Cricket is (as) a Religion!

 

I was on a writing hiatus for long, not because I had a writer’s block, but because I was worried if I would be able to compete with the new kids on the block like the Geminis, Co-Pilots, Chat GPT’s and finally I was perplexed to see something named Perplexity was a proponent of clarity in writing. So, I was a challenged writer since the advent of AI. In a sense I also behave like the generative AI. I get prompted and triggered only when an event or a news tug at my grey matter & my aorta and they in turn trigger my fingertips to type / write, an algorithm that I was trained on since I started writing.

They say Cricket is a Religion in India, its oft used by commentators and Cricket writers from across the world when they write about Cricket & India, it is a metaphor that depicts the passion the fans show for the game akin to the passion they show for their religion. But is that passion for religion or spirituality of any kind on the wane these days? And is it right to associate that passion for winning in a performance-based sport like a team game to a passion for something that is as personal as a religion.

I write because, one such event happened less than 24 hours back in which a 23-year-old young girl played an innings in a place rightly called Navi Mumbai (New Mumbai) at the ICC ODI World Cup Semi Finals, the old Mumbai (Bombay) maidans produced a bunch of male cricketing Gods. It was an innings that eclipsed the best knocks ever played by the so called Gods of Indian cricket like Sachin, Dhoni, and Kohli and will be the more talked about innings in the years to come than the legendary efforts of two other Gods of Cricket called Dravid & Laxman whose godliness was quiet appropriately christened at the Eden Gardens, a good quarter century back.

The 23-year-old was called Jemimah Rodrigues!!!

The name Jemimah also means “beautiful day" apart from dove. The dove is a biblical symbol of peace and purity, while "day" signifies the end of a long period of darkness and the dawn of a new, joyful era for Job (Biblical Character). True to her name she did end a long period of darkness and dawned-in the new with her innings and her attitude to the game and life.

What caught my attention and what has gone viral since, is her post match presentation speech https://www.icc-cricket.com/tournaments/womens-cricket-worldcup-2025/videos/emotional-jemimah-speaks-up-after-india-s-stellar-win-cwc25 wherein she has glorified the God she worships in and gave all credit to him. She endorsed her belief system and platform, when the so-called Gods of men’s cricketing fraternity went on to make millions endorsing products that the youth of India gobbled up without a second thought, here was a young maiden endorsing her own source of strength and belief, a much-needed antidote for the mess the present-day generation find themselves in. Trolls are already up in arms and she, being an influencer of sorts, would be subjected to lot of negativities in the coming days.

What’s new? one might ask. We have seen many a sportsmen and women do it. But the passion in which she expressed it stood out. In a world so polarized, this could even mean the end of the career for this brilliant sportswoman, but she braved it all and it was testimony of sorts. A testimony from deep down her heart and spirit. One might ask why should a sportsperson rely on spiritual strength and proclaim it in a way she did, Even an accomplished sports person needs to invoke that inner strength by calling out to their spiritual / belief system whoever or whatever it maybe, even if the sportsperson is an atheist he needs to turn to his inbuilt belief system in those moments of desperation.

She has etched her place in the history of Indian sports annals not only for having played one of the best innings in any format or gender categories but also for having played on the front foot to acknowledge that her faith complemented her efforts to win the game and that her faith played a part in countering her anxiety in life. She mentioned her strength to endure came from the spiritual text that she follows that says ‘Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning’ the presence of mind of a 23-year-old to quote this after 3 grueling hours on the pitch is commendable and shows that she is as passionate about her spirituality as she is about cricket. She has just endorsed the fact that spirituality and religion can play a part in the success of any sportsperson. An endorsement that might fetch her more brickbats than bouquets but every sportsperson can apply that into their training and performance irrespective of their religious affiliations and beliefs.

I hope her 2 million plus followers on Instagram who belong to a generation who believe in instant gratification will be willing to waste / endure time weeping at night for the joys of tomorrow. (again please read it metaphorically!!!)

RUCA to Gabba – The not so Kutty Story!

My blogs on cricket are reserved for tributes when someone close to my heart bids adieu to the game, it was reserved for the contemporaries of mine and more specifically when Ganguly, Dravid & Sachin slid gracefully into the twilight of their careers. Cricket is always called a Gentleman’s game, however the ‘gentlemanship’ in cricket is waning over the years, as the mantle is being passed on from one generation to the other, much akin to the societal deterioration in values we see around. Further Cricket has always produced two sets of cricketers, street smart & cerebral. In the Indian context, while Dravid can be categorized as a cerebral cricketer, Dada (Ganguly) falls under the street-smart category and if you ask me, Dhoni also falls into this category. This is not only true in India; the below table gives you quick run through on my take from the cricketing world I grew up watching. Introspect on the personalities listed below, and you will get the drift.

Country	Street-smart	Cerebral
Pakistan	Javed Miandad	Imran Khan
West Indies	Vivian Richards	Clive Lloyd
Sri Lanka	Sanath Jayasuriya	Kumara Sangakara
Australia	Shane Warne	Steve Waugh
England	Ian Botham	Mike Brearly
South Africa	De Villiers	Shaun Pollock
New Zealand	Brenden McCullum	Kane Williamson

 

However, these qualities get rubbed on to a chosen few from the previous crop of cricketers.  Though a gentleman’s game in the colonial era, in the subcontinent the gentlemen were groomed in the narrow streets or gullies of overcrowded cities. This blog is about A particular gentleman who once ruled the streets of Madras (or rather one street) and went on to be, not only a Street-smart cricketer, but also a cerebral one, a perfect recipe for tasting success in International cricket. And, boy he did!!!

In Indian cricket the street-smart ones get to play ceremonial farewell matches with all the pomp & splendor thrown in with a guard of honor et al, while the cerebral ones just fade away into oblivion, Dravid, Kumble, Dinesh Karthik…The recent one to join that illustrious company is my very own Madarasi (Chennaite) Ravichandran Ashwin.

Ashwin epitomizes the tribe of no nonsense Cerebral South Indian cricketers, I’m happy he carried the baton of this tribe with poise & grace, as you read the following names you will get an idea, Chandra, Prasanna, Vishy, Kirmani, Srinath, Venkatesh Prasad, Kumble & Dravid from Karnataka, Venkatraghavan, Srikanth, L Siva, W V Raman, Dinesh Karthik from Tamil Nadu, Abid Ali, M L Jaysimha, Azhar, VVS from the undivided Andhra Pradesh. Most of them exhibited humility, while humility was a virtue and won the hearts of puritans like me, the flamboyance the street-smart cricketers displayed was a crowd puller and contributed to the all-important revenue when the economic landscape of cricket went through a major transformation.

Ashwin was the latest addition to the cerebral list above, but what separated him from the rest was the street smartness that complemented his cerebral approach, He would display his cerebral side when he  thought about the ‘Revs’ RPS (Revolutions Per Spin) when pushing a quicker one through the air and following it up with a slower one, and then go on to display his street smartness when being alert on an overenthusiastic non-striker backing up too far and ‘mankading’ him. Off spinners are unsung heroes in cricket. The leggies are often up there along with the speedsters in the bowler’s hall of fame.

Ashwin is not done yet, I expect him to be contributing to this great game by being the next Harsha Bhogle wielding the microphone, or a Gary Kirsten coaching international teams, or the next Kumble churning out Cricket data analytics software, or even a Paddy Upton getting into the realm of mental strength training of sportspersons. You never know, he might shun all of the above and become a life time patron of RUCA (Ramakrishnapuram Underarm Cricket Association) and will end up contributing his clones of grounded Street Smart + Cerebral cricketers to the Indian cricket pool.

Adios Amigos Sachin! (Yawn! Yawn! yet another Sachin farewell blog it is!!!)

We remember not the scores and the results in after years; it is the men who remain in our minds, in our imagination. – Nevile Cardus

The boy, the man, the master, the legend and finally THE GOD (notice that I have used definite article ‘THE’ for God too) was how he was addressed all along over the last 2 decades. If there was a tradition of beatification in cricket no one better would qualify to be conferred the sainthood other than SACHIN RAMESH TENDULKAR.

I never wanted to write a tribute on him ever since he had overstayed his welcome over the last few years, but then, why not, he has taken the liberty to do so in the last couple of years after we took the liberty to venerate him for 2 decades prior to that. Fair enough I thought.

Writing a piece on a cricketer is a tall ask and greatly depends on, the on and off field personality of the particular individual. For example a piece on Rahul Dravid will evoke Poetry, while the one on Laxman will be tailored Prose and the one on Dada Saurav Ganguly might be in the lines of a Bollywood blockbuster screenplay. Mind you, all the above people and the associated emotions were part of the Sachin saga for a considerable period of those 24 years, just that you had to write an epic and epics don’t sell in this era of messaging, tweeting, poking and posting.

While a piece on Sachin is any day a number crunching statistician’s delight, I don’t intend to take that route going by what the great Sir Nevile Cardus said , It is the man that should remain in our minds and imaginations not his scores or the results. I can assure you that no one better than the ones belonging to the same peer group can do justice to this quote. Yours truly is also from the same period as all the above legendary cricketers, the only difference being I wished too like them to retire at 40 but that never was to be, for obvious reasons.

We grew up together if I can take the liberty to say so. Just that he grew and grew while we grew. I was 17 when Sachin made his debut in the winter of ’89, to be precise this day the 15th of November circa 1989, and you can imagine the dilemma of a passionate cricket loving fan in the erstwhile Madras at the age of 17 just 4 months away from that one all important exam in life that determined whether you made it to an A grade or a B grade Engineering college and nothing else. There comes along a boy just about your age making a statement that he has arrived on the world scene. Can be intimidating when, after work sheet after work sheet of solving calculus or deciphering the bonding in Organic Chemistry you still didn’t know what lies ahead of you in the next 6 months.

His stay at the crease over the last 24 years has caused many a marital discord at home, mother-son conflicts were plenty, production efficiencies were affected across companies, folks missed trains or flights, candidates arrived late for interviews that changed careers. So these could be blemishes when it comes to considering his credentials before ordaining sainthood on him. There were times he not only controlled the emotions of a billion plus people but also controlled their bowel movements and their bladder functioning. There were days when you were hesitant to take time off when he was playing to relieve yourself for the fear of missing out on an exquisite cover drive.

One thing that sets him apart from the many greats, some even more talented than him, was his self-discipline at his chosen profession and in his personal life. It wasn’t the technique, it wasn’t skill it was sheer discipline coupled with some in born talent that got him to where he reached. Talking about discipline I would like to go back to the much written about series in which he abstained from playing the fatal cover drive that had accounted for his downfall many a times just prior to that particular one. This abstinence by Sachin from cover drives even when a half volley was bowled outside the off stump put him on an orbit above sage Vishwamitra who faltered in his attempt at asceticism at the sight of Menaka. Probably that’s when I guess people started calling him God.

Being served brickbats and bouquets at regular intervals are the order of the day for any sportsperson in India more so for a cricketer, the blame should be squarely on us, the fans. As I am writing this I get a viral tweet that Sachin’s total test runs prior to the 200th test match were 15,847 which happened to be India’s Independence Day. Wonder how much more fanatic can a fan get! The same fans would have thought twice before mentioning this esoteric statistic had he fallen exactly 1000 runs short. We are not a sporting nation nor are we a sportive nation. We create them, we deify them and we banish them almost at ease. Sachin’s experience has not been any different from the rest before him nor is it going to be any better for those who are going to come after him, but the man had his head pretty square and rose above it all like a colossus ending his career blemish less.

Well recently when asked what cricket meant to him he said it was like oxygen to him, sure it was, he came at a time when Indian cricket was almost in an ICU and he kept supplying oxygen cylinders ever since. Thank you Sachin for the lovely moments and sorry for baying for your blood the last two years, after all we are just mortal Indian cricket fans. We are like that only!!!

No prose can describe the poetic double ton.

Cricket and prose has a long tradition, from Nevile Cardus to Peter Roebuck and there are moments in the game of cricket that bring out cricketing / writing quacks like yours truly to try and do a Peter Roebuck or a Nirmal Shekar. These moments just don’t happen always but are inspired by spectacular performances, sometimes performances of a life time, (or is it yet to come) by none other than Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar.

The man played like he was suffering from an acute case of multiple personality disorder. Playing to a stage where the audience where as vociferous as the ones in a Roman colosseum witnessing a gladiatorial show, here was a gladiator with a willow in hand hunting down a 6 ounce leathered spherical object hurled at him at different projectiles and velocities. He was playing like a man possessed, moving around like a ballerina, displaying monk like calmness, all at the same time. Can you visualise that??? No you can’t? You had to see him in action, and I’m fortunate I did.

No amount of adjectives, no amount of prose not even the best of writers can express what they have seen and hence my ranting are also not to be taken seriously since as I began no prose can do poetic justice to the innings that we saw. Thank you Sachin!!!

The Commons beat the Lords at the Lords.

I learnt tonight that cricket is certainly the game of glorious uncertainties. The Dutch beat the Brits at Cricket. Calls for an undertaker’s requiem for English cricket. Until tonight the only sportsperson I remember from the Netherlands was Rudd Gullit more for his hairdo than for his game.

One more revelation tonight was that Test Match is the only form of Cricket that separates the men from the boys. We had the 50 over One day game that came about in the early 70’s but by 1983 the boys proved they were faster learners than men… could they sustain it??? No. They couldn’t and they haven’t repeated it since. Similarly in 2007 in the 20-20 versions the boys proved that they could pull it off but can they sustain it, is the question. Tonight it was proved that, shorter the stage, the even the playing field…Upsets are bound to happen and Cricket will soon move from a game of strategies and fundamentals to simply a game of chance. The bookies will rule. Wonder what the odds were tonight in favour of the Dutch. But that does not mean that the Dutch didn’t play better Cricket than England, they were spectacular on the field. But they had to put in their best only for less than a 'session' in Test Cricket parlance. The performance was ephemeral not an enduring one. But 20-20 is all about ephemeral performances isn’t it?

Let the wham bam version of cricket bring in many more upsets. Incidentally I was on Heineken tonight supporting the Dutch hope I’m not on some Bangla drink tomorrow and watch India get trashed by the Bangladeshis.

Dravid - The Wall fortified...

The wham-bam-thank-you-mam version of Cricket just proved that though cricket might be a game of glorious uncertainties, irrespective of the version… class defies age and even certain principles of uncertainty.

Day one of IPL had 2 upsets as far as the team performance goes but as far as individual performance is concerned it fell in line with my thinking that legends are ones who can adapt to any terrain & conditions. Sachin, Dravid, Saurav, Laxman and Kumble where not born legends but took the stairway to legend hood.

However, the elevator and escalator bound team owners of the IPL who were pioneers at acting, building cities and airports, making cement, spinning yarns, publishing stories and even brewing liquor and flying planes at the same time fell well short of identifying, recognising or for that matter appreciating cricketing brilliance.

One man said it all tonight…after a brilliant 66 of 48 balls Dravid said that ‘such trying conditions favour ‘boys’ like us who play proper cricketing shots’… Even the erstwhile Mallya might not have noticed the subtle sarcasm in that statement. Dravid played like a man possessed out to prove a point to his critics. And he did it in style…

I might have jumped the gun in going all out in praise just after one performance but a seasoned cricket fan knows that this innings was one that is to be treasured for years to come. One of the commentators even wondered if he could ever get to see the repeat of a spectacular cover drive by Dravid in the remaining 59 games of the IPL.

It was a day when we saw two 36 year olds and a 39 year old from India and a 40 year old Aussie prove that age rarely matters in the shortest version of the game. Some crafty spin bowling by 2 veterans and a fine display of drives by 2 legendary batsmen…. what more can fans ask for.

Unfortunately I sense that good cricket is on the road to extinction, since the advent of the all new term ‘cricketainment’ which certainly has ‘tainted’ classical cricket. Cricket in all its glory was entertainment enough but today it is appreciated only when the kookaburra ball is airborne and sails over the boundary lines for a maximum which in turn is appreciated by gyrating maidens with plunging necklines and even shorter hemlines, which unfortunately is as important as bowling a 'maiden over'.

It was only a Padma ‘Sri’ not a Padma ‘Sir’.

Skipping the Padma function by the skipper of the Indian Cricket Team and his trusted team-mate Harbhajan hasn’t gone well with the Indian public, the bureaucracy or me.

Well, would they have done the same had they been invited by the Queen of England to kneel in front of her for being conferred the title of a ‘SIR’, definitely not ...so why this casual approach to ‘SRI’. Guess being paraded down the streets of Cape Town like glorified slaves bought for a couple of millions of US$$$ was more heady than an honour from the Head of State of the largest democracy in the world.

Well these are days when one of the Bollywoods best known Khans pays his way to collect ‘Datukhood’ from Malaysia but there were also days when good old Indian Cricketers refused the Knighthood and a set of contemporary Indian cricketing legends of the likes of Dravid, Kumble and Tendulkar made it a point to collect their Padma awards personally.

If I may borrow a piece from one of my favourite Ayn Rands….’Money, my friend is the root cause of all evil’- Howard Roark

Terror in Cricket

The last time I heard this phrase was a couple of decades back when the erstwhile West Indian fearsome foursome of Roberts, Holding, Garner and Marshal were bowling with the new ball to any team in the world.

I heard this phrase again this week in a different context. It was real terror armed with grenades, AK 47’s and even rocket launchers encountering cricketers who were like ‘sitting ducks’ in a bus in the heart of Lahore. I’m not sure if Murali would have collected one of those grenades and bowled it back as a doosra to one of the terrorists. But jokes apart what happened was possibly the first attack on sportsmen after the Munich Olympics.

The only gainers were the media because the two biggest TRP earners, terror and cricket had finally merged and they did not have to look for separate time slots for the two. It was kind of a double whammy for the media.

I’m happy for the Sri Lankan team and sad for the six policemen who lost their lives protecting the cricketers.

Koothapiran, Abdul Jabbar, Ramamurthy & Co – Oh How I miss them…

Another Test match is underway at the MAC Stadium in Chepauk, Chennai, 4 weeks a lil too early. Just as the boxer’s day test match is a very traditional affair for the Australian cricketing fraternity so is a Pongal test match significant in the Madras cricketing calendar. Although this time we have an unscheduled test being played at Chepauk.

When I switched on the TV early in the morning and heard the likes of Gavaskar, David Lloyd, Ian Botham and L Shiva holding fort at the commentary box, I was reminded of a few of the legendary Tamil Cricket commentators on All India Radio whom I grew up listening to as a kid.

Warning: This blog will be enjoyed by only a very niche audience, an audience who appreciate Tamil and Cricket with the same fervour.

It was a pleasure to listen to one of the above commentators describe the first ball of a Test match and say, ‘Ithoo wallajah salai muniyilirunthu mudhal pandhu vissuvadharkaka Haryana Singham Kapil Dev kudhirai ottathaipola padi padiyaga vandhu seerana vegam pettru valakai vikettin mel vara pandhai veessugirar’ It just meant ‘Here comes from the Wallajah road end, the King of Haryana, Kapil Dev, running in like a horse cantering and following it up with a gallop to bowl Right arm over the wicket’.

When one was just dependent on the radio commentary and trying to visualise (mind you these were pre Hawk eye days) what was going on in the middle this was the best way to describe the first ball of a test match. We have seen many an acclaimed commentators over the years, including an alumnus of the esteemed IIM in the commentary box but I do doubt their capabilities in doing a better job than Koothapirans, Abdul Jabbars & Co to narrate the visuals to the millions of transistor dependent fans of Cricket.

In fact I’m not sure if All India Radio still does broadcast the Tamil commentary for the Madras matches which I doubt particularly in the present BCCI era when you need to pay even if you walk past Wallajah road for the rights to just hear the crowd applauding a match.

The way Abdul Jabbar describes a G R Vishwanath Square cut or a Sandeep Patil going down on one knee to cover drive the likes of Bob Willis will surely stand out as possibly the best descriptions of a shot by any standards, sometimes even better than the shot itself.

Gambhir caught Shah bowled Patel.

Hang on… it’s not a Ranji score card nor is it a Delhi Vs Gujarat match.
It was India Vs England. An English team that had 3 PIO’s (People of Indian Origin) Owais Shah, Samit Patel & Ravi Bopara playing for them at Rajkot, was akin to the English team of yesteryears during the pre independence times, when names like Ranjitsinghji, Duleepsinghji, Ifthikar Ali Khan Pataudi figured in the English playing eleven.
India might today be the financial power house of cricket but a scorecard in an India / England match that reads Gambhir caught Shah bowled Patel is definitely a testimony to the Indian contribution to this great game of the colonial era. By annihilating England, India has sent a message that the cricketing world is currently witnessing a power shift not only in the financial prowess but also in talent.
Finally I see no harm in India playing bully these days when I see the likes of Mathew Hayden once back home in Australia call India a third world country. It is to this same third world country to which he will head again in a couple of months to receive an oversized wallet from Chennai Super Kings. If Hayden wants to remind us of our third world status I guess we ought to remind him of Australia’s 18th and 19th century penal colony past too.

4 Slips, A Gully, Silly point & a Forward shortleg….Oh what a field to bowl to!!!

This week saw the resurrection of Test cricket. The 5 day version which is on the verge of being taken over by their wham bam rivals and be pushed into obscurity, had something to cheer about this week.

I was fortunate to watch a few minutes of good cricket on the morn of the 5th Day of the second test….thanks to the time zone I’m in. I was running late for office…but I hung on and told myself that these are moments that are best watched live and ones that do not come often for an Indian cricket fan. Zaheer Khan had bowled 2 wonderful deliveries and one of them to a fellow fast bowler, Bret Lee, and the furniture was rearanged first ball.

What fascinated me the most and inspired this blog was what followed…

In walks Mitchell Johnson the Number 9 Ausy batsman…and the field was set for Zaheer who was on a hat trick. The field placement took me to the early 80’s when as a 10 year old I watched Clive Lyod setting a similar field for Dilip Doshi, the then India No 10 bat with the likes of Garner, Marshall or a Holding running into bowl.

The field was 4 Slips, a gully, a forward shortleg, a short fine leg, short mid on and a short mid off. A field placement that spells absolute dominance…well if you were rooting for the bowling team, it gave u a sadistic pleasure watching the batsmen taking guard to such a field. But unfortunately India never found itself in this situation often and on the day I was watching, India set this field, and mind u it wasn’t against Bangladesh.

Its ages since I have seen India in a position to set such a field to an opposition. The heart swelled with pride and was about to take off when my mind brought me back to ground zero and let me know that the only thing consistent about Indian Cricket was their inconsistency!!!

Sachin Tendulkar…. A tribute to a legend.

I’m sure most of you must have seen, heard and read enough on Sachin’s milestone today. Just wanted to write a few words as a tribute to a legend.

I just want to recall a small article in The Hindu around 23 years back about a 12 year old playing the Nutrine under-14 tournament at the Chepauk Stadium in Chennai, the article mentioned that a 12 year old had cleared the MAC Stadium’s main boundary line and was definitely a cricket prodigy in the making. Since I was a 13 year old then and the only page I read in The Hindu those days was the sports page, I remember this vividly.
Just happy that 23 Years later I had the privilege of watching him live on TV, become the highest run getter in the world. Congrats Sachin…

Call it a day at 36…is in

This has been a rather demoralising week for me…Firstly for the me who is an ardent cricket fan and secondly for the me who is on the wrong side of the 30’s. The axe over the Fab 5 in Indian cricket is looming large ever more than before, of which 4 of them are contemporaries and 3 of them made their debuts the year my professional life was launched too, 1 hit a century (Saurav) on debut and the other a 95 (Dravid) and both went on to do very well. The axe finally fell on the one who hit a 100 on debut, Dada… We are a nation that celebrates the 25th anniversary of winning the cricket world cup with much pomp and splendour, when countries like Australia have made winning a habit that they don’t even remember the dates they won a ‘x’ or ‘y’ tournament. However when it comes to treating legendary players we tend to forget the past glory one has brought the country and go by one series where a new kid on the block bowled a funny ball with a couple of fingers and mesmerised the fab 4.
In a sport where the likes of CK Nayudu played at 62 his last Ranji Trophy, its hard to believe that 35 is already a time when people are expecting you to hang your boots / bat. Saurav was one of the best captains India has ever had, one will never forget the grit the determination and the arrogance. The first arrogant captain India has ever had, the first non middle class cricketer in modern India after the likes of Ranjitsingjis, Duleepsinghjis and Pataudis…Dada took on everyone, from the board to the rival captains and even the grounds men. One person who will breath easy will be Nasser Husain the former Chennai born English skipper who was made to eat his words after he remarked that the Indians have to come out of their skin to win a game, dada’s team did just that and the memories of dada waving his shirt and mouthing unprintables is something that will treasured in the heart and minds of the Indian cricket fan for generations to come.

Cricketing whites a mobile billboard…

Being a passionate cricket fan of the good old version and not the IPL wham bam types, I sat down to watch the Irani Trophy match between Rest of India and Delhi live on TV (not before inviting the wrath and cold looks from the missus) over the weekend.

Watching our cricketers in the so called ‘whites’ during even a domestic tournament like Irani Trophy stumped me. A close look at one of them, showed the who’s who of the corporate world strategically embossed, painted, stitched all over the body, except you know where. There were days when the likes of Gavaskars, Amarnaths and Kapil Devs would walk in for a tournament as trivial as the Buchi Babu Trophy in pristine whites and mind you, when they were representing only their employers and not even the country.

Cricket is probably the only sport that has inspired some high quality poetry & prose over the years and to think that people like Sir Neville Cardus wrote on Cricket and Classical Music is itself a testimony to the grace and charm associated with the game, the players, the attire and the rules of the game.

Moving on from Cricket to Boxing. We are masters at deifying sportsperson in India, the ‘Ring to the Ramp’ was the mantra last week for our bronze medallist boxer, Vijender Singh who was seen walking the ramp and strutting his stuff to the tunes of Singh is King and later went on to address the media and talk about everything but boxing. Im sure this is the last we have heard of this guy. It’s not his fault, it has been our undoing. When such a heady mix of celebrity status is thrust on a young mind and shoulders it’s more difficult to stay balanced than a rain of left hooks, counter punches and jabs…

Cricketers and TRP's

I happened to watch the first episode of the program IF- Indias Future on NDTV last night , very rightly named cos atleast after watching the first episode Im sure that IF and only IF the guest goes on to become India's Future this program would continue.
The anchor Vishnu Som who is a personal favourite has to his credentials some of the best news shows including the ones on the F16's. To see this one anchored by him was rather pathetic. Not a fault of his but that of the quality of the guest on the show. None other than our slapgate Sreesanth.
Watching the guest display a few obsolete steps of break dance which was in vogue 2 decades back on prime time in 2008 was absolute misery. A cricketer who is more popular for his antics rather than for his on field skills, a kid who has shot into fame overnight was definitely not the right choice for this show. The replies to some of the questions were a perfect blend of empty arrogance and ignorance... I hope NDTV gets better guests on this show or else India Future will remain an IF.
TRP's matter more than good programming I suppose.

IPL Auction - Slavery Revisited

While recently watching the IPL (Indian Premier League) Auction, I was taken back into history by a couple of centuries when Slave Trade was the most flourishing business of the times...

T V Channels were beaming images of baby faced and not so baby faced cricketers with 'SOLD' splashed across their chests and with numbers which had more zeroes than I could recognise.

The lovely looking Preity towed by her beau talked about promotiong the game at grass roots level... bla bla bla bla!!!! I was wondering if she was remotely aware that the finals of one of the oldest domestic tournaments called the Duleep Trophy was being held not so far from where she was....

How I wished that these self proclaimed patriots and promoters of the game at 'grass root level' would stop by to thank or do something for the groundsmen, the curators and the likes who literally are taking care of the game at the grass root levels.

Oh how I wish these big boys and gals of Bollywood and the corporate world would adopt / sponsor one slum or a village in India ........

A sad day for humanity, a sad day for a glorious game called cricket a day when the filthy fangs of commercialism bit the grace and charm out of this game.