India Vs. West Indies

There was a time when India Vs. West Indies was a keenly awaited series especially in India. When West Indies team was a champion team and India was just about rising. There was Lara Vs. Tendulkar and West Indian pace attack Vs. Indian spinners.

Sadly this time around there is hardly any hype about the tour. India play 5 ODIs, 3 Tests and 1 T20 in the tour with no other tour matches.

The schedule is tight nd the interest is quite low with many of the Indian tops stars giving this tour a miss. Suresh Raina captains the young Indian ODI and T20 side and most of the youngsters in the team are pushing for their place in the regular side and for them this series is a great opportunity to do that.  New coach Duncan Fletcher will have his task cut-out. Test side would be more regular with stalwarts Dravid and Laxman along with Dhoni and Zaheer returning to the side. Tendulkar will be missed and this will be the 2nd West Indies tour he would be missing after the first one in 2006. Regular opening pair of Sehwag and Gambhir will also be missed and Murali Vijay and perhaps Abhinav Mukund can make a strong claim as a backup opener for future tours. Indian pace attack will have a chance to bowl on different pitches than sub-continent to prepare for bigger series ahead. There is plenty to look forward to for the die-hard cricket lovers.

As far as my prediction goes India should win the lone T20 and should win the ODI series at least 4-1, anything less should be considered as a failure. As far as tests goes anything less than 3-0 should not be acceptable to the Indian fans.

Greatest Scenes – Clerk – Cure for Heart Attack

This is a new section of the blog where I would be listing some of the most glorious and unforgettable scenes from Old Bollywood films.

These are the scenes which brings out not only cinematic excellence but also a sense of achievement in you. They deserve to be clapped at and seen from time to time to understand how truly great some of our films are. Some of them will have unique acting presentation, some will have earth shattering dance moves and some will have just enough bollywoodish to be admired.

To begin with here is one of the greatest ‘ham’ scene of our times from 1990 blockbuster ‘Clerk’ starring our very own Manoj Kumar, Ashok Kumar, Rajendra Kumar, Rekha, some Pakistani actors and various others forgotten stars.

This is the scene which tells you how to cure a heart attack with a 5 Rs. battery cell and a dose of patriotism. Medical marvel in this scene is to be appreciated and if all our doctors were this smart then India would be a healthy nation today. I really wonder why no one nominated this discovery for nobel prize for that year!! The dialogue delivery, acting and photography is of unique quality.

This film has many other superb scenes worth watching over and over, in fact the whole film directed by Manoj Kumar himself is one big ‘ham’. Strongly recommended.

Watch it and enjoy…

Madhya Pradesh Calling…

Its the summer holidays and we are going on a short family tour of Madhya Pradesh in a week’s time now…

Here are 2 excellent advertisements which prompted us to visit the state. The superbly made ads made us inquire about the tourism facilities and we decided to do the trip. This is what a good advertisement can do.

This is the first one. Entire state is represented by the movement of eyes. What an imagination !

The second one is even more wonderful as the entire state beauty is displayed by just hand shadows. Its a Classic !!

I hope our trip lives upto the expectations built up by these advertisements.

I WAS THERE ….Historic day !!!!

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Those who know me know how much passionate about cricket I am. I follow cricket on TV, internet and live whenever and wherever I can. This was world cup, finals in my home city and with India reaching the finals only a natural calamity would have kept me away from  Wankhede on 2nd April, 2011. Now a gold letter day in Indian cricket !! It was THE match. India vs. Sri Lanka in the world cup finals at my home ground. What are the odds of having that ever again, in my lifetime?

I had booked the ticket long back and though I was offered serious money ( 6 figure number) I never once had a thought of selling the ticket in black market and encash the huge gains. (Hint – I could have bought a Tata Nano car with AC with that money). I am way too passionate a cricket fan to let go off this once in a lifetime opportunity.

Match was to begin at 2.30 pm IST and gates were to open at 11.30 am. To avoid the rush of getting in and avoid standing in huge queues I reached the venue at 10.30 am all dressed in world cup t-shirt armed with…well nothing except the ticket, wallet and mobile phone ! Yes this time the cops were to allow the cell phone and that was a huge relief as it meant I could communicate with friends and family ( how wrong I was) and can even take pictures with cell phone camera, although not of a great resolution. I have been to the stadium many times in past and it has generally meant a tough time for spectators with little to eat and drink inside and cement slabs as seats, shoddy restrooms and general chaos. But this time it was different. This was world cup finals and Wankhede had been renovated completely for this event, this day.

Now we had enough security to last a war with our neighbor, checking and frisking at every corner and I was frisked 4 times at different points and a very decent standing in line experience I had. It also helped that I was about 5th in line and generally chaos happened close to match time. As the gates opened I was further checked and I slowly made my way to my stands and my seat which was on the top tier, front row of Garware Pavilion, which meant a spectacular view of the entire ground, right besides players dressing room and VVIP boxes. The view was simply breathtaking as I entered my empty stand. I settled down made call home reporting my safe arrival and took general pictures of the ground, the pitch and whomsoever I could see. It was T-3 hours.

The crowd kept filling in slowly and steadily. I made several new friends who all had brought huge banners which we tied it to front of our stand for easy visibility. ‘ Dont Go Gary’, ‘Sach is Life’, ‘Dhoni the Boss’ and there were several more. Some of them cannot be printed here 🙂 I was checking out every corner of the stadium and occupied myself by having some decent sandwiches and drinks and generally made more friends then the first day of my college. It was T-2 hours.

At about 1 pm or so players started appearing and huge cheers went around whenever anyone from both camps appeared for practice, warming up which included catching practice, throwing balls at stumps, slip catching and some mild exercises. Sri Lankan nets was right under our stand but of course everyone in the stadium was looking out for Indian stars and one particular man. The in-house DJ was warming up now and the fantastic audio system inside the stands was blaring the latest hits and favorite Indian cheering songs with an occasional Sri Lankan song too. The moment Indians came in ground, the sound level doubled and when everyone spotted the ‘God’, all of us rose from our seats to bow to the almighty, the one and only Sachin Tendulkar. If you dont know who he is and why he is called God, then please stop reading this RIGHT NOW !!!

T-30 minutes and toss time. There was some confusion during the toss but then Lanka won the toss and elected to bat which was slightly disappointing as we all know its always a good thing to bat first in big matches. Then came the national anthem when the players lined up to sing the anthems for both nations. It was a historic moment when the entire stadium barring few sang ‘Jana Gana Mana’, it was goosebumpish to say the least. The crowd was full, stadium jam-packed with almost all seats taken. Must give credit to the excellent security arrangement, ushers and cops all around to help. The stadium is as world class as it can be. Comfortable seating ( almost) , superb view, airy stands, neat and clean rest rooms, lobbies to walk around and quality food stalls make it a great experience now.

The match begun and I am not going to write a ball by ball report of it as I am not best equipped for that and most of you reading this already know what all happened. Just to summarize the in-stadium experience that it was an experience of a lifetime for me. Huge crowds, cheering every Indian run or a super fielding effort and egging our players by singing songs, shouting slogans, creating giant Mexican waves which went around the stadium multiple times and even booing the opposition at times. Watching our favorite cricketers in action on a world stage was something all of us have a dream off, I certainly did and today I was getting my dream realized. The match as all know had its ups and downs and as Ravi Shastri would have said. ‘ It was swinging both ways’. The atmosphere was electric to say the least and the 300o0- plus strong crowd just had one ambition, to see India lift the world cup, to see Sachin complete his glorious resume by getting the world cup medal. Everybody from common laborer in the ground to the biggest of celebs ( and there were many) all had just one wish today and it was to see Dhoni lifting the world cup and gifting it to the ‘God’

India of course started well and till about middle of Lankan innings we all had hopes of restricting Lanka to about 230 or so but Jayawardane played a brilliant knock  hitting a century in world cup finals, with nice support by Sanga, Kulasekara and Perera in the end to reach a solid figure of 274. A score that has never been chased in a world cup final. No centurion in a world cup final was ever on a losing side. The signs were ominous and chances of an Indian victory were bit distant now. The crowd was slightly muted and nobody wanted to predict the outcome at the break. The cellphone service inside the stadium had died by now and hardly anybody could make or receive any calls but strange SMS’s were doing round about how the match was fixed and how certain things would happen. Of course the messages were as dumb as it can be as I got 2 messages with same details about the match but one of them had India winning and 2nd one had India throwing the match. I of course chose to ignore all such foolish stuff and knew that all of them were nothing but idiotic claims by conspiracy theory experts and were as dumb as April Fool jokes told to me by my 5 year old son !!

Going back to the start of Indian batting, the moment everyone was waiting for happened. God entered the ground in his customary style and you could hear the voice sitting in Shivaji park. The match had more twists in store and when we lost Sachin and scoreboard read just 31 everybody started worrying, 1996 collapse was remembered and world cup seemed distant at that moment. I had my hopes high and I had seen the Lankans batting on that pitch and deep in my heart I knew that if India batted 50 overs, it would get the runs. The pitch had no cracks or no vicious turn in it, neither it had any big seam movement. In fact it was bouncing very well and I knew our batsmen would relish that true bounce.

I was in top tier front and cameramen ( some Afro guy) came up and asked us to sing some ‘Indian victory’ song…this when Sachin had just got out..of course all of started cheering India back and I had a huge Pepsi finger in my hand too, which I was waving almost in the camera lens…after all this jugglery …I think I spotted myself on big screen for about 2 seconds ….I don’t know if Live TV caught us as it was between overs and in stadium feed was not always same as Live TV. This was at about 7.45 pm IST. My two seconds on the giant screens on the historic day, justified my existence !!

We started rebuilding thanks to Gambhir and Kohli and Dhoni and banners were furling again, horns were blaring, clapping and Mexican waves all around, song and dance blaring from the in house system and DJ was playing the best club tracks by now. The lights were on long back and every run was cheered for by the privileged few in the stadium. The in-house entertainment was on all the time and between overs we had mini contests and advertisements and songs and dance on big screens. Hope was slowly getting back in the hearts and mind of all of us.

As India inched closer to the victory people were getting more anxious and to hide their anxiousness they were shouting at the top of their voice. I took few strategic food breaks to settle my nerves and the last 5 overs was a stuff legends are made of. Dhoni and Yuvraj hitting the runs clinically and when Dhoni hit the winning six over long on fence,  it was the biggest moment in Indian cricket. Everything froze, I was jumping on top of the seat while shouting at top of my voice and throwing my cap high up and I noticed history being made. The moment billion people had been waiting for since 28 years. The world cup was our. India were the champion. The most exhilarating moment ever and I WAS THERE !!!!!  Dream was now reality, victory was ours and Sachin had that final wish completed. We had won it, won it for India, won it for Sachin and I WAS THERE to witness it from the grandest of grand seats screaming at top of my lungs, with tears in my eyes. I could no longer control myself.

I WAS THERE !!!!!!!!

Post match presentation, players hugging and dancing and doing a victory lap when Yusuf Pathan lifted Sachin and did a victory lap, when Harbhajan and Yuvraj cried and then danced to ‘Ganapati Dhol’ , the flow of emotion on the ground and all the speeches and interviews are worth watching over and over and perhaps I will watch all of them all day long and I wont get tired ever watching them.  This is the experience we all tell our grandchildren about. This day, 2nd April 2011, I will never forget. This day my favorite hero Sachin got his final wish fulfilled and I was there to watch the historic moment. As Virat Kohli rightly mentioned in his interview that for 21 years, he had carried the burden of billion dreams, it was time for his teammates to carry him for victory lap, tonight. That sight was fulfillment of everything to me. Dream achieved. Time to dream new dreams now.

All of us partied in the stadium with players and spectators dancing to the DJ tunes and sounds of dhols. Nobody wanted to leave and there were firecrackers everywhere, people on the road, traffic jams everywhere and Indian flags on every corner and on top of every car. It was like India achieved freedom once again. I reached home at unearthly hours and even at that hour my wife, mom and elder son were waiting and we discussed the entire match and my experience in details and I couldn’t sleep all night and I had to write this. I still cant sleep.

In 1983, I watched India win it at an hour which was way past my bed time then. I was 9 1/2 years old then and could only imagine what it actually meant. Today my elder son is 9 1/2 years old and as they say history repeats itself. Just experienced the circle of life.

Lastly, to all the moronic conspiracy theory experts who think this match was fixed, here’s my self-censored message “GO TO HELL”. To all the special people who watched this match Live in stadium, ‘Best Decision ever”

I can write on and on but now will stop and perhaps sleep, if I can.

To summarize, when Dhoni lifted the cup and gave it to Sachin, life was complete for me and I WAS THERE !!!!!!

P.S. I have lots of pictures of stadium, players etc. which I shall upload when I return back to earth !!

Here’s link to some of my pics on Facebook

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=378005&id=523247305&l=2d5f8cfaa0

Tanu weds Manu – Shaadi North Indian Ishtyle

‘Tanu weds Manu’ is a small budget movie releasing in middle of the Cricket World cup but inspite of that getting fair amount of patronage and positive reviews. The movie is directed by Aanand Rai and boasts almost of a fresh unknown crew and caste.

Its an Indian story with Indian characters, small town settings and music thats as earthy as it can be. It stars relatively under appreciated Madhavan and Kangana Ranaut along with host of ensemble characters. The story is more or less like many other films when boy likes girl, the girl likes someone else and then the boy wins over her by the end. Here the girl is portrayed by Kangana aka Tanuja Trivedi from Kanpur and the boy is Madhavan aka Manoj Sharma, an NRI doctor from London. We expect the NRI doctor to be all modern and the Kanpur girl to be sedate and shy but the scenario is totally reversed here with Tanu the firebrand, bindass girl representing the modern India and Manu the shy gentleman.

The movie is shot in real locations of Kanpur ,Kapurthala, Lucknow and Delhi and it shows. The characters are very real and the importance given to detailing of various things is very impressive.  The characters walk and talk Hindi but the little difference in dialects and accents in Hindi spoken by a Punjabi or a Bihari, a Delhite or a true blue UPite is subtly captured in the language. That detailing uplifts the movie and makes it cut above a normal Indian wedding film.

The movie has some superb character artists portraying various roles.  Special amongst them is Deepak Dobriyal playing Hero’s best friend role to the tee and winning our hearts. Eijaz Khan as the Sardar friend is quite apt too. Jimmy Shergill is nice and almost steals the show but has small role. Special Mention to Swara Bhaskara, the beautiful girl who portrays Kangana’s best friend who looked charming and acted superbly too. How we wish she was the heroine of the movie !! Speaking of which the film belong to Ms. Kangana ‘accent’ Ranaut and Madhavan.

Madhavan as I said before is very under appreciated perhaps for not having conventional Bollywood look and physique but he is a fine actor and this role is tailor-made for him. You can say Kangana is both perfectly cast and a total miscast in the movie !! She is perfect sas the rebellious girl, representing modern India, brash and abusive and rebel for the sake of being rebel, however we all cringe at the time she opens her mouth. Her dialogue delivery is horrible and perhaps the single biggest negative factor in the film. She is born and brought up in India, is a north Indian and yet she cannot get her Hindi right !! This is inexcusable. She has an image of playing roles of mentally disturbed, drug addicted, lunatic modern woman. Here she tries to fit into the role of middle class, small town Indian girl but without letting go her earlier image. If only she could improve her Hindi and dialogue delivery she could be one of the top stars.

Overall the movie is a pleasant watch, although it does get dragging in the 2nd half and tries to be a ‘Jab we Met’ and all that. The music is rustic north Indian with mix of UP and Punjab sound. ‘Sadi Galli’ is a big rage already.

My Ratings – 7/10  Watch it for true blue North Indian Tadka….

And here it starts.. World Cup 2011

19th February 2011 and its the first match of the World Cup of Cricket 2011 being hosted in India, Sri Lanka and Bangaldesh.

There is enough material about the world cup on the internet, television, radio and wherever you go. So no point mentioning the details like who’s playing whom and when and who is the favorite and who is the underdog.  We all Indians want our country to win like most other cricket fans from their nation.

This is my 8th World Cup beginning from 1983 when I was 9 years old, so technically I was a toddler during the first one and a bumbling 5 year old during the 2nd. I remember the 3rd world cup, known as Prudential World Cup. I remember watching the Finals LIVE on Doordarshan, interrupted by ‘Batmya’ at 7.30 pm and ‘Samachar’ at 9.00 pm but it was a memorable night when India lifted the cup, although honestly I now have a very vague memory of that night but enough to feel proud of witnessing history.

1987 was a heart breaker when India lost to England in the semis and i remember the pin-drop silence walking out of the Wankhede at the end of that match. I was there and do not want to remember it. 1992 was the best format where every team played every other. I remember breaking my home window grill when India lost to Australia and our batsman did not take the match tieing run when it was available. I remember running home from my final board exams to watch the semifinals and i remember the 2 deadly in-swingers Wasim Akram bowled in the finals.

1996 was watched with friends either at a different freinds house every match and India Australia match in Wankhede is memorable, not only because it was an electrifying atmosphere but also because the manner in which all our freinds procured the tickets withstanding lathicharge from police. I had my arm swollen for a week. The semifinal loss was the worst though and I stopped watching after stone-pelting started.

1999 world cup has mixed emories with superb victory over Sri Lanka and Pakistan followed by ugly losses against Zimbabwe only to lose badly against South Africa and Australia

2003 was of course the best so far with India doing really well, Nehra’s 6 wickets in Durban and Sachin’s 98 against Pakistan are 2 of the favorite matches. The loss in Finals made me hate Australia and Ricky Ponting even more and I continue to dislike them.

2007 was blink and miss and literally I missed it as I was travelling during both of India’s losses against Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Both times I was in the train, night journey with matches being in Caribbean I was checking scores through cell phone and SMS’s only to discover that India was losing and the world cup was over before it started.

Now its 2011. This one is huge. Its at home and as mentioned above all of us have high hopes for India to win it. This also is Sachin’s  ( hopefully not) realistically last world cup. He is the guy who has defined ODI cricket and it would be a Billion people’s dream come true if he were to lift the world cup on his home ground on 2nd April, 2011.

My elder son is about the same age I was in 1983. Maybe the history would repeat itself. Fingers Crossed.

The Nervous Hour – Test Cricket at its Best

Couldn’t Eat ! Couldn’t Talk ! Couldn’t Move and certainly Couldn’t Work ! That was the situation with most of us. This was during the final agonizing hour of the Cricket Test Match between India and Australia at Mohali.

For those who do not know what happened today here is the brief overview. India was set a moderate target of 216 runs to witn the first test and had lost 4 important wickets with just 55 on board at end of day yesterday and thus needed 161 more runs to win on a crumbling uneven pitch with Aussies determined to win. With Sachin in the middle we all had hopes that some miracle would happen. Sachin and Zaheer Khan continued the fight with Zaheer falling early. VVS Laxman came on the crease and he and Sachin started playing shots and showing positive intent. They took the target below 100 and the hopes were rising and then the inevitable happened. Sachin fell quickly followed by Dhoni and Harbhajan leaving India tottering at 122 with 8 wickets down and unfit VVS Laxman at the crease with another unfit player Ishant Sharma for support and with just Pragyan Ojha to come, it was all over. People had written the match off, started blaming various people, recalling how India always failed to chase modest 4th Innings target and how once again Sachin couldn’t guide India to a famous victory. It was just a matter of time and people were not even hoping for any miracle now.

But VVS Laxman and Ishant Sharma didn’t give up, slowly and steadily they started scoring runs, one run at a time with an occasional boundary to boost some hopes but in their heart everybody knew this was just a futile effort. The target was way too high for this pair. Till the time the target reduced to about 50 at Lunch I think even the players didn’t believe that they could do it. And suddenly the target reduced to 30 and everybody started having hopesand dreams of snatching victory. Fingers were crossed, toes were curled, no one moved, anyone saying even a word was considered to be jinxing it and was cursed upon by. Flow of messages on Twitter reduced to minimal as everybody was busy concentrating on what was happening in the match.  Every run was then  cheered and the players too started beleiving that they could win.

Australians were getting frustrated and the target reduced to barely 15 and then Ishant Sharma fell to a dubious decision by Umpire Ian Gould. Loud curses blaming everybody from the umpire to  Laxman for giving too much strike to Ishant to BCCI for not getting UDRS system in place were heard. Could it be a case of ‘close but not enough’. Will it be another heartburn? Will Aussies do what they did few years back at Sydney? Will India collapse at the final hurdle? Ghosts of Chennai 2001 against Pakistan were refreshed.

Pragyan Ojha joined Laxman and the next 10 minutes the Channel Neo Sports would have got the highest TRP ever in their entire career. Everybody was glued on to the TV set and those with no access to television were all logged onto the net either on Cricinfo.com website other sports site offering live scores and live feed. The Commonwealth Games and India’s Gold Medal haul were forgotten for that hour.  Life has just paused everywhere, of course possibility of any work was long gone.The Cricinfo servers crashed because of tremendous traffic adding to the chaos. There were few lucky breaks, leg byes, over throws and a doubtful umpiring decision which went in India’s favor this time and India pulled it off. Pragyan Ojha tried to flick the Mitchel Johnson ball to the leg side and it got deflected by his pad and earned 2 valuable legbyes to India resulting in the narrowest of victory in India’s cricketing history.

The world erupted. Loud screams, crackers on the road and twitteratis were back furiously tweeting and life was restored in the metropolises and towns across India. India had pulled off one of the greatest come-from-behind victories ever with 9th wicket pair of VVS Laxman and Ishant Sharma adding close to 90 runs. Zaheer Khan was named man of the match for fine display of bowling although my personal choice would have been Ishant Sharma for doing something which was totally unexpected of him and to stonewall charging Australian bowlers is a massive task for a number 10 batsman and of course how can we forget VVS Laxman, the biggest thorn in Australia’s path. It was a team effort and almost everyone contributed to the victory.

Ishant Sharma had done it, Very Very Special Laxman had yet again mauled the Aussies. Rickey Ponting was denied victory once more. He has never won a test match in India as Captain of Australia in 3 visits. The terms VVS, Laxman, Ishant, Sharma, Test Cricket all were trending at the same time on Twitter and thus proving the large support the match had on the Internet and I have no fingernails left to chew now, need to regrow them before the Bangalore Test in 3 days.

This was Cricket at its best. This match has reminded again to all cricket lovers and everyone that this was the real form of cricket and not the slam-bang variety of T20 and ODIs. This was the battle where warriors fought over 5 days and true  winner earned the victory not with only luck but with skills, temperament and a will to win. This was Test Cricket at its peak.

I am writing this few hours after the match is over and I can still recount the final hour, the minutes , the seconds, the loud heartbeats and have today experienced one of the best cricket matches of my cricket watching career.

Cheteshwar Pujara- The New Big Hope

Finally the call came. Cheteshwar Pujara has been drafted in the team for first test against Australia, beginning 1st week of October, at the expense of Yuvraj Singh. Cheteshwar Pujara, son of former cricketer Arvind Pujara has been waiting in the wings since couple of years now and at 23 he is the new big hope for India in Cricket especially Tests.

In the days of IPL and T20 cricket where hitting every ball out of the park is the fashion and scoring a quick fire 40 is important, the art of patient batting, building an innings, playing strokes and rotating strike is waning day by day. The art of batsman-ship as we all know is not easy to be found, especially amongst the new lot of Indian cricketers.

In Pujara we have a young player who is perfectly suited for the longer format of the game. He has got the technique and the temperament to build innings, play patiently, see out a hostile bowler and concentrate on occupying the crease. He is the new age-Dravid we all are looking forward to. He has played domestic cricket for Saurashtra since last few years and have scored massively, won respect for his team and has won respect amongst the opposition players. When selected to play for India A and emerging players tournament he has been consistently performing with the bat against West Indies, England, Australia and has even shown good leadership skills. In past he has played in Under 19 World Cup as well. His domestic record speaks for itself and his not so successful stint in the IPL with Kolkata Knightriders could be the blessing in disguise, which has allowed him to concentrate on the ‘real’ cricket.

We have seen youngsters such as Suresh Raina, Rohit Sharma, Murali Vijay but none of them have so far cemented their positions in the squad. Raina, who has recently replaced Yuvraj Singh is still a suspect against hostile quick bowling. Rohit Sharma has all the potential but has never converted it to results on field. At this juncture when the senior players like Sachin, Dravid and perhaps Laxman have about couple of more years to give to Indian cricket we need few solid batsman who can take up the roles vacated by the seniors in near future. Pujara is that big hope. Pujara’s talent, ability, temperament shows that he is too good a player to fail at the big stage  but then once can never say that about any player. Pujara is too precious a player for the future of Indian Cricket in long run.

Inclusion of Pujara in the team does not guarantee that he would be in the playing XI, however being in the same dressing room as Sachin, Dravid and Laxman would do a great deal to the youngster and I am positive that given a chance he would prove his mettle.

All the best wishes, Cheteshwar.

Champions League T20 – 2nd Edition

2nd Edition of Champions League of T20 cricket begin in South Africa on 10th Sept- 2010.

The First edition was played in India in 2009 October. The first edition had 12 teams. This one has 10 teams owing to the fact that 2 English teams are not participating this year due to clash of the schedule with their domestic commitments.

10 Teams meaning there are 2 groups of 5 each, with each team playing their group members once. Thus resulting in 20 games followed by 2 semi finals and final. 23 Games in the period of 16 days or so. The matches would be played across South Africa under lights in the evening period which is a prime television time for the subcontinent viewers.

The 3 IPL teams qualified are the 2010 Champions Chennai Superkings, runner up Mumbai Indians and 3rd placed Banagalore Royal Challengers. Winners of the first edition of Champions were New South Wales from Australia who defeated Trnidad and Tobago from West Indies in the finals. Sadly both these teams have not qualified for the Champions League this year. Infact such is the unpredictability of T20 cricket that only 2 teams Royal Challengers Bangalore and Wayamba from Sri Lanka were present in the previous edition.

Looking at the draws, the teams, the schedule, the South African conditions with early season pitches and the nature of T20 cricket it would be very difficult to predict anything. My support is of course for all 3 Indian teams and especially Mumbai Indians with Sachin Tendulkar leading it.

Lets see how it goes !

Books I Read – May I Hebb Your Attention Pliss

The reason I had bought the book ‘May I Hebb Your Attention Pliss’ were quite a few. Chief amongst them was the author Arnab Ray or Greatbong as he is known on Twitter and other such sites. I had read his blog , loved his articles and could easily identify with many of his writings. After all I have grown up in ‘India of the 90s’ as well. I had heard quite a few tweets by the author hardselling his book and I guess one of his tweets made me have a look at the book on Indiaplaza.in and the price was decent ( read cheap) enough to me to buy and so I ordered and waited for it to be delivered. Indiaplaza in their usual style messed up delivery and the book reached around 15 days after it was promised, the only compensation was that i received a detailed apology mail from Indiaplaza and received a ‘personally’ signed copy of the book.

Now to the book review: The book was a breeze to read , as it is more a collection of his blogs then a book. It is more about experience of growing up in 90s of India.  The entire book has lot of satire, wit and dark humor, which I usually like. I loved the chapters about Bollywood Cliches, Film of the 80s and 90s, Indian Politicians, , Terrorist attack, Management School, Television Soaps etc. Didn’t much like the chapters about the great wedding as I felt quite a lot of cliches in them and could almost tell what was going to happen and it did. Mainly it could be because I have been through similar experiences myself.

Loved the special dedication to Prabhujee’s special films like Loha, Gunda, Diya aur Toofan etc. and had tears in my eyes reading them.  Kanti Shah is a true inspiration to us all. I had expected the book to have a full fledged story rather than collection of blogs but it was still a novel experience reading it.

All in all, it was an enjoyable ride and worth the money I had spent. Strongly Recommended for all those who have grown up in India of the 1990s and loved Gunda. ( as the author rightly said there are people in the world who have seen and loved Gunda and then there are people who will )