Rock Stars of Cricket

Rock stars of cricket are on fire. Critics might argue that we were expected to win. Agreed, man to man India is any day much better team than New Zealand. But the way of winning is something which I loved the most. Right from the time the first ball was bowled to the 4th day, we never really looked like losing. There was an air of certainty in the way we played, much like the aussies of late 90’s , when no matter what the opposition team does , end result was always certain.

Sachin Tendulkar says this is the best batting line up he was played in, quite a debatable claim considering the fact Tendulkar was part of every Indian batting line up for past 20 years. In my humble opinion, I think he is probably right , but the dada’s boys of early 2000 comes quite close to them. The factor in which this bunch of boys scores over dada ones was probably the fear factor. These guys are just fearless, I have been following cricket for now more than 15 years and I have never seen an Indian team which plays with so much confidence, fearlessness and the enjoying the game as they do. May be it’s a there captain effect (cool and charismatic), means he is an enigmatic personality , he is not a technically correct batsmen, not even technically correct Wicket keeper , neither he is pretty too watch (in fact that bottom hand approach is quite ugly to watch) , but still he is damm effective. Look at his career development , he started off as an exciting batsmen who can smash sixes at will , people says he is a flat pitch bully, will never work against good pace attack or on bouncy pitches. But he proved everyone wrong, he scores decently in every situation, is very reliable batsmen (perhaps after SRT, especially in ODI) but most importantly has got one hell of a cricketing brain, the most important thing for a good captain.

Other factor which is makes this team more ominous is the role of SRT, u can sense a calm, relaxed person in the way he bats now a days, a person who is dead sure of his role in the team, he might have cut down on his flamboyance a bit, but the new methods are as effective as the old ones. Also the presence of so many rock stars have resulted in lowering of expectation from him, thus making him plan his cricket in the way he wants to.

Anyway, it’s really a great feeling to have a winning cricket team, I don’t really know whether we are currently the best team or not, but we are very close to it; probably SA with their wonderful pace attack and a very good captain might be ahead of us. But these are really exciting team for world cricket with some good hard competition making it really good to watch.

Sehwag Fastest Century in NZ : 4th ODI

Here are the highlights of the 4th ODI of the India-NZ series 2009. Sehwag made a 60 ball century and lead to a historic series win of India. This is the first series win for India in NZ.

India Batting::

Kapil Dev :: Straight From the Heart

On telling someone in an interview that I loved reading autobiographies, the interviewer asked me have I read anything about Kapil Dev. I replied a no !! making a sad face. I ordered his autobiography "Straight From the Heart" the same day.

Kapil Dev is Dhoni of Old era or that would be injustice to great legend, I would say Dhoni is Kapil of new era. Both have few similarities being brought up in non cricketers producing states of India and both lifted the world cup in earlier stages of their captaincy.

Book start with memories of Kapil's childhood days. Kuckoo as he was known in his family was into sports and atheletics since his childhood and was as away from his studies as is Jammu is away from Kanyakumari. Playing whole day not cricket but football, coming back home and pretending to sleep in front of his father so that he is not scolded for studying. But as we know father is father how much we say child is father of his father. He got trapped when his father used to say this football is torn and it should be thrown away. In a flash Kuckoo was awake and his father used to say "Hmm t rajkumar jaag rahe hain. Ab jaag hi rahe hain, to inse kahye ki thode der baithkar padhaai kar leing... Nautanki kahi ka...."

Just like any other Indian family where children are pushed to only study and study same was the case in Kuckoo's family. Kapil loved challenges and he writes one incident of trying to get on the back of police horses who were not used to clumsy boys. He was successful after few attempts and he takes the police horses away and is caught by his father.

Kapil was as ignorant about cricket as most of the Indians are about Ice Hockey. He used to ask his brother about players when his big brother used to read a cricket magazine.

Kapil used to get irritated when his bother disturbed his sleep listening to cricket commentary in the night. He is introduced to playing cricket by his brother Bushan when one of their team member is absent and Kapil is used in place of 11th player. He showed his fielding skills and impressed everyone. His natural talent is again seen by eveyone when in other match his 4 hits in 5 balls are out of boundary and during bowling he also took 3 wickets. On being encouraged by his brother Kuckoo decides that cricket is his future.


Kapil starts his coaching under coach Azad and is asked to increase his stamina by drinking more and more milk. His dad gets two buffaloes in few days and so he became a milk guzzler as was teased by his sister as Nikhanj Milk Diary. He coaches with other cricketers Yograj Singh, Ashok Malhotra. Kuckoo was assertive and fought for his writes, he writes about an incident where he fought with BCCI officials over food quantity in under-19 camp.

Finally his efforts pay off and he makes his debut under Bishen Singh bedi in Pakistan. He has never watched test match before and here is making his debut against arch rivals Pakistan. He feels the bad side of international cricket when he is teased while batting, but his moment infact moment for India came when bowling Pakistani batsman halts the play and ask for a helmet. So here is a fast bowler who has arrived to prove to the world that India can also produce fast bowlers.

He writes about how less money players got and they couldn't afford to get their clothes washed and they used to wash it themselves. He also writes about the divide in the team among seniors and juniors and how the divide wanished when young crickters came and stopped following orders from seniors and asked for equal rights in decision making. He writes about his and gavaskar spat , various tours and World Cup in details. He also writes about BCCI's nature of changing captain every now and then and how little say the players had in BCCI working.

I enjoyed reading about his 175 run knock against Zimbabwe and world cup final. Its exhilariting to read how a team who is at 66-1 odds from beginning of the cup and also the final lifts the world cup. Its an era when BCCI doesn't give lakhs to a team winning world cup but it has to organize a Lata Mangeshkar show to earn money to give to the world cup winning team.

Book is different from other autobiographies in a way that it has not covered only Kapil cricket but also separate chapters are given to his marriage , matchfixing scandal. He talks in detail about his business, he first started a publishing company but has to close that down with the coming up of satellite telivision in India. Later on he started a ground lighting company which has lighted many stadiums across the country.

Till 200 pages there is no talk of marriage, but in chapter "Love Makes you go round" he talks at length about his marriage and love life. I liked the chapter in which he talks about BCCI, honorary presidentship , biased zonal selection. All this is all relevant today and has been going on for ages, one can easily see the biased selection on seeing Balaji in the team as we know Balaji shares state with one of the selectors.

Finally he talks about the Match Fixing saga, cricket fan will surely hate outlook editor Vinod Mehta who without doing proper enquiry kept on publishing what Manoj Prabhakar said about Kapil's involvement. Other one is noted women writer Shobha De who has written in some article like "She never invites cricketers to her party’’. ’’How can She deduce that all cricketers are involved?’’ is what Kapil wants to know. And what to say about another great Mr Bindra Punjab Cricket Board chief who has seen kapil playing and growing in front of him naming Kapil on cnn. You feel sorry for Kapil when you read things like this. You feel like this is not the way to treat people who have brought laurels to nation.

You will enjoy reading about 83 world cup, 175 against zimbabwe, azar and kapil relationship, wisden Indian cricketer of century award, sunil gavaskar and kapil dev saga , romi his wife and her wierd behavior during the 83 final.

Must read for any one who says he is Indian cricket fan

Adventure Sports:: SwatTV Roadies 1.0 :: Future of Pakistan

Hi I am your host Mullah Omar

Welcome to the SwatTV Roadies 1.0. 2012 marks the first year of Roadies being organized in Pakistan.

First a brief history of SWAT TV ::

Last year various international satellite channels pulled out of Pakistan citing security reasons.So SWAT region decided to launch their own channel on the lines of MTv. Its a music channel where we show folk, rock and everykind of music. Motto of the channel is to spread jihadi music. As we all know music is everywhere, we can generate music from anything so we have positioned ourselves as the only channel showing music from bullets, tanks, grenades. Practice in training camps is shown live as we feel there can be no better music then the sound of bullets hitting the targets.


TRP of the channel touched new heights when we showed live second mutiny in as many as 3 years by Bangladeshi Rifles group. For two whole days our viewers listened to the sound of bullets, tanks rolling on Dhaka Roads. SwatTV was the first to show the whole incident infact our cameras were in place 2 hours before the event started as we have our network of reporters spread everywhere.

We have got exclusive rights of showing missile launch by North Korea in July 2012. One team is on way to Sri Lanka to meet the LTTE to get rights to show live attempt by LTTE to regain its lost area in Sri Lanka.

Before continuing further its time for a short commercial break::
(Companies selling military warfare and related equipments are given discount of 25%)

[

Ringa Ringa Rocks Ringa Ringa Rocks
SWAT Rocks .small big diagonal horizontal rocks SWAT Rocks
Buy SWAT rocks to be used during stone pelting spectacle
Buy 5 get 2 free
Ringa Ringa Rocks Ringa Ringa Rocks

]


Welcome back to  Al Qaeda SwatTV Roadies 1.0.

Further about the channel, Swat TV has generated huge interest and we are planning to launch the channel in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Iran in a year or two.

Now about the Roadies.Since we got the idea of the show from a bald man in India (the most dangerous place in the world), we are getting thousands of enquires from the youth.

We have got large number of sponsors. Main sponsor is Al Qaeda, other being
Mulla Umar Consultancy Services .. "Consult us before killing",
Lahore Powder ... "For that heightened feeling",
Toiba Oil -  "Keeps your guns shinning"
and Swat Rocks - "For easy throws".

We have got 10 participants from different regions and first edition is an international one with participants from Afghanistan and Bangladesh also.
And for the participants everything will be unexpected, i.e expect the unexpected, there will be real stunts, killings, gun battles, and many more adventure sports tests.

Winner will get straight entry into the next planned mission of Al Qaeda at an unspecified location.

I will not reveal all the details as it is SwatTV Roadies 1.0 Expect the Unexpected

Till then its goodbye from all of us here at SwatTV Roadies 1.0

ps: Some people are not able to intrepret it and saying that its a sports blog and I should write only sports related posts. I feel the post is very much related to sports and such scenario can take place in future in Pakistan, we are seeing what is happening there and sports be it cricket or anything may not be possible in that country.  So it is like a dark humor which has some bitter reality in it.

public class IndianCricket :: Method shouldSachinRetire

For Sachin Fans :-)

public class IndianCricket {

// constructor

public IndianCricket() {
System.out.println("Welcome to IndianCricket. This class give output of should sachin retire or not");

}

public void shouldSachinRetireOrNot() {
// if will be decided by 3 categories of people media, fans and sachin himself.
mediaJudgement();
fansJudgement();
sachinJudgement();
}

private void mediaJudgement() {

// get sachin last 5 scored and calculate average and then analyse.

int sachinLastFiveScores = ICC_Data(Sachin);

int average = sachinLastFiveScores/5;

if(average < 30)

System.out.println("Sachin has gone old, he should retire and let youngsters be allowed to show their potential");

System.out.println("Is this the same Sachin we used to love !! No his time has gone now.");

}

else {

System.out.println("Sachin is a great player, he should carry on...");

}

// Get Result of India last five matches played and then analyse.

int indiaLastFiveMatchesResults = ICC_Data(India);

if(indiaLastFiveMatchesResults == Loss) {

System.out.println("Sachin has not won much for India!! He plays for himself");

System.out.println("Sachin always fails in big matches");

// they show some matches' details in which sachin has failed.

System.out.println("Here you can see the data how he has failed in big matches");

}

else {

System.out.println("Sachin is legend he has won India many matches !! India and we are proud of him");

}

if((average <>indiaLastFiveMatchesResults == Loss) ) {

String NDTV;

String CNN_IBN;

String India_TV;

String OtherNews;

NDTV= startWalkTheTalk("Should Sachin Retire Gracefully now? Discuss !! Barkha Dutt");

CNN_IBN = startFaceTheNation("Should Sachin Retire Gracefully now? Discuss !! Sagarika Ghosh");

India_TV = startDiscussion-with-Facts("yeh dekhiye sachin kaise pehle run banate the ab pata nahi kya ho gaya hai inko!! Kya yeh wahi sachin hai !! ");

OtherNews = start("Should he retire now!! Should BCCI selectors give some one younger a chance? ");

}

}

public int ICC_Data(String PlayerName_CountryName) {

return data;

}

public void fansJudgement() {

// fans will be divided into two categories true cricket lovers and evangelists and others just game watchers.

cricketEvangelists();

justGameWatchers();

}

public void cricketEvangelists() {

boolean anything;

if(Anything) {

// for cricket Evangelists

System.out.println("Sachin is a legend and he has done what no other player has done to India.");

System.out.println("He will retire by himself when he will feel his interests level is not the same");

System.out.println("We bow to sachin he is God");

}

}

public void justGameWatchers() {

if(India_Loosing) {

System.out.println("These players dont do anything! They dont practice hard");

System.out.println("They always do ads and roam around with celebrities");

System.out.println("Some fanatics will burn effigies of players");

}

if(Sachin_Not_Scoring) {

System.out.println("Sachin is old now he should retire");

System.out.println("Selectors should bring some new face");

} else {

System.out.println("Sachin is our hope and true hero");

System.out.println("We never miss him playing");

}

}

public void sachinJudgement() {

System.out.println("I will retire when my time will come! I am loving the game and enjoying it");

}

public static void main(String args[]) {

IndianCricket obj = new IndianCricket();

obj.shouldSachinRetireOrNot();

}

}

Some compilation errors may creep in :-)