Random Ramblings

Much has been talked and written about the Indian tour of Australia, of double standards, of sportsman spirit, of 'integrity' or absolute lack of it, of the extent a team can go to dominate, of the yardsticks used to evaluate 'our team and 'their team'. And it feels bad that Indian team has been at the receiving end of all these. Yes. There have been other teams at the receiving end in the past, if not to this extent. It has been a height of double standards by the Australians coupled with incompetent and probably highly biased umpiring. It makes me feel that "All teams are equal but some teams are more equal than others" Like many others, I usually accept that errors are part and parcel of the game, and criticize them, but usually like to take that in stride and not make a fuss of it. But there are times when these 'errors' are not actually 'errors' but something much more and may probably make us question the very basic terms like 'sp

Recently I read about the New Zealand cricketer Craig McMillan announcing his retirement at an age of 31, the age when players are often in their prime. Although he wasn't anywhere close to being a great player, he was certainly a good one, having played some good knocks in recent times. There was not much hue and dry, or fanfare and all, though there were some usual courtesies exchanged and all. I was just wondering what if he had been an Indian player and done he same ? In fact, first of all would he have taken a similar decision here, considering various stakeholders! Maybe, there would probably have been tons of news channel smelling something fishy, many fingers raised here and there and few extreme public reactions, and maybe politicians coming in to plead him to consider his retirement once again and return to game. Rest assured, the player who has retired might probably not have been let to live in peace ... at least for few days! And the decision to retire might have an el

He waited for almost 2 hours. The Captain was about to come. He was about to be given a hero's welcome in his home town, a not so big city. And why not ? After all he had won the world championship after beating arch rivals in a nail-biting final, when people had almost written them off at the beginning of the tournament. They were now the world champions in that format of game. This was a shorter version of the game. But things were never the same. He was among many people who burnt the captain's effigy few months ago. They were protesting against him. They even tried to attack his house and car. Reason - Extremely poor performance in the World cup tournament., which was another version of the same game. The captain was then just an ordinary player, who performed miserably in the tournament. Back then, he was even referred by someone as a disgrace to the team by few people. But now it was a different situation. The noise was becoming louder by each passing moment. The captain