Random Thoughts of a Demented Mind

Sachin The Underperformer?

2009-11-18T18:42:03Z

On Hariprasad Poojary’s Facebook page, I came across a link to this article written by Kapil Dev on Sachin Tendulkar’s twenty years in cricket. Standing apart from the universal chorus of applause, Kapil Dev raises a dissenting voice. His contention is that considering the monstrous promise Sachin demonstrated in his teens, he has under-achieved over his career metamorphosing into a record-breaker than into a destroyer, more a Sunil Gavaskar/Boycott than Vivian Richards.

This article will generally be met with two types of reactions. Sachin fans will dismiss it off-hand with a smirk reminding people of the irony inherent in Kapil Dev criticizing someone else of playing for records when he himself dragged his career to beat a rather irrelevant record, in the process depriving the country of the best years of Srinath’s career (I of course do not blame Kapil so much as I blame the selectors for not showing the backbone needed to do what needed to be done). Sachin detractors, and that’s also a significant constituency, will get up from their seats and applaud Kapil for saying what is not politically correct to say right now.

To me however the article is most interesting not because of its criticism of Sachin but how, unintentionally and in a totally unexpected way, it is actually an indictment of Kapil Dev’s philosophy of batting, a philosophy articulated by this following paragraph where he describes what Sachin’s ideal of batting would have been, should have chosen not to be an accumulator of records.

In the same breath, I would have ideally liked to see him go from 30 to 50 in three overs and to go from 50 to 80 on any pitch, against any bowler in 5 overs.

This sums up, in perhaps the most succinct way possible, not why Sachin underperformed with the bat but why Kapil Dev did. While many of you are possibly rolling their eyes at this statement from a guy like Kapil Dev where he expects a single person to score at 6.67 an over, against any bowler on any pitch regardless of match situation what is true is that this is exactly how Kapil Dev used to bat. And it is because of this that Kapil, despite being ability-wise the best batsman among the great all-rounders of his era (my personal opinion), repeatedly underperformed in batting especially in comparison to Imran Khan (Test and ODI average of Kapil is 31.05 and 23.79 and Imran is 37.69 and 33.41) and it was precisely because of this attitude that he never became a transformational figure like Imran Khan.

Putting it simply, you could never trust Kapil to play according to match conditions. In many situations, his devil-may-care attitude was beneficial— most famously in the World Cup where his uncluttered approach to the game was more suited to our situation than a more studied calculating approach would have been. But in many equally crucial situations it was this “I am going to get from 30 to 50 in 4 overs” principle that spelt doom for his team—most notably in that mad swipe against Eddie Hemmings in the World Cup 87 semi-final and that ill-fated attempt at six against Pat Pococok which led him to being dropped for the Calcutta Test in 1985.

Similarly IVA Richards, against whom Kapil compares Sachin against saying Sachin had far more talent than Richards but could not destroy attacks like the former, also had his moments of madness, the most famous of which being the 1983 World Cup final. Richards also had the added advantage of being a member of greatest team of the time (and one of all time) who could support his style (it was said that whatever the West Indies batting scored their bowling could always get their opponents out for less) which Sachin obviously never did. In addition, Richards’ game fell away alarmingly in his later years when he lost his quickness of eye and he did not have the patience, inclination or the ability to adjust his technique based on that and kept trying to play the same old way, with sad consequences for himself and his team [there was enormous bitterness in English County cricket when captain Peter Roebuck did not let Somerset renew his contract because of performance issues in 1987]

As a matter of fact some might say that this playing without any cognizance of match conditions is the ultimate expression of selfishness where your “personal style” overrides the interest of the team, something that Kapil was sadly many times guilty of. And it is precisely because of the presence of players like Kapil Dev that players like Gavaskar had to dig in and play out sessions, an act for which he was often criticized as being obsessed with records whereas most of the time he was just trying to cover for his team consisting of “natural” strokeplayers and mediocre talent. For those who followed cricket in the 80s, Kapil Dev’s ODI career batting strike-rate , an astonishing 95.7 which in those days of much slower ODI batting was simply phenomenal (in today’s terms this would be equivalent to a career strike rate of say 135.0) was fast and furious but it came with crashes, burn-ups, pit-stops, tears and much frustration.

To be fair to Kapil, he played cricket in a bygone era. The Indian crowd had lower expectations from the team, the sport retained much of its amateurishness, there was little money, batting videos were not analyzed so thoroughly for patterns of vulnerability and teams were not as clinical as they are now. In that context, Kapil’s “hit out or get out” was par for his kinder-gentler times and as an audience, we loved his style more than the soporific potterings of that short guy with a white hat and a grim face, with Paaji’s arrival at the crease with a beaming smile creating the kind of euphoria only Amitabh Bachchan’s entry scene would generate.

However Sachin belongs to a different era in a way straddling the old era and the new age in a way no other cricketer currently playing the game does. As a matter of fact Sachin did start out his career as the destroyer that Kapil idolized. Some of his early memorable innings were punctuated by his desire to hit every ball out of the ground. But then around the mid 90s, he came up against his first great career challenge when he started getting out in very similar ways, essentially hitting the ball high in the air almost straight up, with a guy by the name of Fannie de Villiers posing more than a few problems with his variations of slower deliveries. It was around this time that I remember Sunil Gavaskar made the cautionary comment that good friend Kambli might overtake Sachin, despite the early start advantage Sachin has had.

This is when Sachin changed his style from the “score at 7 an over” to a more studied but still aggressive batting ethic punctuated by a furious start and then a gradual slowing down with strategic amped-up periods of batting. It worked to his benefit as the golden years of his career began. This lasted till 2003. Then in Australia, in the midst of one of his worst slumps, he changed his batting style once again scoring 241 runs almost exclusively without his booming cover drives and his thumps through the off-side—two of his most thrilling weapons. Even now, he scores far more runs by nudges through mid-wicket and paddles than in his prime where he would uncork boisterous drives, audacious pulls and flicks at a fractional error in length or line.

Now whether you call this adaptability of Sachin to his own changing abilities and to the changing paradigm of the game a sign of supreme selfishness or the ultimate testament to his genius is of course a matter of perspective.

Which brings up perhaps the most critical question. Assuming what has motivated Sachin has been a lust for personal achievement, has that so-called selfishness been detrimental for his side ? And alternatively has the unselfishness of Kapil Dev’s destroying style been beneficial for India? In other words, does selfishness always have to be bad for the team? I would say not. After all, eleven players striving for their personal bests a great team makes, as long as the overall goals of the team and the individual are not at cross-purposes with each other.

A similar charge of selfishness is often also leveled at Dhoni, being often criticized as someone who plays to stay not-out, as someone who intentionally does not play his big shots so that he can maintain his average. I frankly do not see the problem in that. Whether his calculated style of batting is borne out of the desire to inflate his numbers and get a better bid-rate at IPL or whether it comes from a desire to be a more effective batsman who does exactly what is needed and nothing more is moot from a purely unemotional perspective. All we should look at are his numbers and his win-rate. They tell the story and I am confident that he has been a far greater asset to his team in his avatar as a poker-and-runner than if he had tried to maintain his crowd-pleasing,six-hitting former “roop”.

Just as I am fairly confident that Sachin Tendulkar today is the Sachin Tendulkar simply because of the way he has adapted throughout his twenty years and that if he had tried to remain the destroyer Kapil Dev wanted him to be all his life, he might be today in the Big Boss house like one of his prodigiously talented friends fighting for infamy with a bunch of washed-out faux-celebrities.

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Mumbai Meri Jaan

2009-11-16T18:23:00Z

There have been several events that have taken place in Mumbai of late which I cannot let go without some comment.

For one, I must congratulate the Shiv Sena for tearing down posters of Kareena Kapoor’s bare back. Someone needed to do that, in order to save Indian culture and our collective sanity. [Link]

She is known as ‘Size Zero’ of the Indian Film Industry. So we decided, let’s just call her ‘Half a Bagel’. She is slim, sleek and sexy. Kareena Kapoor is taking Bollywood by storm since a year, and taking the paparazzi by frenzy whenever she is spotted with boyfriend and actor Saif Ali Khan. Off screen, Kareena, popularly known as Bebo in Bollywood, exudes a smaller-than-life, self deprecating persona. She always looks hopeful about her future, whether it’s family, films or Saif Ali Khan. She is unique. She has the sort of untouchable star quality about her. In person, she is quite remarkably beautiful and lean. So lean that she seems almost to be a trick of perspective.

I am sorry but this worshipping of super-leaness just has to stop. When your body seems to be an optical illusion (a trick of perspective) then you are not only a danger to yourself but also to society. Here’s the deal. If I wanted to look at Kareena Kapoor’s bare back, I would be looking at a skeleton hanging in a dissection room thank you.

If the vulgarity of that emaciated back is not enough, the sheer “Look we are a hot couple. Write about us” Brangelina thing that Saif and Kareena have going just has to stop. It just has to. I of course knew this kind of outrage was going to happen the moment Kareena, a person who specializes in getting press attention through wanton public displays of ” I am so hawt” affection (remember the Shahid Kapoor kiss), hooked up with Saif Ali Khan yet another person who likes to keep his relationships in the news. In case I appear too harsh, I would like to say that I have nothing personal against Saif and Kareena—it is just that I always detested “couples” in college and school who would go out of their way to show everyone how in-love they were.

What I knew got them off, like I am sure it does for Saif and Kareena, was not so much the fact that they were together but that so many of us others were not.

So Saifeena shoo shoo, go and adopt some babies like your inspiration Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie please and spare us displays of what a great couple you are. Please.

On the topic of hurting sentiments and Marathi pride, Sachin Tendulkar was rightfully dragged over the coals by Balasaheb for the following un-necessary remark.

” But I am an Indian first. And Mumbai belongs to all Indians.”

Yes Sachin, we know you play for Mumbai Indians. We got it dude. Now will you please go back, stop your franchise from retaining the services of Luke Ronchi (from Ranchi) and Saurabh Tiwari (from Bihar), score a couple of more centuries and not say anything that pisses off the great Balasaheb, his equally redoubtable nephew and their great Sena of supporters.

The third is of Rahul Bhatt’s link with super-terrorist Headley. Now I am sure that Papa Bhatt, who specializes in turning his life-experiences into movies (as an example look at how many times he has flogged his affair with Parveen Babi, which some people may consider to be exploitative of the poor lady) will use this incident to make a movie (or two). Like handsome hunk bar-guitarist Amar (played by Emraan Hashmi) meets a hot-looking firang Sam (played by random beefed-up third-rate actor from Europe or the US), they get close, very close till Amar discovers that Sam is actually a terrorist who has come to finish off India because India has tortured its minorities. The movie will then build on that dramatic conflict with stellar performances by Commissioner Chauhan (Avatar Gill), cocaine-snorting model Lucy (Kangana Ranaut) who pines for Amar, Pakistani handler Hawas Kashmiri (Gulshan Grover) with beautiful “Mushy” music by Pakistani musical duo Pervez-Omar and lovely ballads like “Oh balaam ‘Ji Had’ kar di aapne” and hot foot-tappers like “Quatilana” (with a lounge remix), “Toiba Toiba Tera Jalwa” and “Jaish-e-Jashn” (with trance mix) , finally leading to triumphant openings in Lahore, Karachi and an explosive one in Rawalpindi.

And I shall now leave you, off-topic, with a picture that was forwarded to me by Gurudutt Redkar, a picture that convinces me that there is God. And that not only does he have a sense of humor but that he loves “Gunda” as much as we do.

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SachinTwenty

2009-11-14T19:07:18Z

Twenty years ago.

It was in game reduced to a charity match that which we first saw the reason for the hype. A sixteen year old had gone to Pakistan, amidst some media frenzy (for the time that is) with none other than the great Sunil Gavaskar gifting him his pads with a statement of the sort “This kid plays as good as me. And can play way more strokes than I ever could.” While people remember the savage flood of sixes against Qadir and Mushtaq, what I remember is how, of all the players in the Indian team, only he showed a willingness to fight and give it his all, respecting the time of people like me who were watching the game when they were supposed to be studying Life Science, something that the rest of the team could not be bothered as they went through the motions, talking and laughing, since it was not an official match (as if anything involving India and Pakistan can be unofficial). It would prove to be one of the defining characteristics of the man for twenty years— his commitment, his seriousness and his utter professionalism.

Trying to understand the legend that is Sachin, one needs to look at him through two prisms—that of the game and that of everything but that.

Whether Sachin is the greatest batsman after Bradman has been debated threadbare on many forums with reams of statistics drawn from Statsguru and it is not my intent to go over that. Arguing about the greatness of a batsman with numbers and averages is to me mostly an exercise in futility, somewhat like evaluating movies based on box office collections or the taste of food by its glycemic index.

I therefore go by two things.

First is the evaluation of experts, people who have played the game and not done too poorly themselves, people like Don Bradman, Hanif Mohammed and Shane Warne and his contemporaries around the world, for whom the general consensus is that overall Sachin has been the greatest batsman of modern times.

And second is the evidence of my eyes. My favorite thing about Sachin, what I feel sets him apart from other greats like Ponting, is his balance. It is what I believe is the secret of his shot-making, what makes him move the ball two feet away from the fielder at square leg or lean back and work the ball over the slips or rock back and thump it through cover point, all with equal dexterity. It is that sense of balance he loses when he goes out of form—-which is when you will find him falling over to the front (like how he got out in the 2007 World Cup match against Sri Lanka—possibly the lowest point of his career) or reaching out for the ball, a game defect caused by a slight disturbance in weight transference, triggered with increasing frequency by his dodgy back and shoulders.

What however makes him what he is, the God of all Indian cricket fans, is not just his technique or his ability to dominate bowling.

It is that for decades he has represented one thing.

Hope.

Maybe the batsmen at the other end suck. Maybe they have sold out to bookies. It does not matter.

As long as he is at the crease, anything is possible. The vendor selling nuts knows it. Grandmother knows it. So does the opposition captain.

One of the characteristics of his greatness as a batsman is he, more than any of his contemporaries (Sehwag comes close somewhat to this at his best) can play the same irrespective of the pitch. Numerous times I have seen matches where it has seemed that Sachin and his partner batsman are batting on different pitches—-nowhere more evident that in that semi-final at the Eden Gardens when as long as he was batting, one could not quite understand what a minefield that pitch had become, why Sanjay Manjrekar at the other end was playing the ball with his chest and thighs, whereas Sachin was playing with consummate ease. Once he got out then we realized what had come to pass.

But in order to fully understand Sachin the phenomenon, as an identity that subsumes Sachin the sportsman, one needs to take a step back and look at him from a non-cricketing perspective.

To call him India’s most famous sportsman ever is like calling Mahatma Gandhi the country’s most famous politician.

Sachin is much more.

He is a cultural icon, someone who has his place booked in the history books. No not just cricketing history. National history. This is because of what Sachin represents—- the epitome of the Indian dream. A man from middle-class origins, not a star-son or the scion of a political dynasty who rises to the very top by the dint of his own merit, not because he looks good or can shake his body but because he has a genuine skill which very few in the world have, an inspiring success story in a country where the odds against you are mounted in every domain unless you are an “insider” with “jugaad”.

But that’s just half the story. What makes Sachin “God” is because once he has attained fame, he has still held onto the values Indians adore—-that of being humble, unassuming, possessing a commitment to his work which is emphatic without being aggressive, well-defined without being brash.

Putting it in an another way, his supreme quality in life is that he has maintained balance. Just like he does when he is in sublime batting form.

He may drive a Ferrari and may be one of the biggest names in the country but he is found in the same building he grew up in, still playing cricket with the locality boys when his schedule permits. He does not compromise his dignity on the field or off it. Unlike his colleagues who punch cameramen, shout at groundsmen and in general behave like brats after attaining a fraction of what he has achieved, Sachin never for once in his life has ever betrayed a “I am a VIP so stand aside” attitude, being unfailingly polite to everyone from ground-staff to fans, at the same time not compromising on his privacy or his personal space. Without getting into eyeball-to-eyeball slanging matches, he has been as aggressive on the field as the best of them. Anyone who has tried to verbally intimidate him, from McGrath to Kasprowicz have realized Sachin’s toughness after being hit into the stands, as players all over the world recognize that abusing him is like spitting at the sun, the froth goes up and lands up in your own face.

To me personally Sachin’s most endearing quality is that he still cares. Unlike his colleagues who hang out with groupies after a defeat shrugging it off as a bad day in office, even after twenty years he still feels the pain of a defeat, just like the fans do. It is a pain that even a cynic like me recognizes to be genuine and while I may chuckle at displays of overt patriotism in a sport where the only thing that matters is money, my throat still chokes up seeing Sachin kissing that little square on his helmet after scoring a century or when he says post-match that he has lived his dream of playing for India for twenty years. It is so straight-from-the-heart, an emotion stemming from such a child-like conviction in the honor of representing one’s country that it melts the most cynical of us.

It makes us want to believe. That there is something greater than us, our wallets and our lives. Yes it makes us believe. At least for a few seconds.

This is the magic of Sachin.

This is why he is different.

And this is why we love him.

[Photos courtesy: The Independent and Mid-Day]

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Red Eye

2009-11-13T05:40:23Z

With Mamata Banerjee shutting out the CPM comprehensively in the Assembly by-elections with the wife of one of its most dependable leaders, the late Subhash Chakraborty, losing her seat the sun looks about to set on the Marxist empire in Bengal, something that many people of my generation never hoped to see, no matter how much they may have wished for it. But then again Caesar never thought his empire would end and neither did Queen Victoria.

I belong to the generation that grew up in the Red shadow. I hated it. Not that I understood much of politics as a young kid, but it does not take much of political antennae to detest hours of power-cuts (”load shedding”) which uncles would say was Jyoti Basu’s gift (There was an amusing political poster in those days –it had a picture of Jesus Christ (Jisu) saying “I will take you from darkness to light and then a picture of Basu (rhymes with Jisu..well kind of) saying “I will take you from light to darkness”). If long hours of darkness before Half Yearly examinations and during Chitrahar was not torture enough, it was even more infuriating to see far more reliable power supply being provided to “government quarters” where some “officials” stayed and even to the club-house of the neighboring “local boys” since they drew power from multiple sectors, under the full patronage of the local administration. I realized soon enough that in CPM rule, there were two kinds of people you did not mess with, two kinds of people who are never wrong—–those who had strength by virtue of position and those who had strength by virtue of numbers. And since a middle-class family like mine did not have either, we were consigned to listening to commentary of cricket matches on our trusty transistor.

As I grew up, the pernicious nature of Left rule became even more evident. The local sweet-shop was taken over by striking CPM workers, got red-flagged, their mishti gujiya started having a sour taste, their customers vanished and then the store fell into ruin, a microcosm of the state of industry in Bengal. A plot of land my parents owned got encroached over by “local boys” with the police turning their backs because they belonged to the “party”. With impending Madhyamik examinations (Class 10 exams) I came to understand how entrenched the Party was into the education system and how their anti-English anti-”elitist” agenda jeopardized careers, and how the sanest advice that was dispensed would be “Leave the state. Leave the state’s education system.” From scraps of adult conversation I understood how land in Kolkata’s then-hottest township “Salt Lake” was allocated. And how jobs and appointments were doled out in the land of the Left—from the peon at the door to the Vice Chancellor, from the police constable to the professor.

Then came atrocities like Bantala and Birati. There was widespread outrage. Some isolated protests. Some votes lost.

And yet the Left stayed in power as impregnable as ever. “They can never be defeated in the villages” said an uncle who had strong Leftist sympathies “They have done so much work there”. Said another who was not impressed “Work my foot. They seized land from those who had it and gave it to their cadres who vote out of gratitude.” Another uncle who agreed with him said “They rig elections. Scientific rigging they call it.”

There was truth in all of this. And I had seen scientific rigging myself albeit in a very watered down form where CPM “workers” would coax “bhodrolok” to go home by making them get sick and tired of waiting (and then their vote would be cast by a fourteen-year old voting thirty times in a day) by making them stand in the blazing hot sun and by jamming the queue with fraud voters whose sole purpose was to hold things up. It was well known that in the suburbs and in the villages, the Left techniques were ,to put it politely, even more coercive. But even then I did not understand fully why the CPM had no opposition in Bengal. After all ballot boxes were snatched in other parts of the country, there were areas in India far more lawless than in Bengal .

But everywhere power changed hands.

Why not here?

As I see the Left fort crumble today, I ask that question again. In a different way. What happened suddenly? What changed? Surely elections can be rigged even now. If villagers were so dead afraid of the CPM-police combine in the 80s and 90s why is the entire Left machinery in retreat today, scared to go into vast areas of the state they still rule? People in the rural regions were well used to Left corruption, having seen decades of how bricks, cement and sand would mysteriously arrive at the local CPM dada’s house and how government purchasing favored local boys even when they were selling at many times the market rate. So there is nothing earth-shaking they are seeing now that they have not seen before.

Mamata and her branch of politics has also been here since the 80s and though the Congress-TMC combine consolidates opposition support, it must be remembered that Mamata was once Congress and that there was just one opposition party in Bengal.

What’s new all of a sudden?

Certainly the Naxals are more powerful than ever before providing more sophisticated weaponry to disaffected sections of the population. Certainly many of the old CPM “boys” have changed parties. But that is not the cause merely a symptom of a more basic malaise.

I will not claim I understand everything. At least not now. Maybe perspective will be needed before a fuller analysis can be done. However what I can say is that one of the main reasons, if not the principal one, for the revolution is because Buddhadeb Bhattacharya is no Jyoti Basu.

How he compares to Jyoti-babu as an administrator and a CM may be a matter of debate (I would say Buddha-babu is streets ahead). What however is undeniable is that he never quite had Jyoti-babu’s political acumen and more accurately his knowledge of the psychology of his state.

Jyoti-babu understood the secret to staying in power in Bengal. That of keeping up appearances of being the “little guy”. The underdog. Bengalis, even more than macher jhol and Ganguly, love the ideal of the dispossessed, the simple and the honest fighting against the big bad wolves. If I had a paisa for everytime I heard a Bengali say “So-and-so could have been rich/famous but chose not to” I would have been one of the Ambani brothers. This peculiar aversion for success is what explains why Bengalis are Leftists at heart, why they love nothing more than to see big corporations bite the dust even when it means that their state falls even further behind, which is why they will put their feet on their axe for the sake of “idealism”, misplaced and suicidal it may be.

Jyoti babu knew this and how to play to it. When the Bakreswar power plant got stalled due as much to his government’s intransigence as the Congress central government’s intentional neglect, he painted it as the battle between David and Goliath with drama like “Bangali youth will sell blood to finance Bakreswar” which the state totally lapped up. When industries closed in the State and capital fled, he said “Good riddance ! They want to exploit us and we won’t stand for it”. Bangalis applauded—yes that’s showing those fatcats ! After all as a teacher of mine, with well-known party affiliation said one day with barely concealed pride ” Aare baba. We are not Gujarat”. In personal life, he too never went for the ostentation of a Jayalalitha or a Laloo. People never rolled at his feet or drew his pictures with blood. Appearances of humility were always maintained.

People grumbled about the Left. But when it came to election day, they would still vote for the “little guys”, even though calling them little in Bengal would be like calling Tuntun size zero.

This is where Buddha dropped the ball. In his rush to accomplish “something”, he became associated with the “bad guys”—multinationals, business houses, the ones who grab land and eat babies for lunch. Suddenly Bengalis were able to shake off their ennui, suddenly all the malignancy of the Left became evident to them, suddenly the penny dropped.

When party hacks robbed people in broad daylight, occupying land and property that did not belong them it was “Oho poor people what can they do !” When a retired man whose life-savings had been put inside a plot of land had to see it taken over by the community boys wanted to use it as their football ground, people said “Oho poor boys where will they play?” When family businesses built up through generations of labor and sacrifice were taken by force of muscle, people said “Oho poor workers why should they be deprived?”

Every act of strongarm, every act of violence and intimidation was kosher because the perps were “little guys” or portrayed as such.

But now when the same thing happens (actually not really the same because the Tatas were buying at above market prices from the actual owners who held the titles and not just breaking legs and burning huts [a more detailed analysis here]), the same people discover “property rights” . This is because evil corporations and the big guys are now in the mix.

And who is caught helping them in their capitalist plans of world domination?

CPM.

As Mukul discovered fake Dr. Hajra’s evil intentions in “Sonar Kella” only when he shot at the peacock ( “Tumi dushtu lok” [You are an evil man]), the people of Bengal have finally stumbled, with similar naivete, upon the villain. Ironically at a time when it has been the least villainous it has been in decades.

I have said this before also on my blog. Mamata is the new Left. The new Jyoti Babu. The new champion of the downtrodden. Who has remembered that one golden rule, the second part of which Buddha had forgotten.

That there were two kinds of people you do not mess with, who are never wrong—–those who have strength by virtue of position and those who have strength by virtue of numbers.

And so the fall of the Left comes close. The Huns are at the gate and Atilla is roaring. The Goths are running loose in the countryside liberating vast tracts of the empire. The Red Legion, depleted and morose, are coming out holding their Communist manifestos and preparing for their last stand.

What I had always wanted to see is now at hand. Yet I feel no pleasure. Instead I am overwhelmed my sadness. Not because Buddha’s Left was good. But because what it is to come will be far far worse.

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Observations On India Australia ODI Series 2009

2009-11-10T15:08:43Z

Observation 1: While we came very close to becoming the statistical number 1 ODI team in the world, the fact remains that we have far too many fundamental problems to claim that we rightfully deserve the top rank.

For one, Australia showed us where exactly we stand in one of the defining criteria for excellence as a sporting country—depth of talent.

The Australia of 2009 is a pale shadow of that of 2007 in terms of ability. On top of that, more than half of their first team were not available due to a rotten run of injuries. And yet second and third-choice players like Bollinger were able to turn in match-winning performances in conditions, totally foreign to them and with very little preparation since many of them were hurriedly drafted into the squad. In contrast, the Indian side seems to be unable to recover from the absence of just one player—-pace-spearhead Zaheer Khan for several series now, an absence we have had sufficient time to plan for.

Observation 2: Another place where the gulf between us and what it takes to be number 1 has been tragically exposed has been in the domain of basic skills—-running between the wickets and fielding. The errors that we were told had ended with Ganguly and Azhar and Laxman— of not getting between the throw and wickets, of not diving and sliding, of taking extra steps to avoid throws—was manifested again and again and in multiple players. And the lesser said about the fielding the better. This is one aspect where the Indian team, never the best team in this respect, has fallen sharply even from its 2006–2007 levels with even on the day where it fielded the best it had in many years (Dhoni’s own admission) it was still upstaged by Ponting’s men.

In the field, Sehwag moves about like he is taking an afternoon stroll. Kim Sharma would hit the stumps more often than Yuvraj Singh. Now before you say “Hey these Gen Next players are also not as young anymore” it is worth looking at the way players like Ponting and even Hussey (who is not a natural athlete) maintain spectacularly high standards of fielding, despite them not exactly being spring chicken. It is evident that the problem has got less to do with age and more to do with the traditional Indian “we are seniors we can take it easy” attitude, an attitude I was given to believe went out with the Oldistan generation.

Observation 3: The Indian bowling cupboard looks totally bare, either because our sensational pace discoveries lose their pace [ a condition known as Prasaditis] one or two seasons after their arrival (first it was Irfan, then it was Munaf and now it is Ishant) or because they lose their mind (example too obvious to be stated). Of course that we knew for some time now. The Australians with their immense depth in pace bowling stocks seemed to make this shortcoming even more damning.

Observation 4: His batting may have improved out of sight but Harbhajan Singh, bar an isolated performance or two, is one of the side’s biggest weaknesses. In the match at Guwahati on a spinning track with India defending a low score and the captain needing to call in his main strike bowler as soon as possible (no sense in holding him back) Dhoni tellingly turned first to, no not Harbhajan, but spinning all-rounder Ravindra Jadeja. And throughout the innings, it was Jadeja who looked the most dangerous, threatening a wicket whenever he had the ball. In contrast, Harbhajan delivered a phone-in performance and even though he got 2 wickets to Jadeja’s none, he never looked like he would run through the Australians.

One couldnt help but think of a tall, bespectacled intense looking man who, in countless matches where the Indian batting had failed and where the pitch was taking turn, would bowl his heart out prising batsmen one by one. Not that he could bring victory every time (he still won more than the present “India’s No 1 strike bowler” can ever hope to) but as long as he had an over to go, we fans always knew there was some hope.

With Harbhajan there is little.

Observation 5: It was perhaps as much as indictment of Harbhajan’s spinning skills as that of Youngistan’s weakness against spin that Hauritz, for most of the time, looked the best spinner on both sides.In the past, touring spinners far better than Hauritz have met their Waterloos in India because players like Dada, Sidhu and Laxman used their legs to play them unlike today’s Indian batsman who favor playing from the crease. With the exception of old-school Sachin in Hyderabad, not one Indian player tried to give Hauritz the charge or throw him off length in the manner that the previous occupants of their batting slots used to. The result was that he got away looking far better than he is.

Observation 6: Okay. India is in a must-win game. In Guwahati with a very early morning start and fog around coupled with Australia’s strong pace bowling lineup and India’s well-known problem against the swinging ball, Dhoni still decides to bat on winning the toss. I do not know why he thought that batting first would be less risky than chasing on a pitch which would spin later and where the opponent bowling attack did not consist of Mendis and Murali but Hauritz and Vosges. But even if we consider that he trusted the Indian batsmen to last out the opening hour, why then did he pick three seamers (despite Munaf having a very poor match) and not play Amit Mishra , considering his game plan was based critically on the assumption that playing spin on this pitch would be much more difficult than playing pace?

Observation 7: Given the right teams and given the right timing (i.e. in the holiday season and not in April) one day internationals can be as money-making, crowd-pulling and exciting as T20 cricket.

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It Is Still The 90s

2009-11-05T18:54:12Z

It’s still anyone’s game. The ball gets hit to the extra-cover boundary.

The second run is on. The entire country is on its feet channeling Rajesh Khanna’s ( Disco Dancer) “Ga beta Ga” in a collective “Bhaag beta Bhaag”.

And then the two teams draw apart. Once again.

A flat beautiful under-pressure throw comes in at the ideal height for the keeper. Typically Australia.

The Indian player running to make the crease decides not to dive. And gets run out by a frame. The match is lost. Typically India.

Haag beta Haag.

Watching today’s game was like walking through a time-portal. It was the 90s all over again. Australia power to a humongous score losing just four wickets. If you looked at the right hand side of the score-card and blanked out the left (i.e. names) you would be forgiven for thinking that Mark Waugh, Adam Gilchrist, Ricky Ponting, Michael Bevan had been the batsmen.

And then when India bats, there is Sachin at one end, towering, imperious and carrying the weight of billions of people on his shoulders. And a few Mickey Mouses at the other. There is a brief Ganguly cameo. Oh wait that was Sehwag. Then there is a middle-order collapse—was that Azharuddin who just got flummoxed by a ball that jumped on him? No it was Yuvraj. Surely that cant be a Youngistan player who doesnt run covering the wicket from a throw but actually swerves away, in the process taking extra steps as well as giving fielders a view of the stumps, something that should be burnt into any international cricketer’s DNA as a “no-no”? Emm it actually is.

Is that Jadeja who commits kamikaze, ants-in-pants and totally loses the plot? Yes it is. Not that Jadeja. A new Jadeja. Same difference.

Is that thumping cover-drive punch from Sachin? Is it? Yes it is. Will it be curtains the moment he gets out?

It certainly will.

So there you have it folks. Another whole day wasted, like the many days wasted in the 90s, watching a game India manages to lose in the last over. Principally because in this decade, we are still decades behind Australia in running, fielding and finishing.

Okay maybe not wasted. Because we got to watch a Sachin master-class with some of his off-stump play being of the 98 vintage—his annus mirabilis. Yes we know. He could not finish it off. But maybe that was all for the better—–the rest of the Mickey Mouses did not deserve to finish winners today.

And so deja vu. Sachin Man of the Match, morose and disconsolate at the podium, accepting a prize for yet another superhuman effort with a touching “Playing for India has always been motivation enough” message, something perhaps a few of the IPL stars in the team need reminding. The Australian captain with a “We rule” smile on his face. Dhoni with the “Aaj haar” (defeat today) expression we grew up dreading.

The more things change the more they stay the same. Sadly.

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The King And I

2009-11-04T22:43:34Z

[Long Post]

I had gone to see teenage-wet-dream Divya Bharati and hiding-fat-by-wearing-sweater Rishi Kapoor movie “Deewana” the very day it was released, little knowing my life was going to be changed. It was then, just like how Moses saw God behind a burning bush when he least expected Him, that I saw a similarly magnificent vision, sliding on a block of ice, singing “Koi na koi chahiye pyar karne waala”. I had seen him before in “In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones” but there I did not know it was him, his performance being overshadowed by an attractive lady, playing the architecture student in a hat, a lady who would since go on to be a God of Big Size Things in a different domain. After an intense hand-throwing performance with a curious propensity to curl his lip and make his eyes red, something I had never seen before and which at that time made me go “Wow aisi deewangi dekhi naheen kaheen”, this man slowly started vanishing into the woodwork of Bollywood, like Avinash Wadhavan and Ayub Khan, sometimes being seen driving Nagma on bicycle (King Uncle), dancing behind Divya Bharati as she worked it in a delectable black top (Dil Aashna Hai), being whispered about in the men’s room for “that” scene in Maya Memsaheb or playing second fiddle to Nana Patekar as the loveria-afflicted hero in “Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman”, a movie conjectured to have inspired the growth of Satyam under Ramalinga Raju and also the “taali bajao” theme song of those who walk the middle path— “Aaee Raju Chal Aaja Re Baaju” [Video]

And then he rose from the dying. Having gone to see a low-buzz movie called “Baazigar” only to enjoy Anu Malik’s signature “Main milee tu mila duniya jaale to jaale” vocal riff (which I still worship), I was blown away. From that iconic “Madaannnn Chopprraaaaaa” supremely bloody male-male penetration (even today that scene lingers with me, for instance when I saw “Dil Bole Hadippa” the other day I had this urge to shake my lip, yell “Adityaaaa Chopprraaaa” and run into a high-tension wire) to the historic Knight Riders-throws -down-Rajasthan Royals from the top of the building (a scene that totally caught me by surprise, in a way the ending of “Usual Suspects” did) to the naughty “zip up” move on the heroine’s behind to the scene of Shahrukh Khan in a towel playing tennis and jumping into a pool (a scene that electrified, I have been told, more people than Kajol’s towel dance in DDLJ). “Baazigar” was simply history. The launch of something epic.

Desiring more of this man, I went first-day first-show to Priya cinema hall to see “Darr”. That day for some strange reason the Kolkata chapter of the Sunny Deol fan club had booked tickets en masse (all dressed in bandanas like Sunny Deol in the movie) and as luck would have it, my seat fell right in front of them. And throughout the length of the movie, these maniacs kept screaming “Sunny tor baap” “Juhi tor maa” (Sunny is your dad, Juhi is your mom) whenever the love-obsessed anti-hero would slant his head, slit his red eyes and quiver his lips. Thanks to these inconsiderate fans, I could not fully appreciate “Jadoo Teri Nazaar” which would go onto become the anthem of frustrated stalkers as every Romeo from Khardah to Kankurganchi went K-k-kiran at bus-stops nor could I wrap my mind around the superhuman feat wherein Sunny Deol starts chasing the anti-hero from the mountains of presumably Switzerland right to the beach.

With my Higher Secondary exams over and reeling under a disastrous Joint Entrance Exam, I went to see “Anjaam”. I came out shaken (one of my friends said “The Higher Secondary exams were better than this movie”) unable to decide which was more terrifying—–Madhuri Dixit’s stuffing money down throats, eating human beings or Dipak Tijori as the hero. What however I am sure about is there was more blood spilt in “Anjaam” than all the blood spilt in the seven Saw movies. No two ways about it.

Karan Arjun came and went—primarily a two hero flick with the star turn being provided by Rakhee with her maniacal “Mere bete Karan Arjun aayenge. Dharti cheed ke ayenge. Aasman todke aayenge”. So did “Kabhi Haan Kabhi Na”, making not much of an effect at the box office, despite an endearing (some would say his best along with Swades) performance as a golden-hearted loser and one awesome awesome musical score including my personal favorite “Kab se kare hai tera intezaar”.

And then it happened. Possibly his greatest triumph. “Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge” —a movie that rewrote Indian movie history. Fresh in college and suffused with the lovey-doveys, I swooned. As did an entire generation. Na Jaane Mere Dil Ko Kya Ho Gya. Abhi To Yaheen Tha Abhi Kho Gya. Soon everyone was standing at bus stops, swinging their head sideways, imagining an SRK dimple on their cheeks as they sang to their imaginary muses (mere khawabon main jo aaye) hoping that one day, while on the Canning Local squeezed in like sardines between the vegetable vendors and industrious pickpockets, they could stretch out their hand and a Simran would grab it. Come fall in love.

However DDLJ also killed the man for me. From that time, he became eternally typecast, trapped in the alternate reality of the Chopra-Johars, unwilling to take a risk with his image essentially strait-jacketed playing the “lover boy” . With even the same name. Rahul. Mar gya Rahul. Rahul naam to yaad rahega. A character so infuriatingly real that recently an American terrorist was planning to travel to India to take out a prominent Indian actor identified as “Rahul” [Link].

Which is why I did not like “Yes Boss”. And could barely sit through “Dil To Pagal Hain”, a movie I am sure was commissioned by the military-industrial complex to sell red heart-shaped balloons (remember the song “Chand ne kuch kahaa”). Ditto “Pardes” (Agar Ganga se pyar karna gunha hai…to [goaty bleat] hai…hai…) helmed by Subhash Ghai who brought novelty to the genre by telling people to “rise in love” (in Taal) rather than “fall in love”. The final nail was driven into my devotion for the man when in 1998, the Karan that Rakhee had prophesied in “Karan Arjun” arrived, forging a Big Ears-Noddy duo, the greatest commercial alliance to be seen in Hindi moviedom. “Kuch Kuch Hota Hain” came into being, bringing into existence the most irritating over-precocious kid ever captured on screen and strengthening the formula that would be the bane of Bollywood till today.

Not that he was still was not making some delectable movies. Like “Ramjaane” which created a cult of white coats and red ribbons around the head in Kolkata and the reciting of poetic lines like “Raat badi choti hai lekin baat bari long ala ala ala long ala long”. Or “English Babu Desi Mem” where…oh who am I kidding….that movie I loved because of Sonali Bendre and “Bharatpur loot gya ui mere amma” and “Abhi abhi solaah baras ki hui”. Like “Koyla” by far his most intense action movie with some of the most spectacular sequences ever shown in mainstream Bollywood.

My final falling out with the King happened when we went to see “Duplicate”. For one, porn MMS’s had more detailed plots than that one had. If that was not enough, I was sitting beside a guy friend, a friend who worshipped the King so much that he had a bare-chested picture set as his desktop (his retort was “What do you expect? Me to put a picture of Sonali Bendre? What will my parents think?”). As the hero took a bath, I whispered to him “So paisa wasool”? Immediately a slap hit my cheek. It was my friend, in great wrath, lashing out at having his private moment ruined.

That was it for me. Getting slapped in public for him. Yeh thappad ki goonj and all that. The last straw on the camel’s back. Honestly. My faith was finally broken.

Then doing graduate studies in the US, I went to see Asoka with a few friends. My verdict was simple: this movie was the revenge of the Kalinga rajya on Asoka’s legacy for two reasons: the genocide perpetrated on them and the dropping of Debashish Mohanty. Reducing one of the greatest stories of sin and redemption to a princey romance story with Samrata Asoka leaping out of lakes in superslow motion and making underwater love this was one King’s desecration of another. Then there was Mohabbatein, the five love-stories-in-a-movie, with the King playing Kapil Sibal trying to scrap exams so that his wards may make music and make love. Followed by Devdas which we went to see from Stonybrook in a group of about fifty, sitting in front of the Indian theater playing Antakshari (we had arrived two hours in advance) and then entering to find that the Indian proprietor had oversold tickets. Which meant many of us saw the movie sitting on the stairs, as we were blown away by the assault of colors and the “maar daala” overwrought acting. Followed by “Veer Zara” where his acting as an old man was distinguished from that of young man’s by a slight shake of the head and three strands of white hair, though the final scene where he recites “Main quadi no 786″ as the Pakistani judge starts clapping was deeply moving, a sentiment captured by an Youtube commenter

thanks are due to you dude, for uploading such kind of ultimate videos…. long after i saw the movie in theater, i recalled the moments when i was literally crying at this very moment.. great? movie, great scene, great moment, great words spoken, great acting by the kingly person, and great work by you to have uploaded it..

There have been many more—of failed marriages with Kings XI owner and of rebirth and of a government employee who is unrecognizable without a mustache— none of which have had a fraction of the impact his dozen “Aiiiiis” in “Army” or one nod of his head in “Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge” had on me. Why— I have often wondered? Is the King no longer as magnificent as he used to be? Or has the King remained the same while I have moved on?

Of late as old age approaches and each day means that I am closer to the end, I contemplate more and more. Was I wrong all along? Is He not the King but God himself? Commentator Rajib thinks so and he has made a very compelling argument in the thread of this post. And he may have a point. When I went to see “Om Shanti Om” in Laurel in a packed theater, the moment He came onto the screen brandishing his six packs, an auntie sitting in front of me screamed “Hai mar jawaan” in what I can only explain as religious rapture. Not only she but also an uncle cried out “Ohhhhhh” in a way that was distinctly orgasmic.

Yes it make sense. After all in Veer Zara does he not sing “Main Yahaan Ho Yahaan Ho Yahaan” thus informing us of his presence in everything—-T20 franchises, calling card advertisements, wedding party dances, Bollywood nights, game shows, press conferences, in cricket stadiums handing out CDS of his latest movies? Is this not the ultimate proof of his divinity?

Recently He turned forty-four. On the occasion he announced his ambitious plans for the world of mice and men, in a style that he has made his own. [Link]

Now I want to do something in return. I want to bring a smile to the faces of youngsters. I don’t want to start an NGO, but I do wish to do something for the cause of the girl child… The feeling of wanting to give is stronger now than it has been. I think of life as work. I want to introspect as to which direction I should take my life in. I want to do something to save the environment. Honestly, I haven’t done my bit yet but I will start now.

Bringing smiles to young people. Do something for the girl child. Introspect. Save the environment. Sell money transfer packages to India. And dance to “Love mera hit hit”. Which mortal can do all this?

Happy birthday King or God whoever you are. Where would be all without you?

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The Phantom Menace

2009-10-29T04:11:51Z

With chapters of my book having come back with edits and with a new chapter I have been working on together with talking to the cover designer, I have been on a blog-break of late.

However when sensational things like Arundhati Roy justifying the reign of terror unleashed by the Naxals and Kamal Khan hurling a waterbottle at designer delicate-flower Rohit Verma (who weeps like somebody has died when asked to cook) on Big Boss Tritiyaa happen then I am forced to break the silence.

Sensational yes. Surprising no. After all both Ms. Roy and Mr. Khan push the envelope of outrageousness for the expressed purpose of self-promotion, a game known as Rakhiopoly wherein one is forced to continually raise the bar of provocativeness in order to keep oneself in the public gaze.

That is however where the similarity between the two ends. Because MNS’s-worst-nightmare KRK, with his silver gun locket and his “I am a multimillionaire whose milk comes from Netherlands” fondness for the endowed “Ka-Laudia” , is immensely endearing and totally entertaining.

Whereas Ms. Roy’s recycling of Chomskian rhetoric (”You have an army of very poor people being faced down by an army of rich that are corporate-backed”) in a way even Pritam would scoff at being unimaginatively unoriginal and her monumental hypocrisy (”If all corporations are evil, why does she take payments from publishing houses and if the environment is being destroyed, why does she let trees be destroyed to enable her to make money off selling her prose?”) is plain tiresome.

Yet what provokes me to post is that for many what she says about Naxals finds resonance in that Naxals are considered to be “independent” Robin Hoods fighting the system on behalf of the dispossessed, a militant reaction to state-oppression from tribals and other marginalized folks. This explains why the arrest of people like Chhatradhar Mahato is met with email petitions (like this one) [the argument being that Mahato is not a Naxal but a tribal leader even though Naxals were holding hostages demanding the release of "non-Naxal" Mahato) and people, like our prime minister, go to great lengths to point out that Naxals are not terrorists .

The argument as to who is a "terrorist" and who is "misguided youth" is a never-ending one (For instance, in the Western "liberal" media, the people who attacked WTC are terrorists but those who attacked the Indian parliament are "militants") that has been fought over so many times that it is not worth going into again. However what requires comment is that Naxals are anything but the "little guys fighting for justice pushed into a corner" that their PR people like Ms. Roy would have us believe. They are an organized army-like entity with a leadership structure whose principal goal is the destruction of the Indian state and the rule of law. They terrorize the populations they claim to protect, extort and appropriate resources from the dispossessed and engage in violence against people who do not represent the state. Their arms are sophisticated, they are financed by India's enemies and they are allied with SIMI tapping into their organization and their funding channels.

However unlike your average SIMI terrorists who at least publicly are condemned by one and all, the Naxals have widespread support and sympathy among the chattering classes (who ironically will be the first persons strung on trees and their possessions taken if the Naxals attain their aims). In an age where the battle is not only fought with guns and bombs but also with TV cameras and boom mics, this makes the Naxals even more dangerous.

In West Bengal, allied with the state "opposition" (who are ironically part of the government at the Center and playing a heinous double game [Link] of opportunistic collusion) and provided full support by the intellectual base in Kolkata consisting of a motley crowd of marginal actresses/directors/theater personalities/poets one of whom even donning Maoist fatigues while meeting the “non Naxal Naxal leader” Chattradhar Mahato , they have won a string of major victories by weakening the state and derailing development. And not coincidentally after their major victories, the armed insurgency in the region has also seen a remarkable escalation with the state government finding their hands bound by the deluge of public opinion, misguided and all-informed it is, in favor of the “tribals” –a campaign of misinformation orchestrated by Naxal sympathizers in the media and influential sections of the intelligentsia.

Given this, it becomes contingent on us to raise our voices, even when a book needs editing and release deadlines approach and annual evaluations are due and midterms need grading and project work need to be completed, to call out the Naxals for what they are.

Terrorists. Deshdrohis.

Which incidentally is the name of Kamal Khan’s iconic movie.

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The Gully Cricket League

2009-10-19T20:19:30Z

I presume that rarely in my many years on this planet have I been as disinterested in the cricket that is on offer than I have been over the last few weeks. The Champions League has been on and I could not care less. There is Duminy from South Africa (and a Mumbai Indian) representing a South African T20 team facing off against fellow South African Jack Kallis wearing a Bangalore jersey. Then there is Gibbs from Deccan Chargers who does not turn up for the team we associate him with but for a different franchise. If Delhi Daredevils had advanced and New South Wales had not, then would David Warner switch loyalties midway through the tournament and turn out for his IPL team?

Why single out the Champions League you say—national lines are blurred inside IPL also. But there at least the allocation of different international stars to different teams is kind of fixed—-Bravo plays for the Mumbai Indians, Hodge and David Hussey are not supposed to be on the winning side. Over here, even that association is torn apart creating weird situations like what would happen if Beckham, in his Real Madrid days turned up for Man United in a tournament just because Real Madrid had not qualified for it. This of course does not happen since players like Beckham play for one club at a time unlike in cricket, players are journeymen playing in different leagues at different times of the year with someone like Brendon McCullum being associated with three franchises concurrently(Otago, New South Wales and Knight Riders).

The only good thing about the Champions League is that it reminds me of gully cricket growing up in Calcutta when the big bullies would be captains, do a toss (usually done by guessing correctly if the opposing captain has the pebble in his right or left hand or has it/dropped it) and then alternately pick players based on strengths (I was always the last person selected)so that every afternoon the composition of teams would be different. Of course the Champions League lacks the joy of breaking glass or getting shouted at by second-floor “masi” for putting the ball in her balcony (not our fault that it is straight in the mid-wicket region where all cross-batted hoicks go). Which is why I have avoided it totally this year.

Now coming to what I do care for.

With respect to the forthcoming ODI series against Australia, the board of selectors once again showed their sagacity by laying the blame for India’s latest debacle on where it was due—on the shoulders of Venkatesh Prasad, cricket’s very own Latin Lover whose legacy to a game of pace and speed has been slow delicate caresses and sensual massages as symbolized by his slow and slower deliveries. When he was hired as India’s bowling coach, my first impression was that he would be the glorified ball-fetch guy, since he never revealed great sagacity while bowling. Evidently he proved everyone wrong being felicitated for India’s awesome pace prowess last two seasons. Recently however with the wheels of the great Indian pace machine coming off, the Board has decided that Venkatesh Prasad is the real villain. And so the axe has fallen, slowly of course, on the shoulders of the great Venkatesh. And if Batman gets chopped, can Robin be far behind? So out goes Robin Singh. And if RS gets booted, can the other RS be far behind? So there goes R(P) Singh and Yousuf Pathan as part of the ritual bloodletting that must follow a bad campaign, the Board of selectors has once again cycled back in Munaf “Bobby” Patel (context here) —though something tells me that it is just a series or so before RP Singh comes back in as part of the selectorial musical chairs.

Of course the most controversial omission was that of Rahul Dravid. Several questions have been asked with respect to why he lost his spot—-did the selectors just choose him for one series as a fire-fighting measure? Was he omitted because the Indian pitches are flat and will he be recalled once again when we tour? Does Dravid deserve this kind of “Now you are needed, now you are not” treatment? Or was this because Dravid, in the match against Pakistan, ran horribly between wickets and that Gambhir, never the most even-tempered of persons, threw away his wicket frustrated at Dravid’s inability to rotate the strike at a time Gambhir was in sparkling form?

Or were the reasons elsewhere?

[Link]

Following India’s first-round exit from the ICC Champions Trophy in South Africa, a senior player in the team made it a point to call Prof. Ratnakar Shetty, Chief Administrative Officer, Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and told him that some of the youngsters don’t have any feeling of sadness losing.

Of course they don’t feel sad. Why would they? When I used to play “gully” cricket even I never felt sad when my team lost. Why? Because there was no “my team” since if I was in “Sunil-da”’s team today I would be in Paplu-da’s team tomorrow and in Tunku-da’s team day-after-tomorrow on Wednesday (Paplu-da has maths tuitions on Wednesday afternoon and does not play). The only thing that made me sad was if I did not get my batting, especially after having made to fetch the ball from the fourth floor three times while fielding.

I would think that with cricket being reduced to gully cricket in terms of team loyalty, thanks to the money-sharks at the ICC and BCCI and the proliferation of tournaments like the Champions League , its useless blaming the players for not feeling too distraught at a defeat.

After all is not the “Indian team” yet another “club side” (after all didnt the BCCI argue that the “Indian team” represents a private entity and not the nation), just one of many, for which they play throughout the year?

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God Is a Match Fixer

2009-10-14T03:01:47Z

A very interesting article in the New York Times today.

Then it will be time to test one of the most bizarre and revolutionary theories in science. I’m not talking about extra dimensions of space-time, dark matter or even black holes that eat the Earth. No, I’m talking about the notion that the troubled collider is being sabotaged by its own future. A pair of otherwise distinguished physicists have suggested that the hypothesized Higgs boson, which physicists hope to produce with the collider, might be so abhorrent to nature that its creation would ripple backward through time and stop the collider before it could make one, like a time traveler who goes back in time to kill his grandfather.

Holger Bech Nielsen, of the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, and Masao Ninomiya of the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics in Kyoto, Japan, put this idea forward in a series of papers with titles like “Test of Effect From Future in Large Hadron Collider: a Proposal” and “Search for Future Influence From LHC,” posted on the physics Web site arXiv.org in the last year and a half.

According to the so-called Standard Model that rules almost all physics, the Higgs is responsible for imbuing other elementary particles with mass.

“It must be our prediction that all Higgs producing machines shall have bad luck,” Dr. Nielsen said in an e-mail message. In an unpublished essay, Dr. Nielson said of the theory, “Well, one could even almost say that we have a model for God.” It is their guess, he went on, “that He rather hates Higgs particles, and attempts to avoid them.”

Read the whole article for a more full understanding.

Or perhaps not.

What the theory implies that some agency, let’s call him/her/it God, prevents the success of the Large Hadron Collider project because the discovery of the Higgs Boson is something “He/She/It” abhors, perhaps because it might destroy everything that there is. The idea is not new and there have been variants of this basic premise. According to another kind of speculative theory, there are infinitely many possible universes , with each decision point creating multiple universes. Out of these multiple universes, there is a subset of “feasible” universes (for instance one where Abhishek Bachchan is not married to both Karishma and Aishwarya or one where Akshay Kumar is an ascetic or one where water flows down and not up) and we are currently in one of those “feasible” universes. Taking this idea forward, there may be other parallel universes where the Large Hadron Collider has succeeded (i.e. Higgs Boson produced) though the one in which we reside is NOT one of them. According to Nielsen-Ninomiya, since the production of Higgs Boson itself may render an universe infeasible and since we reside in a feasible universe, the experiment will never succeed. This is essentially an extension of what is known as the anthropomorphic view of the universe (for more on this read Lisa Randall’s “Warped Passages“) which essentially says “Since we, important as we are, live in this universe things must always work out for the good in order to keep us existent”.

This of course explains a lot of things. For instance why Satyen Bose, after whom boson is named, never won the Nobel prize because God, being self-loathing, abhors Bongs as well as Bosons. It also gives a way the seemingly ridiculous event of Obama winning the Nobel prize may be rationalized —-any other path in space-time with an alternative winner would lead to the destruction of everything. This is why God “fixed things up”, in essence snipping off branches in the decision tree with foreknowledge of what would happen if those paths were taken suggesting the possibility that many of what we think are “choices” do not exactly exist and that “match fixing” might have religious significance. This also explains many other mysteries from why I got out 37 of 100 in the nightmarish Maths Second paper in Class 12, why Gatting tried to reverse-sweep Alan Border to why Uday Chopra ever acted in a movie . Simply because the universe might have been annihilated otherwise.

And finally it provides a complicated, intellectually-masturbatory framework for justifying what grandma is fond of saying: “Bhagawan jo kartein hai acche ke liya kartein hain”.

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