A roller coaster fortnight.

Cricket is unpredictable. We've seen that time and time again. The sport that we've dubbed the gentleman's game is in reality, a game made of paranoid schizophrenics, who can alter a game just like that *snaps a finger*. The last fortnight has seen that there is as much of madness off the field than there is on it.
Whether I should start writing about the madness off the field or the madness on it is debatable, but my love for the game prompts me to write about the on field antics.

First: test cricket could never have been more awesome. The first test between Australia and South Africa defined madness. Mayhem, chaos, clutter, crash, boom, bang, wallop and then suddenly like nothing, South Africa won by 8 wickets in the fourth innings, chasing 230-odd. It was like the reverse pitch effect. 1st day played like a 5th day and third day, the wicket had eased out. Imagine what would have happened had the match lasted five days. Either team would have chased 500-odd runs.

What still baffles me is that this is a two-match series. Quite tragic, in my opinion. However, given the way Australia is playing, I think that they're glad that it's a two-match series. Although I like the look of Patrick Cummins. He's young, he's raw and he's fast. India, beware. He's going to come at you and how.

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Speaking of Indian cricket, following the claims made by Lord Paul Codon about every team being involved in match fixing, Vinod Kambli decided to open his mouth and claim that there was something 'suspicious' about Mohammad Azharuddin opting to field in the semi-finals against Sri Lanka during the 1996 World Cup. 

Azhar, naturally, denied the rumours and all of us on Twitter, along with some of his teammates backed him and his decision to field. 

However, with Sharad Powar coming into the picture and criticising Kambli, I have some reservations about the match. Having said that, Vinod Kambli is an idiot. He wanted his five minutes of fame. Like a friend told me, he would probably have been broke and wanted some money for that sex change he so desperately needs. He got some money during Sach Ka Saamna, but maybe sex changes are way too expensive nowadays. 

Having said that, it will be interesting to see what the High Court decides regarding Azhar's alleged involvement. The majority believes that he's guilty, but we can only wait for the result to come out. 

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And now for the general belief that cricket is a boring sport. One of the guys that lived up to the sentiment, Basil D'Oliveira died at 80. I've never seen him play, but my sister has. She described his batting as 'more boring than paint drying up.' However, that kind of pissing off batting ensured that England didn't lose too many test matches. D'Oliveira was gutsy and had balls of steel, just like Peter Roebuck.

Roebuck's death saddened me. The allegations of sexual harassment pissed me off even more. Let's face it, a 26-year-old guy claiming that a 50-plus man forcefully buggered him makes no sense at all. It's like Arnold Schwarzenegger claiming that he got buggered by Hornswoggle

So my theory is that like Vinod Kambli, this guy wants his five minutes of fame as well. Maybe he can fund Kambli's sex change and both of them can live happily ever after. 

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And it's also Ranji Trophy time. I'm glad that Irfan is getting wickets and Harbhajan is not. Sadly, however, Harbhajan will go to Australia because they need someone with 'experience.' It doesn't matter if he bowls shit, but the experience matters. Personally, my 16-man squad for the side will include: Gambhir, Sehwag, Dravid, Tendulkar, Laxman, Kohli, Ranane, Dhoni (wk), Patel (wk), Ashwin, Ojha, Rohit Sharma, Yadav, Zaheer, Ishant and Irfan. 

Who will you pick? 

We deserve to lose

9/29? We deserve to be on the losing side

I decided to do something I have never done in my life today.
I watched a cricket match on a gigantic screen at a mall.
The experience was interesting and like many other cricket-crazy Indians, I was cheering for the wickets and dot balls and sighing every time we made a mess of things.
And then Ashish Nehra bowled the last over.
I swore at him like the rest of the fans when we lost.
But then rationality took over.
We lost 9 wickets for 23 runs.
Had the top order not clicked, we would have beaten Zimbabwe for the world's lowest total.
So I don't even feel bad that we lost the game. We probably deserved to anyway.
The experts in the studio will have their own post match analysis as to what went wrong, but I met a guy after the game, who told me where we went wrong and how we should have selected R Ashwin over Munaf Patel.
This expert happened to be my rickshaw driver, who had a very interesting point. He said, "The reason why they're not taking Ashwin is because he's another off-spinner and with Harbhajan in the side, it makes no sense to have another off-spinner."
Accurate analysis, my dear Watson, but Harbhajan keeps bowling the doosra, while Piyush Chawla, who wasn't in this game usually bowls googlies. This changes their role in the side.
But the rickshaw driver is one of a billion disheartened Indian fans, who wanted to see their side win and ended up in tears after Nehra bowled the last over. Suddenly poor Nehra's Facebook page has gone berserk, with people blaming him for the loss. The rick guy went on to add that Dhoni was probably paid to lose this match.
Speculations like these always arise. My father says that cricket is a whore that has money being shoved into its vagina, while other and colleagues friends say that they lost interest in the sport ever since the match fixing scandal broke out.
I think that we're just a bunch of poor losers.
I'm not talking about the team only. I'm talking about the general culture of the subcontinent. We can act in mobs. Otherwise we behave like pussies. The 1996 Calcutta semi-finals and the pelting of the West Indies bus at Dhaka are just two recent examples that I can think of. Ray Robinson's book 'The Wildest Tests' speaks of several mob outbreaks during the couse of a cricket game and many of them happened in India and Pakistan.
The sad thing is that when we taste success, we get drunk by it in an almost Macbeth-like way. And that's what's generally been the case of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. I cannot comment on the Sri Lankans because I've not read any Sri Lankan paper criticising its players of letting success go into his head. Maybe I haven't read enough or maybe Sri Lankans are far more disciplined that her other South Asian counterparts.

Nehra suddenly became everyone's favourite whipping boy because of his
Chetan Sharma-like last over

I think what my auto rickshaw driver said at the end summed it up beautifully. He said, "Kya kare, boss. Hum log chutiye log hai aur players bhi hum logon ko chutiya banate hai.' (What can we do. We're a bunch of cunts. And the players use that to their advantage and make us feel like bigger cunts)
Maybe someday - and this is the optimist in me talking - we'll finally get to a space where we'll evolve as sportspersons, but that day sadly will be very far away.
But yes, losing 9/29. We don't deserve anything, but to lose.