Two big ones coming up today. Rajasthan Vs Bangalore. Delhi Vs Punjab. I am putting my money on Rajasthan and Delhi. Would be very interesting to watch Smith vs Steyn. McGrath Vs S Marsh.

Friday, May 16

Big One today in the IPL

Mumbai Indians Vs Kolkata Knight Riders.

Will Shoeb fire? Will Sachin blast? Will Dada Rock? Will Jayasurya shock? Three hours from now, we will know.

Immigrant crackdown

intensifies in Italy as per the International Herald Tribune.

"Underscoring the new Italian government's determination to crack down on illegal immigration and crime, the authorities this week arrested hundreds of people in a massive sweep of shantytowns in major urban areas across the country. The widely publicized raids were a signal from Italy's new rightist government, which includes the anti-immigrant Northern League Party, that it planned to pursue tougher policies toward immigrants. "

When will India start acting tough on illegal immigrants?

Soha Ali Khan

turns on the heat.

GreatBong hits the nail

...in his own unique way, on the Jaipur blasts!

Why I hated the IPL ...and then started liking it...

I am sure that my wife lost count of the gaalis which I used to hurl at the DLF IPL ad. The one which went – tu laga daaav….tu laga daanv...tu dikha josh.

My reasoning was pretty simple –

The BCCI is only interested in making money. The cricket calendar is already jampacked or upar se yeh saala IPL. Won’t the players burnout?

Secondly the way the BCCI went about treating players who joined the ICL – the Zee backed rebel leage. The players were banned, some of them starring in a movie lost their roles and believe it or not, the banned players were even banned from entering the stadium i.e. Reetinder Singh Sodhi was banned from entering PCA stadium at Mohali.

Even Harsha Bhogle’s and Amit Varma’s sensible words did not budge me.

And when SRK said in a press conference that he is not getting good response from Calcutta crowd, I thought wow, this seems like a recipe for disaster.

But the facts are different.

The IPL has proved to be a BLOCKBUSTER – giving competition to not only SRK’s Paanchvi Paas but also saas bahu serials – which is great. And watching the local lads like Shikhar Dhawan, Manpreet Gony, Badrinath, Dinda etc do well also proves Amit Varma ‘s point.

Which is - The IPL puts a price on performance and since the teams are owned by private parties, performance shall and will be the key for selection as well as bidding. So no bribing the selector anymore.

Point 2 : Local lads, mind you these are Indian local lads, shall be playing with likes of Mcgrath, Warne, Smith, Pollock. So the experience they stand to gain is tremendous.

Point 3 : The only players that made money previously were the fab four(Sachin, Sourav, Dravid, Laxman) and some youngsters(Yuvraj, Dhoni, Bhajji etc). When the IPL goes into its second season and when there shall be no Rs 20 Crore cap on the team, you might see a Dinda being sold for 6 crores while Bhajji being sold for 1.5 crores. In Economics we call it the equitable distribution of wealth. Isn’t that what Karl Marx set out to achieve?

Some people will still say that its not cricket??? Well did yu ever imagine that a day will come when yu will wear T-shirts over formal shirts like they wear today. The point which Harsha also makes is that sport to spread has to evolve or change or adapt etc etc etc. Also, I feel that in these days of fast life, fast food and fast cars, no one has the time or energy to watch a Test or a one day match.


For that, you can check the highlights.