We're World Champions, bitch!!!

Exactly a year ago, I shared a concern on Facebook. Well, the answer turned out to be an emphatic yes. Sachin did descend at Wankade, and although it wasn’t him who set the stage on fire today, he did have his moment of ascent when he was lifted by his team mates during the victory lap. Kohli was simple in his explanation – they were carrying a man who had carried the burden of the team for 21 years. And yes, Sachin did manage to get what he so badly wanted, the one thing that was missing from his cricketing resume – the World Cup.

This World Cup has been about the 15 players. It makes me shudder to think that Yuvraj had once entertained thoughts of quitting cricket, when he was going through that horrible phase in his career not too long ago. This World Cup has been about his fight back. You could sense the pain he has gone through when he let out the roar after thumping Australia, and the extended hug he gave Dhoni and Sachin post victory today. And people are saying there was no fairy tale ending in the finals.

This World Cup has been about Mahindra Singh Dhoni. The media has always found enough fodder to hang him; today he ensured that they shut up – at least for the next few days.

This World Cup has been India’s support staff led by Gary Kirsten, the unsung heroes. Spare a thought for Praveen Kumar too. He deserved to be there - at the podium - living what would undoubtedly have been the best moments of his life. May be his time will come later.

And last but not the least, this World Cup has been about us, the fans - the “undefined fans”, according to Sharad Pawar, who can safely be ignored while distributing tickets. We are the ones who sit in the same positions so that the momentum of the players who are thousands of miles away is not lost. We are the ones who delay nature’s call just so that any movement does not affect proceedings in any way. We are the ones who miss offices or schools to watch a match because we are lucky for the team. We are the ones who give up watching an important game so that we do not jinx the team. Yes, this is our World Cup.

And for the advocates of the theory that it was fixed - Yes, it was. It is called destiny.

The latest chapter of my trysts with World Cups has a happy ending. I wouldn't care less if the World comes to an end in 2012. For all the romantics, who have been coming up with pieces of trivia to link this victory with the one in 1983, here’s one from my side. If the World comes to an end in 2012, I (and many others who would be reading this) was a World Champion when I was born and will be a World Champion when I die.

I will end with a quote by the late Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter (Literature, 2005), “I tend to think that cricket is the greatest thing that God ever created on earth – certainly greater than sex, although sex isn’t too bad either”.

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Mixed bag

This is just one of those times, when you don’t feel like sleeping and have nothing better to do, so start writing a blog, ignoring other things which are in your plate. By the way, I just made a startling discovery - the ‘secret’ behind writing a good CV is neatly hidden in its name. It’s Ctrl-C + Ctrl-V. Yay, I unearthed it before Dan Brown could write a book on it.

So the World Cup is less than a fortnight away and the buzz surrounding it is growing. And thanks TOI for bringing to us in your special segment, what the likes of Bipasha Basu, Deepika, Katrina and Kangana Ranaut think of our cricketers. You guys have really made my life complete. In the meantime, the number of possible contenders who could be holding the World Cup on April 2nd have halved (from 28 to 14) after Pakistan finally decided to name a captain. 30 26 22 18 year old Shahid Afridi will be at the helm of the Pakistan team. Also, in a style characteristic of only him, Sehwag tweeted this. If I were the opposition, I would be scared. Very scared. What a cameo already!

While all this is going on, 4 cricketers (Sachin, Yuvi, Bhajji and Nehra – the last 3 travelling to Mumbai especially for this) met with BCCI officials today to discuss their IPL payments. If all this is done, can the cricketers concentrate on the World Cup, please? Moving on to Egypt, I see lots of ‘virtual marches’ being organized on facebook and other social media sites. I am a bit cynical of its purpose. For starters, the people there will have no way of finding out what’s happening – they don’t even have internet. And if a million people on the streets cannot put pressure on the government, a few million more on the internet, who only heard Mubarak’s name a week ago, RSVPed to an event, won’t either. Anyways maybe it’s just me.

Shifting focus from Egypt (er.. almost), Sidharth got a kick-ass offer from ICICI. Well Sid, Mubarak Ho!!

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End of T10

Thought would sign off the year with one last blog. A look-back (early one at that) at some of the things in 2010 - the first year of this decade or the last one, depending on which algorithm you follow to define decades – and what a year it has been. It was a year when Ravindra Jadeja scored 130 more ODI runs than someone who goes by the name of Sachin Tendulkar - and still people go gaga over Sachin and call for Jadeja’s head. Well, life is never fair, is it? (Now don’t you dare point out that Jadeja played in 19 more matches than Sachin did – this is the only time I’ll write something ‘positive’ about Jadeja, please let me do it.)

It was not the fairest of years if you are a Yuvraj, or A Raja or have anything to do with the movie Prince - all these were ‘royally’ screwed in the year. The Chennai Super Kings were an exception though, winning the IPL and Champions League. (Even Larry King chose this year to retire).

This year was also a year of shameful scams and controversies. Towards the end of the year, JPC replaced IPL as the most abused three letters. As Cyrus Broacha put it in TWTW, "When our leaders don’t work in Parliament, the nation loses ` 250 crore; and when they do, we lose ` 17000 crore”. And, given the way, our chosen leaders behave in Assembly; the time has come to start a swearing-at ceremony instead of a swearing-in ceremony.

Talking about money, the rupee also got a new symbol this year, and a cool one at that. Am I the only one who gets reminded of the Roger Federer logo, after looking at the rupee symbol? Perhaps Mr Udaya Kumar was also a fan of the great man.

I won’t end without a word about Swami Nityananda, someone we all secretly admire and wish to be. Now, this was one of the rare controversies this year which was not exposed by WikiLeaks. I was actually wondering why didn’t Julian Assange expose Swami Nityananda. You got to watch HIMYM to get the answer. It’s called “Bro Code”.

Enough said for now. Wish you all a Merry Christmas, an entertaining Boxing Day and A Happy New Year. Enjoy Maadi.

PS – As the countdown to the new year began, the world waited for two milestones to be knocked off – Sachin getting his 50th test ton and Anshat getting 2000 Facebook friends. Sheer genius Sachin is, whaddaplayya. Now I know why the world will end in 2012 - Sachin might just announce his retirement then. Coming back to the two milestones, The God has done it today, now it’s your turn Prabhuji.

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Ashes to Ashes

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,
If my first post didn’t impress you, this must.

Well, my first blog post was a review of the 2009 Ashes, so thought would write one previewing the next one. You know - the circle of life, and all that. So Ashes is here again, and this time, after ages, it is a contest between two evenly matched sides (I’m not talking about the rankings – No 4 and No 5 – alone).

If you look at the team line ups and compare them man to man, there is nothing separating the two teams. Only Greame Swann enjoys an edge in the spin department when compared to his counterpart Xavier Doherty, the surprise inclusion in the Aussie squad. On current team form, England look better, but Australia’s home advantage neutralizes this. The bookies are sure going to have a tough time going to predict the favourites (for a moment let’s forget that they might have other means to help them decide on their favourites). Who are you putting your money on?

Ricky Ponting has been at the receiving end of criticism from all quarters. Even his old buddy Warnie did not spare him. He surely isn’t the best of captains to have done duty, but then, a captain is as good as his team is – and his team lacks good players. It becomes evident when you see them struggling to replace someone like a Marcus North. The following line from Andy Zaltzman’s blog perfectly sums up Ponting’s state.
I have heard rumours that every night Ponting goes back to his hotel room, makes little papier-mâché dolls of Glenn McGrath and Shane Warne, and says to them: “Right, Glenn, you bowl from the bathroom end, and Shane, you take the bed end. I’m going for a snooze, and when I wake up I expect you to have bowled the opposition out. Night night.”

But you have to give it to Ponting for allowing Laxman a runner in the Bangalore test. He was well within his rights to deny him one. Andrew Strauss had denied Greame Smith a runner not too long ago.

Ricky Ponting said in an interview before the India series that teams produce their best cricket against the Australians. This can’t be very far from the truth. It can’t be merely a co-incidence that most come-from-behind victories in the history of the game are against the Australians (be it winning after following-on or last wicket wins). There sure is something about the Aussies which spurs an opposition on.

Shivnarine Chanderpaul had once said (during the era of Australian dominance) that Australians had all the marginal decisions going their way, which was greatly instrumental in their success. Remember all the drama surrounding the Sydney test? Has the situation reversed now? We know the Bangalore match could have tilted either way if any of the close umpiring decisions been any different. And remember, it is not the Aussies who oppose the umpire decision review system.

Australia find themselves at No 5 in the rankings and the cricketing world is loving it. Nothing better than watching Australia lose, right? But I will be supporting them in this Ashes. India play Australia in 4 away tests end of next year. I hope to see India beat an Australian side which is No 2 in the world. It will be some series if that happens. Plus, I have a gut feeling it could be Sachin’s last test appearance (on second thoughts, nah.. Sachin won’t probably retire so soon).

Well turned out to be another blog in defense of the Aussies. Enough said about Australia, let us look at the English perspective now. On second thoughts, let’s drop the idea - even the English media does not write about their team, why should I bother.

May the best team win.

After all this seriousness, thought would end with a joke: PCB

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All is not well

Cricket is going through a tough time - again. As if the placid wickets, the one-sided matches and the half-filled stadiums were not enough, we now have cases of ball tampering and spot-fixing, in newer ways that could make any out-of-the box thinker proud. While we may go on cracking jokes on it (like I have done here), the truth is that it is upsetting for a cricket fan. While the Pakistani authorities have accepted ‘Ignorance is bliss and deny to stay in biz’ as their tried and tested mantra, it would be foolish to imagine that the plague has been confined to Pakistan only. Thanks to the ICC Anti Corruption Unit (ACU), for a moment the CWG organizing committee can perhaps celebrate because they might not be the most inefficient body after all.

Talking about the CWG organizers, their attitude hasn’t been something that one can be proud of. Check out this still from the movie Prince (it’s showtime) – the greatest movie ever made (ain't it Ankit, Ashish?). The greatest tragedy and the difference between Vivek Oberoi and Manmohan Singh is that while the former can’t act, the latter just refuses to do so. It is worrying that no one in the administration is even worried about it. The icing on the cake came from Lalit Bhanot who said that Westerners have a different standard of hygiene than the Indians. Yeah right. Perhaps the Congress headquarters has two bathrooms – one for Sonia Gandhi and another for all the Indian members.

All said and done, like every Indian, I pray that the event would eventually be remembered for the right reasons and that the organizers are not the only Indians who walk away with gold.

Moving on to something else, Google came up with a ‘new’ feature (which was actually started by Yahoo! some 5 years ago). I don’t want to start anything on that because that would trigger a ‘Being First’ vs ‘Being Best’ debate, But I happened to read the following statement by their PR – ‘If every Google user around the world switched to Instant, we'd save 3.5 billion seconds a day, or 11 hours per second.’ Now, if there was ever a moment where one particular acronym perfectly summed up a statement, it is this - WTF!!! So what’s next? I guess Kayam Churn coming with a line that will say, “If every individual around the world had Kayam Churn before sleep, they would have quicker motions which would save ‘googols’ of seconds per second”. Ah, this would give us enough time to organize a Common Wealth Games Event every second.

Coming back to the cricket fiasco, I am devastated not because they cheated, but because it would be difficult to trust them again.

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And the winner is...

The news is out everywhere. I’ve topped the IPL Cricinfo fantasy league among my college folks. And as expected, the media is after me. Instead of giving multiple interviews I just thought I’d post excerpts of the interview taken by a leading daily (name withheld due to copyright reasons)

Interviewer (I); Rahul (R)

I: So Rahul, you’ve done it. Is there something you’d like to say to our readers?

R: Oh yes. I attribute this success to a lot of people. First of all, I would like to thank my parents for having me. Without them, I would have been nothing - trust me on that.

Next, I’d like to thank all the losers for being more worthless than I could ever be. What's a winner without the losers.

And yes, a word for my fans. Whatever Rahul Saraf is today is because of all you people out there. Without your continued support I could easily have been just one of the 13 losers in the league. It’s a scary thought.

And last but not the least, I would like to thank God. He was in my team and gave me 1867 points. The message to take from here is “Do not lose faith in God. Ever.”.

I: Ok so if you would want to pick one turning point in your league, what would it be?

R: Dropping Gilchrist after two matches. Not an easy choice when you consider he had given me 408 points in those two matches and gave a whole lot of points in the last edition. I was 9th in my league at that stage and was faced with a situation similar to what Sam Worthington was in Avatar.

“Loser. Laggard. Outcast. To ever face them again, I was gonna have to change the rules. Sometimes your whole life boils down to one insane move. The way I had it figured, Gilly is the most explosive batsman in the IPL. Nothing stops him. So why would he ever fail? But that was just a theory.“

I dropped Gilchrist to accommodate some of the other expensive buys. The rest, as they say, is history.

I: The tournament saw Sachin rise as a T20 player. Any comments on that?

R: It was wonderful to watch him bat the way he did, and hardly a surprise actually. I was, of course, disheartened because he could not win it for Mumbai. Just to further show what mettle he is made of, I’ll take the example of Gilchrist and Hayden. Now most people would select them over Sachin in the shortest avatar of the game, and you can’t blame them for doing so. But both of them were woefully out of form in this tournament and the only thing they did was try to hit their way out of trouble. They kept repeating the same mistakes time and again in the hope that it would come off. Contrast this to someone named Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar. In the series against Australia in 2003-04, he kept getting out caught in the slip cordon while trying play the drive. He turns up in Sydney and what does he do? He scores an unbeaten 241 at a strike rate of 55 without a single shot through covers or mid-off.

Andy Flower summed it up when he once said, “There are two kinds of batsmen in this world - Sachin Tendulkar and all the others”

I: What about the controversy surrounding the IPL? Any thoughts on that?

R: For a moment forget about what the officials have done and are doing. If Dhoni can hit a six with one hand; if Sachin can score a solid 48 with a split webbing between the fingers of his hand; then you know that Indian cricket is in safe hands.

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The God of all things

Sachin became the first man on the planet to score a double ton in a limited overs international. I could not share my thoughts through the medium of a blog because of two primary reasons - A) I was traveling and hence did not have easy access to the internet and, B) I had no words to match his feat. The first is now taken care of, but the second is still an issue. But I've always been taught in my workplace that there is a workaround for everything. So here I am - after all a picture is worth a thousand words.


Repeating what I had said in an earlier post:
It is difficult to imagine what life would have been without cricket and it is impossible to imagine what cricket would have been without Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar.

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IronY!

“Zindagi bhi hamare saath kabhi kabar ajeeb o’ garib khel khelti hai”. This is perhaps Bollywood’s oldest clichés. Even to me, it was no more than a cliché; until a few hours ago.

Let me take you to flashback mode (which happens to be Bollywood’s favourite tool). The year was 2008 - the year when India thrashed Australia in Perth, the year when IPL made its debut and the year when Love Story 2050 was allowed to release. The story is about two great friends – Rohit Chawla and Rahul Saraf (who by the way is me) – both of different shapes and sizes, but both world famous (or rather infamous) college-wide for their well-earned reputation of being PJ stalwarts. The former, the teacher and the latter, a disciple. The former was known for being very slow and the latter just for being ‘low’. Both had to choose between a job offer and an admission offer (in the same B-school). What choice they made is history now. Both lived on with their without reflecting too much on their decisions, for approximately 20 months.

Cut to the present: The fateful day of 4th February 2010 arrived. Rohit Chawla gets a dream campus offer from KPMG – one of the Big Four in auditing (which makes him a direct rival of my sister, and - I have this sinking feeling - of the Shiv Sena too, who off late have a problem with everything). But destiny chooses the same date for the announcement of Monster’s acquisition of Yahoo! HotJobs (which by the way is the property I work for) – subject to approval by the regulatory bodies, which does not include the Shiv Sena.

Now this reminds me of another famous Bollywood dialog which goes as follows (after omitting the lisp defects): “Zindagi mein watt isse nahi lagti ki humne kaunsa rasta chuna, balki isse ki humne kaunsa rasta chchora”

And before the curtains roll, the disclaimers: “Aal izz well”. I’m so happy for Rohit who deserves every bit of his success. And mind you, things are not as bad from my end as have been projected here. I still have the job. And I did misuse some of the literary license to dramaticize the whole affair. And by the way, another story to share – another of zindagi’s ajeeb o’ garib games: Just a couple of days ago, Tanushree (who is one of the very few readers (which includes Google’s crawlers) of this blog) asked me when would the next blog come. I confessed that my life was drab and I have nothing to write about. Well, I had no idea that Destiny so desperately wanted me to write that it would go to this extent.

And just for the records, I don’t have many regrets about the decision made two years ago. As Bollywood would have said “Woh kehte hain na ki jo bhi hota hai achche ke liye hota hai… sahi kehte hain”

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2 Decades of Power Play

“In a gentle way you can shake the world”

-- Mahatma Gandhi

“Main khelega” said a squeaky voice from under the helmet covering the blood smeared face of a 5’ 6”body lying near the pitch. We’ve heard the story a hundred times from Sidhu (in an unmatched charismatic way that only he can manage), of how a 16 year old kid - who had no business being out of the comforts of school, leave alone facing the likes of Imran Khan, Waqar Younis and Wasim Akram at their fiercest bests in a cricket pitch – had refused to leave the ground despite being hit on the face by a Waqar Younis special. “Main khalega” – these are perhaps the two words which best sum up the hunger, sum up the attitude of the great man towards the game, during and even after 20 years from the incident. The world knew that the 16 year old had come of age.

Enough is already been written about him as he knocks off another milestone in his career. There are not enough superlatives to describe what he has done in these 20 years, so I will not even attempt to tread the path. But what amuses me, is, that despite all this, he could never please the critics enough. If the critics had had their way, he would never have made his debut at such a tender age. If the critics had had their way, he would have hung his boot by now. The world would not have known what they would have missed. For some time, he let the numbers do the talking on his behalf - 10K runs, 30 odd centuries. But after a certain point, perhaps even the numbers became so huge and unfathomable (and as meaningless as the age of “Baa” in the Indian television soap industry). Perhaps they should stop keeping track of his records and just employ the symbol for infinity and make the life of the statisticians easier. And by the way, the 20 years haven’t always been about the runs alone; but the manner, the precision, the style, the honesty and the simplicity with which he’s got them. It’s been about his flawless image; the fact that never once has he been involved in any tussle with the media or a team-mate or the opposition, any drunken escapade, any incriminating incident or any other spat that usually accompanies super stardom at a young age.

Margaret Thatcher once remarked that if her critics saw her walking on a river, they would say it was because she could not swim. The legend too, brought some changes to his batting style, at times adopting a more cautious, a more mature approach – cutting down on some of the aerial shots, cutting down on some of the flair. And people came up with theories of his reflexes betraying him. Mind you it was more out of choice than anything else; and one thing he did not cut down on, was class. Yet, as a reminder to his critics, he produced one of those innings time and again, as if taking it out from a shelf and placing it back there again. Aren’t we fortunate to have seen so many avtaars of the legend, each one special in its own realm, each one with genius written all over?

“ENDulkar?” screamed the headlines of the TOI after the Mumbai test against England in 2006. Well I hope whoever came up with this phrase has a good enough sense of humour to laugh at himself each time the man goes out to bat and comes up with something special, else life would have become miserable for him. But this has been the legend’s story all his life - some people have kept throwing stones at him and he has kept converting them into milestones, craftily and gently.

In the gentlest possible way, he has made billions celebrate and cheer, he’s given them a reason to rejoice, and to cry - a reason to live; in the gentlest possible way he has made a mockery of bowling attacks, slaughtered their confidence, given opponents sleepless nights; in the gentlest possible way he has shaken the world. It is difficult to imagine what life would have been without cricket and it is impossible to imagine what cricket would have been without Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar.

P.S. – The quote by Gandhiji was used by the man himself to describe Harsha Bhogle, another legend in his own rights; but if anything, it fits seamlessly with Sachin.

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5 hungry men

Still infuriated by Dravid’s omission from Team India, and inspired by other analogous blogs doing the rounds of the internet, I have come up with this conversation that could have happened between the Indian selectors when they met on October 15 to decide what the Indian team would look like.

Disclaimer: This is purely a work of fiction but co-incidences are possible. Although we’ll never know, any resemblance to actual happenings cannot be ruled out.

Srikkanth: “Ok gentlemen, we have gathered here to select the Indian team for the first two ODIs against Australia. We all know South Africa was a disaster (pauses) - the board refused to let the selectors accompany the team. But like true gentlemen, we must put all this behind us and get on with our job – and fast. We are already two hours behind time and we don’t want to be late for lunch. I think going by the media review we got the last time, we can pride ourselves in having done a great job in selecting the team when we had last met.

Yashpal: But I saw someone's Facebook status message saying that India was knocked out in the first round of the Chamions Trophy.

All in chourus: What! (Everyone is shocked and dismayed)

Raja: Then I think we have to make a big change somewhere. This is how it generally works. When things are not working, change it.

Bhave: Yeah you’re right. How about changing the captain?

Srikkanth: (immediately feeling his right cheek with his palm) Er.. Er.. I don’t think so. He has been doing a good job for India. And you see we are from the same Chennai Super King outfit. (Again rubbing his cheek as if reminded of something.).And.. and besides he is strong, very strong. Er.. I mean he has the necessary strength to lead India.

Hirwani: Hmm… Then I think we can sack the coach, Kirsten.

Raja: I doubt that is an option. His contract does not expire until March 2010.

Bhave: We have to do something. We can give the boot to Venky and Robin.

Yashpal: But it may not go down with the players so well.

Bhave: Oh. I didn’t know the players were that close to them.

Yashpal: No, no. It’s not that. What I meant was who will serve them coffee and snacks.

Raja: That can be taken care of. The manager can double up. As it is he never does anything. My only concern is who will notify the two.

Srikkanth: (frowns with surprise) why do we have to tell them? The media can do that. Hey guys, lets start some sort of a trend. Countries have separate teams for tests and ODIs, let us have separate teams for home and away matches. It'll be fun. Something new.

(Everyone looks up and are delighted with the idea. This was their chance of being pioneers, and scripting their names in the pages of history.)

Yashpal: India’s best batsman in away matches, by far, has been Dravid. We can drop him. But the only problem is he hasn’t done bad in matches at home.

Srikkanth: Listen, I am in no mood to go with someone with a nickname Jamie, when I am sitting here, deprived of lunch.

Bhave: But with what pretext should we drop him?

Raja: We can tell the people that he is old.

Yashpal: But he shows no signs of ageing. Shouldn’t form and fitness be the criteria?

Srikkanth: Not when you’re hungry. Common guys we can’t be wasting so much time.

Hirwani: Ok. Let’s pick Ravindra Jadeja.

Raja: Jadeja! But there were reports that it was because of him that India lost the T20 World Cup.

Hirwani: Hmm.. But Shane Warne thinks he is the future of India and we could do well to use his expertise.

Bhave: But Warne also told the same thing about Yusuf Pathan as well. So are we picking him too?

Yashpal: Hey common, Warnie cannot be right each time. He maintains that he likes baked beans. But they have always given me stomach upsets.

Raja: Yeah right. I fart a lot too whenever I have baked beans. Makes me wonder how he handles all the women after he has eaten baked beans!

Srikkanth: Well guys, we just found out, why, at times, he restricts himself to phone sex!

Bhave: Hmmm.. Moving on, should we pick Virat Kohli?

Hirwani: Yes, yes. He always reminds me of my childhood days.

Yashpal: Why? Were you thin during your childhood days?

Hirwani: No. My mother used to cook in Virat pressure cookers when I was a child.

Srikkanth: We should give this youngster named Sudeep Tyagi a chance. He is also in the Chennai Super Kings team.

Raja: Yeah. You must have observed him closely then.

Srikkanth: Not exactly. But Srinivasan is a shrewd fellow. He would never have him in the team if Tyagi were not good.

Bhave: What about Sreesanth. Do we give him another chance?

Raja: He’ll be fined a lot of times so that’ll save the board a lot of money. Moreover, when he was last slapped, he skipped dinner. He'll be an asset in times of recession.

Srikkanth: The board will not share the money with us. And why should we be concerned with anybody’s dinner when we are starving here for want of lunch. He is not selected. And perhaps, we could be getting the Nobel Peace Prize next year for keeping him out of the team.

Bhave: Does anyone realize it has been 15 mins since we came here.

Srikkanth: Yeah. Enough is enough. We will each write a random syllable in a piece of paper and assemble it to form names. We will then select those players. As it is too many cooks spoil the broth. Let us not waste anymore time and proceed for lunch. We sure have earned our bread and butter today.

And the rest - as they say - is history.

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And the loser is...

Well, I have been toying with the idea of blogging for a long, long time; perhaps even before Cricket Australia’s downfall began. But, in the race between my zeal and lethargy, the latter always dominated. (and people say that laziness does not win you anything, hah) Anyways, when you got only a few people left in Bangalore, and work load isn’t that much, what do you do? Sorry ----, but I didn’t want to watch porn. (Some people will know instantly whom I’m referring to, while for the others it could be anyone or no one, so don’t bother trying to fill up the blanks). I’m not denying that I AM good at ‘nothing’, I still am – u don’t lose your knack after over two decades of practice – but thought, for once, would give this a try.

So, Ashes ‘09 finally got over. Micheal Vaughan had correctly predicted a 2-1 win for England, but I doubt he actually believed it. His prediction would probably have been different had he been asked to bet on it. But you do get the feeling that Glenn McGrath believed that his predicted 5-0 whitewash for the Aussies would actually transpire. Poor McGrath had probably forgotten that he is no longer part of the Aussie team.

Anyways, a 2-1 loss it was for the Aussies and with that they now find themselves at no. 4 in the ICC cricket rankings. They’ll probably climb back given that their next test assignments are home series against the West Indies and Pakistan. But for the time being, their wounds will be sour. Ask Ponting about that! Mind you, I still don’t think that England were the better team in the competition. It is just that they capitalized better on the opportunities that came their way. But the bottom line is that the Brits will keep the urn for the next 18 months.

Aussies lost, and you found celebrations coming from all corners of the world. Mind you, none of them were celebrating because they wanted England to win, but because they wanted to see the Australians reeling. Australia has always been a team people love to hate. Whenever there is a match between Australia and Some Team,, the entire cricket-following populace, barring the 23 million Australians (and maybe the 115 million sheep they have) will root for the “Some Team”. Why is that people revel when the team from Down Under are going down and under? Perhaps, because while they were on song they destroyed, sledged, hammered every team that came their way - shattering their confidence, slaughtering their egos.

If I were to choose one turning point in the Aussies’ dream run, I would stick my neck out and go for Sydney ‘08. Their fortunes have surely reversed after all the drama surrounding the test. The first nail in the coffin was planted by the Indians at the WACA immediately after the test, a ground which the Australians cherished as much as Shane Warne used to cherish baked beans before their tour of India in 1998.

The Australians have always come in for heavy criticism before, during and after the tour for their unsporting ways. Some of this they deserve, and some they don’t. I mean when they were on top, they really were on top of their game playing a brand of aggressive cricket (something the likes of Dhoni would never dare – remember the Mohali test against England and the Nagpur test against Australia?). And talk about gamesmanship, haven’t we seen umpteen number of times, the likes of Gilly, Steve Waugh and the others applauding the opponents when some one came up with something special? Haven’t we heard enough generous praises being lavished on a rival cricketer by an Aussie contemporary? Shane Warne was the first to acknowledge that Sachin gave him nightmares (when he was not dreaming about girls). How many times has Micheal Artherton praised Glenn McGrath in public? Did the Indians give something close to a look of respect to Ponting when he manufactured that blistering hundred in the World Cup finals, which was responsible for the shattering of a billion dreams?

Another thing for which the Aussies deserve due credit is that they never allowed their emotions to get the better of them in the cricket field. I can’t recall a single incident when an Aussie bowler allowed himself to shout at a fielder who misfielded in his bowling, or even dropped a catch. One incident that immediately springs to mind is Adelaide in 1999 during the time when Agarkar was on a duck collecting spree. (Inside informers have told me that he actually went to Jumbo to barter names. If there was anyone who deserved the name “A NIL”, it was him). During that tour Agarkar provided the opponent bowlers ample hattrick oppurtunites. On one such occasion, Warne dropped a sitter at slips of the batsmen (was either Srinath or Kumble) which denied Flemming a hattrick. All Flemming did was smile at Warnie. Having seen ample of Srinath and Kumble, one can safely guess what they would have done if confronted with a similar situation.

Ahh, I didn’t ever think I would ever write or say anything in defense of the Aussies. But in an obituary, you do write the positives about the person. And I sincerely hope that this is an obituary and, like many others don’t want to see an Australian resurrection. And moreover, all these players are history now. All we are left with is Ricky Ponting and Micheal Clarke (and would have been left with Symonds only if his prudence was one-hundredth as good as his cricketing skills).

Ponting was candid enough to admit that questions will be asked of him. While he was sitting in the press conference with his wounded lips, you could not help but feel for him. (Life had come a full ‘circle’ for him at ‘The Oval’ - the Harmison bouncer in 2005 which has left a permanent scar on his face, and now this); and like a wounded tiger would, he announced his intent of coming back to the Oval and England in 2013. But will he be at the helm till then? I know a captain is as good as his team is. But then…With England on 58/3 overnight in the second essay, he did start the day with as many as three fielders on the boundary line. But then… In Nagpur with Australia just having got more than a foot on the door, he did allow Dhoni and Bhajji some breathing space, and in turn, choke him. There is no way you could have imagined a Border or a Taylor or a Waugh ever do that.

Well, it has turned out to be longer than I had intended it to be. Hope you have made it this far and hope to see your comments. Untill the next time, so long.

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