Manam Irundhal Margabandhu (If there's a big heart, it has to be Mr. Margabandhu)

It is very uncanny that I have a striking resemblance to this character called Margabandhu. In general, full length comedy movies in Tamil have had an impact on my actions and my words. The title of this blog post is one that has been carefully hand picked from Vasool Raja MBBS (Munna Bhai MBBS) for the tamil challenged and the indi padam maniacs. The character is known for his huge heart and heavy patience. The point I am trying to drive home is that like him, even I seem to have a really huge heart and with it I seem to display a really huge amount of patience at certain times. One such time is during the India-Australia series 2011-2012.

In the same movie Vasool Raja, a follow up dialogue goes like this "Margabandhu Mudhal Sandhu". This one is senseless by and large and doesn't qualify as one for which I should write an English translation within braces. But the point is. it's a well timed dialogue that seems to convey the emotions one goes through when one is in really deep waters. December 26, 2011 was a significant day for me as an ardent cricket fan and much like many other purist fans of this game, I woke up before the cock and waited anxiously for the proceedings to start in the much spoken about boxing day test. The first day was really going India's way until Sachin succumbed through his bat pad gate to a wonderfully bowled delivery from Siddle. It was a heart break for many fans who were waiting for his most talked about hundredth ton. But the situation was such that one could manage to move on because the day arguably belonged to India and the Indian top order had to an extent lived to their hype.

One such day never came again in the 2 and a half tests that we've seen ever since. The sad part is, even after so much, I don't seem to give up. I know I am not alone in this and I am well aware that many more Margabandhus around have wasted their sleep hours at dawn. But mark my words Maarkku, we have been foolish. Test after test, the script has been the same. It has now become all too familiar now. Still, we have not given up. It is the third test in the series and Indian batting has been in the same Thakkali(Tomato) Soup that it has been in for the past 3-4 weeks.

With very sad emotions gushing through my heart after a disastrous start to this tour down under, I wish to make a few points.

1. Indian batting shall never ever be deemed as one of the most formidable. Period.
2. Indian bowlers are not to be spared. They are equally complicit because they don't seem to bowl consistent length and line like their Australian counterparts.
3. Why is Dhoni talking about 2015 and all? If logic remains and fairness triumphs, he should be on his way to Ranchi sometime towards the end of 2012. Luck is a good thing and it can cling on to a person for astonishingly long whiles. But it can't get longer than this.His period at the helm is almost over.
4. Sachin Tendulkar will score his hundredth century before retiring. Let us put to bed any apprehensions about that fact.
5. Rahul Dravid has had a changeover ever since England. If I remember right, Venkatesh Prasad used to close his bat pad gap better whenever he came on as nightwatchman.
6. When India dropped Ashwin for the third test, they dropped their most in-form batsman and with that they resolved to fall short of 120 runs across two innings.
7. If you have forgotten this fact, India were world number 1 in tests 6 months back.
8. I will wake up tomorrow morning also and see the first session with some hope. A brand new day, A brand new approach and all that sort of hopes.
9. I have a big heart and hence my name is Margabandhu (Maarkku)
10. If you have a big heart too and if you could be called Maarkku, don't shoot yourself, it's ok. Ivanga eppodhume ipdi than (This Indian team is always like this).
11 And, Finally Maarkku brothers, we shall never walk alone. Zaheer, Umesh, Ishant, Vinay, Ashwin....they are also in our club only. They have a big heart, if you get my drift.

Image Courtesy : Cricinfo.

Predicting this, that and those

Disclaimer : After long hours of revisiting older posts on this blog, one striking fact caught my livid attention. The first paragraph of any post has never had to do with the title or the topic I intended to cover. Beating around the bush and boring the faithful reader has been my way of causing disappointment (like the Indian team's way at England recently) So what I propose is that I will do away with the first paragraph from this time around (oops! ok...from the next time around) and come to matters straight.

Predicting the future is an art and yours truly has spoken many times earlier about this particular talent and its money making prospects. And like my view on many other forms of art, I am convinced that each of us should try our hands at it some time or the other. Prediction - according to my mobile dictionary, refers to the art of foretelling future events with no precision and all confidence. For example, the next Indian batsman's injury, the result of by elections in our constituency, the next poonam pandey who will rise to fame when England tour India, what scheme implemented/proposed by karunanidhi would Miss Jayalalitha call off and so on and so forth.

Kris Srikanth once called himself a wise predictor when he was interviewing with Rahul on Headlines Today about Indian team's R.I.P performance during the recently concluded England series. I request the reader not to confuse Rahul with one Mr. Arnab of Times Now fame. The latter is like a hot air balloon - full of gas. Rahul talks but he seldom farts. Coming back to Srikanth, Apparently he predicted India's world cup win months before the opening ceremony. My guess is he wanted to be the Paul (Octopus). In comparison, I somehow feel that Paul is a much more informed and prudent predictor than Kris for two reasons:

1. Paul didn't talk shit. He just hugged national flags
2. Kris doesn't have 8 legs

I don't have any prejudice against Kris the predictor, but I have a fair amount of bad experiences when it comes to his interviews on TV. He uses certain cliched phrases like 'Boss don't ask questions to increase your TRP', 'Dude you are joking', 'See, I am not here to talk for BCCI (who else would you talk for??) etc. Those are still ok. He once went to the extent of calling Sreesanth a bowler. I mean, there is a limit to talking non sense and that last one was over and above that limit.

But ironically, what I am going to do now is throw a few random predictions. But I would do my best to try and do the same Non-Krisically

A.) Harris Jeyaraj to become CEO of Microsoft.

Harris Jeyaraj is a successful music director in south Indian film circles. Now don't hit me with that rod. That is not my personal opinion. That's what they say out there. For now, take that as a given and come to analyze his core competencies. He is a maestro when it comes to researching about Latvian, Angolan, Japanese and Ethiopian music. His talents in picking up songs from the aforementioned genres and employing them with no changes whatsoever are immaculate. 'Boss', one cannot tell a HJ song from its Latvian original. So with such precision in lifting others' work/property he is definitely one who is tailor made to run a company like Microsoft. They are masters in that ball game and talk in my part of the town is that they have copyrighted Ctrl+C owing to their contributions in the field.

B.) Shahid Afridi to replace Manmohan Singh

Indian democracy is going through really tough times and people around the country are slowly coming to terms with scams, lies and more with unprecedented pace. Now such a situation is very tough for any government to handle and the work of the moment is for the Prime Minister to talk. This, precisely, is what Manmohan is not ready to do. He just wouldn't budge. Meetings in my office these days start with a mandatory decree that attendees put their phones on 'Manmohan Mode'. So the starkly contrasting personality in Afridi would probably be the panacea to our democracy's various ills at this point. He appears without summon anywhere and everywhere. What's even better? He talks and talks a lot with a superior sense of humor. He recently claimed that he has seen Sachin's right foot tremble when Shoaib Akhtar started taking run ups. How ingenuous. He could be our answer to the war of words in diplomatic matters with Pakistan. For instance, he could go and say He once saw Narendra Modi wear a white linen hat and do namaz at Thousand Lights mosque in Chennai. Gilani would probably call it truce if he hears such words.


Last but not the least,

C.) I would write my 101st post before Sachin gets his 100th ton.
D.) Following up on C, I predict that no one would realize I have littered this web space about hundred times and I still have a reader who doesn't give up on me (Thanks dude!. You make my day)

Yours Fervently, An Ardent Cricket fan

The Saturday meant a start to an amusing long weekend of sorts after quite some time and the self had woken to a rare rooster that crows late generally. Resting on the armchair like an octogenarian, I had breathed a lot of fresh air and was running through my mind the sequence of events that would follow in the next 3 days. That contained the following : read something to lift the spirits, drink a lot of coffee, eat to the stomach full, get the 11 hour sleep that has been evading for a while now and repeat the same in the order stated. Such was the beauty of the thought flow when the mind was particularly disturbed by a wayward sound that arose from somewhere in the neighbourhood. After curious onlooking, I found to my surprise that it was the gigantic wall clock that had caused the upset of the mind as the gong was doing its hourly duty at 3 hours post noon. Half an hour before the proceedings of the 4th day of the third test between India and England at Edgbaston.

It has been quite a while since I got myself deeply interested in a cricket match by and large. The last time such an instance was recorded was way back in March 2003 when Sehwag and Sachin entered the field to chase a mammoth 360 and Glenn McGrath had the shining red piece of leather to start the proceedings. After a considerable hiatus, the same interest started growing in me just before the ongoing series against England. What good parenting and modern pedagogic techniques that exemplify moral high ground have taught the growing youngster is that thing called maturity. As the body expands vertically and horizontally when man wakes up each morning to drink his cup of horlicks or viva or whatever suits him, the mind ought to expand. That, my ancestors used to call "maturity".
It has been well documented by learned people in the scriptures and elsewhere that mental maturity is quintessential for the uplifting of an individual. Though much has been talked about in this regard, what was visibly missing in my self as I got the bunch of potato chips and the plate of ground nuts in a move to gear up for a day of pleasing test cricket was the same thing that I have repeatedly lacked - maturity. To cut a long story short, what my heart ached at that particular juncture was for some legendary batting display from the few legendary batting names we have got on the roster so as to save the match and save our number one status by some hook or crook. This particular thought is a good example of an immature one at that. I call the very idea of the whim to be singularly childish. One cannot expect such a huge turnaround after two devastating performances at Lord's and Trent Bridge. But the heart ached for it in the same way it used to do back in 2002 and 2003 when Indian cricket was one of my highest priorities in life. I used to be an ardent fan way back then. But things have changed ever since and I moved on to other more intellectual addictions namely football, spirit, love and the rest of the things that G.K Chesterton used to talk about at length. So, this cricket fever recurring after such a long while was more of an aberration.

The end result? A big disappointment. Nothing that can be classified under the banner called sport has disappointed me to such a great extent, though I remember one instance when Benfica or some equally infernal force from Portugal knocked Man United out of Champions league and if my memory doesn't fail me, it was in the year 2005.After that one, now this particular disappointment from edgbaston made an impact on me and it was a sore one to say the least. The three matches that have taken England to summit from where India just toppled, were just a vindication of the visible listlessness in the Indian camp. There are cries and shouts inside the minds of the players and fans to abandon these humiliations and get back home, in the same way the Flintoff-led English team did during the 2008 terrorist attacks in Bombay. But we Indians are made of sterner stuff and it is not in our blood to call something off cheaply like that. We can continue to be distrait for ages and eons together but we shall not abandon. That fact being a given in the current scheme of things, the only logical thing to do is to somehow get over the fourth one as quickly as possible and start getting geared up for the five match one day series that is to follow. We could have been a very disheartened lot in the last 3 weeks, but the fact remains that it is not the end of the world and the one day series can help to make up for the shame quite a bit. So, along with the Indian team, I am telling myself after yesterday's horror collapse that all is not lost and that English August could after all culminate in an Indian September.

In Cricket, class is permanent and form is temporary. Let us hope to roar back in the one day series and worry about the test shambles in an introspection later in the year when we go down under.

16 Conclusions after the WC final

I love the idea of 16 conclusions after each football weekend (mostly the big ones) on football365 and I thought it is worth doing one after the biggest thing in cricketing history for India. Here it goes....

1. Sachin, thank you for bringing it at last. You might have failed in the final match. But it was under your guidance that the chaps could pull it off

2. Kirsten, You are just Legen....wait for it.....dary

3. Gambhir, Salute, what an innings..but next time apply some thought to personal accolades too. Now you've lost a massive chance to tell your grand children about that one century

4. Zak, You are still the best bowler we have had in the past decade. It's ok to leak a few runs like you did towards the end. You gave the dream start anyways

5. Do not call for a review again in your life Mr Sehwhack, unless Sachin tells you to.

6. Virat, you have the class. We are waiting for your time to come. You will take center-stage one day.

7. Dilshan, you took a brilliant catch, but then stop shouting those dirty things. Takes the class out of that brilliant moment when you grabbed it.

8. Sang, Kudos....you were a gentleman, unlike Shahid, who blew it after reaching home.

9. Malinga, try a hair cut...might work out for the next final. Your team can't lose three in a row.

10. Mr Srikanth, Never ever pick Mr. Santhakumaran for a one day cricket match.

11. Ashwin, I like your down to earth approach. Do not get heavy anytime and there's future.

12. Yuvi, you were the most aggressive in this tournament. You were just loved and I am sure your roster of female fans is going to reach the size of the 2G scam initial report that the CBI have submitted for the judges to read (80000 pages)

13. Captain Cool, Don't listen to Musharaf. See, it paid off....(P.S : I ve turned gay since April 2, 2011 after that six and that head tonsure.)

14. Indian team, Our domination has just begun. The country wants to keep this going for longer than the Australians kept it with them.

15. Virat Kohli's statement about carrying the master on our shoulders was the best of all reactions that day. Goosebumps...Really!!!

16. Readers, we've bleeded really light blue...and that has worked...time to bleed yellow now...Bring on the bharat bandh!

Why Ashwin should play this Sunday

With the world cup reaching its second phase in a really short while, teams are looking to get past the small mistakes that have made them look like clowns (Indian team in mind). One should keep in mind that all stadiums have had their first round of matches and there has been a good amount of wear and tear. That definitely means that spin will become all the more important. For a team that has been known for its deadly spin bowling attack in the last decade, this is the time they should start proving themselves to be good at their home turf.

Already, the ball has been tossed up to the spinners in the early overs and power plays. Zaheer, Nehra and the like are not getting their first spell quota of 5 overs apiece. With the pitches looking to appear more abrasive than earlier, it is important to bring the young man into the fray and experiment his "so-called-confidence". Enough is enough. We have done more than required in giving a good number of games to Chawla in order to increase his confidence levels. Chennai, being ashwin's known battle ground, he is definitely the choice, given his familiarity of the conditions at the M.A Chidambaram. You don't need to be too intelligent to deduce that it means R Ashwin, happy to use the new ball, must play. It also means that Piyush Chawla must make way, and that is where Dhoni's selections have baffled many.

 Dhoni is showing signs of losing the plot and I think he has just enough time to get the combination right before the second phase kicks in. The quarter finals and further will be different ball game each time the team goes into the field. The slow bowlers' wit will definitely become all important and wicket taking abilities will pay off. It would be great if Ashwin can spring a surprise when he gets a chance against the Windies. I am going to be there to witness the magic. And i totally think this is India's last chance to throw the hat in the ring and show the glitters.

 Please bring on the guy. He was player of tournament on his biggest stage till date - the T20 Champions league!

ICC should ban any references to 1983 and the Indian Cricket Team in the run up to World Cup 2011

For the good of mankind and to restore public sanity by and large, may I launch a formal request to the International Cricket Council asking them to ban the following two things in the media?
1. Any reference to the 1983 world cup victory
2. References to the chances of India winning this edition of the world cup.

It is just too tiring to see every Tom, Dick and Harry (not to mention the Bhajjis, Dhonis and Kapils) talking about India being a front-runner for world cup victory this year. The media is going all gaga over the 1983 world cup win and asking all and sundry from the Indian squad of 15 about the chances of winning the event. I wholeheartedly wish the ICC issues notices to all journalists suiting this description, at large in this country to stop working for a while, till the completion of the 2011 mega event. They should be given a quarter off and should be packed off to some place like Egypt for tourism. :P.

People seem totally off their minds when answering stupid questions during the conferences. For instance, Kapil Dev feels that the toss could hurt the Indian team's chances in this world cup. Can somebody give me a sleeping pill? He went on to say that Dhoni's win loss record as captain has been attractive at something like 78-48 while his toss record in the same set of matches looking like some 68-74 or some such number. How does it matter Kapil? Is the toss even something to talk about at this juncture? Are you hinting at some toss practice for Dhoni besides practicing with the bat and the gloves?

Aakash Chopra..who is a former Indian opener..for people who are caught unawares at this point, please check this out. Aakash who thinks India have the potential to lift the world cup this year. "I am an optimist and I believe India have the potential to win the ICC Cricket World Cup 2011." Yes sir. We realize you are an optimist and thanks for the information. It would add to our knowledge kit. Chopra who is an optimist hurray!!!!

India had a disastrous world cup in 2007 - they were dumped out of the tournament after the first stage where they lost to Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, defeating only Bermuda in the competition. So keeping these facts in mind, shall we ask the media to shut the F up and concentrate on some other important thing like the 2G or the Adarsh or the Egyptian crisis? Or if you are bent upon cricket in general, talk about the team's injury crisis and give us updates on how Sehwag/Praveen Kumar are shaping up rather than ranting about Dhoni's confidence, Tendulkar's last chance or Kapil Dev's last night's dream.

We cricket fans are here to watch it and we shall get to know what will come out of this edition, set to start in a fortnight's time. We do NOT want any predictions, speculations or forecasts about the end result whatsoever. And lastly, before I forget, is it possible to ask the ICC to ban astrologers and soothsayers for the period starting now till the end of the world cup apart from banning the list of people/communities mentioned earlier? We are tired of statements like these -- "jupiter will be transiting in 11th house from dhoni's moon sign and india's lagna"...or some such equally stupid thing.


Thanks

My half century on the double century

Bat Up! Half century of posts on my blog. There wouldn't be a better time to talk about the "double century".

If you are

a) A Cricket Lover (or)
b) A Sachin Fan (or)
c) A sane human being (or)
d) All of the above

You will get goose bumps on reading the following few lines. If not....Sue me!!!

"When Sachin Tendulkar travelled to Pakistan to face one of the finest bowling attacks ever assembled in cricket, Michael Schumacher was yet to race a F1 car, Lance Armstrong had never been to the Tour de France, Diego Maradona was still the captain of a world champion Argentina team, Pete Sampras had never won a Grand Slam.When Tendulkar embarked on a glorious career taming Imran and company, Roger Federer was a name unheard of; Lionel Messi was in his nappies, Usain Bolt was an unknown kid in the Jamaican backwaters. The Berlin Wall was still intact, USSR was one big, big country, Dr Manmohan Singh was yet to "open" the Nehruvian economy.It seems while Time was having his toll on every individual on the face of this planet, he excused one man. Time stands frozen in front of Sachin Tendulkar. We have had champions, we have had legends, but we have never had another Sachin Tendulkar and we never will."

P.S: The above paragraph is a TIME magazine quote on Sachin Tendulkar after he scored a double ton for the first time in One Day International Cricket.

P.P.S: The buzz word in blogosphere these days is about saving our tigers. Hence, my two pence on that front:

"Save our Tigers. Only 1412 (1411 from the cat family + 1 (me) ) left.

Season 3 Preview

With the auctions just behind us, it is time again for Season Three of the money-rich Indian Premier League. Unlike last year's transfer market, this year didn't bring in too many big names for bidding. Kieron Pollard was the pick of the lot. With his masterful performance in the recent KFC Big Bash and his heroics in the Champions League Twenty-20 last year, he is pipped to be a massive hit in the coming season. As expected ( with two players worth $1.5m in the aquad already), Chennai Super Kings were one of the bidders for the 22 year old West Indian All Rounder. Other bidders were Mumbai Indians, 'unsurprisingly' (because they had an all rounder void in the line up) and Deccan Chargers, 'surprisingly' (because three of their overseas player are all rounders). But at last, after a tie on the $750000 ceiling, an impressive $2.3m bagged the coveted prize of IPL3 for the Ambani's.

With the teams and players availability almost confirmed, there seems to be no surprises for most of the teams. Mumbai Indians is the team I want be backing this time around. Albeit not just because of the new arrival. The team has appealed to me over the last two years. The only weak link being some sporadic sub-standard captaincy. The team is a well shaped bunch of promising faces. A Jayasuriya-Harbhajan-Duminy-Tendulkar-Zaheer force (Pollard not included) is unquestionably formidable. Having been a staunch Super Kings fan for the last two years simply due to nativity reasons, this time I have decided to back India's cricketing God for once in his last few years at cricket's helm. I reckon he will lead the team better and overcome those minor hassles that they've come across in the last two seasons.

I bet nobody predicted a Hyderabad-Bangalore final in season 2. And going by the same logic, I am sure one can not write off any team (including KKR :-) ). On the viewership front, though season two was an extradited affair, viewership showed a 10% increase from its first season numbers. Given that it is back to India once again, i am sure it is going to be a massive hit for the advertisers. Personally, I am not looking forward with much excitement or some such thing to this IPL 3. But all around me, there has been an overflow of chitchat in the past two days about the auction and the event as such. Hence the post.

Nevertheless, what's in store this time?
Mumbai Indians for the trophy!
Loads of money for the already rich bureaucrats and advertisers!
Some fun for us viewers!
And if one wants to witness the event from the stands, a small hole in the purse.

Om Criketaya Namaha!!!

Journalism-Philosophy-Cricket-Life, My Stochastic Journey

How often has an article from the 'Times of India daily' been motivating or mentally stimulating? The question should be lauded for the humor content in itself :-P. The answer to it is 'Most often not'. Today, journalism is a field with high levels of cash flow in its arena and as is rightly said, in today's environment, 'Media means Business'. Having celebrated the luxury of being India's largest daily for ages together, the newspaper has created a new dimension in the field of advertising and media. Sex, Fun, Youth, Masala, Movies, Paparazzi news, Celebrity talk and a few more on the same lines can be termed as suitable labels for most of the articles that are covered these days. Nevertheless, Economics, Strategies, Terrorism and Politics do take center-stage in the Editorial section with contributions from stalwarts from the above mentioned domains. So I have in no way taken up an evaluation of the celebrated daily.

Having said that, what I wanted to write in this post was something completeley different. The first paragraph is more of a digression and the basic intent was to write about a full page article on a recent edition of the Times.

No points for guessing the topic chosen for discussion as terms like 'Master Laster', 'T-20' and twenty-"Ten" are ubiquitous in recent-day print and media. Yes, it was an article on 'The great Man'. A lot has been spoken and debated about his closeness to 'Divinity' in the religion of cricket and of late, even in a newer religion called 'Sport'. I am not going to grind that grain once again. What caught my eye was how motivating that article turned out to be.

I have heard of an incident in North India, which is not the sort that makes the headlines but yeah, interests a few amongst us. - "On a train from Shimla to Delhi, there was a halt in one of the stations. The train stopped by for few minutes as usual. Sachin was nearing century, batting on 98. The passengers, railway officials, everyone on the train "waited" for Sachin to complete the century. This Genius can stop time in India!!". Now how does the process of 'deifying' happen? What are the ingredients that enable one to become a candidate running for that post? Trying to figure out answers to these 'almost always' rhetoric questions, I realized the answer lies in removing the abstraction in them. Take the example of the same game and the gentlemen who've evolved in the last decade. I can think of England captain Kevin Pieterson's debut about three or four years back. In a period of six to eight months of international cricket, the 'modern media' that we were referring to at the beginning of this discussion, elevated him to a status of being compared with the master. Terms like 'Next Tendulkar' and 'English Master' did the rounds owing to his aggression and technique. 4 years into the arena and take a look at where he is now? He is undoubtedly one of the most important players of the English cricket team today. No denying that fact. But why isn't he tipped to be the next sensation any more? Genius is made out of perseverance, determination and a host of other virtues. But to me, the most important ingredient to it is 'feet on ground' and that is in coherence with the answer to the 'KP question'.

Achievement is something that every one of us encounter and come across in various stages of life. But the way we treat those encounters with 'achievement' is all that matters. The answer to that intriguing question on ingredients was in one quote from the Master himself - "Let the world think of our past. We should think of the future". An adage comes to my mind at this juncture. "You are very unique, just like everyone else". So, celebration should be a fleeting phenomenon when it comes to a bigger picture of life and its obstacles. Having said that success has to do with a combination of a variety of virtues, some more important than the others, one should stay motivated to reach the pinnacle of glory and be smart enough to keep that place until another touchstone is spotted high up the same ladder of life.

Anjali Tendulkar revealed in an interview that Sachin has sleep-walking tendencies and surprisingly, she said "Now we know what it takes to make a genius". I mused for a while after reading those two lines for i am an astute 'sleep-walker' too. But jokes apart, what was meant by usage of 'sleep-walking' is important. The determination and obsession that leads one to think of his duties day in and day out is what makes the genius. Sleep walking in most instances is associated with toiling minds and continuous thought flows during sleep as a result of the obsessive nature of the mind.

Masters come and masters go and we, for our part incessantly speak of them. But the paradigm shift from the connoisseur's role to the artist's role is what should be mulling in our minds and food for that kind of a thought comes from such great personalities and their lives.

Now, as a vindication of the levels of confidence and fearlessness involved in such instance of genius, watch this - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oez4TSdZvJI

Season Two- Unveiled

There has been a lot of talking about IPL Season II moving to South Africa making way for a safe and secure Election process. The debate and discussion about the shift in venue is well over now. Questions about the eccentricity and the enthusiasm for this second edition of the tournament have been coming through. Now that the season 2 has got off to a start, it is time to find out what has changed and what has not from the inaugural edition of the tournament. The start did make a success story. The newspaper headlines had the catchy slogans. But is the cricket fan satisfied? What does he feel about watching all this from a distance?

For a start, i would like to analyze how big a fan i am of this highly spoken about version of the game. This shorter version has always been interesting. The fervour and passion was sure to come right from the inception of this form of the game. Season 1 was really interesting. The teams did not manage to accrue passionate fanatics supporting them die hard. The cricket lovers were more enthused by the very nature of this form of the game and did not resort to wildfire regional supporting tendencies. I was one of the kind too. I did manage to cross my fingers for Chennai Super Kings sporadically during the first edition and i would owe that gesture to the feeling of local support being a long time dweller of the city. But as the build up for season 2 started, the passion increased. I wanted to own a yellow jersey to support the team through season II. I decided that i would watch a few games at the stadium too. Those hopes were dented by the decision to move the tournament overseas. With so much homework from my side done, i geared up for the inaugural match. But at last i ironically managed to miss the match in view of my last minute plans to go to Bangalore. I learned about the results late in the night though.

Fellow supporters told about the loss to Mumbai Indians on the opening day. Surprisingly it did not create any hard feelings for me. May be it was too late in the night for me to fret and discuss the sad story after all for co-supporters would've done the post match analysis which i missed citing personal reasons. I thought i would catch up with the tournament in full swing and with complete ecstasy from the next match day. But the interests were not sustained. As i returned to work on Monday, i could just not think about it with the backlog items at the workplace daunting me after a tired weekend. I watched a couple of slog overs in the CSK-RCB match late night after i got back home.

I noticed the same dip in the passion levels with my fellow fans not knowing the reason though. But whats quite clear is that the move overseas has brought down levels of interest as one cannot enjoy the ecstatic atmosphere in the stadium if the tournament had stayed in India. The idea of screening the matches at multiplexes was welcome during the build up to the season. But nothing materialized at the end, lowering the hopes for a sizzling month of IPL fever. Watching the matches this season i reckon would just be more of a time pass activity rather than being a fervour. I do support the decision to move the tournament away from the country for security reasons, but i somehow feel the passion and enthusiasm which showed positive signs during preseason have died down nevertheless.

Thirty-30

Thirty things I would like to do before I am 30. This is yet another Tagged post (this time by one of my old school pals).

Ok here it goes....

1. Add a PGDM behind my initials.

2. Work for a consultancy firm and analyze a big thing like the Tata Nano Release or an RIL-RPL merger.

3. Complete the IMDB list of Top 250.

4. Read all of the 90 odd works by P.G.Wodehouse.

5. Start a Retail Chain of something really innovative-may be jewellery...lolzzz

6. Create and shoot an advertisement for Vodafone or Pepsi.

7. Play a protagonist in a documentary.

8. Win an All India Chess tournament.

9. Carry my bat in a 30 over a side domestic cricket match after opening the innings.

10. Taste Champagne.

11. Watch a United-Arsenal match at Old Trafford.

12. Watch a football match on boxing day at a pub in London.

13. Walk along the LOC in the kupwara sector or Poonch District.

14. Design my dream home from scratch.

15. Eat all possible chocolate varieties from around the world.

16. Cook an elaborate meal for a group of 10.

17. Build a Personal library of over 500 books I have read.

18. Give a lecture on Theology or Philosophy at some prestigious management school.

19. Go on a world tour with family.

20. Eat only chocolates from morning to night on a single day.

21. Spend a night on a star cruise deep in the middle of the seas.

22. Shoot 10 terrorists in a guerilla fight.

23. Serve the Indian Air Force for a short period.

24. Be a commentator alongside Harsha Bhogle for an India-Australia match down under.

25. Conduct a Sports quiz at the national level.

26. Own a super market in some hill station.

27. Write an article for the Time Magazine.

28. Dine with Warren Buffet on a moonlit night in Mexico.

29. Coach a Division II football team in England.

30. Officiate an international cricket match.