Late Cut

Three quarter finals have been done and dusted. Confusion reigns!! One major upset, one sort of and one a damp squib. Such a contrasting level of cricket skills seen in all three games....... confusion rains!! West Indian effort against Pakistan was a total washout; a complete disgrace and unworthy of last 8 round of a premier competition. May be West Indian team decided to take their revenge on Bangla spectators for the stones they received at their hands!! Me thinks that may be West Indians took it upon them selves to confuse the (g)hosts of match-fixers that inevitably tag along Pakistan team, like a Betal on Vikram's shoulder! May be this is a better way of taking the ghost of match-fixing out of equation?? Take that..we will shoot your odds to hell! And for free.... I mean, for cryinoutloud, how can batsman after batsman of international class miss simple straight ones? I thought I saw an expression of utter confusion on the face of Mohammad Hafiz. Poor fellow must be tryi...

  Welcome to the real curtain raiser to the world Cup. What has gone before this, minnows bashing or champions breaking TVs, its all an entré to the main course. If Ponting or Dhoni was asked before the start of this World Cup, which captain they would love to avoid most till finals, they would have mentioned each other. The fact that they face up to each other today to decide who misses out on a berth in the semi finals, is an indication of how much under-par they have performed. Australia, though got drubbed by the Poms in test series, showed their opponents their rightful place in ODI series winning handsomely, and maintained their supremacy in the ODI ranking. India, who on the other hand came into this competition from a difficult tour to South Africa where in spite of their main players not participating, did quite well in the ODI series and certainly surprised their fans and opponents equally. While Aussies were coming from a high, Indians were coming home. And with their...

The world Cup 2011 is simmering and started living up to the lyrics of its anthem, "De Ghuma Ke". It seems to have inspired quite a few players including a totally unknown teenager called Hiral Patel, of Canada!! The caning he gave to the world cup champions in a lost cause, especially the six over covers off the fastest bowler in the tournament Shaun Tait, will linger in the memory long long after the dust has settled in Mumbai. There has been a lot of talk about the minnows bashing; for a change it was nice to see Champion bashing! That's the beauty of sport; king for a day is far better than a pauper for life. Love it!!  One swallow does not make a summer, agreed; but it can make a painfully bad memory for life for some! Ask Zubin Surkari, who copped the brunt of Tait's thunder and came away with three balls! The Great Australian selector Andrew Hilditch must have been moved sufficiently to say " Tait needs to improve "!! What? for missing the goolies?...

Long awaited ICC World Cup has begun and results have been going as per seedings...so far. Meaning all the minnows so far have been bashed. And in some case, have been reminded about their status in no uncertain terms, as well. Perhaps Veeru's emotions boiled over after his terrific innings against Bangladeshis; even though Indian win by no means was a washout. At 182/2 off ~30 overs only, Bangladeshis were in the scrap. To think of a cricket game as a revenge is a bit too much, but for those who suffered 4 years back at Port of Spain, the kind of back lash from the fans and everyone else, that you see only in India, it must have felt like redemption. If that defeat in the Caribbean was a motivation to play well, Indians succeeded. However, World Cups are more about proving you are a champion side rather than an ego trip. Having said that, Veeru is one of the very few players on the international circuit whose uttering on cricket and especially his opponents, have any thing...

2010 was perhaps the best year for Indian cricket in a long time. Perhaps only one that can match it was 1971, when India won two overseas series for the first time against powerful cricket nations, WI and England; not counting 1983 when India became world champions in One day cricket against the run of the play. In spite of Tendulkar, the Ram, being so dominant in Indian cricket, to me 2010 was the year of (VVS) Laxman. Five superlative innings that not only saved India but converted defeats into victories and changed the fate of every series. Review the following games and you will find VVS as the common denominator; the pillar of strength. SA vs India in India India vs Sri Lanka in SL Australia vs India in India New Zealand vs India in India India vs SA in SA And the last one against South Africa will be remembered for a very very long time. Indeed a water-shed moment in Indian cricket as it helped India to level the series for the first time in South Africa. Laxman was all ...

Sorry, have been flying around, so no contact. Heard this when I was a fly on the wall somewhere.. Small Boss (b) : Sir, this is brewing into a big problem. Big Boss (B) : (snaps out of his snooze with a Homer Simpson drawl) Brew, ahhaaaa....I love my brew. How can brewing be a problem? b : Sir, I mean the cricket scandal; this spot-fixing by cricketers may fix us. B : (suddenly sits up) How? b : Well Sir, obviously everyone will think if cricketers are so corrupt what about the cricket board? B : How can people connect cricketers to the Board? We said and did nothing when IPL kicked out cricketers, did we? b : Errrr..well, (coughs), sir, we sort of managed it...newspapers did report Sports minister's complain to his counterpart about being snubbed and a national insult and all the patriotic emotional..... B : (cuts him off) Well, that is just standard political rhetoric. Does not prove our connection to the players. If anything, it will prove to the world that the governm...

So John Howard, ex-PM of Australia has failed another "election". In some ways you can say that he lost a winnable one this time unlike the one he lost to Kevin Rudd in Nov 2007. I honestly thought he would have got used to loosing by now! Apparently, you can neither take out the politics from the politician nor a politician from politics!! Most Pollies in all countries have a very sharp sense of smell; they will smell-out power even from a chook-raffle! Top level sports administration, obviously represents a pot of honey to a bear; especially to those who are missing their power-fix. And when a sport interests lots of people and spins a few bobs, it is certainly like a full syringe to a junkie. But you can fool some people sometimes. Little Johhny is now facing the barbs from the thorns he nurtured during his tenure. While he did some excellent work to turn Australian economy around, his ultra-conservative beliefs could not adept to the fast changing canvas of this small b...