The Home of Cricket and going high-tech

IT is every cricketer's dream to tour England, and being capped in a Lord's test would certainly be one of the most special moments for any player. After all, it is the home of cricket, and the grounds that our Indian team is playing on are the cradle of the game. Much of the chatter before India's first test at lord's was about the senior players being eager to make in an impression in perhaps their last appearance at Lord's and the youngsters being overwhelmed by the privilege of being allowed to play a test at this holy venue. The thrill of watching cricket being played in English conditions is no less felt by the fans either. The picturesque settings-be it the backdrop of London's majestic clock towers or the rolling meadows of the English countryside-, the classic grandstands with elderly fans still dressing in their best formals to watch a cricket match, lush green outfields and not to mention the wind vane with Old Father Time at Lord's, all make cricket in England a very special experience. The weather might be the most unpredictable and uncooperative, but there is probably no other venue that provides as even a contest between bat and all, with plenty in the conditions for quality swing bowling initially, and enough respite for the batsmen in patches when the sun shines and the pitch eases up. I reckon batting in English conditions for this very reason is the true test of skill for any batsman, especially an opening batsman.

The second day of the first test produced a very interesting (controversial?) incident involving Kevin Pietersen. He edged one which was lapped up by Dhoni behind the stumps, and the Indian team was off on a celebration, umpire Simon Taufel and that was that.

Not quite.

TV replays showed that the ball had not carried to Dhoni, and Pietersen was almost off the field when his teammates frantically waved him back on and the umpires called him back on. He was to survive only three more balls before being caught behind cleanly again. I did not really think too much about the TV referral until the former Australian batsman Ian Chappell brought up the topic in one of his articles.

Cricket has always prided itself on being a game that put fair conduct first. Chappell has two points of contention against the further use of TV replays than are already in place and I comepletely agree:

1.) Cricket has always stressed putting faith in the good intentions and inherent sense of justice of a qualified umpire. Simon Taufel is one of the best around, and I would imagine that his mistake was due totally to human error. Overuse of TV replays means for one thing that we are not really showing faith in the competence and judgement of trained and experienced umpires who are probably right almost all the time. Further, our extra dependence on TV replays would mean that we start to "make do" with slightly lower quality umpires, since the replays are there to make the correction anyway. In short, we hazard the esteem of good umpiring and risk lowering the expertise of the average umpire. There is always scope for errors in judgement in any sport, and players should be willing to ride their luck. If errors occur alarmingly too often, it is the selection of umpires that must be addressed, and not the inclusion of technology.

2.) It is all very good that the batsman is done full justice in this regard, but what of the bowler? Bowlers do not get to refer an appeal that has been turned down to the third umpire, do they? No balance between bat and ball here.

Ironic that these questions had to come up in Cricket's own home.

Trimming the tree upstairs

GETTING a haircut was never my favourite pastime- and for thinking that getting a haircut was extremely annoying when I was back in India, Destiny sent me to the US, just to show how much worse it can get.

Today the frustration levels hit their highest point- and it was very, very high.

To some people hair is a fashion statement, a reflection of their attitude, something to be flaunted. To me it is an auxillary outgrowth on the head which needs to be gotten rid of periodically. So why the extremely shiny glass cabinets, posh lighting, and overdose of gloss when all you do is esstentially mess around with the auxillary outgrowth using sharp instruments and fancy chemicals? Here I have to admit that I did not have the patience to take the bus all the way to a barber shop which was much more stripped down to the basics, but my amazement at the bells and whistles still remains.

I was greeted by hair cutting person with a handhsake and an extremely artificial and overdone "hello, Im so and so... how are you doing today...". If she was not the one in control of the instruments being used on my head which resemble potential weapons, my response would have been:

"Im not here to buy your company, I am here to get this mop off my head. It is an unfortunate law of nature that I have this growing on my head, and I hate clearing a jungle from the front of eyes to see anything. Unfortunately, you seem to be the only one who can do something about it".

I suppose a simple smile is good enough for a welcome? Apart from the elaborate introduction, the frustration was heightened by the attempt to make small talk, despite my clear (yet polite) signals that I was here just to get the job done, (over)pay the bucks, and leave. Really, does anyone ask a prisoner of war in a torture chamber about what he plans to do over the weekend, whether he wants to go to europe, or what one should do in great weather like this?

I was hoping that once the job was done I would be set free, but as it turns out, there was a burst of aggressive marketing where I was bombarded with an army of "haircare products" in all shapes, sizes, and solid/liquid/semi-solid states. After charging an exhorbitant $16 for the haircut, I was asked if I wanted to add any of those onto my bill. I mean, is that a trick question? I am a graduate student, and my haircut is certainly not sponsored by a movie production company.

When I got home and thought about things with a cool (and lighter) head, I realized what a pain I must be for haircut people around the world- uncooperative, terse, least interested in being stylish, and stingy. I cant help it though, I have tried for two decades, I guess I was just born this way.

But hey, I make their next customer seem all the more sweet and friendly.

Me and the City

THE inspiration to write this article comes partly from my own experiences and partly from a friend of mine who left for a certain beautiful european city for a little while (the city of love and romance: guesses, anyone?). The title of this post does not give much away, and the feeling I am writing about here is hard to describe to someone who has not experienced it- but here goes!

Quite often we feel trapped by the circumstances we are stuck in or the (physical) place we are stuck at. There does not seem to be much we find exciting in either our professional or personal life, and there always seems to be something we find lacking in both. To make things worse, there could be people around who do not appreciate us for who we are, or for what our choices in life are- and being in their company or vicinity brings us down and weakens us to such an extent that we are unable to do anything to improve the quality of our life.

It is then that we need something special something to happen. Perhaps we need something so big that we and our problems are small in comparison. We need something so dynamic that we have no time to stop and brood. We need something to connect with that gives us pleasure, and this pleasure is free of all conditions and uncertainties because we do not rely on anyone else to give it to us. We are at the source of pleasure, and there is nobody between us and the source. We can just drink in what the city has to offer in it's many special places- I suppose each city has one such unique place. What comes to my mind is Marine Drive in Bombay, Times Square and Lower Manhattan in New York, or the banks of the River Seine in Paris (this I have only heard about, never visited).

This special thing can sometimes be a city. It could be any city in the world- I have found the size and dynamism in Bombay, but it could as well be the artisitc, romantic touch of paris. When it is just Me and the City- something special happens. We find something in the air that gets us going, that sets our pulse racing and makes us appreciate and value life. We find something that makes us forget the issues we almost enjoy complaining about every single day. There is a reason to actually start getting the most out of each day.

Bombay (or Mumbai, same thing!! :) is where I have been able to live alone with the city. It is so enormous that I am just a speck of dust in the millions. Nobody knows who I am, nobody cares how I am living my life (in fact, they are least interested) or what I am doing. I have complete freedom to live according to my choices, as long as I obey an unspoken code of conduct in everyday life that is observed for the common good. At the cost of a digression, it is worth mentioning here that Bombay was (absurdly) voted last year as one of the "rudest" cities the world-I am no globetrotter, but it is one of the places where I have seen, on an average, people behaving in a much more synchronised manner to keep life moving, and certainly the best response to unforseen natural or man-made disasters. People complain about the hustle,dirt, crowd and costs of big cities, but I find a certain peace in them when it is just Me and the City.

Dancing In the Dark

LET me be completely honest-I did not expect Graham Ford, when offered the role of coach of the Indian team, to turn it down. A corner of my mind was aware of the fact that this is one of the most demanding, scrutinized, and high pressure jobs in any sport at any level, but at the same time I had imagined that Ford would be lured by visions of becoming a demi-god by giving our cricket crazy nation a taste of success. I suppose the BCCI also carried this sort of overconfidence, because at no real stage did they look too interested in any alternative candidates. There was only one alternative candidate, John Emburey, and they never seemed to consider him too seriously. But now Ford is not coming, and as the tough tour of England looms large, there is still no coach. Quite a desparate situation to say the least. The BCCI is in a fix because of it's own stuborness and overconfidence.
I have not been among the coverage on what exactly the "senior" players of the team have been saying, or their take on who should be coach, or why they preferred Ford as coach. We could give them the benefit of the doubt- since senior players have more experience they would know who is better suited for the job at the top level. However, there is still this dirty disgusting part of me which says that their opinion (it is indeed important, I am certainly not disputing that) is being given too much weight. I am skeptical about whether there are purely cricketing reasons behind the senior players' choice, or they are looking for a person who is not going to question them under any circumstances, and let them remain in their comfort zone of not being questioned.
Futile as it may be, I still wonder why Ford chose to quit after coming all the way from Kent to make his presentation. The straightforward way would be to accept that he was not willing to relocate along with his family to India, a land foreign to his wife and himself. However, he did know when he was applying for the job that his family would have to relocate or at least make adjustments if he were take up the coaching job in India, didn't he? Once again, the darker side of my mind seems to suggest that he might have been intimidated when actually came to India, and got a flavour what the BCCI actually is, and the complex people and situations he would have to deal with during his tenure which would ultimately limit his freedom. Perhaps he was also not able to get a sense of what a high-pressure job this was going to be, sitting in the relative serenity of Kent.
Whatever his reasons may have been, the fact remains that we do not have a coach now. We need to find a good one, and need to find one fast. We can only hope that the BCCI gets Indian Cricket out of this mess by going about it's job in a more urgent, sincere, organized, and yes, modest manner.
Otherwise we shall be dancing in the dark.

Overwhelming Response

Who would have thought one man's relative uncoolness and ignorance would draw any kind of attention- yes, I am referring to my own relative uncoolness, my very ignorance, and the 5 comments that have been posted on the stag article!! It's great to see ideas flowing, because in the stag community we need to know why we are called so :P. "Good Jaaaaab", friends! I won't be surprised if there are enough ideas in my head to set off another article speculating where this term came from.

This is my first attempt at blogging, and for now even a modest number like 5 comments constitutes a heartwarming response.

Food for thought

IT is agreed upon by doctors, dieticians, and the general public that the choices we make in what we eat have a huge impact on the quality of our life. We must then realise that the next time we go out to eat, we must give the following non-trivial question enough thought and make an informed decision:

Do we eat deep dish pizza or thin crust?

It is a dilemma I am faced with almost three times a week. I will try and provide an impartial analysis here for the benefit of the food-loving reader.

Fill Factor: Remember those times when your stomach was growling like an unhappy beast and all you wanted to do was grab the food off other people's tables? The deep dish(or thick crust, if you like) is the undoubted saviour in these situations. The sheer volume of the crust sinks in and fills that huge emptiness inside that is the cause of pre-meal sorrow. The thin crust falls way short of the mark. It is gobbled up like a snack and half an hour we are back in the hungry zone again. Unless of course, you have lots of other stuff on the side, but that brings in the cost factor which I will get to later.

Topping Factor: It could be in part due to my poor eating skills, but I have noticed that my favourite toppings slide off the thin crust way too easily. To savour the topping, be it the tomato, the capsicum (ok..ok..bell pepper), or mushroom, it should be given the space and stabillity to impart its taste to our taste buds. The thin crust does not offer this kind solidity. The deep dish on the other hand, is like a solid platform where the toppings showcase their brilliance.

Crunch Factor: This post now seems to be slaughtering the poor fragile thin crust, so here is one point clearly in its favour. Quite often, pizza is not about filling empty spaces in the stomach, it is also about a food with a touch of class. The well made crunchy thin crust is all about class, especially if enjoy the "crunchiness". It is great for a heavy snack or a light meal, and if you add a nice side and some lemonade, hard wood floored cafe in some nice surroundings, the spohistication of the thin crust leaves the rather industrial deep dish well behind.

Beer Factor: I am no beer guzzler, but I do enjoy the occasional beer with my meal. In this regard, the deep dish is a much better companion for that chilled, bitter liquid than the thincrust. It is hard to describe why, but its just first hand experience that tells me deep dish and beer go hand in hand. As mentioned earlier, the thin crust would beat the deep dish for a lemonade, some fruit jiuce, a coke, or maybe some sort of wine (I think I am getting beyond myself here) .

Cost Factor: Now we all value our value for money. If you are a poor graduate student and looking to hit the highest point on the utility v/s cost curve, then hit the deep dish. It is filling and can make a badly chosen or cheap topping go unnoticed. Having said that, there are obviously times when we want to be a bit more sophisticated (a first date, perhaps :)), and the thin crust is the right choice for these moments.

These are just a few of the things that determine our dining experience. So the next time you are "just going out for pizza", remember there is indeed a need to stop and think about the smaller but more important details in life. You will thank yourself for it!

I hear you, coach!

CRICKET is an integral part of every Indian's life- there are those of us for whom it is the most sacred thing on earth, there are those who worship cricketers like gods when they win, and curse them like devils when they lose. There are those who drift in and out of this obsession depending on the nature of the match or tournament; those who couldn't care less but would like to make that known to the intoxicated masses, and last but not the least, those who simply loathe the game (or rather the fever that grips the country as a result of the game) and believe that it brings down the nation's productivity.

In any case, it touches every Indian in some form or another. And now, the time has come after Mr.Chappell's less than pretty exit, to choose another man to coach the men in blue. Names have been flying all over the place, and with each name there is associated a complex theory explaining why he is the right choice. But one of the hotter debates is over whether we should hire a firang coach or a desi. The current wave seems to suggest a slight preference for an Indian coach (I read Jimmy Amarnath and Ajit Wadekar said so), and like all true fans, I have my own views on this which I shall now freely air with pleasure.

There is no doubt that Greg Chappell did not achieve as much as he was expected to. We did crush England, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan in successive ODI series about an year and a half ago, but we also did go down in flames against a less than reputed West Indies team. We won our first series in the carribean in four(?) decades but the test performances against England and Pakistan were scratchy. Add to that the World Cup debacle and we have a tenure that would best be described as stop-start-stop.

I still think Mr.Chappell (and Captain Dravid for that matter) had the right ideas. "Experimentation" to have a wide range of young players game tested and ready for a challenge at any position in the batting order/ bowling attack is the best way to build a winning ODI team. The emphasis on a long term goal and building up a team towards it- yes, I am referring to the now infamous WC 2007- is a good approach. However, Mr.Chappell failed on two counts- firstly, he was unable to fix the inability to overcome the classical phenomenon observed in Indian cricket- tigers at home, kittens/bunnies abroad. Our worst failures still kept coming in alien conditions- I consider the WI tour overall to be a failure even though we won the tests, because based on caliber, experience and past form, we were the favourites going into both ODIs and test, even as tourists- and playing with authority in completely different conditions is something we have to learn in order to become a force to reckon with. Mr.Chappell also did not seem to win the support of every player all the time. There was always one fragile relationship waiting to break, be it Sourav Ganguly at the beginning or SachinTenulkar at the end.

Which brings us to the point: are foreign coaches not suited to coaching us because they "don't understand" us or are "culturally different"? It is a tricky question and I don't have the answer- but it is easy to see what they do bring with them, and given what they bring we must weigh out the pros and cons.

Fielding, Fielding, Fielding: that is the one mantra to success these days, especially in ODI cricket. Fielding standards outside the subcontinent are much higher than within it. Foreign coaches are in a much better position to make Team India a good fielding side, and we certainly have seen (maybe not with great consistency, but it is true nonetheless) fielding standards improve under John Wright and Greg Chappell.

Discipline, Discipline, Discipline: before John Wright came in, the team actually used to have chairs at practice sessions and some nice chai aur biskut to go with the afternoon. Sounds good, but doesn't sound like a WC winning team. The first change John Wright made was to get rid of the frills. I dont see a candidate among the Indian coaches who can put his foot down and establish a no-nonsense ethic like either of Mr.Wright or Mr.Chappell.

Kill, Kill, Kill: speaking of cultural differences, here is one that I have observed. A Kiwi or an Aussie certainly would run the last mile more aggressively than we would. Indian cricket has always been plagued by the "so close, yet so far" syndrome, where we lose more close games than we win. A foreign coach would help build some killer instinct in our men.

Where did it break down then? I suppose Greg Chappell was too authoritarian for our players. It looks like Indian cricketers like to have a little bit of their own territory and a complete control over a bit of their territory. They don't like to be told harshly what to do, and it looks like they seldom like to be questioned. This was precisely Sachin's problem a couple of months ago. He didn't understand how he was being "questioned" after years of service to Indian Cricket. Two analogies that come to mind are a) Little Children b) People looking to establish mini-circles of power in a joint family :).

What do we need then? We need either an Indian coach who inherently has the ability to tackle these problems, and has technical expertise along with a work ethic comparable to the best in the world, or, a foreign coach who brings with him technical expertise but with a softer personality- who doesn't have the same dictator-like image that Mr.Chappell had, that eventually led to disharmony.

Given the current crop in the country, I would say we don't close our minds to the latter option based blindly on the Chappell Regime. Even treating his whole tenure as a failure (which would be stretching criticism), it's 1-1 as far as foreign coaches go.

Otherwise, I shall be playing a lot more football.