I keep falling in love.

Oh yes I do.

♥

Three things

1. Who in the world is Michael Beer?

I'm reminded of my up-ended jigsaw-puzzle analogy (because I'm self-obsessed like that). What's next? Warney's Sunday drinking buddy?

2. Why, thank you, Gauti. We must all bask in Ashwin's awesomeness. *basks*

(Are you listening to/reading this, CSK? You can always replace Vijay any old day, but not Ashwin! Hold on to the man and release Vijay! Come on, now!)

3. I thought I could go to the match yesterday, I really did. I had an exam in the afternoon, but once I finished that, I thought, hey, I could go home and take up my friend's offer (an open invitation to the match, because he's awesome like that).

I checked the score once the exam finished: NZ 103 all out. I rechecked after I got home: India 52/2.

Not much point in going after that.

(but it didn't rain, which I'm willing to count as a miracle, because just a week ago this city was almost drowning in a torrential downpour that lasted for more than 2 days).

From Eye-Stabbing to Jaundiced

One of the few pleasures of being a Chennai Super Kings fan is the sitting around during breaks, trying to come up with new names for the colour of their costume ("uniform" doesn't sit well with the whole shindig, and "gear"? Gaaah, I'll pass).

From digusting poetry ("like the buttery sunshine that breaks through dense foliage on a pleasant summer afternoon") to disgustingly medical ("purulent exudate from an abscess"), it's been rather fun. I used to settle for the all-occasions "Men In Startlingly Bright Yellow", but it these days it often vacillates between "Eye-stabbing" to just plain "jaundiced".

Was there any other point to supporting the team?

... Oh, oh right. The cricket.

I honestly believe if these jaundiced men had gotten their asses into gear at the right moments, our w/l tally would be 5-1.

See, the game against-

... okay, let me try that again. The GAME AGAINST P-

Oh, lord. Fine. THAT game. The game I'm trying my hardest to forget, the game that actually haunted my dreams the night I saw it played. We were - we -

Geez. But really: that exposed something vital in the inner circuitry of the team. And it has been malfunctioning ever since. Contrary to popular opinion, I believe Raina did the best he could. It's just that something vital's just missing. Against Punjab (yes, I said it - I think I may be moving on. No padded rooms for me, nossir), where our middle order was cracked open like a rotten egg, we found a man unable to handle the pressure that he is meant to handle: Albie Morkel. If Ashwin was determined to be monumentally idiotic in the last over, I would endeavour to say Morkel was even more so, in giving Ashwin the chance to be monumentally idiotic!

That's where, friends, we need Dhoni.

Dhoni isn't revered because he's got prodigious talent with the bat/gloves (he doesn't), or that he's the greatest tactician out there (he isn't), or because he's got some supernatural Jedi-like ability to calmly smile in the face of an approaching tsunami (he'd be sensible and run like hell). It lies primarily in his ability to go out there, see the situation for what it is, and stop it from going sideways (most of the time). He's built most of his success as captain/batsman in making sure his team doesn't fall into the hole it resolutely persists in digging, and that's exactly what we needed there, exactly what Raina provided in our win against Delhi (seems so long ago). Except he got run-out for a needless run (all run-outs are for "needless runs", if you'll notice) against Punjab, and neither Parthiv nor Albie had it in them to take up the responsibility.

This, needless to say, is worrying.

It was like watching your favourite cousin fail in the finals after topping the class the whole year. :(

So, anyway: major dent to the psyche? Check.

Next game: Bangalore.

Look, nobody was really expecting CSK to win this one, and being the gracious team that they are, they obliged.

But how!

CSK, here's a clue: if you're gonna lose, do it humiliatingly. 100 runs, ten wickets, I don't care. That's it. Make me not care.

Don't lose... like this! (because "going down fighting" is a load of bull-crap that doesn't change anything except make you depressed and anxious; "going down with a thump" is something you can laugh off and forget)

Raina was awesome on the field as captain. Like I said, responsibility does him good! I really liked his body-language, and liked even better that that language expressed in great stops and stunning catches.

Unfortunately, the Tamilians in the squad had been hit by an Evil Supernatural Jinx greasopalmus. It's a terrible blight. I present my case:

First, Balaji dropping Kallis off Morkel. "Lost the ball in the background"? Hm.

Second, Ashwin dropping Uthappa while nearly colliding into Tyagi. What are you playing, people? An under-15 friendly?????

Third, Vijay dropping Uthappa at long-on, with no excuse. It's the kind of catch he would catch blindfolded, one arm amputated and the other with just three fingers on. And he dropped it, with all his faculties in full function. Dropped it!

And 35 runs were scored in the next two overs! (And Raina, I thought, made a serious tactical error in saving up Balaji and Ashwin for the death. Either one of them in the end is risky enough. But both? Nuh-uh.)

And "Robbie" Uthappa won the MoM! And he has the NERVE to say that he "wanted to stay till the very end"! What he should've said is, "I'd like to dedicate this award to my South Zone teammates from TN, who were kind enough to recognise that my career as an international player is close to non-existent, and help me out in that regard, as they are generally wont to do, given their modest, reserved and helpful natures. Guys, I can't thank you enough. Three jigarthandas on me next time we play in Chennai."

"GAH" is sometimes all you can say.

So: 172? No big deal, right? Easy.

Except Parthiv gets out early and Raina makes Serious Tactical Error No. 2: George Bailey.

No. 3, yo. Raina, it's YOUR position, and nobody else's. Particularly if that nobody's name starts with "George" and ends with "Bailey."

Mr. Bailey ate up a lot of balls and regurgitated nothing, until I was practically begging at the TV, "George, just get out." He obliged, but only after getting Hayden run-out. And I had practically blown my last remaining fuse by then.

It was too much, too late for the rest, and we folded predictably. And guess how many runs we lost by?

Thirty-six.

I bet Vijay's hands were burning at that point.

Speaking of bets, next match: Mumbai. Again, not one a lot of people were expecting us to win, but hey, Dhoni's back! And that raises the awesomeness by a few hundred degrees.

Buoyed by all the awesomeness and annoyed beyond measure that a lot of my classmates seemed to supporting Mumbai ("Sachin's there" is NOT an excuse. Arre, does nobody get territorial about sporting teams anymore??), I proclaimed, rather bravely, that CSK was bound to win.

And we started off well, we did.

A) No George Bailey. All rounder replacing all-rounder, i.e., Perera (who I was frightened to find out is only a year older than me) replacing Kemp. Great.

B) Dhoni's playing.

C) That point deserves repeating. DHONI. IN THE TEAM.

D) Ashwin out, Jakati in.

E) Raina walking in at No. 3.

We batted well, Raina and Badri were so awesome, but they were never really able to... just. push. the. gear. up. one. more. notch. It was a bloody shame that we were able to scrounge up only 7 overs off the last over with two batsmen who'd been out there for 15 overs at the crease, but Malinga bowled genuinely well.

So. Bowling and fielding. The single most undisciplined effort I've seen from CSK all tournament. It was painful to watch: the sheer no of wides, no-balls, sloppy stops that gave the batsmen opportunities to sneak in extra runs - was this the same team that was so delightfully sharp on the field just a couple of games ago? We really need to pull ourselves together, and fast.

Still, a few timely wickets, and the match was sweetly balanced at the end of 16 overs.

Then Perera came on to bowl, and Dhoni said ten agonising minutes later, "Hm. That might have been a mistake."

Five full-tosses. "Juicy" as they say. All of them hit for four. Twenty-one runs off the over. It was like some sort of mini Groundhog Day: Perera would run in, bowl a full toss, Sachin/Pollard would flick it off, and poof! boundary, Perera would grimace and groan, and Dhoni would get this look that says, "well, it seemed like a good idea at the time...." and then Perera would run in to bowl again, and -

You get the general idea.

Game, set and match after that.

CSK need to do some collective soul-searching. I firmly believe that this is a team with vastly underestimated players - so underestimated, in fact, the players do it themselves. They've got to figure out their roles, and need to forget 21/3/2010. It never existed.

Also, we've got the absolute worst reserve bench in the whole of the IPL. Thishara Perera? Look, I know the guy was good in India last year for Sri Lanka, but he's young, inexperienced. I thought we had Thilan Thushara in the ranks? And you know who would've been perfect? Nuwan Kulasekara. I cannot believe that he wasn't snapped up by any IPL franchise (I think).

Local players? Hi, where are the bowlers? Playing for other teams! It's actually kind of pathetic. We've got a weak pool to choose from, it's sad.

Still, we're an awesome outfit. I love this team way too much to be cussing it for prolonged periods, and I think we're in for a turnaround. Lessee.

(And it's in these kind of moments that I really, really miss Amy. :( )

Floundering in hyperbole

... not to mention crashing through stacks of meaningless rhetoric, tangling up in a bunch of sticky metaphors, eventually to fall into a roiling adjective soup, breathless descriptions cloying on my skin and rolling onto my laptop in great lumps... pretty much the kind of situation I find myself in when Virender Sehwag decides to play yet another of those innings.

It is usually prudent to give oneself sometime to regain lost breath, lest one starts giving into that sticky tangle of hilarious exaggeration (the Neandrathal comparsion's my favourite. Somewhere, Charles Darwin is rolling over in his grave... again). There's something about watching Viru Sehwag (and I don't think it an exaggeration when I say that it was indeed a Divine Intervention that the only full day of Test cricket I managed to catch all year was day 2 of the Mumbai Test) play that provokes intense emotion out of you. He nonchalantly spanks all and sundry on his way to 100, 200, 300... and you think, here's an epiphany. Even with the commentators regurgigating their usual staple of "No footwork, it's all exquisite hand-eye co-ordination" you think, you are obligated to say something about this. Because Sehwag sure ain't. It is brilliant, it is brutal, it's a million Thesauri meshed together into a savage beast of Biblical proportions as you search for -- and fail at finding -- words to fit in everything you wanted to say about Sehwag's innings. You are only more intent on celebrating this "simple, yet brilliant" mind when he comes out later with things like "I see ball, I hit ball."

He still says that, now with a smug matter-of-factness, probably amused at how people are fascinated by that statement of his. He probably still means it, but I'd like to believe that a lot of care, a lot of careful thought and construction go into each of his big innings. But even the cynic in me is defeated when he goes, "I was hitting only the bad balls, but in the dressing room they were telling me I was hitting some good balls too", or something to that effect.

In short, Virender Sehwag = all that's awesome about the Indian team right now. When he fires, he really fires; when he fails, it's not in half-measures, either.

And what can I say about Murali Vijay, other than he was really unfortunate to miss out on a well-deserved maiden ton? He looked delightfully assured and competent at the crease, and not for a moment was Gambhir missed. I loved how he kept the tempo up in the beginning as Viru settled at the other end. He is just so much awesome right now I can't even.

And Dhoni got his second century of the series. Wow. When it rains, it pours, huh?

And what a difference the return of Zaheer Khan has made to the team. Even though he didn't really start pulling his weight until toward the end of the series, just his presence, I believe, could rejuvenate our suddenly-floundering pace attack. It might be the most important plus point EVAH.

The Sri Lankans stuck around, and, uh, that's about it, really. There've been renewed murmurings about the presence/absence of the Umpire Decision Review System (or what the hell ever it's called), with Sanga going as far as to say that a couple of bad decisions cost them as much as 500 runs and possibly a victory or two.

Maybe, but the argument is moot when strong protestations against the newfangled thing are sounding with the backing of rock-hard evidence from the Aus v Windies series going on right now.

Either way, it's like stirring an old pile of stale shit, so.

The other big thing going right now is India's supposed ascension to the top of the ICC Test rankings with the 2-0 win against Sri Lanka. Lot of congratulations and chest-beating going on, tempered, of course, by some well-founded cynicism from other quarters of the cricketing fraternity. I agree, India haven't won enough overseas, the no 1 position is very fluid right now and can change hands frequently, India definitely is not the all-conquering champion side that West Indies or Australia once were. Check, check, check. But for now? That little rankings table reads like the way every Indian cricket fan has always dreamt it would read, for the first time ever. It's a nice moment, and the team and its supporters deserve to savour it while it lasts (except, of course, oh noes! The largely-accepted-for-the-past-eight-years ranking system is suddenly all WRONG because INDIA is no 1! Isn't that all kinds of unnatural? I mean, it's okay when the table shows Aus or SA at the top, cos that's how it'a meant to be, but India? Nah. And, oh, the Evil IPL is Evil. Just in case you'd forgotten.)

It kind of reminds me of my travails with Hindi in high school. I used to hate the language, and I believe the feeling was mutual. I scraped through the subject, until I came to my tenth Boards - the last time I'd be writing an exam for that subject. I was a jingling pile of nerves the day of the exam, and, despite being the most pathetic Hindi conversationist even this side of the Vindhyas, and getting my tenses mixed up practically every other paragraph, I passed with the highest distinction in the exam. "Pratham Shreni" says the certificate, still, and my mind still boggles at the sight. And how did I do so well? Pure dumb luck in that a lot of the questions I'd memorised the answers to made their appearance in the question paper, the fact that I was taking a less advanced Hindi course, and a little bit of innate ingenuity on my part at the time of writing the paper. I was surprised, more than a little pleased at seeing the high ranking, but I also knew exactly how much work I needed to actually put into my Hindi. Certainly I could blame the system for assigning qualifications to people who don't exactly deserve them, for the way the language is taught in schools with more emphasis on memorisation and rote than on conversation and free reading, but that's the way things are. Hindi and I have a much better relationship now - I hope - and perhaps one day I'll be deserving of the distinction I was awarded all those years back.

So, at the end of it all, what am I trying to say, you ask?

I have no idea.

Addendum: Only two Tests in the next 6 months??

Ridiculous. Can't wait for the South Africa tour -- in a year's time from now, I think -- already.

Zip, Zap, Zoom

... and other such onomatopoeic expressions of 'where the hell did all that time go."

'Cause, really? I could've sworn that the Ill-Fated ODI series against Australia finished just now, and already we're in the final Test of a series against Sri Lanka, Dhoni scored his first Test century since the Stone Age (and it is a little scary when I mean that literally), everybody else is helping themselves to centuries apiece, Sreesanth, frickin' Sreesanth, back in the team and producing match-winning performances (not that, of course, I have anything against him or nothin'), India won its 100th ever Test win, and really, what?

Whatever happened to the deliciously slow build-up to Test matches, all that speculation, all that gathering of momentum. Conidering how much resources and how many brain cells are expended on each Test, you'd want to make each of them actually count, yeah?

Honestly? I can't blame Gambhir putting attending his sister's marriage before playing the third Test. After all, your sister gets married only once (hopefully).

Also, it means Murali Vijay gets to open, which, yay! I'd just spent a lot of time arguing with a friend a couple of days ago about how it was certain that Wasim Jaffer would make it ahead of Vijay -- experience, home ground, whatever -- but I'm super-happy he's gotten another chance at wearing the Test cap for India. Hopefully this time he'll get more than a couple of gritty forties and a Run-Out of Awesome.

Also? R Ashwin and Ashoke Dinda in the Twenty20 and ODI squads, leaving out Ishant Sharma. I heartily approve.

I was going to give some -- ostensibly -- deep insight about the first day of play at Mumbai, but then I came across this:



My first reaction was, "Holy hell, that's unhygienic!"

And then it all sunk in and a small part of me died inside.