The Rise and Fall of Indian Cricket and Mahi

The recent debacle in the series against Bangladesh once again showed that we possibly don't have the best players representing India. Overconfidence and high handedness often bring about your downfall in sport. India never played to its potential and the players seemed to think we are too strong for Bangladesh. The wakeup call was quiet harsh and so be it.
Selection is largely a call made by the selectors and the captain. While heads must not roll because of one series result, there are some serious questions worth answering. Dhoni once the poster boy of Indian cricket especially in T20's and ODI's is now no more the cool customer. He is clearly feeling the effects of criticism over the last few years. The question is he possibly has brought about his own downfall with some team selection decisions. His policy of not playing Harbhajan and Yuvraj who were his peers is surprising to say the least. His persistence with Jadeja, Ishant Sharma, Stuart Binny are difficult to explain in logical terms. The inconsistency of our bowlers have also added to the captain's woes. There is a clear lack of vision in distributing the workload between a pool of bowlers. Lack of use of Zaheer Khan and Ashish Nehra who still have decent skills is inexplicable. And India needs to play less cricket to avoid our players breaking down. There should be a balance between Test Cricket, ODI's and T20's. Will anyone in BCCI listen? Time will tell.

Lets Be Human Again

What a start to the new year..while every year i grow older, i always have a hope that the world would get better. But i wonder whether my optimism is misplaced. Religious intolerance and hatred seem to be so widespread now that it becomes difficult to pick up the morning paper or read an online news magazine. What is happening to mankind? I guess that's where the problem lies..many people are so fragmented that they refuse to see humans as a common race. First you have the international boundaries followed by state boundaries and then urban and rural divide, religious divide. i could go on and on. The point is in our search for identity and differentiation we are forgetting we are basically human beings inhabiting this lovely planet. Yet we do everything to spoil our planet, its environment, people to people contact.
I don't know what is the solution to these diverse problems of religion, race, language. Its about going back to the basics and believing that we are all humans first and we share the common set of problems around education, healthcare, sanitation, creating jobs and sustainable environment. The only way out is to educate citizens of tomorrow before they indulge in the same hideous acts of hatred and greed. Religious leaders, politicians, community leaders and educationists all have to work towards the goal of making the world 'human' again. As parents we need to teach the same set of values to our children. Now you would question, what is being human? To me its about being sensitive to people around you irrespective of their race, religion, financial status or which college they graduated from. My job gets me to travel a fair bit and one insight i have gained is people everywhere have similar set of problems. Yet there is so much anger and so much divisiveness. Its time we worked on solving our common problems rather than waste our energy on creating divide. Is any one listening? Lets change our mindset before its too late. We still have a chance.

To write and write what?

Its been a long time since i blogged. In this day and age where there is so much happening. It makes you wonder as a writer/blogger (now don't get into semantics ;)) about what to write. I have been facing this dilemma for last couple of years ever since i toyed with the idea of writing a book. Would it be fiction or non-fiction? Thanks to modern writers there is no shortage of 'genres' and topics. That leads to the dilemma..what do you write about. My first attempt at writing fiction was 'Boys of Summer' based loosely on my experiences as a field geologist and with some additional characters introduced to fictionalize the story. Unfortunately i never managed to go beyond the story. There were self doubts whether i could really write a book and keep it interesting enough. My second attempt was with my colleague and brother in arms Arnab. (hope you read this blog and smile about it). We worked on a couple of consulting gigs together (engagement is so boring while gig sounds happening!!)..we planned a book on Information Management "Enterprise Information Management in Today's Businesses". We worked on the table of contents and i managed to write the first chapter. Laziness, boredom and plain indifference led to the book not progressing beyond that point.
A couple of years past and early this year i got back to this idea of book writing. This time i had a point to prove to myself. Choose a subject which was interesting enough and then finish the book !
So here i am after 9 months of labour. My debut book 'A Journey Through 100 Years of Indian Cinema' arrived online last week. It was a load of my chest in many ways. Many have asked me why such a subject. The reason is two fold - one i have been a quizzer and two i have an interest in Indian Cinema. What made me also write this book was limited number of quiz books on Indian Cinema. I hope my work can reach all quizzer with an interest in Indian films. So i am doing my best to spread word about this book.
Do watch this space..for this is only the beginning..there is more to come next year ;)

2012..the Olympics year

This is the year of the next edition of the Summer Olympics which return to London after 1948..
Its another great sporting event that pits the world's best against each other. One wonders how India would fare at this edition of the games. In Beijing we won 1 gold and 2 bronze medals largely due to the individual brilliance of Abhinav Bindra, Sushil Kumar and Vijender Singh. Who will be our saviours this time? As a country we have failed at the Summer Olympic Games. It is indeed surprising that a country of a billion struggles to win a few medals. Given our economic progress it is strange that we are yet to achieve significance as a sporting power. China on the other hand has made rapid strides in the sporting arena along with economic success. Different authors have penned diverse reasons for this suprising failure to win medals. I believe there are three main reasons for our failure - One we dont take sports seriously enough in our culture, two our economic progress is skewed and the benefits are yet to reach a larger section of the society where issues like nutrition and opportunities impact the growth of our sportsmen and women, three lack of international training facilities and modern sports medicine and coaching methods. We have not given sports its due for instance in our yearly Budgets or even in State Budgets. Sports is a great reflection of national pride and it is indeed suprising and sad that we choose to ignore such a wonderful opportunity to annouce our arrival as a nation. It is not only the government's responsibility to promote sports but also private enterprises should build state of the art sporting infrastructure to promote different sports.
Hopefully we would have new champions in this edition of the Olympics..after all the controversy regarding sponsorship of the Games by Dow Chemicals its time to look forward to the greatest sporting event of the year..let the Games being..let the best win..

SMG - An Era of Indian Cricket

Comparisons are often biased..we all tend to have our heroes. In today's cricket Sachin Tendulkar is the god of cricket. There is no doubt Sachin has left his stamp on every type of cricket played. But one question remains on my mind. is Sachin the best Indian batsmen ever? Is he the best Test batsman India has produced? While Sachin holds the records for highest test runs and centuries my personal vote for best Test batsman goes to Sunil Manohar Gavaskar. I know i am openings a can of worms here..but let's look at it a bit objectively..Gavaskar played in an era where India was an average team. He played in an era that had the best fast bowlers be it the fearsome four from West Indies (Marshall, Holding, Roberts and Garner) or the hunting pairs from Australia (Lillee and Thompson) and England (Willis and Botham) and guile of Imran and Hadlee. The best part was Gavaskar took them on even when the rules of the game were fair (no limit on number of bouncers per over) and no helmets to save your head or face. Yet Gavaskar played them with ease and never looked in trouble against quality fast bowling. He exemplified all the attributes of a great opening batsman - super technique, footwork, very steady balance, great powers of concentration and never say die spirit. And the best part of Gavaskar was adversity brought out the best in him. He was one batsman who put a price on his wicket. Not surprising his knocks have become a part of Cricket folk lore evoking the passion of cricket fans all over the world. His knock of 96 in his last Test innings against Pakistan on a mine field of a pitch was a master class in batting. One could always bet on Gavaskar producing his best where the other batsman failed. His knock of 101 on a seaming pitch at Old Trafford in 1974 was another example of how to play fast bowling. His batting skills earned him the respect of all time greats and his ability to deliver the goods when needed made him a fearsome adversary. His feats brought not only records for Indian cricket but also changed the belief that Indian cricketers had about the game. Gavaskar truly was an era of Indian cricket..we can classify the history of Indian cricket as before Gavaskar and after Gavaskar. His deep knowledge of the game and his keen observations make him a wonderful commentator and student of the game. Gavaskar has also never shunned from sharing his batting tips to greats like Sachin and Dravid during his stint as a batting consultant to the Indian team. Added to his knowledge of the game, Gavaskar has a mighty pen as well and has been sharing his insights of the game and its evolution through his PMG columns. He is also a pioneer in Sports Management and was the first sportsman to set up a Sports Management company, Professional Management Group in the mid 1980's. He is truly an icon of the game and we were lucky to have witnessed his era.

Tiger - the dying embers of a wonderful being

The Tiger is a majestic animal..The mention of our National animal evokes mixed responses of fear, awe, respect and appreciation as William Blake immortalized the tiger with his poem 'Tiger Tiger Burning Bright in the Forests of the night'. Legendary hunter turned conservationist Jim Corbett referred to the Tiger as a 'gentleman with boundless courage'. The sad state of the Tiger today makes one wonder if these lines hold good in today's commercialized world where every natural resource is being expended without a thought for conservation and sustainable development. Let's look at a few glaring realities -
India had over 30,000 tigers at the start of the 20th century
Tiger shooting was banned in India in 1970
Project Tiger was started in 1973 when the tiger count had gone below 2000.
In mid 1990s the tiger count was around 3500.
The current tiger counts stands at 1411
The reason for the tiger's sad decline has been incessant shooting during the British Raj by both British civil servants and maharajahs of princely states. Post independence there was the rise of jeep and spotlight aided shooters and poachers. Now poaching still continues with tiger bones and other body parts fetching a fortune in the Chinese markets.
Recently the rise in conflicts between humans and tigers are on the rise as boundaries of civilization keep expanding on to tiger habitats. Frequent news of human kills in Sunderbans and the recent man-eating menace in Corbett National Park are grave reminders of how serious the problem of human encroachment is. For the tiger to have any chance to survive and thrill future generations human encroachment into park buffer and core areas must stop. The state governments must do their bit in providing the required funds, decision making agility to make things happen on the ground. Its a now or never effort that must involve corporate houses, governments and people participation. For those who have frequented reserved forests and heard or seen a tiger in its natural habitat would know what a magnificent animal it is.
I sincerely hope that with the Aircel initiative the tiger would get a fresh lease of life and the master of the jungle would get many more years to survey the jungle in the characteristic nonchalant manner. Nothing like the forest reverberate with the call of a tiger on a moonless night. The long guttural call warning all inhabitants of the jungle that the king was on the move.
Hope the future generations have a chance to see the tiger in all its majesty in its natural habitat.

A Blogger's Dilemma

After months of perceived inactivity (though my mind was busy analyzing the world around me ;)) aka no blogs i finally decided to break my silence. The last few months have been marred by stories of rampant corruption be it the CWG fiasco or the dubious land deals or stories of sporting success. As a citizen of this country my mind has wavered from the depths of despair to the joy's of India's sporting victories..but when i look back at the year that is almost over what strikes me is how the nation's mood has changed from the postive energy of an re-elected government to negativity stemming from the incidents that cast a doubt again on the quality of governance in India.
And its not just the Central Government or the State Governments but right down to the smallest units of governance be it schools, panchayats or colleges that stem from lack of quality governance. We see a common thread lack of discipline and governance continues to hurt India. We may hide behind self-congratulatory statistics like the 2nd fastest growing economy and the tag of 'Growth Markets' but the fact remains that the growth story would be more sustainable and noteworthy with better governance. Yet as a nation we keep hiding our problems under the carpet..case in point the mess during the CWG was clearly hidden to ensure a trouble free games though the people of Delhi were to face the brunt once the games were over..hence the question of India has arrived is largely theoritical as we have a lot of mess to clear up before we can claim our arrival on the world stage..the mess that i refer to is multi-dimensional - education, health, quality of governance, power of judiciary and executive, state of environment to highlight the key points.
Our media (electronic and print) need to highlight the true picture of India to the common man and not sensationalize issues for TRP ratings..while there were numerous reports on CWG financial scandals and the Mumbai Oil Spill.little is being spoken about these issues now. There must be a consistency on part of media while reporting on issues. While the Obama visit got significant coverage (almost like Reality TV) a lot of issues did not find mention. For instance when we talk of promises made by the endless government schemes but little is spoken about the effectivess of these schemes on rural employment and electrification.
We continue the to be a country of misplaced priorities. It is time for the rising tiger to wake from its slumber and shake off the cobwebs of sleep and deprivation. Let's make it happen. Its now or never.