Back Without A Bang

Ok, I'll admit I can no longer stand the guilt that comes with not writing a post for over a month; I feel I can be brave enough to concede that the only reason I'm writing this is because every other blog writer I know continues to merrily write post after post without so much as a hint of a furrowed brow, while my blog has been languishing in the sorrowful shadows, unattended and ignored. Ugh, looks like the month-long hiatus has made my writing a little over-dramatic. But what the heck, as long as I'm writing something....

Perhaps the most significant development in the last one month, other than Hilary Clinton closing the gap on Barack Obama in the Democratic presidential race in the US, the previously unheard-of phenomenon of foodgrain scarcity scaring the living daylights out of Americans, Priyanka Gandhi meeting with one of the assassins responsible for her father's death, and our dear old MSEB announcing that Pune will not have to face load-shedding at least until September but deciding to subject Puneites anyway to frequent, painful power-cuts lasting anywhere between 5 seconds and 5 hours (whew, this is turning out to be one long sentence), has been the roaring success of the Indian Premier League, or IPL, to be more hep about it. Actually, 'roaring success' might be an understatement - there's something so enthralling, so rivetingly amusing about seeing those mighty Australian and South African players being meekly obedient to their Indian captains and eagerly putting in the yards to, oh, defeat just another State team filled with a bunch of second class Indian cricketers, that there never really should have been a doubt about the success of the tournament. It helps, of course, that the format of the tournament is eerily similar to that of the many football leagues in Europe that are so wildly popular with a small but substantial segment of Indian sports watchers. The IPL has done to cricket what a 100 years of Test cricket and 40 years of one-day cricket couldn't: it has made cricket, in every shallow and amateurish sense of the term, 'cool'. Way to go, BCCI!


In other news, the tennis clay season has begun, and the question that has enchanted and consumed tennis followers for the past 3 years has surfaced again: can Roger Federer beat Rafael Nadal at the French Open? Federer, for his part, seems to have overcome his early season hiccups by stringing together two consecutive finals appearances on his least favourite surface, notching up his first title of the year at Estoril before losing to Rafael Nadal in the final at Monte Carlo. Yeah, I know, nothing new or earth-shattering about that last bit - Federer losing to Nadal on clay has become somewhat of a given, has it not? What does surprise me, however, is the continued and insistent belief that Federer's supporters hold that he will, one day, manage to overcome the King of Clay at the French Open. I mean seriously, if you saw how much advice, not support, but advice that Federer gets before each match that he plays against Nadal from thousands of people who may never have wielded a racquet their whole lives , you'd think Federer was the prized protege of nearly half of the tennis-watching population of the world. Play the slice backhand. Use the forehand dropshot. Come to the net more often. Attack Nadal's second serve more aggressively. Improve your serving percentage. Some have even suggested switching over from a one-handed backhand (that gorgeous beauty of a shot) to a two-handed one. Even Jose Higueras, Federer's celebrated (?) new coach, hasn't been spared the 'expert' counsel. In the midst of all this, some rather more well-informed columnists gravely pronounce that Nadal on clay is a puzzle that cannot be solved; that Federer simply does not have the patience or fitness to get the better of the muscular Spaniard on dirt. How true is that last statement? Being a sworn Federer fan, I like to believe that it isn't in the least true; but it's all rather pointless for us to be armchair psychologists, is it not? At the end of the day Federer has to go out on the court and play solid tennis and outwit Nadal. Nothing more, nothing less. In the meantime, he can continue to delight us by displaying the kind of dazzling tennis that he put on show in his quarterfinal match against old nemesis David Nalbandian, and by handing out a few dozen more defeats to Novak Djokovic, preferably including several bagel sets. And of course, a few more moments like the "Be quiet, ok?" admonition that he shouted out to Djokovic's mother in their semi-final match at Monte Carlo. That was just so unexpected and so very wonderful. I mean, wow.


Watched a couple of Bollywood flicks last week, first Tashan, a strange movie that has all the right ideas but falls sorely short in execution. The first half is stylish and mildly interesting, the second half shoddy and exasperating. A shame, really, considering the extraordinary hype generated by the movie before its release and the oodles of hard work that must have been put in by Kareena Kapoor to achieve that thing called size zero. The other flick that I watched, U Me Aur Hum, is almost the reverse of Tashan - intolerably boring first half, mildly touching second half. Here too, the makers had a great premise, but the mandatory theatrics and Bollywood-style wooing sequences ruin things considerably. Kajol comes up with a vintage performance - even after all these years, she still holds, in my opinion, stomping rights to the mantle of being the best actress in Bollywood, and there are quite a few heart-rending scenes towards the end of the movie, but that's just about it. Just a thought: is the tagline of the movie, "Sometimes the greatest journey is the distance between two people" supposed to be a quote from an outside source, knowing as we do how the Ed Norton starrer The Painted Veil has the exact same tagline, or is this another pathetic attempt at thinly disguised plagiarism by Bollywood's dear old thieves?

Okay, for what seems like the umpteenth time, I seem to have run riot with my post - there's nothing more irritating than a post that never seems to end, is there? So I'll end right here - no conclusion, no dramatic parting line. Yes, this is it. The End. I quite like the ring of that. Hehehe.

10 Things We Learnt From the 20-20 World Cup

To call the recently-concluded Twenty20 World Cup anything less than a roaring success wouldn't quite be a shameful blasphemy, but would certainly be mighty close to it. We should know, the ICC officials wouldn't be grinning from ear to ear if the event was anywhere near as bland as the 50-50 World Cup in the West Indies. So what were the things that we learned from this very special event? Taking a cue from the innumerable movie message boards across the internet, I'll do my own list of the 10 most significant lessons that the Twenty20 World Cup taught us:

1. An Indo-Pak match is an Indo-Pak match is an Indo-Pak match: Maybe this isn't such a new lesson. No matter how strange the format or how neutral the venue, India and Pakistan really do know how to produce electrifying cricket matches with more twists than your average Bourne flick. If the first round encounter between the two turned out to be historic, what with the bowl-out and all, the final that these two teams put on show is already being heralded as the best finale to a major tournament in cricketing history. The Ashes? What's that?

2. South Africa are chokers, but never expect Graeme Smith to admit that: Honestly, Mr. Smith, the cricketing world is tired of bringing up that semi-final of the 1999 World Cup whenever your team crashes out of a major tournament inexplicably. Why not spare us the trouble and not raise everyone's expectations by performing so brilliantly in unimportant matches?

3. Stuart Broad can do a Daan van Bunge: I know, I should probably concentrate on Yuvraj Singh's jaw-dropping splendor in that unforgettable 6 sixes-over, but pray why has no one thought of taking a poke (or several pokes) at the bowler who made it all possible, Stuart Broad? The fact that only one international bowler (a Netherlands bowler, no less) in the history of cricket has ever let such an embarrassment come to pass should be a fair indication of how poorly Broad bowled in that over. Ah, the English! They can be quite freakish sometimes. And that brings me to the next lesson.....

4. The English can be pathetic at every innovation that they bring into cricket: Ok, 'pathetic' may be a little harsh here, but the English side was supposed to have a better shot than most at winning the tournament, armed as it was with a battalion of '20-20 bits-and-pieces specialist cricketers' and because, well, they started 20-20 cricket. Which is why the solitary win against Zimbabwe must hurt, perhaps even more than their customary insipid performances at the 50-over World Cups. 'Skill' is still the most important virtue for a modern cricketer, dear Englishmen.

5. Santhakumaran Sreesanth will perpetually try to be the Shahid Afridi of the bowlers: 21 runs off his first over, 0 from his second. Was he trying to create some kind of record? To be fair to him, he did bowl brilliantly against Australia and he played a big role in India's victory over Pakistan in the first round. But I do know that if India had lost the final to Pakistan, forgiving Sreesanth would have been a pretty hard thing to do. How do you let a batsman like Sohail Tanvir hit you for 2 sixes in a single, desperately crucial over?

6. Mahendra Singh Dhoni can make singularly inspired decisions: The tournament made a strong case for Dhoni to be appointed the Test skipper to go with his newly-acquired one-day responsibilities. His choice of players to bowl in the bowl-out was fantastic to say the least, and his handling of remarkably inept bowlers like Joginder Sharma deserves applause of the highest order. Maybe if he regained some of his batting magic the selectors will give him the chance he so thoroughly deserves?

7. It's never too late to announce your arrival on the international cricket stage: At 33, Misbah-ul-Haq is 3 years older than Mike Hussey was when Hussey first started to show the cricketing world that there can be better finishers of a match than Michael Bevan. And yet, Misbah batted so breathtakingly well throughout the tournament that one was almost tempted to give him the title of 'Best finisher in world cricket', or even 'Mr. Cricket', if you will. Unfortunately for him, only 'almost' - the cute chip/nudge/glance or whatever other name you wish to give to the ungainly shot that Misbah played on the last ball of the tournament will haunt him for the rest of his life. Nevertheless, Misbah undoubtedly was the most unlikely star of the World Cup - he sprang up from virtual nothingness and played not one, but two innings for the ages during the tournament; I'm sure Mohammad Yousuf isn't quite so wild now that he lost his place in the team to a nobody like Misbah.

8. Australia are not invincible in every format of the game, and Ricky Ponting can get REAL cranky about that: Just as we were getting over Graeme Smith's child-like condemnation of the tournament's format that was supposedly responsible for his side's early exit, Ricky Ponting came out and blamed everything in sight for his side's rather unexpected early exit (on a side note, it's a mark of Australia's supremacy in all forms of the game that a semi-final loss is dubbed an 'early exit'). Lack of match practice, his openers being too prolific for his side's own good, luck, the cruel scheduling of Australia's matches in distant venues.....the list was endless. Dear me, have the elements all of a sudden turned their back on the Australian cricket team? Or did Ponting listen to one Serena Williams press conference too many?

9. You can score a century in a 20-20 match, and still end up on the losing side: Poor Chris Gayle, he was in such a violent mood in the very first match of the tournament, bludgeoning 10 sixes and blowing the South African attack to pieces, that it seems he scared his own bowlers. I'm sorry, but the West Indies bowling attack is really quite ridiculously spineless, and it wouldn't surprise me if Chris Gayle ended up on the losing side even if he made a double century. Honestly, nothing about this West Indian team can surprise me any more. Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

10. Twenty20 Cricket is THE FUTURE: Daniel Vettori and Adam Gilchrist can turn their noses up at the format all they want, but it is clear that if cricket wants to have any semblance of an existence on the world sports stage, then it's got to invest in Twenty20. Get rid of 50-over cricket within a year, I say. And puh-lease, get rid of the ludicrous dancers/cheerleaders too.

Cricket Gets Its Saviour, Tennis On The Lookout For One

As Chris Gayle got down to some seriously savage ball-thwacking in the first match of the Twenty20 World Cup between West Indies and South Africa, all I could think was: why are they still playing 50-over cricket? If any cricket follower still feels the need to defend the logic of holding 50-over tournaments in the face of the adrenaline-rushing, maddeningly exciting blur that is Twenty20 cricket, then I have to fear for his sanity. Cricket needed something to save itself from the embarrassing doldrums that it was plunged into after the match-fixing saga, and it has got one. Twenty20 is fresh, innovative, thrilling and intense: just about everything you'd ask for in a modern sport. Thankfully, Twenty20 is also a money-spinner, and that would probably be a good enough reason to induce the bunch of dolts that is the ICC, which had the gall to insist to an outraged cricket community that this year's World Cup in the West Indies was a 'great success', to do some progressive work for a change. And while they're busy slobbering over the enormous mounds of money that they're bound to make through this new golden egg, will someone advise the idiots to push for Twenty20 cricket to be included in the Olympics?


Speaking of Olympics, I'm sure the fact that tennis is an Olympic sport must have alerted a lot of tennis followers to the deliciously fascinating possibilities the next year holds for a certain male tennis player. Roger Federer has achieved just about everything there is to achieve in tennis, having this week added yet another Grand Slam title to his already bulging collection by defeating Novak Djokovic in the US Open final, but a 'Golden Slam' might just be the one thing that firmly and eternally closes the GOAT debate. It's never been done before by a male player - Steffi Graf managed to win the Olympic gold medal in addition to the 4 Grand Slams in 1988, but no man has ever even come close to such a feat. Of course, Andre Agassi does have a career Golden Slam, but his career spanned two decades, so there. (On a side note, isn't it simply fabulous that the only two players in the history of tennis to have completed Golden Slams, whether in a calendar year or a career, ended up being married to each other?). The French Open remains the most worrying obstacle for Federer to achieve this Holy Grail-like accomplishment, but I like to believe that he's been saving it for the year when the full force of his achievements will hit the tennis world like a tornado. Yes, a Golden Slam next year would be totally stunningly terrific, and honestly, if anyone could ever do it, then it's got to be him. Federer will, however, have to watch out for an outlandish young player who likes to do silly impersonations of his well-respected peers, looks to the crowd instead of his coach when in need of advice whether to challenge a call, and who goes by the name of Novak Djokovic.

They said Federer didn't win the US Open final as much as Djokovic lost it, and for once they were right. When you get 7 set points spread over 2 sets, 5 of them on your serve, and fail to convert a single one of them, it says a lot about your poor mental strength, but if you're playing Federer, it also says a lot about your huge talent. Federer played awful for long periods during the game, I agree, but at times he was also outdone by Djoker's range of shots, his amazing movement, his effective serve and his exquisitely potent backhand. He's almost like a mini-Federer, to be very blunt. Of course, Federer managed to withstand all of Djokovic's weapons without so much as a grunt of frustration, armed as he always is with his own, much more important weapons like the ability to play the big points alarmingly well and an almost indefatigable serve. And that's precisely why he is THE Federer, all glory and perfection, and not a 'mini-Federer'. But Djokovic, it cannot be denied, is an irresistible talent, and it seems clear that from now on Federer will have not one (we've almost forgotten Rafael Nadal, haven't we?), but two great rivals. All the more motivation, I think, for Federer to raise the bar even higher, even if age isn't exactly on his side, and go for something that no man has ever dreamed of before. And oh, Pete Sampras's record is just a formality now, don't you think? 14 Grand Slams? If I were Federer, and that's a big 'if', I wouldn't settle for anything less than 18. Maybe even 20. Scary? You bet.

Cricket Gets A Blockbuster

Alright, yesterday's 20-20 cricket match between Australia and England may have been yet another damning indictment of the English team's depressing perils, and Australia may have proven yet again why there is such a wondrous gulf between them and the rest of the cricketing world. But if ever cricket has thrown up a sight to behold that exuded pure thrilling entertainment, it had to be Australia's batting in the first innings. Actually, it may not be entirely correct to describe what Australia did in the first part of the match as 'batting'. 'Massacre' might be a much more appropriate expression. In what turned out to be a record-shattering innings, the Aussie batsmen launched an astonishing onslaught on the hapless English players, and in the end it seemed so much like child's play for the marauding batsmen that it was positively scary.

Hayden was all muscle and aggression, Gilchrist's clean hitting and awesome power were mind-boggling, Ponting was thunderous class personified, and Symonds was buccaneeringly brutal. Even the relatively unknown Craig White feasted sumptuously on the format and England, and Michael Vaughan's men could only gaze on stupefied and dazed by the violent assault. 221 runs in 20 overs is no joke, as the unfortunate English batsmen found all too painfully when it was their turn to bat. To say that the Aussie spectators had a rip-roaring time would be an understatement. The fireworks provided by Australia's batsmen which were followed by the spectacular fireworks provided by the kind Sydney organisers made sure that the day was nothing less than one huge festive party.

I must confess that this was the first 20-20 match I've watched live on TV. And just this one experience was enough to turn me into a huge fan of the format. I'm convinced - this is the future of cricket. And a money-spinning future too. Just have a look at the overwhelming response cricket-lovers have given to 20-20. Whether it's England, South Africa or Australia, the crowds turn up in droves to witness the mad bashing and mauling of bowlers at the hands of some merciless batsmen. So what if the importance of technique and classy strokelay has been diminished? We do have Tests to preserve cricket in its purest form, don't we? When one-day international matches were started, I'm pretty darned sure there must have been the same snobbish protests against its 'unruly' nature. "Mediocrity will be encouraged", "batting and bowling will never again be conventional enough to qualify as art", "cricket will no longer be a gentleman's game". These are the oh-so-predictable disagreements with the shortening of the game, aren't they? Well, to that I just have to say that if the countless incidents of less-than-gentlemanly behaviour over the past decade or so including last year's Oval disaster are any indication, then cricket has ceased being a gentleman's game since a long long time.

Ironically, the performers of yesterday's magnificent display themselves have misgivings about 20-20 cricket. According to Ricky Ponting, a format 'which is a whole lot of fun but not very intense' does not appeal too greatly to his fiercely competitive mind. Adam Gilchrist and Co. have also registered their mild disapproval of the format. While the players themselves have every right to frown upon a novelty that seems threatening enough to their playing mindsets and attitudes, I think these protests will soon die out: when 20-20 cricket is actually exploited of its full and splendid potential, I don't see too many cricketers sticking their necks out and condemning the 'belittling' of the game, as some of the game's elite contemptuously prefer to call it. The bottomline is, money talks. And 20-20 will bring in the money by the truckloads. Not without reason either. Who wouldn't pay to watch a game in which every time a bowler puts in all a whole lot of effort to run in 20 metres and bowl one lousy delivery, the batsman doesn't decide it's too docile a delivery to be done anything with other than left alone? Clearly, 20-20 is the way to go. 50-over games will soon be ancient history. And if all teams decide to bat even half as enterprisingly as the Australians did yesterday, then we've got no real reason to worry. Cheers people, it's party time!