Tale Of Three Cars

There are three brands which come to my mind instantly when I think as to which is the best popular road gong car in the world. I always felt that each has certain traits which I associated with three batsmen who in my view are the best in the cricketing world.

Audi aka Ricky Ponting: Audi has been contantly pulling up its socks. Under a certain viewpoint it wont be wrong to term the A8 as the best car in the world. Its handsome, efficient and advanced. But to me it lacks a certain feeling of reverence. It evolved to be a great car rather than me always expecting it to be one. Ricky Ponting has been adjuged the best batsman in 2005. He plays some magnificent strokes, I dont think anyone plays the pull shot better than him. Its all in him to match the best, but he fails to ignites my senses to the same degree as say Lara.

BMW aka Brian Lara: A Beemer is good in ordinary road conditions, great when you throw up a challenge or two at it but brilliant when you push it to the absolute limit. Its indeed the ultimate driving machine. Sample what Steve Waugh had to say about BC Lara: Lara is good against ordinary bowling, great against a quality attack but is brilliant when cornered and hunted.

Mercedes Benz aka Sachin Tendulkar. Elegant, solidly engineered and the thing you want to be before or after an accident. Of late questions have been asked of it and quality issues needs to be sorted out. But it still manags to hold on to the tag of the best car in the world, though its grip is loosening. The 2006 S class may be oddly designed but those who have driven it have no doubt about the obvious. Questions have been asked about Sachin lately too, he is bettered by his competitors in certain departments but the overall package still defines batting to me.

Pink Floyd and Cricket.

I dont know if the group had something to do with cricket. Though I would have loved if either Gilmour, Wright, Mason, Waters or Barrett was as attached to it as Mick Jaggers is. But I found a link. I love Pink Floyd and think they are the best thing in music and I adore the game of cricket. So the title of some of Pink Floyd songs make me associate the title to certain things in cricket.

Shine On You Crazy Diamond: Brian Lara, when he hit the double century against the Aussies recently.

Coming Back To Life: English cricket teamand English cricket in general, after the English team won 'The Ashes'.

Wish You Were Here : The absense of SR Tendulkar from the team during the Ganguly Chappel fiasco, BCCI election and whole lot of ugly things, and when I so yearned for the worshippers rather than the prospectors.

We Don't Need No Education: Pakistan Cricket Team....absolutely.

Keep Talking : Warne... just let your deliveries keep talking and asking questions.

Comfortably Numb: The Indian cricket follower

Lost For Words: Ah!, that Tendulkar straight drive. Its.....(lost for words!)

Paranoid Eyes: Mutthiah Muralitharan. His eyes just at the moment of delivery, make me go paranoid.

Learning To Fly: Everytime I hold a bat or a ball or practice a shot in the air...and that feeling of ecstasy. Its sad I didnt play cricket in any form.

Saucer Full Of Secrets(album name): Pakistan fast bowlers who at one time and maybe still are the only ones privy to the art of reverse swing.

Great Gig In The Sky: Jonty Rhodes and those fabulous catches he took in mid air.

Us And Them : India vs Pakistan

The Wall( album name): We all know it, Rahul Dravid

Welcome To The Machine: Glen McGrath for his absolutely phenomenal ability to strike the deck again and again and continuously.

On The Turning Away: Those off-cutters. Batsmen reach out to the ball and the ball says teasingly we'll meet at the turning away.

Fat Old Sun : Arjuna Ranatunga & David Boon

Let There Be More Light : To the BCCI and Indian selectors.

Remmember A Day: SRT's back to back centuries in Sharjah against the Aussies

Finally

A Great Day For Freedom: Typical warm, sun lit, early winter Sunday morning of my home town. Watching a cricket match on the tube in the terrace of my house. Sachin Tendulkar carving one of his majestic innings against McGrath, Warne & Co, for ecstasy and aaloo ke paranthe, lassi and achar for my taste buds. Amen.

PS: The lyrics of a number of songs donot match my imagination.

The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.

One of the most interesting features of international cricket is the tour system. I don't see tours playing such an important role in other sports, atleast not of such gigantic propotions as in cricket. Often the strength of a team is determined on the basis of its performance on an away tour. I bet more points will be associated with an away tour win in Australia for the Indian team than it being crowned as the world cup winners. An away series is the ultimate test that can be thrown up to any team.

Its both a test of mind and matter. Well sports is always a test of mind. But I assume that this test is being done at a more abstract level, at a hidden level if I may say so. But on an away tour a test of mind, the character, the softer aspects is a well outlined subject in the datesheet of exams delivered to the players. The players have to often slug it out in an inhospitable terrain for sometimes as much as three months on a stretch. For three months. All this time you are away from the family, play in conditions you are not fimiliar with, eat food you haven't developed taste for, adjust to an altogether different climate, plus play at stretch on venues where your supporters are outnumbered one to a zillion. I find it uncomfortable putting up for a day at an unfimiliar place and cricketers do it for sometimes as much as 100 days. At these tours often players have to look at each other for support. And ironically these are the times when the small cuts grow to big wounds and often leave an everlasting scar. God forbids if a situation like a Sidhu-Azharuddin emerges, like it did on the '96 Indian cricket team's tour of England. Or more recently the Ganguly-Chappel fiasco no matter it popped up on a relatively easy tour. Tours as much as they test the skill are also a test of character. No wonder they call cricket the gentleman's game. I associate character with a gentleman.

It becomes especially difficult if you are on a loosing spree. Nerves of stainless steel often get stained, ask Steve Waugh about that ill fated tour of Pakistan in 1990-91. And the milder ones often dont recover. Ask the English team collectively, who took a generation to reclaim the Ashes. But Shakespeare said: 'There is a tide in the affairs of men,which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries'. Promising teams often blossom into great ones when the flood gates to supremecy are opened in tours. An important tour is coming up early next year, just a few days from now. For all the talk of the 2007 world cup, it may well determine the course of international cricket.

Teerz Kurrant---My Dream ODI Team (Players Picked From 96 World Cup Onwards)

Every sport lover's fantasy--The Dream Team. Here goes mine, in batting order.

Sachin Tendulkar
Adam Gilchrist
Aravinda De Silva
Brian Lara
Inzamam Ul Haq
Micheal Bevan
Andrew Flintoff
Wasim Akram
Shane Warne(c)
Allan Donald
Mutthiah Muralitharan

What say?
An Interesting fact about my dream team: starting from Sachin till Shane Warne, the batting order flips flops regularly between left handers and right handers.

PS: It has been assumed that these players will play for a team and not for individual reputations. Secondly, it is also assumed that each player has the capacity to be turned into a better fielder and runner between wickets with training.

'Maidan hai hara, bheed se bhara, wicket hain gareh, tayyar hum khare....khel shuru hoga pone gyarah'

'That cricket is going to stay in India there cannot be a shadow of a doubt; it has taken hold all over the country, and chokras can be seen playing in every village with any sort of old bat and ball that they can lay hands on. I should hope that it will do something to get over any racial antipathy; for instance, it must, I think, bring the several races together more and more, in a spirit of harmony that should be the spirit in which cricket is played. Unquestionably, it arouses excitement and enthusiasm, and extreme ambition that one's own side should succeed, bit it also ought to lead to friendliness, and that is what is needed in India. East will always be East, and West, West, but the crease is not a very broad line of demarcation – so narrow, indeed, that it ought to help bring about friendly relations.' Lord Harris (1921)

Lord Harris served in the House of Lords as Under Secretary of the state of India from 25 June,1885, then as Parliamentary under secretary of the state of war from 4 August, 1886 to1890 in the Conservative Government.

He served as Governor of the Presidency of Bombay in British India from 1890 to 1894 . His appointment was not universally well regarded, with one anonymous writer penning a poem expressing the hope that Bombay would not suffer too greatly from Harris' political inexperience.

His governorship was notable mainly for his enthusiastic pursual of the sport of cricket amongst his fellow Europeans in the colony, at the expense of connecting with the native population. When the interracial Bombay riots of 1893 broke out, Harris was out of the city at Ganeshkind enjoying cricket matches. He returned to Bombay only on the ninth day of rioting, and then primarily to attend a cricket match there.

Many later writers credited Harris with almost single-handedly introducing and developing the sport in India . The game was, however, well established among the natives before his arrival. Furthermore, in 1890, he rejected a petition signed by over 1,000 locals to relocate European polo players to another ground so that the locals could use the area for cricket matches. It was only in 1892 that he granted a parcel of land to the newly formed Mahomedan Gymkhana for a cricket field, adjacent to land already used by the Parsi Gymkhana. His reluctance to do so is evident in his written comment:

I don't see how we can refuse these applicants; but I will steadfastly refuse any more grants once a Gymkhana has been established under respectable auspices by each nationality, and tell applicants that ground having been set apart for their nationality they are free to take advantage of it by joining that particular club.

When Harris left India, a publisher circulated a collection of newspaper extracts from his time as governor. The introduction stated:

Never during the last hundred years has a Governor of Bombay been so sternly criticised and never has he met with such widespread unpopularity on account of his administration as Lord Harris.

On his return to England, Harris again served in the Conservative Government, as a lord in waiting from 16 July, 1895 to 4 December 1900.

---- Source Wikipedia

I found Mr. Harris's comment quite interesting and true.

Out Of My Comfort Zone










Steve Waugh is among my favourite cricketers. I just couldn't miss his autobiography. Its pretty expensive but worth every single rupee of it. My respect for the man has grown further. The book has given me a different perspective on how matches are played. Having never played serious cricket and rarely having played it consistently with a bunch of guys, some aspects of the game were totally lost on me. This book helped me that note of these finer elements.

In ten days I could manage to read only one third of this tome. Often get this irresisteble urge to hop on to chapters ahead and have done it sometimes too. I hope somebody makes a mini TV series out of this book. If nobody does, hope I do. I just miss the man in the field so very much.
There is so much character attached to the man. Victory or defeat, pressure or no pressure, he always had that steely, inscrutable look on his face. Makes me remmember what Rudyard Kipling said:

'...If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same
.......you will be a Man my son.'

Men Of Honour

Brilliant though as the Ashes were, there were two warriors, two fighters of sublime skill, who will cause this series to be remembered many years later as I do now. England revolve, maybe even a touch uncomfortably, around Andrew Flintoff and Shane Warne has been Australia's man of all seasons; bowling on first day and last, to keep the runs down and to take wickets. Their personalities rather pleasantly typified the series.

Richie Benaud made the right observation when he said that Flintoff had evolved from a batting all-rounder to a bowling all-rounder. Earlier he was a destroyer of ordinary bowling and provided support with the ball. Soon he could be England's best bowler for he is more consistent than the temperamental Harmison and more troublesome than either Hoggard or Jones. But by being that kind of bowler, and batting sensibly at number six, he allowed England to play five bowlers.

All good teams must have five and that has been the cornerstone of England's revival. Few teams in history have the luxury of four outstanding bowlers—the West Indies did and so did Australia till recently—but for everyone else having five is critical to winning matches. Indeed, if he stays free of injury he could join the likes of Miller, Sobers and Botham. But the greater journey lies ahead. He, like Warne and Tendulkar in the decade before, is going to be the most watched cricketer of his era.

But for all his brilliance, to me the Ashes were about Shane Warne. He is as fascinating a personality as he is a bowler, spinning a yarn and a ball with equal felicity. You would have thought his shoulders and his fingers would have been complaining by now but if they were, his heart has quietened them. Everytime there was a sniff of battle, he sallied forth and you would have thought a youngster had arrived on the horizon.

He couldn't have had a worse start watching his marriage crumble before a ball had been bowled. Some men might have been devastated by that, Warne might have been too for his wife said he cried more than she did when the time came to say good-bye. But Warne straddles two worlds, able to shut one while searching for glory in another. It couldn't be easy.

Like Andre Agassi, and with the same joie-de-vivre, he stands out in a young man's game. Some of his tricks have deserted him but his bluster remains so does his extraordinary belief in his own powers. On the last day at the Oval, you could see that he was physically spent but the moment he had a ball in hand, he grew unrecognisable; searching deep within himself for reserves of energy. The body waned, the mind didn't.

Sport has this quality of lifting us. They tend to remind us the good that exists inside us. Cricket does it for me though ironically I am among its poorest practitioners.