Saturday, May 31
IPL Dairy - May 31st
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....
Wednesday, May 28
Tuesday, May 27
IPL Dairy - May 27th
- 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.
Monday, May 26
Sunday, May 25
Karnataka Election Results
- Visibly Happy - Arnab Goswami, Swapan Dasgupta, Rajdeep Sardesai(Surprisingly, may I add) & Prannoy Roy
- Visibly Unhappy - Sagarika Ghose, Srinivasan Jain
- 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
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
Friday, May 23
IPL Dairy - May 23rd
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
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
"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."
Wednesday, May 21
Tuesday, May 20
IPL Diary - May 21st
Monday, May 19
Don't go to the dressing room
The ICC should definitely ban him for jumping and showing his jockeys.
Sunday, May 18
King Khan having a bad hair day
Real liberalization is the ICL
Saturday, May 17
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
Will Shoeb fire? Will Sachin blast? Will Dada Rock? Will Jayasurya shock? Three hours from now, we will know.
Immigrant crackdown
"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?
Why I hated the IPL ...and then started liking it...
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.