A God Or A Ghost

So finally the 200 has been breached in the odi’s. I am not surprised that Tendulkar was the one who did it. Before you continue reading this post let me warn you that I am not a Sachin fan. I admire him for his passion for the game. He still likes his job and excels in it even after twenty years. I find it difficult to keep the love going after 6 yrs. There is many a lesson to learn from him. But let’s keep it for some other day. This post is more on the evolution of the batting in the LOI form of cricket.
Many batsmen have threatened to breach 200 runs mark, but perhaps got too greedy reaching it. Most recently sehwag and dilshan threatened to breach it in the same match. The advent of T20 has pushed the scoring rates to a new high. But what has made the feat achievable is the powerplays and mandatory changing of the ball after 35th over. The bats have been getting better but still it was difficult to maintain the tempo for 50 overs as the balls used to get softer and hitting 4s and 6s with tired limbs was not easy.
If we study the history of the limited overs game, In the first 20 years only 3 men managed to breach the 150 runs mark a total of 4 times. Twice by that great man Viv Richards, once by Kapil Dev and Glenn Turner. These are remarkable innnings as these were before the era of fielding restrictions, helmets, power-plays front foot no balls, strict leg side wides rules, restriction on bouncers etc.
The 1992 was the dawn of a new era as the 15 over field restrictions was introduced.
However it was not until 1996 that powerhitting caught up. In the next few years the 150 mark was routinely breached, till the bowlers started catching up. The team scores continued to rise but the individual scores started seeing a bit of a slump.
Then came the T20s, power-plays and the ball change rules. These changes have removed the bowlers totally out of the equation. These along with ever shortening length of boundaries have removed any challenge whatsoever the batsman had. Only obstacle a LOI batsman has thesedays is boredom.
Technology is advancing in all sports, but so is the human effort. Bolt still has to run 100m’s. Better shoes and tracks help him, but he still is a cut above the rest.
We love the nadal/federer rivalry for the contest, the rallies. It would have been boring if they had been indulging in a slugfest of aces. Similarly in football people love goals. But we don't remove the defenders and goal keepers and have 90 mins of free kicks and penalty shootout.

I don’t understand these craze for feeding more 4s and 6s. A six used to be thrilling as we never knew till the last moment if it was a six or the batsman was out. These days the moment a ball is hit in air the only thrill is if the ball has been hit out of the stadium or not. Perhaps we should bring the original 6 rule. Award 6 runs only for balls hit out of the ground. Not an impossible feat. I love the game. And want to keep on loving it. But for that, the contest should return back. A few more years of such ghastly innings I am off from this nonsense for ever.

The Tragedy of Fourteen Eleven

Fourteen Eleven is celebrated as children's day in India. Tragically it(1411) is also the number of tigers left in India . I often wonder what kind of legacy are we leaving for the future. Will we be leaving any at all? What role does mankind have to play as an evolved species. For what do we owe an highly evolved intellectual faculty? Is mankind supposed to be a cold blooded sophisticated predator with an insatiable hunger to kill without any provocation or cause?

It's high time India realizes the havoc it's ever burgeoning population is causing.
We need our country to be as beautiful as our National song Vande Mataram depicts it to be. It is possible, but will take a concerted effort from both the individuals as well as the government.

"Save the Tiger" campaign should not look at the tigers in isolation. We have to introspect and look at how we can reduce the consumption of natural resources.

At individual level I think people need to shift to a more vegetarian way of life. By vegetarian way I do not want to restrict to what we eat, but also what we wear. The next time you lay your eyes on the exotic leather wallet/belt/shoe, pause for a while and think before you buy it.
Companies should not look down upon employees if employees start turning up in sneakers. At the end of the day its the quality of work which matters and not the clothes someone wears. Companies should encourage casual dress code.

Civic authorities should realize their role as town planners seriously. We need to penalize people who crave to dwell in independent houses/bungalows. Living in apartments/multi-storeyed buildings reduces the geographical span of a city. It also makes planning way simpler. Make public transport affordable and practical.
Tier 2 cities like Bangalore have not learnt anything from the experiences of metros. The public transport in most of these cities is unreliable,expensive and use non-CNG vehicles.

As a fiscal policy it's high time the government removed the subsidy on Petroleum-products. The prohibitive prices will drive down the demand for petrol, create demand for products consuming alternate/clean energy. As the demand for petroleum products decrease the prices will go down.

We need to realize that Tiger as the king of jungle is not of mere symbolic importance. It will accelerate the vanishing of forests. Without forests our country will cease to exist as we know. We will be a vast barren desert. Save the Tiger, Save INDIA.

Mumbai for ALL, But No One for Mumbai

Mumbai belongs to everybody? Really, or is it that everybody wants to belong to Mumbai?
Experts of all hues say that the constitution bestows a right to seek employment anywhere in India. But most importantly the constitution is mum on dignity of a citizen. Shouldn't the right to live with dignity be of paramount importance.For long Mumbai has been the land of dreams and opportunity. A significant chunk of India is spread across the failed states of central and northern India. Millions from these states flock to Mumbai every year. They slog hard and lead a piece meal existence. In a way they are like birds who fly to warmer climates in winter. But unlike the birds they cannot get back. Millions of such birds keep flocking to Mumbai every year. But the truth is the warmer lands are harsher than the cold climates.
Mumbai has become unsustainable. There has to be some kind of censorship to control its inorganic growth. I dont condone the sena, I care for Mumbai.
But I would like to put a question to all the Non-Mumbai intellectual crowd who proudly say Mumbai belongs to all. How many would agree for a National tax for Mumbai. It pinches right? If Mumbai belongs to everybody, everybody in India has to contribute for it. A healthy Mumbai is necessary for a healthy India

Folk arts means of sustainable rural economic development?

I was told about a toy town called  called Channapatna by my friend some time back. A visit to the Cauvery emporium in Brigade road, ignited my curiosity and I decided to pay a visit. I took one amongst the plethora of buses available from KSRTC bus stand.My friend had given me the contact details of  an artist there. I had seen some of the artecrafts in the cauvery emporium. But the sheer variety and beauty of some of the items in his workshop blew me away. The variety and ingenuity of the some of the toys is unbelievable.The toy making process ensures minimal  wastage of wood. The colours are made of vegetable dye and perfectly safe for children.Recently I read a report that most of the toys sold in India have lead paint on them. Even toys from well known manufactures like fisher were known to have them. Rather than buying such toys we would be better off  exploring such handicrafts. It would be environmentally and economically safer. The toys cost very little as compare to toys from fisher.

Apart from toys the workshop also contained many utlity items like fruit baskets, key holders etc.
The most intriguing craft work were the wooden inlays. These are wooden portraits. But instead of colour they use pieces of wood  cut into various shapes to form the portrait. Imagine visiting your sister for raksha bandhan next time. Gift her a wooden inlay of your childhood photo. She would be thrilled to receive this instead of a box of Celebrations from Cadbury.  It would also be cheaper.

India is filled with such artisans. Many of these arts are dying a fast death. These arts can form unique gifting ideas. Patronising these art forms will help us sustains these arts, as well as create more jobs in rural India. If people in villages/small townships can find sustainable jobs, they will not have to come to the cities and we wont have parties like shiv sena

An Elixir for ODI's

One day cricket is in news again, albeit for all the wrong reasons. I am not in favour of abolishing it.
For crickets sake we need to Ensure the primacy of Test cricket and need to make it elitist. Restrict it to 8 nations. Use T20's as a tool to popularize cricket and use ODI's as a bridge between Tests and T20's. Cricket should follow a 4 year calendar. The bottom two of the eight nations be relegated. To make ODI's more interesting it is imperative to make changes and bring the bowler back in the game. I don't agree with the concept of 2 25 over innings. Shane warne had proposed this around 5 years ago. At that time it looked interesting, but not any more with the advent of T20's.

Some of the changes I propose:
1. Introduce a min cap for bowlers and abolish the max cap. I suggest, make it compulsory for 4 bowlers to bowl 10 overs each. No restriction on max no of overs a bowler can bowl. This eliminates the need for bits and pieces players. The bane of ODI cricket.
2. Abolish the concept of runners for batsmen. It's equivalent to chucking by bowlers. No substitute fielders either. This will ensure only genuinely fit players will play.
3. Better ball which will last 50 overs. This will bring back reverse swing into play.
4. Increase the bouncer limit to 2 per over.
5. Reintroduce backfoot no ball rule. If the non striker can leave the crease before the bowler delivers then the bowler too shall be allowed some lee way.
6. Restriction on boundar dimensions. The bounday ropes need to be atleast 75m. We need to give the spinner a chance to take wicket. Entice and deceive the batsman. I was aghast to see Hayden beaten in flight hit a 6. Modern bats and short boundaries are a sure shot death sentence for spinners.

Adelaide Dilemma

Indian cricket bids to do tomorrow what few teams have managed to do. So great has been the dominance of Australian cricket over the past few decades that not losing is an achievement in itself. The euphoria created by the Perth victory may well be forgotten if Australia get off to the way they did here four years ago. The Indian has to make a few brave decisions. The news papers are abuzz with who is going to open and Harbhajan's chance of playing. If things where left to me, I would have gone for both Harbhajan and karthick. But then who do we drop. Not an easy choice, but to me it should be Saurav Ganguly. Agreed he has been probably the most consistent batsmen over the past year. But he has failed to get going in the series. For all the brouhaha created over his dismissal in sydney few manage to see the poor shot played at a crucial juncture of the game. Its not that we would be weakening our batting. Harbhajan is a decent bat. The Indian tail has improved a lot more than the Indian top order over the past few years.
To me the Indian line up would read
Karthick
Sehwag
Dravid
Laxman
Tendulkar
Dhoni
Sehwag
Kumble
Harbhajan
RP Singh
Ishant Sharma