gareebee

I don't know who pays them to throw in such heaps of bullshit -
http://cricket.indiatimes.com/quickiearticleshow/1293710.cms

मी म्हणतो ती पूर्व दिशा

बरेच दिवस मी अधून मधून विचार करायचो की आपलं इथलं घर नक्की उत्तराभिमुख आहे की दक्षिणाभिमुख! माझं ताऱ्यांचं ज्ञान अगाध असल्यामुळे (सप्तर्षि बनवायला मला आकाशातले कुठलेही सात तारे चालतात)दिशा ओळखायला मला सूर्यच जास्ती भरवश्याचा वाटतो. शेवटी काल बऱ्याच दिवसांनी सूर्य ढगांबाहेर आला आणि माझ्या लक्षात आलं की आपलं घर पूर्वाभिमुख आहे (सध्या सूर्य बराच दक्षिणेकडे असल्याने आणि मला तो भर दुपारी १२ च्या सुमारास दिसल्यामुळे हा निष्कर्ष चुकण्याचीच जास्ती शक्यता आहे). तसा माझा direction sense काही येरा-गबाळा नाही. "बबन 'अ' बिंदूपासून निघून ४ पावलं पूर्वेकडे जाऊन १३ अंशातून उत्तरेकडे वळून १९ पावले दक्षिणेला गेला तर तो आता कुठे आहे" असल्या निरुपयोगी प्रश्नांच्या ४ पर्यायांपैकी मी जो ठोकायचो तो सहसा बरोबर यायचा (आणि दर वेळी याचं कारण योगायोग कसं असेल?), त्यामुळे मी हे म्हणू शकतो. पण याचा उपयोग नेहमीच रस्ते किंवा दिशा ओळखण्यात होतो असं नाही.

विशेषतः हे पुण्यात जाणवतं. तिथे सगळे चौक हे चौक नसून छक्के आहेत (उगाच काहीतरी अर्थ काढू नका, मला असं म्हणायचंय की अशी जागा जिथे ४-४ नाही तर ६-६ रस्ते एकत्र येतात). त्यामुळे नक्की कुमठेकरांकडे जायला ३३ अंशातून वळायचं की भांडारकरांकडे जायला ५७ अंशातून, असा विचार करता करता मी बऱ्याचदा ७९.५ अंशातून वळून ढोल्या पाटलांकडे पोहोचलोय. पण पुण्यात हे सगळं चालतं, कारण की तिथले बगळे हे सांगलीतल्या बगळ्यांपेक्षाही निरुपद्रवी आहेत, तुम्ही No entry मधून उलटे आला तरी ते गोड मानून घेतात. No entry कसलं One way मधून! ("विकेटकीपर नही गोलकीपर, गोलकीपर बेवकूफ़" मोड मधे वाचणे ).

इथे बाल्टी-मोरीत मात्र सगळी तऱ्हाच वेगळी आहे. मोरीतून बाहेर पडायला २-३ फ़्री-वेज आहेत. कुठेही जायचं झालं तरी त्यापैकी १ वापरायचा. आणि मला नाही वाटत की वर दिलेलं बबन्याचं गणित इथे कोणाला सोडवता येईल. काहीही हवं असलं की लगेच ते mapquest किंवा google चा आधार घेतात. त्यांचंही बरोबर आहे म्हणा, रस्तेच इतके मोठे आहेत की स्वतःचं डोकं लावून काही झेपायचंच नाही.

मधे एकदा रात्रीच्या वेळी एका अक्राळ-विक्राळ दिसणाऱ्या टॅक्सी ड्रायव्हरने आम्हाला असंच गंडवलं. त्याला exit 12A घ्यायला सांगितलेलं असताना सुद्धा त्याने स्वतःचं नसलेलं डोकं चालवलं आणि आम्हाला अंधारात होवार्ड कौंटी फ़िरवून आणली. शेवटी अगदी आम्ही जीवावर उदार झालेलो असताना एकदाचं exit 12A दिसलं. आणि ड्रायव्हरसकट कोणालाही कळलं नाही की नक्की कुठल्या दिशेला वळल्यामुळे ते आलं. एकंदरीत काय, तर (ब्लॉगच्या) नावात काय आहे? mapquest किंवा google म्हणतं ती पूर्व दिशा!

Pathetic pundit

Many times people with zero knowledge get into event reporting or journalism. Here is one classic example from rediff.com that I came across. Even "dainik puDhArI" might not make such a preliminary mistake I guess.

Context - India vs Srilanka, 2nd ODI at Mohali.
The writer says - "India could have well opted to use Agarkar for his spell of ten overs and then had him replaced by Super sub Sreesanth, who could have exploited the helpful conditions, but they chose not to." http://us.rediff.com/cricket/2005/oct/28india.htm?q=np&file=.htm

The guy who has written this (seems to be an official rediff correspondent, not just someone from readers' comments), seems to have never read what the substitution rule says - "Once you replace a player, the substitute is allowed to bowl only the overs that were not bowled by the player he substituted out of his quota of 10 (i.e. if the player has already bowled 5, then the supersub can only bowl 5) and bat only if the player he substituted had his wicket in tact." You don't need to know rocket science to figure out why it is so. If he replaces a player who has already lost his wicket and is allowed to bat, then the opposition will have to get 11 wickets and not 10 (or else leave 2 batsmen not out at the end). (This 1 is for the pundit himself).

I don't know why I still read those pathetic rediff.com and indiatimes.com cricket articles, may be because they feed me for my blogs.

I wish...

I wish I could write like this -
http://content-usa.cricinfo.com/india/content/story/222744.html

माझी मराठी भाषेला देणगी...

काल माझ्या रूम पार्टनरला दिवसा अभ्यास करताना पाहून मी तिथल्या तिथे एक नवीन म्हण पाडली ... माझ्या सर्वात मोठ्या समीक्षकाने (मला समीक्षक आहे असा दावा करून मी स्वत:ला लेखकाचे अधिष्ठान प्राप्त करून घेतोय.. ब्लॉग लिहायचा म्हंटल्यावर तेवढं चालतं) "मुकर्रर..." असा प्रतिसाद दिल्याने ती मी इथे मांडतोय ...

"रात्र घालवली चॅटाचॅटी आणि दिवसा बसून पोळ्या लाटी"

पण तेवढ्यात समीक्षक काकांनी दुसरी गोष्टं लक्षात आणून दिली की वेळेअभावी आपण इथे पोळ्या लाटत नाही, टॉर्टीला वगैरे आणून खातो.. समीक्षक ही खरंच वाईट गोष्टं असते. मुक्तछंदाला मारण्याचं काम करतात मेले.. आणि भाषेचा तोटा करतात फ़क्त (त्या हिशेबाने मी याच पानावर क्रिकेटचा खूप तोटा केलाय, ब्लॉग लिहायचा म्हंटल्यावर तेवढं चालतं). तर अशा या समीक्षक काकांची सूचना शिरसावंद्य मानून मी थोडा बदल करतोय..


"रात्र घालवली चॅटाचॅटी आणि दिवसा बसून होमवर्क रेटी"

एक पाचकळ जोक...

सौरव गांगुलीच्या कर्णधारपदाच्या कारकीर्दीला समर्पक शिर्षक काय असेल? ....
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कयामत से कयामत तक...

हा लेख वाचा. मला पुरेपूर पटला ..
http://content-usa.cricinfo.com/india/content/story/220186.html

Time to leave sir

If you believe in cricinfo's inside story on the Ganguly- Chappell rift (stories can be cruelly biased), then only you should read on. It's learnt that an honest suggestion by the coach was made public by the captain. And all it can lead to is debacle. I stated in one of my previous posts about how KPS Gill obliterated Indian Hockey circuit through some startling decision making and extreme egos. And we have witnessed in the past that when an individual becomes more important than the entity that he is a part of, then it destructs the whole entity. Needless to give examples, you can take Hitler's, who sank Germany along with himself, Ganguly seems adamant to do the same for Indian cricket.

It's very difficult for some individuals to accept bad things about themselves. They can't pass an unbiased judgement for themselves. Ganguly seems to be one of those. He still believes that he can fight back. But with this latest episode, I think he will be questioned even for his successful moves, forget about the ones that will fail and hence be cruelly carnaged by the media. It's difficult to imagine his future, unless Jagmohan Dalmiya also believes that he is above the goodwill of Indian cricket and pulls a rabbit out of the hat.

A coach has the power to give an honest advice, something that Ganguly himself demanded from Chappell. And his advice of stepping down from captaincy was not wrong at all. This is the problem with headstrong people. As much as their qualities can benefit when channeled properly, so can they destruct you when they go wrong. A sachin tendulkar would not have needed the coach to tell him to step down, if struck by such wretched form (mind you he has never got into such a low scoring rut ever). But then his lack of headstrongness was the one that kept denying him his choice of playing eleven, something that he believed contributed in a big way to his failed tenure at the helm. Ganguly's obstinancy has helped Team India in the past when he demanded Yuvraj, Kaif, Harbhajan, Sehwag and many others despite their failures and later converted them into a successful unit. But it was logical to support that move as one could see him having some sort of a thought about how he wanted the team to look like in the forthcoming days (and his picture of a good team was inline with most experts' opinion from what was available then). And all of these people were young enough and had shown glimpses of promise that their zeniths lied ahead. By the same hypothesis, if you try to judge his current support for himself (believing that he has an argument like - "if I supported people with constant failures, why should I not get something back when I am struggling?" - oh I am being so supportive to Ganguly, trying desparately to be in his shoes), you still can't sympathise with him. He has failed more consistently than all these blokes combinedly had and doesn't seem to know what vision he has for the team, apart from sinking it with himself.

I can't help myself reiterating the exceptional example of Nasser Hussain. During his reign, he was not too dissimilar in his approach to Ganguly, supporting his team, mentoring his youngsters, judging talents of the likes of Flintoff and Harmison and taking on his oppositions. But when he realised that his time had come, he decided to hang up his boots to make way for more deserving youngsters. He left with full dignity and left imprints of his own on English cricket. I am not sure that history will be so kind to Ganguly, although he, arguably, deserves it to some extent.

And then you have a VVS Laxman (excuse me for the topic change), who hits out at his critics after a feast against Zimbabwe. How can people think that they have the moral high grounds to lambaste people after such performances? I have no doubt about Laxman's BATTING (I have ample doubts about lots of his other aspects necessary to be a good cricketer, including his fitness) ability, but come on man, you have given better performances than this in our domestic cricket. I would have accepted your comments had they come even after a performance against the Mumbai team, not against a joke called Zimbabwe. Laxman, you still are precious to Indian TEST side, you are not agile enough to be in the ODI team (there are quite a few, Ashish Nehra to name one, who fall in this category, but then it's your bad luck that we don't have fitter replacements for them and we have quite a few for you. Don't whin about it, try to be fitter, if you can at all). You have taken a good step ahead, but that has been your problem man, everytime you take a step ahead, you think you have reached the pinnacle and rather than focussing, you start airing your views about how they have been doing injustice to you. Learn something from a man called Anil Kumble, you don't need your favorite opponents, the Aussies, to learn from. See how he fights his omissions from the team.

Back on the issue, I believe it's better to look at a problem from the solution end. We have to first think what if Sourav has to leave. Whom do we have to replace him with? Probably we have a better answer (or the only answer that can be better justified) now than we had in the John Wright days. With Greg Chappell there to enforce the cockiness and provide the flamboyance and the instinctiveness, the Ganguly part of the Ganguly- Wright combination, Dravid can sit back and do the strategic thinking, the Wright part of it, something that he is better off doing. He can pretty much leave it to Chappell to take on opposition captains and stuff like that & you can rest assured that there are few competitors to him in that department, even in his bald days in cricket.

It has been sad for an admirer of Sourav like me to watch the way he has faded over a large period of time. I don't know how we are going to address a rift between two most important persons of the touring party, when it is known to all and sundry. It must be difficult enough to be a member of the team at present, particularly if you are a newcomer. I can't think of a reconcilation here. A senior member of the team could help may be. But then there is no point in trying that out. It's very clear that the combination can't work and it will take just one more failure for the cracks to open up again. The BCCI simply has to make a decision about what they are committed to, Sourav's future or Team India's. That will decide if it's send-off time for Sourav or Chappell, after a marriage that got over even before the honeymoon.

कशासाठी... बाण्यासाठी...

इथे अभ्यास झेपत नाहीये ॥ ध्रु. ॥ आणि मी मराठीत ब्लॉगायचे धन्दे करतोय... ॥ ध्रु. ॥
इथे भराभर टायपिंग सुद्धा जमत नाहिये आणि मी मराठीत ब्लॉगायचे धन्दे करतोय...
इथे स्वयंपाक करता येत नाहीये आणि मी मराठीत ब्लॉगायचे धन्दे करतोय...
इथे खायला काही नाहीये आणि मी मराठीत ब्लॉगायचे धंदे करतोय...
इथे खिशात दमडी, माफ़ करा पेनी, सुद्धा नाहीये आणि मी मराठीत ब्लॉगायचे धंदे करतोय..
इथे झोपायला गादी नाहीये (सध्या फ़क्त sleeping bag आहे) आणि मी मराठीत ब्लॉगायचे धंदे करतोय...
इथे फ़िरायला 2-wheeler नाहीये आणि मी मराठीत ब्लॉगायचे धंदे करतोय...


वा... सुरुवात तरी झाली...

A tale of sour grapes

A hungry fox noticed a juicy bunch of grapes growing high on a grapevine. He leaped. He snapped. Drooling, he jumped to reach them, but try as he might, he could not obtain the tasty prize. Disappointed by the fruitless efforts he'd made to get the grapes that day, he said, with a shrug, to comfort himself, "Oh, they were probably sour anyway!"

No prizes for guessing who the hungry fox is in this story. Ricky Ponting's comments after the Trentbridge test and an interview with Melbourne Radio has been nothing but a great example of this story. His stand on the England's substitute fielders usage, coupled with his blatant reaction after getting ran out at Trentbridge and his media talk later on have been shameful to say the least. But then he has never been put in such situations before which is why he isn't matured enough to handle them.

Ponting's claims about England's unfair use of substitutes may be justified. But what England is doing is strictly within the laws and Australia should be the last team talking about spirit of the game which they have so often violated while in the middle. His allegations could not have been more mistimed as his concerns were not arising from the current match, but over the whole series. Then why was he not whinning about it earlier? Or was he waiting for one of the substitutes to actually get him ran out?

Duncan Fletcher asked a very good question "If one of our bowlers is unfit, why will we bring someone on who doesn't have fleet feet?" And is it England's fault that Garry Pratt was the one who managed to hit the stumps when Damien Martyn and Ponting planned a suicide for themselves? I would like to ask another question. Would Ponting have been as outrageous if he had not gotten out to a substitute fielder's throw? I guess that wicket did not increase the severity of the issue of England's use of substitutes. And no one can claim that the run out was the cause of Australia's defeat. I don't know why they can not wholeheartedly accept that they were outplayed by a team that was far more spirited, if not necessarily superior.

Remember what Ponting did when the Aussies could not chase a paltry target of 107 at Mumbai? Instead of accepting the inability of his men while playing on dust bowls, he kept shouting all the way in the press conference about the dust bowl itself. Agreed the wicket there had many devils in it. But even Indians in the past have shown more maturity when they were made to play and were subsequently mauled on the cattle-grazing fields in New Zealand. The way Ponting acts and the arguments he makes in such situations, suits a child cricketer owning the only kit being used to play in gullies of a small town, not the skipper of the 1 st ranked team in the world.

If he really had a case and wanted to take it up, he should have taken it up right after the Old Trafford test, which the Aussies saved despite English dominance. But then it's hard for an Aussie captain to accept such defeats. Perhaps the last (and one of the very few) Aussie captain who would have reacted in a more amenable way was Mark Taylor. Ponting should have used the example of the Don himself, who complained about the balls being whirled at Aussie batsmen more to kill them than to get them out, right after the 2nd test at MCG which the Aussies WON and not after losing a test, during the defamed body line series. And that was an issue of far more magnitude than the trivial use of more agile substitutes. That's when yours appears as a valid case and not as just an excuse to a mediocre performance that costs you the game (not that this is an attempt to call the Aussie performance at Trentbridge mediocre). Otherwise the statements that you make will always be perceived as nothing but a tale of sour grapes.

I wasn’t following it!!!

How could I be so cruel? I wasn’t there pressing my favorite F5 when the (de)famed Indian batting line-up was being 007ed by Bond … Shane Bond. I have been made up of a true Indian cricket fan’s irrepressible ability, hope. Even when they were 8 down for 44 (yes only India, of course apart from the Windies and the Zimbabweans can manage such a plight against the kiwis, Bond or no Bond), you would have found me banging the F5 hoping a rare crack from Harbhajan or Pathan, or whosoever it is. And yet even after knowing that India were due to play there 1st game against the kiwis today, I lost track of it, and entered cricinfo to get some ashes bites with the breakfast tea, only to discover “Bond Blitz floors India”.

I, for one, have been an ardent supporter of the men in blue, and their super leader, Sourav Dada and also the real dada, Jaggu Dada. I believed these people -for all the things they were accused of doing for themselves – did some serious things for Team India taking it in the right direction. But hope has its own limits. I was one of the few who did not lose patience when the crowd attacked Mohd. Kaif’s house in UP after India lost to the Aussies in the league match of 2003 world cup. Hope did not betray me then, as it had a firm basis to be alive. I could see them coming back in the groove, based on the CONSISTENCY they had maintained throughout the year preceding that tournament in the limited overs game. But as age is starting to show up on the Aussie team, so is impatience starting to show on me. I don’t know where India go from here. And I believe that now is the time to drop dada. He isn’t getting any younger, neither can I say any hungrier, nor any better. And Team India is going from bad to worse. Justine Langer once told Glenn McGrath that you got to hit the rock bottom to come back up again. But rock bottom standards for McGrath were quite high by Ganguly measurement scheme. All McGrath had done was missing one season due to an ankle surgery, and not picking up noticeable amount of wickets in around half a dozen appearances on return. Ganguly over the last two seasons has seen a considerable amount of drop in his average from 44 to 40 in ODIs, which is quite significant and I am not even dissecting his test form which has been, barring the sole Brisbane hundred touted as a tiger’s knock, abysmal.

There has been a lot of pondering done on India’s losing cause in the recent time. A point has been missed time and again though, which I believe lies in their dreadful ODI bowling. It’s there for every one to see that they have lost an important man in their world cup mission, namely Zaheer Khan. The man needs to rediscover himself somehow, if he has to fill in the shoes of even Javagal Srinath, forget Kapil Dev. Same can be said about Harbhajan Singh. I have to really stress my memory to recall when Harbhajan took his last 3 wicket haul, an achievement which should not be far beyond an Indian ace spinner’s capability. But he has literally looked incapable of picking up wickets recently and if he keeps going on the track he is now, we might need to force him to retire alongside Anil Kumble. Have I lost my marbles? Remember what came Saqlain Mushtaq’s or Mushtaq Ahmed’s way? And when they were kicked out, they were bowling at least a notch above the supremely straight stuff that Harbhajan bowls these days. I mean even Kumble spins it more than Bhajji these days. Is it not the worst abuse ever for a spinner?

Was it just a purple patch for a bunch of mediocre batsmen who would look potent of chasing any total against most attacks, if not all, that took them to the world cup finals 2 years ago? Yuvraj Singh, for a long enough period of time, has been ugly; bad could be a complement for him. And they still hope that he will get runs CONSISTENTLY. I don’t care about a solitary hundred that he strikes against a futile West Indies attack. When time demands him to bat, he’s either foxed by a spinner, or if he avoids it then he sweeps him into the hands of deep mid-wicket, or else he edges a quicky to the slip cordon. Virender Sehwag is the replica Sourav Ganguly of the early years of the millennium. While Sourav was prolific in ODIs and dismal in Tests, Sehwag’s the opposite.

They now realize the value of their batting champion Sachin Tendulkar. As his critics shout, he may not play a Brian Lara or a Steve Waugh or an Inzamam Ul Huq for his team, but I have seen him score hundreds on days when he hasn’t timed a single delivery and has been completely out of form, still at a reasonable strike rate, through some thoughtful and soulful stuff. Those knocks may not win matches for his team, but they never let his team be embarrassed to the extent of 8 for 44, that too against a soul Shane Bond, I don’t count Andre Adams a bowler.

That brings us to the question of where to start the cleansing job. I guess it starts at the top with an axe on the skipper. England can afford a non performing skipper, India cannot. The man to wear the hat should be the only permanent member of the team, Rahul Dravid. Or if they are prepared for the tough decision, then they should go with different men for the two versions, Dravid with the test squad and Kaif with the ODIs. Have I lost my marbles now? If Ganguly is to go and Dravid is not a long term option, then the only person that stands a chance is Kaif. He has batted more consistently in ODIs than anybody else apart from Dravid himself and, although at a junior level, has previously led a world winning team. The next axe falls on Yuvraj, who must be asked to win a place back in the team by doing some notable stuff at the domestic level. And for god’s sake I hope they don’t bring back an ever unfit VVS Laxman as a replacement. If Sachin manages to come back sooner rather than later, then they must think about whether Sehwag deserves a place in the playing eleven. I believe it’s better to lose by trying out young blokes like Suresh Raina, than by chancing continuous failures like Yuvraj.

And what about the bowlers? It has to be made clear to Ashish Nehra and Zaheer Khan, that the BCCI has wasted enough money on their fitness and travel tickets. It’s time they do something about it or accept that they were never made for the highest level, a sad realization that came very late in case of Ajit Agarkar. But giving it a second thought, is there an option? I fear that the answer is no. If strike-rate-wise the best ODI bowler to immerge from a nation happens to be called Ajit Agarkar (believe it or not he still holds the best strike rate for an Indian taking more than 100 ODI wickets), then god save that country. And if you drop Harbhajan, the only bowler who has averaged less than 4.5 runs per over since the 2003 world cup, is it not a suicide?

So do you really count it as the captain’s failure? Or is it the impotency of his men that’s responsible for the debacle? That brings me back to the original question, was it just the coinciding purple patch of a few ordinary people that gave us hope of a CONSISTENTLY high performing team? Well only time and (maybe) Greg Chappel could tell. For the time being, my breakfast menu has changed to English style to avoid tummy-aches like 8 for 44.

Lost in Baltimore (I hate mess II)

I complained and complained again about the kind of food that I would get in all my messes in Pune. But I will be extremely grateful to anybody who can bring Nana’s “Swami Samartha” or “Harikrupa” to Baltimore, let alone “SP’s Biryani House” or “Mahesh Lunch Home” or “Swarajya” (near Nilayam talkies), some of my hot favorites from Pune. The food here can be described in 1 word, amm… no I can’t think of one word. Let me describe it in 2 words, it sucks.

It all started when I boarded a British Airways plane from Mumbai. For all the good things it offered us, an ontime flight amidst deluging rains of Mumbai, a nice 5 hours halt at the busiest airport Heathrow and some good movies onboard and of course, no lost luggage, the food was a true test of one’s character. We were served some orange juice, which tasted like anything but oranges (and wasn’t even sweet), a horrible tasting pack of butter, and the contents that we had to use to make our coffee from, were extra-ordinarily different in taste for us to make a good one. To add to the woes, the London-Baltimore flight had a vividly smiling Jennifer Anniston look-alike attendant saying to us “Sorry, chicken is finished, we only have beef and salami”, thereby rendering us vegetarian (No, I have still not gone on with the red meat, apart from my favorite pet lamb). And by vegetarian, they literally meant vegetarian as the food had plenty of green plants and leaves. I don’t know what the hell it was that they served us as it was extremely painful to eat. I had to manage on the cakes that were on offer.

Down here in our School Campus, as currently summer is going on here and hence there are very low crowds on campus, there is only 1 place where we get some food. And that place only serves Pizzas. I could find the reason of the fact why the biggest human beings I have ever seen are after I came to the US, hidden right there in the cheese of those pizzas. It’s all bread poured in cheese, which these people can eat day in and day out and not consume the fat that it accumulates on their bodies. Ok, topic changed, I am not here to do some social work by doing research on the obesity problem of the US. But how can one serve every chicken dish made with a lot of sugar in it? I don’t ask you to consider the Indians who are going to eat it, but do some justice to the chicken at least by giving it a taste of some spices.

Yesterday, I had gone to a Chinese restaurant here and could testify an old saying, Chinese eat any crawling living being (probably apart from kids). They served us with hot and sour soup which was neither hot nor sour. There were some unidentifiable items, which we dared not try.

After seeing all this, I know that however I avoid it; I have to accept that I have to cook, and be really good at it. Not for Amit, not for Anubhav, not for Ajay, not for the new students who are temporarily staying with us, but for my own hunger. There is no other solution to soothe your taste buds when you come here. You got to bite the bullet and lift the pan and cut the onions and put the spices. Otherwise, you will end up spending all your money and eat pizzas and bulge your bodies like lot of the natives here, or you simply die of hunger.

An expert’s take

Just a couple of days ago did the ICC come up with its new recommendations for one day cricket and left the experts analyzing its after-effects. The Cricket Committee of ICC had suggested many ways to revamp the game, 2 of which were approved by the Chief Executives’ Committee of ICC. One day cricket did need some resurrections, particularly the slam bang stuff that is played in the subcontinent, with scores of 300+ not being secure. I, as a knowledgeable spectator, would have liked to see the battleground between bat and ball more flattened, rather than bowlers left in an open field to get bulleted by batsmen with no place to hide. I would have also liked to see it in a less predictable form, with teams needing to think at all stages of the match, rather than having big burley openers (read Adam Gilchrist) clatter their way through hapless and “boundary protection-less” bowlers (read Zahir Khan, or better Javagal Srinath, still better Venkatesh Prasad) during the 1st 15 overs, then swift runners (read Paul Collingwood) setting it up for the mighty sloggers (read Abdur Razzaq) to put their teeth deep into the flesh of the already bruised fielding side. But where do the new rules lead us?

The ICC has approved a rule for introduction of a substitute during the course of an ODI. Purists have dismissed the case saying it’s not cricket, but soccer. Revolutionists have welcomed it saying ODI cricket needed a change. But what the situation demands is an analysis of its effect on the experts front, while an ability to think dynamically and react to the situation to best exploit the rule on team management front. As I am leading the former, I will try to analyze it.

The rule says that a team can call upon a substitute during any stage of the match and the player substituted cannot take further part in the game. But it hasn’t made clear when the team has to be announced. There needs to be a clear guideline saying when you have to declare the final 12 men and the starting 11. As of now, the final 11 have to be named before the toss. Going by this theory, if a team has to announce their final 12 and starting 11 both before the toss, then the rule leads to nothing but a gamble. With this rule, the most obvious use case is to use an extra batsman while batting and replace him with a bowler while taking the field. But if they have to name their starting 11 before the toss, they will not know whether they are batting 1st or not. So they don’t know whether to include an extra batsman or bowler in the starting lineup. Suppose a team names 6 batsmen, a keeper and 4 bowlers in the starting lineup and has to field 1st, then the 1 bowler left on the bench is rendered ineffective. In case the team replaces the extra batsman with their bowler, to make up for the 5th bowler then the replaced batsman is gone for a toss. If the rule actually allows you to announce your starting 11 after the toss, then it undermines the whole purpose of the rule change that is to reduce the predictability of ODI. In most cases the substitutions will come at obvious stage of the match, the innings break.

The other regulation introduced is a good thing to have, as it will actually help make the game more unpredictable and has a scope for more shrewd tacticians. I don’t quite agree with the increase in number of overs for fielding restrictions from 15 to 20. The game is already loaded in favor of the bat and this probably will add to that. Probably the ICC has increased number of field restriction overs to maintain the effect of the current number. A 15 over fixed restriction will be as helpful to the batting side, as a 20 over restriction with only the 1st 10 being fixed, the other 10 coming at the fielding side’s discretion. 3 slots of 5 overs, with the 1st being mandatory at the start of the innings would have made it more favorable for the poor old bowlers. But then the rule will surely make the teams re-devise their strategies.

What I would have liked to see is a reduction in the effect of toss on the predictability factor. At many venues, particularly those hosting flood lit games with the dew factor coming in late at night and also those hosting it with the morning dew, the result is driven by the toss outcome. I liked a Sanjay Jha solution to this, where he proposed to split the 50 over innings into two 25 over slots. The 1st team bats their 25 overs, followed by the 2nd team’s first 25. Then the 1st team resumes its innings for the remaining 25 and then the 2nd team completes the rest. The idea was to have a single innings per team (not 2 different innings), split in 2 parts. This would have made both sides bat and bowl in all kinds of comparable surrounding conditions.

There is another good step that ICC has taken, that is to ask the MCC to review the restrictions on the size and material of a cricket bat. The last thing we want is heavyweight boxers hitting crafty spinners out of the ground after actually getting beaten in flight, yet using the edges of their mighty bat blades. Some limitations on the willow could do well to preserve the skill and art in batting in the long run.

Looking from the Indian perspective, the substitution rule could be a blessing in disguise. It’s a well known fact, that India’s best ODI all-rounder in the last 10 years has been Ajit Agarkar (if you don’t count Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid with wicket-keeping gloves on), which is a shame in itself. This rule could serve as their filler for an all-rounder, with the ability to use their 5th bowler only for bowling purposes (with the kind of bowling they have in ODIs, they will probably do well to have 391 of them). With a lucid thinker like Greg Chappell at the helm, we can relax a little, that the Indian camp is sound in terms of thinking caps. What we have to hope though that the rule change doesn’t do an Indian Hockey (remember what we got when they moved from grass to mat and then marred the dribbling skills by canceling the offside rule), although it took a K.P.S. Gill to complete that debacle and a Jagmohan Dalmiya is all the more acceptable.

i hate mess

When I first came to Pune for my studies four and a half years ago, all everyone back home was worried about, was my food. I was always very particular about the things that I liked when it came to choosing cuisines. And this set had a limited cardinality. In fact very limited, which is why I could never adjust to a thing called mess. I can bear a mess in just about everything else, but this mess was beyond all tolerance levels. And as I had a roomi who was ever ready to eat outside, the hotels in Pune were browsed one by one. Not that I am the most hefty eater of them all, but a connoisseur for good food for sure. I like quality rather than quantity and the quantity that I eat is always decided by the quality of the food, something very peculiar about my hunger.

I could never last at one single mess for more than a month. And mine was always a good deal for the owner of the mess , as even in that one month I used to needlessly pay him for the 10 odd days that I used to eat outside and not in the mess. The only respectable exception was our college canteen where I lasted for about 1 year (not consecutive of course). This was a tribute not to the quality of the food they served, but to the coupon system that they employed. This system allowed us to buy a fixed number of coupons and use them anytime. So we could consume the coupons whenever we were bored of eating outside in hotels.

Not that all messes were bad. There were some good ones, but I used to get bored a bit too early as the food used to get monotonous (or that was the excuse I used to discontinue from a mess). And probably there was another reason. I disliked a thing called regularity, a quality required to continue with this messy business. You have to always go to the mess on time. Otherwise there is no food left for you. I could hardly ever manage this.

I passed out and joined the industry and nothing much has changed. At the start of each month I pledge that I will join a mess or get a tiffin from somewhere, but that just turns out to be a new month resolution, something that's always pushed to the next month. The hotels here are so enticing and the messes are so dull (or my mindset in this case is so rigid) that I just can't resist the temptation of choosing the former, day after day after day. And there are other advantages as well. For instance it's 11 in the night and I have been browsing and blogging for the last 3 hours with the assurance that there will be hotels waiting for me. If it was a mess, I would have had to follow their timing and could not have posted this mess here.

I found a subject

Start, it's the most difficult thing to do & yet the easiest. It's easy because if it wasn't, I would not have written this. Yet if it was, this post would have been a good one. It happens sometimes that I want to write & don't know what to & how to write. I had decided that I would start blogging. Of course like most other things, I am not the 1st person among those, who I know, already do this. Simply put, this is yet another thing that I felt the urge to do myself because many other people do this. Blogging is like a common man's hobby for me, something that's never immortal, something whose oblivion can always be defended as lack of time. In fact I have had most of my hobbies turn up this way, wherein I am very upbeat about their start & don't realise how they fade away. This number of hobbies is so large that I can safely claim "Making a start" as my hobby & in its defense present a list of things that I have just started & left. So no surprises if I never appear on this site ever again.

I have been thinking the whole evening on where to start. No prizes for guessing that this one has no subject whatsoever. I kept wondering about the field that I could use for this. Thought about writing on cricket, the thing which I believe I surely can write about. But then it also needs a start & there was a dilemma about the event in cricket that I could have a go at. With India pretty much in their shell, the Pakistan fixture not yet fixed, the ashes a long way away & England already returning from South Africa, we only had the pitch-diggers on cricket field & I did not really want to write about them. So cricket could not become the subject of my 1st blog. A 9.30 to 11 (believe it or not, but the 1st figure is am & the 2nd is pm) schedule (including stuffs like blogging) isn't really allowing me to follow the other sport events like the europian soccer leagues or our very own national sports' PHL. My post on them would definitely have been out of date & that's why they could not serve my purpose.

Then I thought about events that I recently attended. I desperately started recollecting what I recently did & hence came a thought about the "Sawai Gandharva Mahotsav". But then most people from Pune are regualars to this & won't find my event reporting capabilities very informative. Writing about social issues has never been my field & I right now have had enough of my software profession to let it peep into this place as well (this is an excuse for my inability to write some real intelligent stuff about softwares, including code).

So as the evening turned into night, the options for the subject went on becoming thin. I finally decided to just write, albeit without a subject. But dilemma is something that always accompanies me. And the apprehension of a start, something that makes it the most difficult thing alongwith being the easiest, quickly came to the fore. I can compare this feeling with the one that I got while writing my 1st check-in mail where I was never sure about any line of code that I had checked in or for that matter, the spelling of any word that was written in the mail. I hate options, they bring a dilemma with them. So choosing a template for the blog was the step that I least enjoyed. I unnecessarily kept feeling that the color of the template that I would choose, would reflect something about my liking, as if somebody was really interested in knowing what I like. I got over that using a random algorithm (which randomly makes a choice) before I encountered another step of choice. This time I had to choose a signature and a URL name. It seemed to dislike all my choices like "wow" and "ow" and "owow". So I had to be very very creative and find something like o@w spelled as oatw. After making it to this point, as always, I got caught in a loop wherein I have already checked a few times if I have mis-spelled anything and not finished yet.

And as I read it one last time, I realised that I probably have a subject for this post hidden somewhere there. I could have written something better if I had known at the beginning that I was going to write about how I started blogging, but then hindsight is a perfect science and life isn't (this sentence has come due to an old greed of getting that extra mark for the essay). Now it's already 11.30 in the night and I have to travel another 9 km before I reach my room. So moral of the story is - be clear about what you want to write. This is a bug that I have to fix in my next releases.