Friday, January 15, 2010

Chocolaty Life-Raju aur Basant ka Atyachar

Act-1, Scene-1
Place: Cadbury Guest House, Worli, Mumbai
Time: Around 7 PM, sometime in July

Rahul-"Raju bhaiya kuch nashta bana do"
Raju-"Abhi khane ke time ho gaya hai, nashta nahi milega"

Sunil takes the TV remote in his hand to browse for channels when Basant strikes.
Basant (Quickly robs Sunil of remote)-"Ye remote ko hath nahi lagana"

<span style="font-style: italic;">The Context</span>:
Raju and Basant are the care takers for this Guest House of Cadbury. And they have been here eternally; as confirmed by seniors. The new joinees are initally provided accomodation for some time. And that is the time when we cross our ways with R&amp;B. Both are from Nepal as is apparent by the accent; by the TV channel which runs when we enter the guest house.

Act-2, Scene-2
Location: Same
Time: Not relevant

Aditi-"Bhaiya ye kapade dho dijiyega"
Raju-"Nahi, wo huum, ladkiyon ke kapade nhi dhote hai"
Aditi (Disappointed and slightly annoyed)-"Acha koi baat nhi, par kapado ko iron to kar dijiyega"
Basant-"Woo, ladikon ke kapade iron nahi karate hai, kyuki jal jaata hai"
Aditi get even more annoyed but had to manage it herself.

Thursday, January 14, 2010

The Debate-Test v ODI v T20

All right, all right; I am a bit late when already enough has been discussed on the issue. Questions have been raised over the future of pure cricket-Test and off late people arguing whether ODIs should co exist with T20 or be done away with. And then there is all this debate over excessive cricket and player burnout.
But, let us take a step back and find out why this debate. Players all round the world want to represent their countries and play as much as they can; and I don' think good players are in short supply. The national cricket boards would ideally want more and more quality cricket and also cricket which attracts audience and in turn revenues. And then there are viewers all over, cricket pundits, commentators etc. who want more and more of exciting cricket. So, if players want to play, administrators want to arrange and viewers want to see then why this whole debate on cutting down on matches and different formats hurting each other. And I feel every thing boils down to this-the number of players representing a country. Every team wants to field the best 11 players for each and every game of each and every format. This leads to 7-8 players constantly involved in one format or another all the year round. I strongly believe there won't be considerable difference between the skill level of top 30-40 players for any country. Agreed that there would be 2-3 super natural match winners but apart from these the skill level does not fall too steeply within the top 30-40. So, if the national boards can dilute there obsession with fielding the best 11 every time then a very simple solution exists to all the above problem. All three forms can co-exist and the number of matches/year actually be increased without the fear of one format competing against other and burnouts.
Every nation can rotate players for different series/formats. There can even be parallel matches between same teams in different formats (Ind vs Aus-test and T20 being played together)
But for this to happen every stake holder has to forgo a little bit of obsession with winning. Everyone wants good cricket and more cricket after all. Players would then not be forced to retire basis age, youngsters would get exposure to international cricket early on and there won't be appeals for less cricket/

Monday, January 11, 2010

Checking-Blog using Email :)

Hi there.

If you can read this then congrats!
You can now publish blogs via email