The best World Cup....... ever

And I am not even sarcastic. This is the most balanced world cup since 92, when I started watching cricket. We have atleast 4 good teams contending for the top spot and none of them have a huge lead over the others. I am betting on SA to win. But if the kiwis manage to beat SA, I'll shift my loyalties back to NZ. Both SA and NZ have strong well balanced teams. Gibbs I think is the most likely batsmen to get to 200 in a ODI. And Styris has been doing a great job for the kiwis destroying the opposition. The best part neither of the teams is very dependent on individuals. Aussies also have a good team, but then like any non Aussie cricket lover, I don't like them and sincerely hope that Bangladesh beats them tomorrow. If they actually do that, India should give citizenships to all the Bangladeshi refugees. SL also has a very strong team which almost pulled off a miracle the other day. Malinga with his weird hairdo and awkward bowling action did exactly what a 4th standard kid in Warangal, who woke early on a cold winter morning, expected Kapil Dev to do to the Aussies back in the 1992 tour of Australia. Much to the disappointment of this moderately optimistic kid, Kapil never claimed 2 hat-tricks to seal the match. But Malinga must have made it a day for some Sri Lankan kid who decided to stay up the night and watched till the end with the same moderate optimism. I am soo jealous of that kid.

It is quite ironic that this also must be the least watched world cup thanks to the exit of India and Pakistan, the two big cricketing nations. It probably also is the least profitable. If anything it shows what a bad business model ICC has. The World Cup with the best cricket also quite sadly has to be the least profitable. We didn't have as many good teams back in 2003 but then India stayed on till the end making it highly profitable, inspite of the mostly mediocre cricket. I was actually surprised that ICC let India get out of the world cup. They very well know the impact on the sponsors and their future sponsorships. It shows that afterall, thankfully, there isn't any fixing in the game anymore. But still the truth is ICC is overdependent on one country for its profits. Actually it probably cant help that part. What it help itself with is loving cricket more than the money. It has to put cricket higher than money in its list of objectives.

ICC oflate has become too greedy and has not even made an effort to hide it. They look up to FIFA and shamelessly copy their business model which unfortunately doesn't suit the gentleman's game. Thanks to all the ICC's measures of taking cricket to more people, we now have cricket fans who can compete with the English football hooligans anywhere. Probably even put them to shame. Do they take out mock funeral processions for the football players when they lose to, lets say, a team like Man Utd(footballs equivalent of Bangladesh)? guess not. Cricket fans however were taking them out in every city in India like there is no tomorrow. I think cricket can do with lesser number of fans. It'll mean lesser money but better, pleasanter cricket. I hope the guys who ruined Dhoni's house or the ones who took out the mock funerals never go back and watch cricket ever. I can understand the disappointment and frustration to watch their favourite team lose, like I myself was, but the problem is with the way they are venting it out. And unlike the soccer hooligans they dont even have the excuse of being drunk.

When I saw the news about the Indian fans reaction to their loss in the WC, I was like "Thank God! they don't follow puzzles so closely". And then I realized that the Indian team is indeed doing well at the World Sudoku Championship(WSC) this year. They are placed 12th out of 24 teams at the end of 4th round, just behind Britain(11) with which we have a one sided rivalry.(Poor fellows, they don't even know about it) Also its the only other cricketing country in the championship. Ofcourse I don't yet consider Canada, Holland and even Ireland as cricketing nations, inspite of the fact that the Irish went further into the tournament than India. Anyways here's wishing Team India luck, and hope they beat GBR convincingly. Looking at the fine team we have now, I will have to do lots of work if I have to earn back my position in the team to go to WPC, Brazil later in the year.

Go India Go

Image Copyright protected.

Are you a blogger?

300

If you are not a Telugu you will probably be amazed at what could be the inspiration behind this fantasy filled action thriller. There is a remote chance that you actually think that it is inspired by the spartan military culture. If you do think so then u should catch the nearest available Telugu guy and ask him about a movie in which

1. the hero is born into a family that produces sons only to fight and derive sadistic pleasure from the cries of the enemy. And the mothers are very willing to offer their sons for the benefit of the tribe

2. the hero and the tribesmen talk gloriously about their tribe's rich war history and their fighting culture

3. The hero can single handedly kill four million five hundred and ninety seven thousand three hundred and twenty three warriors of the lower tribe before the first drop of sweat materializes on his body

4. The villain has a never ending arsenal of mediocre quality warriors who invariably flatter to deceive and end up dying in the hands of the hero after typically at least defying gravity

Any self respectable gult should come up with at least a dozen movie names which satisfy these criteria.

300 is a movie blatantly copied, or inspired as they like to say, from one of those more popular Telugu movies which glorify the vengeance and the factionism prevalent in the Rayalseema seema. 300 glorifies the Spartan culture and military values in pretty much the same tone.

The movie starts with a flattering introduction to the making of spartan warrior kings. After being crowned and having a kid, life comes full circle and he starts training his son. But then the Persians had other plans. They send a messenger who very humbly requests them to surrender to the mighty Persian God-king, the ruler of the world, or lose to him in the battle. The Spartans, whose brains dont seem to be in any good proportion to their muscles, obviously decide to kill the Persian messenger. When the messenger realizes his fate, he says "This is Madness" and the king replies "This is Sparta", which roughly translates to "yes" in normal English. Just as you get ready to watch a nice historical war movie with all skimpily clad warriors with graphic muscles, the story takes an ugly turn . Ugly it is. There are some arbit ugly old men on a random mount Everest Jr. with one beautiful young girl randomly dancing all alone, probably under the influence of some home made illicit liquor. They tell the king not to go to war after listening to the naked girl sing "manmada raasa" in some funny language nobody understands. Sparta has a senate and an unwritten constitution which forbids the king to go to war unless the wasted Oracle says so in her funny language which can only be deciphered by, you guessed it, the ugly old fellows. So there our man is, all his meticulous training useless just because the heavily drunk semi naked young girl wouldnt agree.

These guys the Spartans are about as fond of war as any respectable Quaker is about playing quake. The king being the finest of the spartan warrior, too excited to get into the arena and assembles 300 of his finest men and marches to the coast to fight what looked like 300 million Persians. And these Persians are funny folks, they have giant slaves pulling the grand oversized chariots, when they actually seem to be their best warriors. The Spartans do a god job of fighting the Persians and killed at the rate of about a 1000 Persians per hour. They also make very novel and effective use of the corpses, by using them as bricks to build a wall. The corpses just keep piling up with the Spartans tearing through the Persian lines as if they are static butter at room temperature. The battlefield seemed like the safest place on earth for the spartans, going by the number of injuries they suffered. I am sure relatively speaking, there must be a greater possibility of getting injured by watching this movie.

The movie drags a bit initially with arbitrary skin show but is largely tolerable once the war begins. The queen for her part tries to amuse the audience with her own little desperate act. There are quite a few nice disgusting creatures with random features and excess foaming skin all over. You'll probably like this movie if you are a fan of Lord of the rings, Harry Potter or well maybe the popular faction movies from tollywood.

Fallen Goliath

I woke up on Saturday morning, eager to watch my heroes do to Bangladesh what Gibbs did to Holland on the day before. But well I should have known the Indian team better. With a captain whose risk appetite is of the order comparable to zombies, mermaids, fairies and other nonexistent things, he would only treat Bangladesh as he repeatedly said "seriously". That's what Dravid always does, treat all teams equally seriously. An attitude as flawed and damaging as the Indian Foreign Policy. India used to treat every sovereign country as an equal. So whether you are USA or USSR or Djibouti or Somalia you were all treated equally. Makes very good rational sense but highly unrealistic, ineffective and worse, damaging. Thankfully the Foreign Policy guys are smarter, realized the flaw and adapted.

Dravid is the least effective captain since I have started watching cricket maybe even since I was born, actually since the birth of cricket. You'll probably find 2-3 lesser effective captains if you include the veteran cricket,gully cricket, french cricket and book cricket.......... of all ages......... and genders. 3 might be tough but you should find 2 with some effort. All the games India won under him were more because of individual brilliance than inspirational captaincy. He is not the kind of guy who would take the attack to the opposition. And the only time he inspires is by being the top scorer in a game India inevitably loses. India lost a greater proportion of matches when Dravid was the highest scorer for the team. Quite understandable, he never was a match winner. He can at best make the losing a little less embarrassing. He does have a huge fan following, especially among the young females, who probably only get to watch him selling some pink stuff on gigantic billboards or during the break of the 347th episode of their favourite daily serial. If only they had endured the pain of watching one of his acclaimed "wall" innings where he ensures that the ball always gets pitched within the 1 feet radius from his legs after hitting the bat, they'll understand me better. He might be a good model but he is a boring cricketer, more boring than those daily serials. Probably if you are capable of enjoying those infinitely prolonging intricately woven family dramas you might find Dravids batting as divine poetry and vice versa.

As bad as a captain we have, he cannot be singularly held responsible for every body's performance. He can be blamed for their attitude though. Whats missing in the Indian team was the killer instinct we had in 2003 under Saurav. I am not a great fan of Saurav either and believe he definitely deserved the sack he got. And he's doing much better now than he did before the sack, so I believe the sack did work in his case. But he was a good captain. He pushed the team, lead them, took tough decisions when things didn't go his way and well, he was a successful captain.

Coming back to yesterdays game,m ore than a batting failure or a bowling failure I think it was a lack of will and attitude. Sharav girls have shown more determination to win the annual 9-a side in IIT Madras than India did the other day. Bangladesh on the other hand played extremely good, sensible cricket and nailed India comprehensively. They have come a long way from the previous WC when they even lost to Canada. They have embarrassed the kiwis in the warm up match and now the Indians. It is disappointing to watch India lose, but then trivial things like nationality shouldn't come in the way of appreciating good cricket. I think only one team wanted to win and, quite rightly, it did. Bangladesh has a young team with a good attitude. They, like most of us, must have grown up watching and idolizing the Sachins and Sauravs. It must be terribly satisfying to hand them their asses on a plate.

And then Pakistan, the other fellow south Asian team had a worse day. They are the first team to get kicked out of the World Cup 2007, thanks to another minnows, Ireland. Now the first round matches have become infinitely more important and interesting. And it gives cricket a great hope, maybe someday soon we'll have 16 good test playing teams. Though the Paki-Ireland match relieved some of the disappointment out of India's loss, I felt really bad for the Pakis. And also for all the Desi's who booked their tickets for what they believed to be India-Pakistan super 8 match. Now they'll end up watching Ireland-Bangladesh.

PS. The saddest part, by far, however is the tragic death of Bob Woolmer. I remember him more for his tenure with the proteas, when they brought in a new level of professionalism into the game. When things like this happen you realize how trivial cricket really is.