The Problem with Umar Gul

I like Umar Gul a lot.
He's fast, accurate and can swing the ball both ways. He's consistent, economical and usually keeps a low profile.
That's also my problem with him.

The qualities are exempolary, but Umar has a problem, which is why he's a misfit.
He's got all these qualities being a Pakistani player.
Now I'm sure there are a lot of Pakistanis reading this blog, who would be ready to swear at me on my twitter timeline, but if you guys give me reason to explain myself, I shall.
I read this article in this morning's Indian Express about Umar Gul. While I agree with what the writer said, Umar is the black sheep in a Pakistani side dominated by a bunch of mad men. Check the video out to see what they're capable of

And I mean mad men in the nicest possible way.
The reason why I love watching Pakistan play is because the guys are a bunch of crack heads. They will play like Gods for 10 minutes and play like shit in the other 10, making you wonder if this is the same side you saw. Let me illustrate this with some examples
Example 1: One day, Shoaib will bowl 99 mph inswingers and break your toes. The same guy will bowl a full toss on leg stump to Ross Taylor and get hit for 28 runs in an over.

Inzamam ran like an 'elephant'
and caught like a 'gazelle'

Example 2: Inzamam Ul Haq will run between the wickets with another guy. He will run the other guy out and end up running himself out. Then while fielding at slip, he'll fly like a gazelle and catch a ball that looked impossible to take. I remember one match where he actually did this and Geoff Boycott, who was in the commentary box at that time said, "That's Inzamam for you. Runs like an elephant; catches like a gazelle."
Example 3: The Pakistani spinner is a madman. Take a look at them over history. I've seen Abdul Qadir, Saqualin Mushtaq, Mushtaq Ahmed, Danesh Kaneria and now - although he plays for South Africa - Imran Tahir. All these guys have a mad glint in their eyes and have a fast bowler's run-up. If you look at Shane Warne or a Harbhajan Singh or an Anil Kumble or even a Muttaiah Muralitharan, it was either a jog or a walk. These guys charge at you as if they're going to take your head off.
And then there is Umar Gul. It's a pity that he doesn't have the madness about him. It's probably the main reason why he will always be Pakistan's second best, even if he is the best at that time

Cricket songs and all that jazz...

 

 

  

Take a look at these two videos. The first one, De Ghuma Ke is the official World Cup song. I see it and want to kill someone because it's played 20 times a day.
The second song is a video created by some guy in Pakistan to boost Pakistan's ego for the World Cup. My boss sent it to me this morning. The video stars some chick called Kiran Khan, who tries to look like Michael Jackson, but looks more masculine than he does. The singer is some guy called Asif Shah, who needed his 5 minutes of fame. Youtube gave it to him, methinks.
The lyrics of the song go something like this:

Boom Boom World Cup, Cricket Cup World Cup
Boom Boom World Cup, Cricket Cup World Cup
Chick sings: ICC, Oh, ICC

 Unfortunately, I'm not even making this up. Check the video if you don't believe me.

When I see videos like these and De Ghuma Ke, I think that I should write my own World Cup song. We could always spoof De Ghuma Ke by saying Ma Ch**da Ke, but that would be too cliched.

So if we're to write a cricket song, we could always do what MAD magazine did for its cricket spoof in the 80s. It was a brilliant one, with a verse dedicated to how the English batsmen were getting raped by the West Indies. Fortunately, I had the copy of the magazine with me. I've attached an excerpt of it here. If you guys want to read the actual thing, just write me a note and I'll scan the entire thing over the weekend or something

But yeah, my primary focus was songs. I know the rest of the world is ranting about how India played the other night, but I'm pretty sick of that right now. Okay we screwed up, but the optimist in me says that we've been known to play shittier cricket.

Personally, I think that the last two World Cups have been rubbish. I probably will attribute this to the fact that both of them had theme songs. Hell, after checking out that Asif Shah and Kiran Khan video, I think that I can write something better. It'll be offensive as hell, but it'll do its job.
So I'm going to try something in the lines of an Irish Drinking Song from Whose Line Is It Anyway?

The World Cup's here again,
Hip Hip Hurray
The TV sets are playing
A song called De Ghuma Ke 

It is really funky
But there is a catch
We hear the song all the time
500 times before a match 

Then the players come to play
The crowd begins to cheer
The ball gets hit for fours and sixes
The home is supported and opponents jeered

Then Chawla comes to bowl
The crowd begins to sigh
Dhoni says, fuck it and gives the ball to Nehra
And the crowd begins to cry

India isn't the only host
It's Sri Lanka as well
Bangladesh gets is maiden call
And beggers are sent to hell 

Then there is a tied match
And Ireland fulfils a dream,
Then Akmal drops 3 catches,
And Pakistani bowlers are creamed
Now we've got three weeks left
To the finals in Mumbai
It's difficult to place a bet
To tell who'll take the cup away

Does India have a chance?
Personally I say no
I'll still watch the game though
Because I'm a cricket whore... 

 

 

 

A worthy reply

A friend of mine replied by email to the India-South Africa match report that I wrote. The mail was so awesome that I had to put it up here.
For the record, he is a psychiatrist who loves photography and you can check out his blog here: http://lensored.blogspot.com/
And here is his reply

Read your piece on the India-SA fuckup - excellent writing, but I feel compelled to provide an alternate viewpoint.

Let me be clear first up - I broke up with cricket a decade ago. Far too many games, far too little drama - even excellence got predictable.

Then I moved to the US, and cricket became harder to come by. I started following baseball and American football instead and developed an unhealthy affection for the Boston Red Sox - a star crossed team for 86 years. Then in my second year as a fan, they overcame 86 years of adversity and won the World Series! That remains the second greatest of my sports-fan life and the greatest moment where I clearly remember all details. The greatest remains the 83 cup - I was 5 then and a lot of memories of it are hazy, though I remember standing on Annie Besant road, outside my grandmas house and cheering as the team bus drove by, Prudential Cup on proud display next to the driver, and Kapil standing behind it, waving through the windscreen. This is one of my earliest memories. That was a time when India dominated cricket. The Asia Cup and Shastri's Audi and Champion of Champions title also helped. Then, as I grew up, the losses started to pile up. Futility in Sharjah, the Rise of Miandad, PAkistans 1992 Cup win - all added to a general disillusionment. Intermediate highs like the Titan Cup and some individual records helped, but it wasn't true Glory! My feeling of self-worth was defined by the fact that in the end we were former World Champions. Over the decade, I've broken up with cricket - I no longer know all players on all teams, and have followed only from a distance the rise of all our 'next big things' (including Dhoni, Raina, Irfan, Munaf and Yusuf). One the other hand I know everything that David Ortiz, Josh Beckett and Tom Brady have done.

Ultimately though, I have realized that these were rebound relationships - albeit happy ones that will probably last.

Truth is, I am once again waking up at 1.30 am to watch India play Holland, now that I have the opportunity to watch. Truth is, I again bite my nails when Sachin hits the 90s. I am again waiting to hear eagerly about Pakistan's collapse...and again, I am developing severe apprehension about running into Pakistan in the elimination rounds.

And the instant return of all those dysfunctional symptoms has led me to realize an important fact...and this is where I disagree with you.

You say that cricket is my whore, when in fact it is the exact opposite situation.

Cricket is not my whore...I am its bitch!

The joys of colonisation

I met a friend of my sister's today and we discussed this article that I had written for Mid-Day a couple of weeks ago. He had a very interesting to point to make. England's best batsmen are South African, as is their captain. Though Strauss may hold a British passport, he is South African by birth. So here's the argument that this guy put forth: the England team's batsmen are not English, while the bowlers are from England or are South Asian.
When you go back to the evolution of cricket, the Lords and the rich were the batsmen, while the poor and the servants were the bowlers and fielders. When Douglas Jardine captained England during the Bodyline series, he was a lord, while Harold Larwood was a coal miner's son. (Larwood also spent some of his time as a night watchman somewhere after his career). The last blue blooded Briton to lead England was David Gower. Before that, you had Mike Brearly a genius captain, but crap batsman leading an Ian Botham and making his career. Also when you think back to England and its captains, barring Ray Illingworth and Bob Willis, everyone has been a batsman (Botham and Flintoff were all-rounders).
Today, it's been a reversal of sorts for England. The batsmen are not from the country, while the bowlers are Britons. Morgan is Irish, while Trott, Prior, Pietersen and Strauss are South Africans. So going by England's hierarchical system, which is still seen today, has South Africa become England's ruler?
Earlier, it was South Asia ruling England when Nasser Hussain was captain. There were players like Mark Ramprakash, Monty Pannesar, Uzman Afzal and more recently, Ravi Bopara.
So with the colonised coming and colonising England, where do the Britons stand? In their defense, we can say that if England lose now we can say they choked because most of them are South Africans and they can also add that they snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, which India and Pakistan have specialised in.

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.

Habits die hard

England's loss to Bangladesh was another exposure of the side's weak bowling attack. True that they've had a crazy schedule with the Ashes, followed by seven ODIs. However, given the amount of international cricket teams have played, this is perfectly normal.
Sure the England bowlers are tired, but they've done this before. They gave West Indies the Championship Trophy at Lords from a winning situation. Last night's match proved once again that they're unable to polish off a team, unless it's Australia or India playing an ODI game against India. It's been the trademark of English cricket.
India has a similar problem. Remember their collapse against England in the Bangalore ODI. They did hte same thing against the same side during the 2003 World Cup. That side had Zaheer, Sachin and Sehwag. And Sachin and Sehwag gave India a reasonable start like they had done here.
Old habits are difficult to stop, but if you don't, you will not see improvement. India and England should take notice of this

Cricket fanatic? Me? Nah

I saw an interesting cartoon by Satish Acharya on CricInfo the other day. The cartoon is funny and witty and is pretty descriptive of how a fan from the subcontinent usually reacts to the game.
However, personally I'm not too excited about the IPL. I've ranted about this several times over about how I feel about the concept.
Sure it looks great on television. I'll also give that it gives the BCCI more money that the rest of the local and international tournaments hosted by India.
Sure it has some great cricket matches and I'll also say that it has some of the best players of the world playing together at the same time.
And let's face it, Season 4 is going to be boring as crap after N Srinivasan announced that there would be no after-game parties.
This means that we won't have an obese Rohit Sharma groping some random actress, we won't see Shane Watson spiking his hair to look 'Very, Very Sexy'.  We already have one VVS and he can't play T20 cricket to save his life. Hell, he can't even play 50-over cricket, yet he's in Team Kochi and will be running the rest of his teammates out.
The only two things that I would love to follow during the IPL are probably Test Match Sofa's ridiculous commentary and Jarrod Kimbler's blog.
When I think of the IPL, I think of this genius like MS Dhoni came up with this afternoon on his explanation to select Piyush Chawla over R Ashwin. "Ashwin's mentally tough, which is why he's not in today's game. He'll do well whenever he plays. Piyush needs some confidence." Going by that theory, players in the side do not have any mental toughness and Sachin, Sehwag and Zaheer are pussies. In the same way, I am not a cricket fanatci because I don't watch the IPL.
And speaking of the IPL, why would anyone want to see Sreesanth captain a side in the first place?