Bob Woolmer - R.I.P

The entire world was shocked to learn of Bob Woolmer’s now ‘suspicious’ death in Jamaica. There were glowing tributes from across the cricketing world. A great strategist and a brilliant student of the game, Bob will be missed. I just hope there is a thorough investigation and the world gets to know the truth behind his death.

"Bob Woolmer had such a massive influence on my cricket career, and I know that there are countless cricketers around the globe who are just as devastated as I am by his sudden passing. Bob literally gave his life for the game he loved so dearly, and while he had already made such an immense contribution to cricket, his premature death has deprived the game of someone who still had so much to offer the cricketing community. My thoughts and prayers are with Gill and the family." - Jonty Rhodes

Check the full coverage of Bob Woolmer's passing on Cricinfo.

Sachin the best - Ponting

Ponting states the bloody obvious. Read Sachin the most complete batsman: Ponting. I am curious if this is a way to appease your Indian fans after the stupid comments earlier.

Howzzat? I mean,“Ye kaisi thi?”

Here is a must read: Pakistan banned from speaking English in conferences. The brilliant Pakistani team management thought it would be an awesome idea to have Pak players speaking in only Urdu to – believe it or not – “promote tourism to Pakistan.”

"A journalist spoke to Danish Kaneria and asked him what he thought about the gas leak and he tried to play the incident down and said 'It happens'.”But when the report came out the journalist quoted him saying 'It happens at home as well'. "So we would rather avoid these kinds of incidents and speak in Urdu at official times, as well as for reasons of promoting Pakistan."

I have a suspicion in future matches, the Pakistani team might just play with 12 players. No I am not counting the umpire – they did that before the advent of the neutral umpires. I am talking about a translator on field to translate all the sledging and appeals. The next time Shoaib (if he decides to focus on cricket for a change) bowls a bouncer and comes snarling at the batsman with a few pleasantries to share, we might see a translator hurrying along the pitch to make sure the batsman understands every word of it.

The ICC as usual has spoiled the party They think the process of translating for the players might take too much time and hence Pakistan should resort to English. Captain Inzy Haq wasn’t too happy about speaking in Urdu either since he thought the timing of the decision reflected poorly on the players. Well Inzy, here is something I read the other day on Panicker’s blog.

Tony Greig called up man of the match Inzy ul Haq, and then Tony went into this long rigmarole about what a bitch of a pitch it was, how difficult batting was, how no batsman managed to look remotely competent, and how in the midst of it all Inzy had played like an angel.. Through it all, Inzy stands gazing at the heavens, an ex-pression of blissful unconcern on his face.
"So, Inzy, tell us, how hard was it to bat on that wicket," goes Tony.
Inzy blinks into wakefulness on hearing his name, flashes a beatific grin at his interlocutor, and goes, "Nice peetch, no problem."
It was one of the most hilarious tv moments ever.

I would think hearing the players butcher English would reflect more poorly on the team. For the select few, fortunate enough to represent their country, I would think they would work a little on their public speaking skills. Kaise rahi?

JAWS - Snack Attack

Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are. - Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (French Lawyer, Politician and Writer, 1755-1826)

Aren’t midnight snacks fun? I generally tend to pick the sweetest, fattiest, greasiest, cheesiest, most unhealthy snack possible. Come midnight, and I think I like to “weigh” my options more carefully than I would normally do. Ice cream/Pizza is good. Anything loaded with saturated fat and a million calories is better. Question to ponder about while finishing your bag-o-chips: When exactly did food stop being food and become “calories”?

Anyway, I used to get pretty creative and adventurous around midnight. The spicy French toast (is it still French?) was invented one such night. In recent times though I have tended to give into the microwaveable quick fixes – the only problem being, they aren't unhealthy enough. As I ‘grow’ into my recliner with a built-in crapper and get more comfortable by the day, I can only thank the wonderful people at Pepsico Inc. for making my life easier. Enter any supermarket, grocery store, gas station or a general hospital and the choices I have are mind-boggling. I am like a kid lost in a Frito-Lay store. Not only do I have a thousand different varieties of chips to choose from, I have hundreds of dips and salsas to go with them. What I admire about Frito-Lay is that not only do they make great products (Cheetos – my personal favorite), but they also have a great sense of humor. Every bag has “nutritional” information at the back and they have recommended “serving sizes” which if you take seriously would mean you could have 3 chips a week. Hilarious.

On a side note - what's the deal with opening a near empty refrigerator in the middle of the night and generally staring blankly for a few minutes expecting food to magically appear out of nowhere?

Losing my chain of thought... Gotta eat... Lift… arm... to… open… bag…

Captain Ponting

In calm waters, every ship has a good captain.

Captain Ricky Ponting is distinctly un-comfortable in un-chartered territory as he finds himself in an un-familiar role of manning the Aussie ship in un-friendly waters. Aussies lost their last five ODIs and have certainly lost their aura of invincibility. Already in a corner, it is easy to understand why cricket legend Sunny Gavaskar might have touched a raw nerve when he targeted Team Australia’s on-field behavior.
Gavaskar: "There is not the slightest doubt that in the last decade or so the Aussies have been awesome in batting, bowling and fielding, which has taken them to the top of the cricketing ladder. But they have also been awful in the way they have sometimes behaved on the field much to the chagrin of the traditional fans of the game."

Read Ricky’s response: Ponting targets Gavaskar over behaviour. Excerpt:
Ricky Ponting: "If he is talking about us, what about the way India has played their cricket over the last few years?" India won three of 12 Tests last year while Australia were successful in their ten games. "I know who I would rather be going to watch," Ponting told the paper. "Have a look at how many Test matches they have won. He [Gavaskar] has been a big part of that, he has been a selector and he has been on the coaching committee. They might want to start to look at the way they play their own cricket rather than looking at us."

Relax Ricky, its ok, not everybody can handle pressure, and I guess that’s what separates the good from the great. But seriously, we are talking about on-field behavior, not about winning matches. And while there are 20 holes in your childish response waiting to be torn apart, I think it’s time you shut your trap and focus on what you do best – score runs. Your logical reasoning and argumentative skills aren’t exactly your strong points – your batting is. Once you are out of your purple patch and the runs dry up, it will be tougher to fend off the vultures. So here is hoping that McGrath signs off in style, Hayden bludgeons his way through the WC, Symonds provides the balance your team needs, Clark plays to his potential, and you score some runs so you can win the WC and be an ass about it too. Maybe once you are in calm waters, you will mellow down and stick to being brash, arrogant, and abusive strictly on the field.

On a separate note, I think it is beneath a cricketing great like Gavaskar to even acknowledge Ricky’s comments. However, in his response ('Aussies could get whacked in a bar') to Ricky’s moronic statement, Gavaskar compares the Australians and the West Indies side of the 1970s and '80s, adding that the players from the Caribbean were more popular champions.

They [West Indies] did not abuse the opponents. They did not have anything to say to the opponents. When they were dominating world cricket the West Indians did not resort to personal abuse on the field, they just played the game hard, they were very tough competitors but there was nothing untoward in their behaviour towards their opponents. West Indian players always had a smile on their face when they came in at the end of day's play to talk with you and to commiserate when you lost, you could see that there was no arrogance there. Cricket lovers all over the world wanted the West Indies teams to get back on their feet and start winning again.

India thrash WI in practice match

Ind vs. WI - second practice match scorecard.

You know you are a goner when you even follow the practice matches with interest...

India - WC Practice match 1

India beat Netherlands by 182 runs in their WC practice match. The jubiliant few can check the scorecard.

Tendulkar will dominate the limelight

Read Harsha Bhogle's latest piece: Tendulkar will dominate the limelight.

Great men invite challenges; they like the idea of the opposition, or circumstance, placing obstacles in the way for it allows them to demonstrate their ability, to paint a new picture, to vanquish any hindrance.

Meetings

Have you noticed how some of your co-workers have this habit of inviting the entire world to their meetings – whether their participation is value-added or not? Stuck in one such meeting I was doing the tight rope walk of trying to stay awake while looking intelligent, and actively suppressing homicidal thoughts, I silently wondered why these morons would tie everybody up in this useless exercise. Maybe they like showing people how hard they are working or maybe they just like to hear themselves talk. Maybe it’s the office calendar feature which is just so cool that they can’t resist inviting people so they can ‘refresh’ and check how many have accepted. Or it could be the fact that they have nobody else to talk to. Heck, I have a sneaking suspicion my ex-boss used to call meetings when she wanted to show off her new dress. What better away to parade your new dress around then to call a meeting where you know there will be at least one person pathetic enough to notice and compliment you, and the rest will be subversive enough to feel obligated to do the same. Whatever the reason, these people need to grow up. How many of you have been invited to meetings with no agenda? If you don’t have an agenda, don’t call a meeting. Let’s just chat over lunch.

Early to bed…

Early to bed and early to rise
Makes you healthy, wealthy, and wise.

I tried to follow this pretty assiduously as a kid. But cut to Engineering college (and the infinite wisdom that comes with teenage years) and I found this hard to digest. I mean, my friends and I used to be up all night chatting, partying and generally enjoying life. In fact, our hostel used to come alive after midnight. We had heated discussions about cricket, politics (inter-group, college level, regional, national, international, and everything in between), girls, sex, movies (not in this order) – basically everything under the sun except studies and course work. Playing under-arm cricket in the hostel lobby at 2 am wasn’t uncommon. So I slept at about 3-4 am and got up at 10-10:30 am on a good day to make it to class. The more I thought about my lifestyle, the less this adage made sense to me. The basic flaw in the above saying is the underlying assumption that by rising early you get time to exercise, study and make excellent financial decisions like 401K, social security and investing in Enron. What if I wake up at 5am every morning and spend my time eating junk and playing solitaire? Come to think of it, isn’t the world designed for the late-nighters? Why do we end up chatting and debating in the middle of the night? Never once have I heard of an impromptu fruitful (read meaningless) discussion at 5am in the morning. Why do we make always plans for Friday/Saturday nights? I haven’t heard anyone say – “Let’s meet up and paint the town red this Saturday morning. 7 am good for you?” Last time I checked, we had ‘night’-clubs, not a single ‘day club’ in the yellow pages. Restaurants have hoardings screaming “open late.” All the games are scheduled in the evenings. Most of the tv channels play all night but try switching the tv on in the morning and all you have is Chuck Norris promoting a miracle machine that will miraculously make you muscular and fit - all for the small matter of a gazillion payments of $29.99 per month.

Conclusion: The wise old man who wrote this adage didn’t come from a big city with night-life and I am sure had no social life whatsoever.

Conclusion – 2: Even with my nocturnal lifestyle, I am pretty healthy (touchwood). Wealth? Ah, it is such a relative term. And as far as wisdom is concerned, astute readers can make their own judgments based on the smart conclusion drawn above.