Lurching through a kaleidoscope of the nonsensical

First off: a very happy new year to everybody out there! Let's hope this year is filled with happiness, success and exciting cricket.

I apologise for the long hiatus. 2011 has been rather trying from a cricket fan's point of view. While I allow that my laziness is partly to blame, this year has been so full of dizzying highs and desperate lows that it's become more a chore than a pleasure to keep up.

The World Cup victory - has it only been eight months? Gosh - has already vanished in a haze of premature nostalgia, and people composing end-of-year review posts have already started warning us that the victory shouldn't hide the greater problems with the Indian team. Namely, our pathological inability to win anything substantial on foreign soil. While I avoid a large chunk of cricket writing these days - I can never shake off the feeling that I'm being talked down to, that there's a great deal of obfuscation regarding different forms of the same sport, that people who enjoy, or claim to enjoy, cricket at its basic levels can find it repulsive when not played for five days - I agree with the basic principle.

The time difference between our tour of England and England touring us was a matter of weeks. In every other way, however - they might as well have been photographic negatives.

The batting floundered, the bowling was inadequate, sure. But I've heard this story before. This team seems stuck in an eternal bog of inadequacy, sea legs on a distant shore, although they are probably more travel-savvy than most billionaires around the world. Our batting literally cannot get any better - VirunGauti at the top, Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar at the top of their game, the Australian Nemesis VVS Laxman, both Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma making strong claims for no 6, Dhoni at 7, a surprisingly accomplished Ashwin at 8, and, uh, well, let's forget about the tail. This flopped repeatedly in England, and in both innings at Melbourne. If our bowling is some sort of patchwork rotating door, the batting is like one of those antique behemoths that crumble to dust at the slightest pressure.

At home, however - they swell like a tidal wave, and all is forgotten and forgiven in a burst of jingoistic retribution.

This team is stagnating. The stage has changed, the props have changed, the actors have changed, the director has changed, the music is loud and the audience is more rowdy, but the script remains the same.

You can call that an uninformed, or barely informed, generalisation. Sure, go ahead. But when I look at the cricket and feel nothing but a tired sort of deja vu, I have to wonder. Is this 2003? Is this 2007? Because it's the same friggin ground, the same friggin team, and the same sort of mindless capitulation after a strong start.

The technical analysis behind India's repeated failures abroad is beyond me; it could be the technique, it could be their mental status, it could be a hoodoo priestess in a rundown shack in Canberra, for all I know. All I hope for now is a quick re-write, before all the columnists start gnawing away like maggots on a three day old corpse.

Again and again, I keep coming back to this quote, but there has perhaps never been a more candid, more true statement about modern cricket:

After all, if taken in the right sense, we are the performers in the circus

Dhoni nailed it. 2011 was a particularly busy year for the circus. I have a vague recollection of a South African tour in January - wasn't Yusuf Pathan quite the hero in that? He's disappeared into the ether now - a ponderous group stage of the World Cup (barring a couple of exciting games) ate up most of February and all of March, and - after the glorious, glorious first week of April, we had the IPL right through the rest of the month and all of May. And then - again, I vaguely recall - a tour of West Indies? Or something. Duncan Fletcher got appointed as coach somewhere along the way, and Rahul Dravid made one of the most ironic statements in the history of the world with regards to a sense of humour.

July and August - touring England and getting our asses kicked, then coming home and kicking ass in return - squeezed in a Champions League in September before the West Indies came home, and -

- you know what? I don't even know anymore. There was cricket, and it was played.

Two of the best things in 2011 for me - apart from April 3, of course - was Dhoni surging to limited-overs glory in the middle of the ear, doing it in his inimitable, last-man-standing, boy on the burning deck style at first, then in a sort of Rockstar Terminator style later. The second was, of course, the rise and rise of one Ashwin Ravichandran. The man's a gem. He really, really is. I feel nothing but pity for Bhajji.

Coming to our current tour of Australia - given that we are following the paths tread as deep as the Grand Canyon, the Sydney test should be a better one. Whitewater raft your way through this one, boys - quit stagnating and shake off the seaweed.

Brilliance.

I sometimes feel out of place in cricket discussions: the upstart, the young girl who's followed cricket for barely nine years, the fangirl who hero-worships Dhoni like some people hero-worship Tendulkar. They speak of several years of supporting a faltering Indian team, watching it slump and then grow and then slump again; they talk of the choking emotion in watching it move from triumph to triumph after the turn of the century. Their heroes are slowly going out, one by one, except for that one man who's been a constant fixture in Indian cricket for more than 2 decades. They talk of the '83 World Cup victory with unbridled nostalgia; in '83 my parents were still five years away from even meeting each other for the first time. This World Cup win, then, is special for them in so many ways - ways that are scattered across cyberspace, freely - but for me?

My affair with cricket started with the 2003 World Cup, when I was a giggly 12 year old who barely knew the difference between 'leg side' and 'off side'. My grandmother was - and is - the original cricket buff in the family. She religiously watches every single match that India plays - and as many other cricket matches as she can - and her enthusiasm as the '03 Cup approached rubbed off on me, more than any amount of media hype. I remember studiously cutting out the colourful World Cup match schedule from the backpage of The Hindu, laminating it, and then checking it every morning to see what match was on that day. Much of my emotional investment in the game today comes from my memories of that tournament. I whooped and I cheered and I cried. I pestered my Dad with all sorts of cricketing questions. I remember enjoying listening to Sanjay Manjrekar and Rameez Raja commentating together. I remember giggling at all the jabs at Mandira Bedi. I remember the Tarot card reading before the Ind v Kenya semifinal. I bought an India jersey just before the final and sat in front of the TV, hoping, hoping, praying. Of course, the team flopped at the final stage, but long before Tendulkar fell, Ponting blitzed an amazing century and I think we'd all come to accept that India wasn't winning this one. But hey, we said, we reached the final. That's pretty damn good, right?

At that time, it was. I religiously followed the Indian team after that. There were periods - most of 2006 - where cricket was the last thing on my mind, but for the most part, I followed the team that I believed would do it, would do it next time. I acquired a working knowledge, played backyard cricket with my brother, devoured as many cricket-related articles as I could.

In 2007, I was the hormone-ridden 16 year old who believed "Dhoni's going to win the World Cup for us this time." I was in the throes of a crush on the man, what can I say? Those dreams, of course, came crashing down pretty quickly, but it was nice while it lasted. I had a copy of the World Cup schedule - this time, it was an already-laminated copy that came free with some magazine or the other - under my pillow, so when I woke up, the first thing I'd do was check the day's match.

One of the things I remember best about the run-up to the tournament was our ability to fool ourselves. Not all was well with the team - the unceremonious ousting of Sourav Ganguly, Chappell being an unpopular coach and media-handler and PR... well, just unpopular in general, home series losses to Australia and Pakistan, a godawful tour of South Africa, where we lost everything except that Test win in Jo'burg and our first-ever Twenty20 - but we won a couple of hastily-arranged bilaterals at home against SL and WI, which of course, assured us that we could still make a fist of things. It wasn't to be, and like the '03 final, we'd (or I'd, anyway) forgiven the Indian team long before the final wickets fell against SL and Rahul Dravid's tears broke my heart. I remember feeling a kind of malicious glee as reports came in about a tournament that was poorly organised and poorly attended, a tournament that had its final end with one of the most pointless and farcical finishes in the history of the game. After all, how can a tournament that had neither India nor Pakistan even make it to the second round ever be popular? But still I told myself: we would do it, we would do it next time.

That debacle prompted me to up my cricket obsession by several levels. I followed the exploits of the team more intensely than ever before. If you ask me, I can tell you anything you want to know about India's matches in between May 2007 to December 2008. Anything. I can even quote some of the scorecards. "Religious" didn't even begin to cover it. We were beginning to lift ourselves after that disaster, and I didn't want to miss a moment. A Test series win in England, a curious, good-now, bad-now, good-again sort of 3-4 loss to Eng in the ODIs (characterised by the most atrocious fielding I have seen from the Indians ever), and then: the inaugural Twenty20 WC.

Hah, that tournament. Full of dizzy highs. The thing that I found remarkable about that tournament - more than Yuvraj's six sixes, or Irfan Pathan's performance, or RP Singh's magic with the new ball, or even Rohit Sharma's emergence - was something that happened during our tie in our first match against Pakistan, and that ridiculous(ly awesome) bowl-out we had to decide the winner. Malik had no clue what was going on; he just picked five bowlers who'd bowled the best that day, and that included the likes of Umar Gul and Asif. Dhoni? Dhoni picked Sehwag, Harbhajan and Robin Uthappa, who'd never bowled an international ball in his life, much to everybody's astonishment. Result? India win that 3-0.

Why? everybody asked Dhoni. What was the rationale? And Dhoni said: they'd been preparing for just such a scenario. The squad had divided itself into 4 groups, and during practice sessions, they would have bowl-out tournaments. So, it was easy, he said. He just picked whoever had the best record in those little tournaments. In fact, he said, Rohit Sharma, who was not in the XI in that game, had a 100% record.

That, for me, was mind-boggling. Here was a guy, just appointed captain of the team, playing a tournament in a format of the game that was still in its infancy, coming into it just days after a long, draining tour of England, with no senior players, having played just one Twenty20 till that moment, no practice matches, no coach... and he was so goddamn prepared. He was at the top of his game, he had every base covered, right from match one of his captaincy. This was a keeper, I thought, and I didn't mean his role in the side. I hoped it was a portent for great things to come.

We would do it next time. Next time.

I watched this team with a sort of open-mouthed fascination over the next year or so. The superbly entertaining, if controversial -- oh, who am I kidding, it was that entertaining because it was so controversial -- Australian tour, the CB series of awesomeness, IPL, the Asia Cup, the Mendis menace and the SL tour, the Border Gavaskar trophy, Ganguly and Kumble's retirement, the captaincy going over to Dhoni completely, the whitewash of England in the ODIs and then that magnificent Test win at Chennai-- 2008 was a fab year, and I loved every moment, cherished them. I became more involved with cricket online -- I joined various forums, I'd check out cricinfo at least once every day, I started reading blogs, and late '08, I finally created one of my own.

'09 and '10 were what I like to consider the sobering years. I didn't follow cricket as closely as I moved to my college hostel which has no TV (it's an evil hostel, I know) but I made up for it with online commentary. One of my favourite memories was listening to Sachin Tendulkar score his ODI 200 on radio a year and half ago. A long lazy afternoon, but I was sitting in front of my radio, super-tense and practically vibrating with excitement. And when Sachin hit his 200th run? I ran out into the empty corridors - everybody else was either sleeping or reading or lazing about - screaming. I knocked at doors, screamed "Sachin scored a double-century!" and hugged everybody in sight, friend or enemy.

But yeah. Those two years gave us a better idea of what this Indian team was settling into. There was failure now, interspersed with success, and people were finally beginning to realise Dhoni was human (about time!) but not dealing with it very well (which sucked). We are a lot with our heads up our asses a lot of the time - the sense of entitlement we possess is staggering, and I do not consider myself an exception. But I love this team, and I understood they had to grow on their own terms. I ranted and raved when I could, and I defended them fiercely. We can still do it, was my constant refrain.

So. This World Cup arrived. My gut feeling was India's going to win this. I told my friends until their ears had fallen off: there can't be a better opportunity for India than this. We are perfectly placed. If we don't win this, then we don't ever deserve to win the World Cup.

My previous post elaborated my feelings on India's journey in this World Cup: I felt like they were saving their best for the last. We would do it, we would do it, I chanted. And how--!

The first striking thing was the fielding. My jaw dropped open! So quick, so fast, so dedicated! Not even in the T20 WC '07 did I remember them being this sharp. Yuvraj, throwing himself around and saving boundaries like a friggin' Superman on steroids! Raina! Kohli! Gambhir! Sreesanth, Zaheer, flinging themselves near the boundary rope! My house did not have current supply for exactly the period between the 44th over and the end of the Sri Lankan innings, and apparently that was the time the Indian plans came apart. Just as well for my blood pressure that I didn't see that, then. But still -- to come out with this kind of a mindset with a billion people breathing down their necks... my heart burgeoned with fresh admiration.

The prospect of chasing 275 was an interesting one. My grandmother had given up. It's Sri Lanka's day today, she said, with a shrug of her shoulders, All fate. What can we do? But I told her to just wait and see. Unlike a lot of the fans out there, I've seen this team slug it out a lot more times than I've seen it roll over in the mud.We would do this. We would do this. We ARE doing this.

Sehwag goes first thing, but I pushed down my trepidation, swallowed it like it was a particularly large chunk of bitter medicine, and thought: Okay, Sachin. Here you go.

Here's the funny thing about Sachin Tendulkar. He has played so many matches and played with so many generations, I bet he has enough to material to fill half-a-dozen very interesting books. He also means different things to different generations. To my generation, he's the Established Hero. We were what? 7, 8 years old when he played some of his most memorable innings? Hell, I was born a whole year after he made his debut. A lot of my contemporaries idolise him, of course. But for me, he's the kind of guy who you just have to admire, but not hero-worship. I can't. I'm baffled at the Tendulkar-devotion. Maybe I didn't live his greatness; after all, when I was starting to really get into cricket, he was struggling with his tennis elbow and run of poor form. So, no. Tendulkar is not god, at least for me.

But last night? I might've thought just that.

However, he was out, and it was upto the Unscarred Generation to get us through. I like Kohli. He has attitude - shit happens is just a few notches below we are performers at a circus for my favourite candid comment from a cricketer - and he has the ability. With experience, he can be a future leader. And Gambhir. With his advances down the pitch like a rampaging anaemic bull with ADD. He was brilliant, but it was upsetting that he threw it all away on 97. More than his century, I raged, he's allowed Sri Lanka a window of opportunity. But then Yuvraj came to join Dhoni, and I sat in my living room with my grandmother - nobody else, just the two of us, sweating because neither of us dared to get up and switch on the fan lest another wicket fell - and we hoped and prayed and watched.

What can I say about Dhoni? For me, one of the sour points of this tournament was that Dhoni'd had a very average tourney with the bat. It nagged me like a particularly persistent insect at the back of my brain. But I told myself he'll come through when it matters. It seemed like a selfish thing to wish for, that Dhoni get in and play big, match-winning innings, that I rarely discussed it with anybody else. But the hope lived on in my heart.

He delivered better than I ever thought he would in the final.

To cope with all those expectations, in anticipation of the massive backlash he'd receive for his selection decisions and strategic moves if he failed, to deal with humidity and noise and chronic back pain - at one point, he looked scarily like he couldn't move another inch - to do all this with the poise and grace that has become uniquely his - no amount of 'ice' and 'cool' metaphors can do justice, sorry - and hit the winning runs with that trademark shot for six (how many times has he finished off a chase with a six for us in his career?)... wow. I salute you, Mahi. It's not like I needed another reason to hero-worship you, but you were brilliant.

Brilliance. That's all I can say. Like a thousand brightly burning suns.

I screamed during the winning moment. Not for long, though. Not even as much as I screamed for our win over Pakistan. After that, I hugged my grandmother and sat down and watched the celebrations and heard the fireworks and grinned and grinned like my face would split open. And the only thought in my head was:

We did it. We did it, this time.

A Measured Post

Now that I've given myself enough time to recover from the India-Pakistan encounter, I think I can manage a decent-enough post building up to tomorrow's final. Or manage some level of coherency at any rate. In case you do want my reaction, which involved much CAPSLOCK and fangirling, you can check it out here.

Now. Tomorrow, India v Sri Lanka for the ultimate glory in the cricketing world: the world cup. I think it kinda fits, you know? Over the last three years, if there's been one constant, it's been: there's an India v Sri Lanka match 'round the corner. Right from the Asia Cup in 2008 - or is it even before? Our history goes way back, but I'll start with 2007.

In early '07, we played a four match bilateral with SL in India before the World Cup, which we won 3-1. We kicked their asses, I remember. However, it was SL that broke a billion hearts when we lost to them and crashed unceremoniously out of the '07 WC. Then the Asia Cup in '08, where we were on a high, rebuilding and recovering, just having beat the World Champions in their own freakin' backyard and destroying the Lankans on the way. We had a completely in-form, frighteningly awesome line-up. And yet in the final? We crumbled to Mendis' carrom-ball. Score to SL.

The Mendis nightmare continued as we toured them later that year. He bamboozled the likes of Dravid and Laxman and Ganguly as SL cruised to a Test series win. However, we came back and won the ODI series 3-2. I don't think it's possible ever to underestimate how important this win was. Almost as big as the CB series win. For me, this is where the Indian team began to show that it had the guts for a right royal scrap. This was as much a defining moment in recent Indian cricketing history as any other.

Then. Another ODI bilateral in early '09, 4-1 to India. SL touring India later that year, Tests and ODIs, both going to India. Then we tour them in '10, drawing the Tests and winning the ODIs.

In between. Five tournament finals: Asia Cup '08 (SL), Compaq Cup 'o9 (Ind), tri-series final in Bangladesh '10 (SL), Asia Cup '10 (Ind), the Micromax tri-series with New Zealand '10 (SL).

That's a lot of cricket in less than three years. I remember a lot of exasperation everytime yet another series was announced, and I even wrote a parody-piece about it. And to think that the biggest tournament in cricket also culminates in an India-Sri Lanka final? Is it the same old yet another, yet another? Can we expect things to be different this time? Especially when these teams know each other inside-out?

Let's have a look at SL's performances leading up to the finals. Well. I don't remember much of SL's matches this tournament, because they've been so efficient. I honestly can't remember a goddamn thing from their group matches, except their middle order had a funny propensity to make life tough for them. Huge wins against Kenya, Canada... a loss to Pakistan, I remember, their only aberration... a washed-out match against the Aussies... then? A win against New Zealand, I think? And Zimbabwe? I honestly can't remember without looking it up, because their campaign has been so unremarkable. Most of their plans have worked, and worked well.

Clinical wins against England and New Zealand in the quarters and semis, and you have to say Sri Lanka have peaked, yeah?

That's the funny thing. I can point out a particular stage in the tournament where each team has peaked, and say, "yep. That's about as good as they can get." Sri Lanka are in that stage right now. Dilshan on song, Sangakkara and Jayawardene in form, Malinga, Murali (if fit), Herath/Randiv/Mendis... everybody chipping in. Rosy picture? I think so.

But what's funny about it, you ask? Well, the only team that hasn't reached this 'peak' stage is India. In every match you get the feeling India is performing sub-optimally, doing just enough to get the job done. Our first match against Bangladesh is probably the closest we've gotten to playing to our potential. Is that scarily awesome, or scarily worrying? I don't know. But that we've gotten all the way to the final despite not being at our best adds some credence to India's apparent strategy of saving their best for the last. Maybe they don't want to get burnt-out before the Big One. God knows we've done that before.

A fairly comfortable win against Bangladesh, a hair-rending tie with England, wins against Ireland and Netherland, both games in which we made our chases a little complicated because of overconfidence at the top, then that last over loss to South Africa, and finishing off our group with another good win against the West Indies. A well-fought quarterfinal encounter with Australia... and then the win over Pakistan in the semi.

About the game...

I will not lie to you, I looked forward to that game like it was my next breath. I mean, I don't know how much of it is the media hype; I don't watch news channels anymore, particularly during a major cricket tournament. But even so: that morning I woke up and the first thing I thought was oh my GOD today's India v Pakistan! And then: oh my god today's my mom's birthday better go run and wish her. But, yeah. I was super-excited.

The match lived up to my expectations. A team is only as strong as its weakest link, so while everybody went on and on about how it was Pakistan bowling v Indian batting, the real battle was between the Indian bowlers and the Pakistani batsmen. And guess what? The bowlers won. It is very special, considering how handicapped the attack was without a second specialist spinner, and that neither Nehra nor Patel had exactly covered themselves with glory in the previous matches. But they came good, and that's just this Indian team all over again: they falter and they fight, but by god, they won't just lie down and take whatever crap's dished to them.

(A note of appreciation here: I raged and raged when I learned that Ashwin had been dropped for the game. The Nehra choice worked very well - he bowled superbly - and Dhoni could've just grinned and soaked up the "oh he's such an intuitive captain" praise. But he didn't. He had the balls to admit that he made a mistake in reading the pitch, and that he ought to have gone in with two spinners, while still appreciating Nehra and Munaf's efforts.)

A lot of talk's going around that it was more a case of Pakistan losing than India winning the game. They dropped Sachin Tendulkar four times, they say. That's criminal! Perhaps. If Sachin'd gone, what's to say Yuvraj wouldn't have performed? What about Kohli? What if Raina had gotten a longer stint? What if Dhoni'd settled in earlier? Maybe if Sachin'd gotten out early, would we be looking at a 280+ score? 220? Can anybody say for sure?

Ultimately, India took its chances better than Pakistan did. Isn't that all about what cricket is? Isn't a pitting of skill against skill? Particularly considering it's a no-contact sport and you're freakin banned if you so much as touch shoulders with an opponent player. India batted better, India bowled better, India caught better! End of story! Why undermine the performance?

I have to say, though, that the Pakistanis did have a great tournament (apart from a few mad overs against NZ) and Afridi was fantastic and super-gracious in defeat. That, though, brings me to one last grouse:

It is best exemplified by this article by Aakash Chopra.

Look, I've never been a fan of the guy. I can't judge his cricket-related articles - not my area of expertise - and I've heard they're pretty good, which, hey. Great for him. But this one? So much more broad-based - too broad-based, in fact, and I think have sufficient authority to comment on it.

"Is this really patriotism?" he asks in the title. No, Aakash, it's jingoism. Welcome to the party. You're, uh, about 60 years late.

The support for the Indian team bordered on crass, he says. Again: where have you been all these years? Then:

In fact, now that we have beaten Pakistan it's considered okay if we lose to Sri Lanka in the final, for we have been avenged. Don't you find it strange? What does it tell you about our evolution as a responsible nation?

Oh god no - pop!sociology or whatever the hell he's attempting. No, Aakash, don't do it!

Then:

Post independence and the division of the country, we just carried forward the same sentiment i.e. sport being the vehicle to assert supremacy. The relations between India and Pakistan remained sour for the longest time. We've fought wars and still continue to have other equally important issues plaguing us. Yet, there's enough reason to believe that we as people, have matured and come a long way in trimming down that animosity, especially via Bollywood and numerous other cultural exchanges, perhaps reiterating time and again that the rivalry is only political. Or at least I'd like to believe that India has definitely evolved and has become a responsible nation. Unfortunately though, all it took was a cricket match to topple that process of evolution. Are we not, in a sense, pushing ourselves back a 100 years?

Just look at that. Look at the histrionics there. I thought I was a drama-llama. "topple that process of evolution"... "pushing ourselves back 100 years"... it's a cricket match, man! Stop attaching more importance to it! You're kind of defeating your own case, y'know.

If there are issues between India and Pakistan now, it's got to do with a little something called "terrorism". I'm sure you've heard? It's got nothing to do with a bunch of guys in coloured pyjamas knocking a ball around.

Also: dude. Sport has always been a source of crass jingoism! Sport is not like real life, where there are a million shades of grey and there are no absolutes. In sport, there are a definite set of rules, a clear playing field, and a definite winner and loser at the end of it all. If we let ourselves go as far as sport is concerned, should it be considered a devolution of intelligence on our part? Bollywood and cultural exchanges are fine, but on the playing field, it's always going to be an Us v Them, and it's always going to bring out our basest instincts. This is the case with every high-profile rivalry out there. Or have you not been evolving with the times? It's a global village! Keep an eye out for crowd reactions every where.

Then he vies for our sympathy, by describing the pressure felt by a player during these kinds of matches. He talks of the reactions of fans and how the players fear them, citing the vandalising of Kaif's house in '03 and the super-hype that the Pakistan tour of '04 got as examples. "We are humans too," he says. "Will we be the nation's pariah just because we couldn't win a game of cricket?" No, just win the next one and you'll be their darling again.

Okay, I don't have much against this part. The pathos is heartfelt and completely understandable. I can't imagine how it must be to have millions of hopes hinging on every move you make on the field.

Then he ends it so:

It's about time that we, as a nation, answer these questions. Are we going to behave like this every time we play Pakistan? If we detest them so much, it may not be a bad idea to severe all cricketing ties with them, for a cricket match can't be used as a benchmark to prove our superiority as a nation. Every time we behave like the way we did this time, it pulls us down as a responsible nation. The choice is ours.

Oh, is it, Mr. Chopra. What exactly did we do? We detest them? Really? We're looking at cricket matches as our only parameter of success against them? India and Pakistan have a lot of history between them, and the antagonism comes from wounds far, far deeper than any random cricket match. Like everything else, every place else, emotion is allowed free rein on the field. We scream and shout and hate and love, and at the end of the day we go home and sleep and go to work the next day. So don't boil everything down to a cricket match, Aakash. You're kinda shooting yourself in the foot.

Also, one of the most memorable India-Pakistan incidents is the standing ovation the Pakistani team got from the Chennai crowd in '99. Or more recently, when we gave the second-biggest cheer of the night to the Pakistani contingent (after our own athletes) in the Commonwealth games opening ceremony. Maybe you could take those incidents and spin a spiel about how close India and Pakistan actually are, huh?

Oh, god. I went completely off-track, huh.

Anyway, tomorrow? Has every chance of being India's day. I remember watching this ad and thinking how appropriate it was. Notice the man wearing the Dhoni jersey and walking the tightrope. He falls off at one point, and the crowd gets worried and anxious. Collective gasp. But he hangs on to the wire, hauls himself back on, and continues walking, much to the relief of the crowd.

I thought: that's India. That's the Indian team in a nutshell.

100th post! \o/

That's right. After two and a half years of much passion, procrastination, and intense love/hate, this blog has finally reached 100 posts. \o/

I was hoping to post something special, was hoping it would have to do with India, but right now? With Ireland having pulled off a Victory of (Pure) Awesomeness against England? I have to talk about it.

So I was talking about letting go of intensity and sitting back on a huge score, and - well, England certainly didn't seem guilty of that, at least in the beginning, skittling through Ireland's top-order, and at 111/5, I just yawned and thought "same old, same old" and switched off the TV. About half an hour later I was getting messages, asking me to watch O'Brien go after the English bowlers.

I did, and wow. I mean, WOW. It was the kind of innings that just seemed absolutely effortless; like a sort of cricketing Midas, every stroke that he played seemed to go over the ropes. And it wasn't like he was just throwing his bat at everything, oh no, there was a method to the madness, or perhaps a madness to the method, and when they took on the Batting Powerplay and unleashed hell on the English bowlers, it was a magnificent sight. Finally, a batting team that's used its Batting PP well! 62 runs came off five overs, and that turned around everything for Ireland.

That's not overshadowing Mooney's efforts at the end. He seemed determined to run his partners out, but his little cameo - not to mention Kusack's efforts with O'Brien - made sure Kevin's efforts meant something. This is the kind of temperament befitting a regular international team, people.

So, where now for Ireland? They play India on Sunday, and as much as I enjoyed Ireland's performance today, I'm definitely holding out for a big victory from India. Definitely Ireland'll be thinking, we can do this. They just completed the highest ever successful run-chase in World Cup history. They must be feeling like they can do anything. But where's the line between self-belief and heady over-confidence? That's something the Irish team will need to figure out over the weekend.

For now, though, celebration.

(As for England? I don't really feel sorry for them - seriously, I've found even Australia and Pakistan much easier to sympathise with, I have no idea why - but they've had a tough week. First that unexpectedly close win over Netherlands, the physically and emotionally sapping tie against India, then this loss against Ireland. And they've got a tough one against SA this Sunday, and the Saffers are looking like a million dollars, like possibly the best unit in the World Cup right now.)

You know what's funny?

I missed the anniversary of this blog... again. Not that anyone aside from me cares, but yeah. For more than two years now, this little blog has been festering in its corner of cyberspace.

I've blogged even less this year than the previous one, and I wish I could blame my academic obligations for this, but the truth is that I'm kind of lazy, and I'm sick of ferreting opinion on cricket on the Internet - most of it is acerbic, hypocritical and completely infuriating, anyway. I just want to watch and enjoy the game - I don't give two shits if it's a Test or the IPL that I'm watching. It's all still the same damn circus, just that one form is more pretentious than the other.

So. When you visit the blog, you pretty much know what you're going to get, don't you? I make no pretensions about myself or my writing. This is pure armchair snark and fangirling - the lowest strata of cricket blogging out there, I know, and I'm perfectly happy with that. No heavily-worded tl;dr analysis over here, thank you very much.

But recently I've found that fangirling? A pretty tough thing to do, especially when it comes to cricket, because, quite clearly, it frequently hates its fans.

For one, much of cricket itself is tl;dw - it practically begs tl;dr in response. I think it's one of the things that attracted me to this sport in the first place. There is nothing I love more than rambling and ruminating and debating minutiae - and cricket lends itself rather beautifully to that purpose. There is such a wealth of time - you can dock away a whole day to watch a match and give yourself to the ebbs and flows of the game; much like well-crafted drama, a game that might have been quiescent, coasting smoothly to a seemingly pre-destined result, a single moment of brilliance and/or mediocrity - a flash of genius, a lapse in concentration - is enough to change the scenario drastically. The script's changed, folks, and there're no stage-whispers to help you. Can you improvise? Can you start a brand new story? It appeals to the romantic in me; makes me scream and curse and laugh, because, that? That is drama; that is joy.

And as long as I continue to find that joy, this blog will continue to grow.

Anniversary thingamajig

So it was when I was reading this post by Leela that I realised something very startling: it has actually been over a year since I started writing this blog (from Oct 5 '08, to be precise).

Not that I've blogged a whole lot, but still, it's been fun, y'know?

Discovered the cricketing blogosphere only July last year, where knowledgeable and entertaining perspectives were given on the game without creaking and tottering in the narrow grip of professional diplomacy.

I figured that since I had a compulsion to write about anything and everything that interested me (leading to quite a few embarrassing moments as my careless scribblings would be invariably be discovered by somebody else in the household) I might as well start one of my own. Let the snark and the fangirling flow. Being a lurker myself, I didn't expect anybody else to read this, let alone make like-minded friends, but I'm glad to have been proved wrong. :D

So... yeah. Yay me.

Addendum: Apparently the BCCI has banned the Services team from the rest of the Ranji tournament as they refused to appear for a match against J&K in Srinagar owing to 'security reasons'.

Am I the only one who burst out laughing at the irony in that one? If I'm right, 'Services' is supposed to represent the army.

Oh well.

Addendum 2: Oh, and today's the fifth ODI between Ind and Aus, in Hyderabad, if I remember right. It's been pouring cats and dogs in Chennai over the past week, let's hope the weather is kinder there.

Also also, Peter Siddle has gone home with injury, and Henriques is down too. Why oh why couldn't it have been Doug Bollinger?

Also hoping to see Tyagi instead of Ishant today. It won't happen, but I can hope.

Addendum 3: Also apparently, in the newest "Let's beautify the Marina!" wave, cricket on the Marina has been banned.

Now, I've never actually played cricket there, but I know a lot of my cousins and friends do, so I express my Obligatory Incredulous Outrage on their behalf.

Thank you.

Fleeting Impressions and Post-Mortems

A week or so ago, inspired by the kazillion 'looking-back-on-2008's-cricket' articles to come, I sat down to write one of my own. It never got finished, distracted as I was by South Africa's exhilarating campaign in Australia, Bangladesh's attempts at renaissance against Sri Lanka, some entertaining domestic cricket, and the Gayle-show on as the Kiwis faced the Windies. Cricket squeezed the most it could out of even the very last days of the year, and right now, looking at the half-finished draft, I couldn't help but think, 'ah, chuck this'. The game transcends any attempt I could possibly make to sum it up, and 2008 was a more tumultuous year than most for this beautiful game. The normal Powers That Be on the cricket field are all out of whack, and therefore 2009 promises to be an exciting year for the game. I can only provide my fleeting impressions of how cricket this year affected me, because that's all my spectrum is limited to. I don't even play the game (hell, the only sport I took up seriously was tennis, and even that fell to the wayside for academics), but I adore it with an inexplicable passion, and therefore I sit here and type, despite the sleep tugging at my eyes.





The year started off interestingly enough, with the Eternal Drama Queens of Cricket presenting you their ultimate production: Sydneygate, Jan '08. More than anything, apart from all the accusations of racism, blackmail, threats, and the vitriol, it was the actual cricket that disappointed me most. Don't get me wrong - I thought Sydney played host to a fantastic Test match that week, but I was reduced to crying tears of bitter disappointment even as a confused Ishant Sharma gazed dazedly at his captain at the other end when he was the last Indian wicket to be dismissed with just five minutes left on the fifth day to be played out for a draw even as the Australians went completely - and undertstandably, in retrospect - berserk in delight. Mixed dangerously with the disappointment was anger and resentment, as the Test had also showcased every kind of blunder an umpire could possibly make on a cricket field, and the team most harmed by this incompetence from Benson and Bucknor was India. Sure, fine, the umpires make mistakes, we get it, but Sydney '08? Was too much to take in one go. Bucknor adjudging Andrew Symonds not out when he had clearly edged Ishant Sharma to Dhoni... I mean, what the hell? It was probably the only time I have ever seen Dhoni stare at the umpire in abject disbelief, and Ishant was left practically doubled over in agony, clutching his hair, and all I wanted to do was go and give the kid a hug. The bottomline was, at the end of the match, I was left feeling utterly cheated, and I suspected, so did many other Indians and that exacerbated every little ramification of whatever happened in that Test. The true extent of the BCCI's financial muscle was exposed, resentment built, Indo-Australian relations were almost irreparably damaged. I thought it was all great entertainment at that time, really, but this statement from Anil Kumble? Hit home in more ways than one: "Only one team out there was playing the spirit of the game. That's all I can say." in that firm, polite voice of his, barely glazing over a simmering anger... the first time I actually stood up and applauded. Kumble handled the fall-out of Sydneygate so well, and the way the team regrouped under him to record an unprecedented win at Perth... it was the absolute high-point of Kumble's captaincy stint. To have gotten his 600th Test wicket in the same game -the wicket being that of Symonds' , ha - was just a sweet bonus. What a man.





And after that was the triangular ODI tournament, and amidst all the furore about senior players being dropped in favour of younger greenhorns, the seemingly inexplicable faith being shown in a woefully out of form Yuvraj Singh, illegal gloves, verbal sending-offs, obnoxious weeds, shadow-boxing, streakers and rugby tackles, India shone through in the end, shored up by the brilliance of their bowlers and Sachin Tendulkar, and a batting line-up that finally managed to click. The finals were won, and the last-ever CB Tri-series trophy to be hosted by Australia was securely in Dhoni's hands, even as his ice-cool demanour was finally broken with a warm, proud smile as he asked the youngest member of his team to lift the trophy first. Talk about proving a point! Here was where we really got a feel of where he planned to take his team as a captain, and it was a portent for great things to come.



Despite all the euphoria however, our inconsistency as a team was once again highlighted as we struggled to draw the home series with South Africa that followed, leaving aside Sehwag's triple-century on a Chennai featherbed. Folding up for 76 on the first morning of the Ahmedabad Test within 20 overs has got to be one of Indian cricket's most humiliating moments.



Still! All was forgotten as soon after that, the IPL started. And everything else ended.



As a spectator, forgetting those two months ain't gonna be easy (not that I want to). Before the player auctions, I was half-considering ignoring the whole thing, faced as I was with the dilemma of whether I ought to support Dhoni's team or the Chennai team, Dhoni and Chennai being two things close to my heart. That was, of course, happily solved by the fact that Dhoni was bought by Chennai for an astronomical sum, but looking back now, I realise now that even if I'd wanted to, I could never have ignored it. The IPL was everywhere. On TV. On the ka-zillion news channels. On billboards. In TV ads. On the radio. In the newspaper. On the internet. My friends' conversations.



Just. Everywhere. It was mind-boggling. And a marketing masterpiece.



I watched and followed, open-mouthed, mind inundated with Twenty20. There was slapgate, there was glamour. There were half-naked cheerleaders, there was delicious controversy. Endless gimmicks. Great music. Horrible commentary. Non-stop advertising. Good-looking comperes (mm). And not to forget, some great cricket as well. Although admittedly, toward the end of the tournament, as a spectator I felt utterly exhausted and was relieved when it finally ended, leaving behind hungry cricket fans even where there were previously none (Nothing more frightening than having my hitherto cricket-phobic mother come with me to watch a match, and admire Adam Gilchrist's batting).



International cricket went inexorably on - the Indian ODI team, overworked in the unforgiving subcontinental summer, reached and lost a couple of finals, the final of the Asia Cup being the more significant of the two, as Ajantha Mendis rent the young batting lineup into pieces with his uber-mysterious spin bowling, announcing his arrival on the world stage as a formidable possible successor to Muralitharan. It was then that Dhoni decided enough was enough, that if the iterinary wasn't loosened, he was going to take matters into his own hands, and took a self-enforced break from the Test series against Sri Lanka, which was eventually lost 2-1 in a series that briefly exacerbated the whole seniors turmoil in Indian cricket, especially considering that the Middle Order collectively failed against the wiles of Muralitharan and Mendis. Dhoni returned for the ODI series, the bowlers shone with preternatural awesomeness, Dhoni almost singlehandedly held the threads of the fraying batting line-up together, the team made most of the little dollops of luck that came their way, and the ODI series was won, with India left a lot to think about.



Pakistan's terrorism-induced isolation in world cricket finally came to a head as the Champions Trophy scheduled to be held there was postponed (read: cancelled). India went on to win the Border Gavaskar Trophy after that, decimated England in the ODI series, won the Test series as well via one of the more memorable fourth-innings chases in Chennai, finally ending a mixed year with an anticlimactic Plod.

So? I don't disagree that it was a great year for Indian cricket, apart from the whole falling apart in Sri Lanka part. The reasons for this are manifold: things that previously used to be an uncertainty in Indian cricket are now our greatest strengths - a fantastic pair of opening batsmen, excellent up and coming pacers, a solid wicketkeeper-batsman, and an innovative, aggressive captain. Funnily enough, the previously rock-solid middle order turned out to be a little soft this year, though.

A lot has been written about how India finish the year as the no. 1 team. Uh, I'm not too sure about that. Like Sourav Ganguly said, we've played most of our Test cricket at home this year, and lost the only two overseas series that we did play (Australia and Sri Lanka). We have yet to play an overseas Test with Dhoni at the helm. With the Pakistan tour cancelled, his first overseas challenge will come in the form of a tour of New Zealand. I feel that India will falter there, but will hopefully come out of the experience a better team.

Moving on from India, the end of the year showed up who was truly now the best team in the world: South Africa. Topping off an excellent year with a first-time series win in Australia, with two absolutely phenomenal Test matches throwing up some fantastic names like deVilliers and JP Duminy, has given Graeme Smith plenty of reasons to smile, smile so hard his (non-existent) lips crack. 11 wins out of 14 Tests in the year? That's the freakin definition of phenomenal.

Australia, however, start the year playing the last Test of the series they've already lost - a position they haven't been in in nearly 16 years, 16 years where whole generations of cricketers have come and gone, either to bask in the glory of Australian dominance or to get spanked by it. Sure, Australia is in a tough position, presumably brought about by some mistaken belief in their old unshakable dominance, when clearly, with a retired Gilchrist, Warne, McGrath, an out-of-form Hayden, Lee and Hussey, lack of a proper spinner, a rash of injuries to key players, and the exposure of the limits to Ponting's leadership, they aren't. What surprises me, though, is the reaction of the Australian media. I mean, the death of Australian cricket? Over-reaction much? Sure the team had a tough year and it will be some time before they come close to being the team they once were, but these post-mortems from the Australian media aren't helping matters any. They seem to have firmly perched their rear on the panic button, and while that is admittedly funny and great to enjoy, it ain't pretty. And here I was, thinking only the sensationalist lookit-me-dammit Indian media did that. It is an international malaise, apparently, and somehow, that's not very reassuring. At all.

And the Australian selectors aren't helping matters any. Before the Border Gavaskar Trophy, I had no idea who Trevor Hohns or Andrew Hilditch was - to me the Australian selection board was just an anonymous bunch of suited men who had the most enviable job of typing out and selecting the best players in the world and sit back and watch them win match after match. Now, though? When faced with an actual crisis situation? They run around, completely confused. Australia have gone through a kabillion spinners for the Test team, some of them not even the first-choice spinners for their State sides, they have persisted with out-of-form players in Hayden and Symonds out of some apparent misplaced sentimentality, denying younger players the opportunity to play for the national team (hello, where's Marsh, Jacques, Rogers and the rest?). All this while, the Aussie selectors have had a team that they could put together like a complete jigsaw puzzle, all the pieces fitting perfectly against each other, forming a formidable team that demanded the highest intensity and great feats to be defeated. Now, though? Now, the jigsaw box has been upended, the pieces are all scattered and several are missing, and the selectors are trying to fill in the gaps with misshapen pieces of cardboard and glue.

So. 2009 promises to be a year which would finally decide who takes over from Australia, and my bets are on South Africa, although India seem to have a great chance as well. Exciting stuff. Also looking forward to the Twenty20 season this summer. I've enjoyed all the exhilarating Test cricket, now I think it's high time for some T20 action.

Oh, and because I couldn't help it, here are my 2008 teams of the year:

Tests
Virender Sehwag
Gautam Gambhir ( I know, I know, where's Smith? you ask. I say that while he's had a phenomenal year, I prefer to look at the opening combination as a whole rather than the individual batsmen. As a combo, VirunGauti have always been greater than the sum of their parts. A fantastic rocket-propellant at the start of the innings).
Ricky Ponting (Amla just misses out)
Kevin Pietersen
Shivnarine Chanderpaul (like, duh)
AB deVilliers (has had a great year with the bat, and is an awesome fielder)
Mahendra Singh Dhoni -wk, capt. (Need I even explain?)
Zaheer Khan
Dale Steyn
Ishant Sharma (sorry that Johnson had to miss out, but Zaks and Ishi have been so phenomenal, even on tracks least conducive to pace, and are one of the main reasons India has done so well this year)
Ajantha Mendis (all hail this special spinner. He promises even greater things for Sri Lanka in the coming years)

12th man: Hashim Amla

ODIs
Virender Sehwag
Chris Gayle (br... if I were a bowler, I would be afraid of this combo. Very afraid. )
Gautam Gambhir (highest run-scorer in ODIs this year, and has previously shown the temperament and ability to be a successful number three, as in Australia)
Kevin Pietersen (there's no getting away from this man)
Yuvraj Singh (ah ha ha, after I brainwash him to believe that every opposition he plays against is England)
Mahendra Singh Dhoni - wk, capt.
Andrew Flintoff
Daniel Vettori
Zaheer Khan
Nathan Bracken
Ajantha Mendis

12th man: Stuart Broad

Here's wishing everybody a happy and prosperous New Year 2009.