Saturday, October 16, 2010

The ass-kissing Sachin fan

Sachin Tendulkar. I remember one time when India was touring South Africa under Rahul Dravid's captaincy and Sachin wasn't playing the best cricket at that time. His average had dipped a lot and people were questioning his role in the side, calling him a liability to a young Indian side. But there was this one cover drive that he played off Ntini. The ball wasn't that bad, but Sachin touched it and it went for four. My uncle was watching the match with me and said, "Even if you hate the way he's playing, you look at a shot like that and you forgive him for everything."


That was three years ago and today Sachin plays shots like that all the time. He's been Bradmanesque and remarkable. We all know what he's done over the years and he had nothing to prove to anyone, but nonetheless he just went on like a machine on overdrive and produced century after century and now he's just three away from 100 international centuries.


The Australian series was tough. It could have been two drawn test matches, but thankfully it wasn't. Now with NZ coming down, Sachin should ideally reach his 50th

Thursday, October 7, 2010

The many meanings to VVS Laxman

Laxman did it again against Australia
You can't ignore VVS Laxman.
He can't field in the deep, he plays the worst T20 game in the history of cricket and he can't run between wickets in the 50-over format of the game.
But give him a test match - add to that, a test match against Australia, the transformation from Very Very Shitty to Very Very Special is evident.
He did it again and this time with a backache.
What looked like it would be a boring draw ended up being one of the greatest test matches of all time.
Who would have thought that on day one, when the commentators said that the pitch is dry and has no response, that we would get a result?
Who would have assumed that those criticising the pitch on the first three days, when both Australia and India piled over 400 runs, that they would have this as a result?
We owe it to a lot of people for giving us a great test match. Laxman, for one. Ishant for bowling like a madman in the second innings and batting like a veteran in India's chase.
We owe it to Billy Bowden for his rubbish umpiring in a time of chaos. We can never say which was worse: his declaring Ishant out or his declaring Ojha not out. It'll always be a mystery that will elude us.
But we owe it to the game. Test cricket is still alive and kicking and hopefully, Bangalore will also see cricket chaos.
But this is about VVS. As my friend Ipsit says, "A penny for your thoughts on our old friend VVS's tendency to fart around scoring the odd 50 or 100 here and there...and then comprehensively gang-raping the Aussies every two years to ensure that he gets to fart around undisturbed until the next Aussie series."