Best actor - Female

.... and the award goes to Shilpa Shetty!! After all the hoopla she created with first complaining of racism, getting the culprit kicked out, then telling she was not racially abused, but setting the ball rolling on ensuring the co-conspirators during her torture days in the house of big brother don't go scott-free, to finally now, WINNING IT! The people behind the show want us to believe that the contestants didn't know that the whole racism thing got so much publicity. Sure sure, we believe you. :-)

Damn girl, you smart or what! Thatz a cool 100,000 pounds she has pocketed. Basically she let her sobs actually become racial bites to the desi diaspora, she then questioned Britains claim of being non-racist, which made Britain guilt-ridden and ended up voting for her to win! After winning she had this to say, "I have made India proud in UK". :-) Sure girl, crying on TV is exactly what makes us proud! Happy shopping . :-)))

Notice, I have tried to appease all the new age actresses who hate being called an actress and would rather be called an actor. Their logic being, you don't have doctress or lawyeress and since acting is also just a profession, they should be called as actors. What the big deal? There is already a dictionary approved English word, actress! Why make us all think that much more hard to be politically correct every time we have a casual conversation about movies with, "eeeh, sorry, didn't mean actress, meant female actor"!

In my opinion, Almost as pointless as renaming Bangalore as Bengalooru. ;-)

SE strikes back!

Its been a while since I had any gadget on this blog. Here is something from CES 2007 which is of relevance to the Indian mobile buyer. Sony Ericsson has had quite a bit of success with their walkman series of phones, but most of the phones are in the 10K plus range which is not volume market in India yet(but the ante is being upped everyday). The low end market leader is still, Nokia, the made for India range of phones.

Here is SE trying to dent this market, and by the looks of it, there is potential here people!







At the start of last year the thought of a below 10K Walkman phone would have been outrageous! This baby should be around the 6-7K mark and has all the whistles needed to make a mark.

The greedy, The bully and The victim

India won yesterdays day/night ODI against West Indies in Cuttack. The match was a real contrast to the previous encounter in which both teams crossed 300 runs while yesterday neither team could cross 200! But what was more interesting than the match itself was all the drama that happened behind the scenes regarding the telecast of the matches.

The BCCI, henceforth called the greedy, had made statements a while back, where it had stated that all matches held in India will be given to Doordarshan, henceforth called the bully, by default and the other broadcasters will have to work out their telecast modalities with the bully. Somewhere along this line the greedy changed his plan and decided to sell the telecast rights to matches being played in India. Quite obviously the bully does not have or did not want to spend so much money on telecasting these matches. It stayed out of the race and waited. Couple of initial series went to the Star Sports-ESPN combine. The bully sprang into action and demanded that they should be allowed to simulcast the matches as they have the maximum terrestrial reach within India. The Murdoch party have deep pockets and were smart enough to comply while making a buck or two in the process. Then came the chance of the dubai based Ten Sports, a new player in the game, it challenged the bully that what it was doing was not fair and that they needed a revenue sharing model. It was agreed upon that the same Ads will run on both the bully and Ten Sports. This of course didn't happen as planned as I couldn't see the same Ads on both the channels. None the less, another series was viewed by everybody and another disaster averted.

Now comes the newest entrant in the whole rat race, Neo Sports, henceforth called the victim. The victim has put a lot of money, 612 million dollars worth of money, into buying rights from the greedy to telecast live all matches being held in India. The deal goes through and the greedy and bully don't say a word. When its time for the live telecast, the bully wakes up and wants a piece of the action. The victim has spent so much money that its existence depends on the revenue generated from the telecast of these matches. The courts still side the bully, but now with a twist. They can telecast the feed from the victim, but with a 7 minute delay. Yes, this means that you have to resist following cricinfo and instantly delete all the latest score SMS's that come and mask out the four corners of your TV set as every channel in India will show the latest scores! Thanks to the greedy and bully, we have a new twist to India's favorite pastime. The audacity of the bully doesn't stop there, not only does it get the feed for free, it shows Ads which generate revenue for itself, all at the expense of the victim.

The victim on the other hand is not exactly helping itself. The CAS (Conditional Access System) , which is followed in the metros other than Chennai from this year came into effect, ruled that no pay channel will demand more than Rs.5 per subscriber. But Neo Sports knows that the majority junta in India is still at the mercy of the cable operators. It therefore has decided to charge Rs.58.50 per subscriber!! Agreed that India is cricket crazy but its not that crazy either. So, as expected, most of Bangalore at least does not have Neo Sports and is more than happy to view the 7 minute delayed feed from Doordarshan.

Agreed that most of India does not get cable, but how can Doordarshan do this kind of arm twisting? They should pay for what they get or if they mask their bully attitude with the reason that they are trying to cater to the masses, then, the money that they make off the telecast (via Ads) should be given completely to the original telecaster, in this case Neo Sports. How is BCCI given a free ride on what it can do? If the High Court cares so much, then why not prevent BCCI from actually selling the rights to anyone for astronomical costs? Why not give Doordarshan the first shot at buying the rights and only on being rejected should BCCI try selling it to the other broadcasters and then on Doordarshan shuts up for good!

Cricket in India, can any other sport(business?) get any murkier?

Music Review: Sona

Wondering when a movie by this name got released or is gonna get released? Good luck finding it as I am not talking about any film. :-) This is a pop album which was released a while back, apparently, but the music video got released recently. Or more accurately put, I saw the video recently and then I just had to listen to the album, and I have no clue when the album was actually released.

I have been told that the songs of this album have been on FM stations in Bangalore, but surprisingly I hadn't heard them. The songs in the album are very fresh and nice. The lead singer is Sona Mohapatra, who is a slightly peppy and less strong version of Shubha Mudgal. Her sound is not soft and sweet but can still render melody. I don't know how good or bad she is in classical music, but for pop numbers, her voice is just about perfect. The video of the song Aaja Ve got me interested in the album just as much as the song. A song sung by a female, a good looking one at that, has a video that doesn't have skimpily clad item number girls shaking their booty. This for me is a novelty in itself these days and the Computer Graphics in the video do it absolutely no harm.

From the songs perspective, I personally enjoyed, Aaja Ve, Bolo Na and Sapne. The other songs in the album are also pretty decent, but right now, these 3 songs don my playlist. Ishq Nachaye is sorta given a sufi touch with Abhi nahin Aana showing that she can sing soft songs too. The music for the album is by Ram Sampat who had done the music for the bollywood film Khakee, but hasn't been seen doing any good films off late.

Give it a listen people, some creativity from an Indian artist in the Indipop scene after a long time. Definitely prefer this over Atif Aslam's Doorie, which again is a rarity these days with singers from Pakistan doing very well for themselves in the Pop and Bollywood scene. I give the album a 7/10.

Ready To Eat?

I saw a deal a couple of days back in a supermarket for a "buy one get one free" for microwavable dishes. Since these quick food thingies come in very handy these days, I thought of giving it a shot. On hindsight, I shouldn't have.





People.. do you see any similarity between the dishes shown on the cover on the left and the actual cooked dish on the right?? Damn... this could easily win the worst microwaved dish ever, and I take no credit for that! :-|

Get on the fast lane...

WiMAX is touted as India's expressway to broadband pervasiveness. The storyline is similar to what was promised by cellular technology a few years back. India just didn't have the time and the corporate India didn't have the interest to invest money in laying fresh copper cables for getting a phone in every house in India. They did what many technology leaders who visited India a few years back had suggested, "Take the wireless route. You have to get there eventually, why not get there right now!" Now its the turn for broadband to take the same route. Though I do feel that broadband has taken off in India so well that every service provider is backlogged. BSNL can't provide connections for the next 2 months in a place like Indiranagar while Airtel can't cover the Outer Ring Road stretch because they don't have enough high capacity switches! None the less, nothing like going wireless anytime anyplace.

Aircel Business Solutions, the Chennai based service provider has announced launching of WiMAX operations in Bangalore. They are starting off in 3-4 popular areas with a 5km radius of coverage and plan to expand soon. They apparently are using equipment from Israeli company, Alvarion, which was one of our major competitors at my previous organization. We were good, but they were damn good! :-) Hopefully their WiMAX products will be just as good and reliable as their pre-WiMAX products.

Cry Baby & Supporters

A bollywood actress whose career is on the decline decides to prop it up. Instead of working hard/harder, she decides to take the relative short cut. She decides to contest in a reality show hosted in the UK that is now cloned in India. The actress in question, Ms. Shilpa Shetty, the show in question, Big Brother and the clone show in India, Bigg Boss.

When Shilpa made it into the show, currently in its 5th season in UK, and this hit our papers here, it did take me by surprise. I thought, if its a true reality show, she won't last a week! The only reality show I have ever followed was Survivor-I and that show was quite cut-throat. It takes a different kind of skill and resolve to last it out and our dainty lady just didn't seem to have what it takes. True to form, Ms. Shetty was splashed all across the media and also made it to the front page of the papers today weeping and whining.





She is supposed to have been racially abused in the show and called a "dog" and "the indian". She was also called fake, a liar and pathetic by another contestant. This is most expected from contestants who stand to gain a lot of money if they last it out. Why should they be nice or real or anything else to her? She should have known this before she got into it. Everything comes at a price, and her price for the fame she expected was this kind of harassment or humiliation she faced.

There is a definite racial undertone in many places in the US (personal experience) and I have heard the same from friends about UK and Australia. What happened didn't surprise me one bit, but the hypocritical reaction by many in India(not UK) is what is really surprising. Is racial abuse alien to Indians? What about when we call people TamBrams(Tamil Brahmins) or Ghaatis or Kallus(blacks) or Firangs(whites), aren't these racist abuses in the same vein? The reason why such remarks as seen on Big Brother cause an uproar in countries like US or UK are understood, coz there is a constant government and social initiation or maybe compulsion to discourage these kind of remarks. But in India, there is a lot hidden agreement to all these kind of statements. In many cases, these are not considered racist even and hence go unnoticed, but that doesn't mean these are not racist.

Who are we to call anyone racists??

Want a day for yourself?

Tomorrow i.e 19th Jan is supposed be World Popcorn day! DUH!! What is world popcorn day? Whatz next? World Bonda day? These kind of days usually take birth in the brainy minds of execs from greeting card companies like Hallmark and Archies. But do they really expect people to send a greeting card with "Happy Popcorn day, may all the corn pop!"?? :-)

First Birthday!

Its been a whole year since I started this blog and I almost missed its first birthday!

Here is how it all started and must say some of the first few posts look funny to me now. :-)

Thank you all and yipeeeee..... :-)

Sponsoring The Pirates

How many movie VCDs or DVDs do you own? If the answer is not zero, how many were bought from the streets and how many from the stores. The answer most likely, atleast in Bangalore is bound to be "from the streets". The latest movie releases on VCDs and DVDs are available at throw away rates from the streets at every nook and corner while the same cost a small fortune in the stores. Is it ok to buy these from the streets? The obvious answer is likely to be no, but lets delve a little more and be a little less idealistic.

Every big celebrity event you see on TV, you will find all the big stars telling us to kill piracy. So, we have piracy happening so blatantly for so many years now, do you see the celebrities making any less money? Who is losing money here? Do you really think a 5 minute dance show deserves 20 Lakhs?? Thats 4 Lakhs per minute! I am sure many will immediately retort back with, there are many such professions that don't deserve the money they make. For e.g. the software engineers working in the IT industry, do they deserve the money they get? Luckily there is not much anybody can do to make us make any less money, the piracy in software has most definitely not brought down my salary! ;-) So, coming back to the topic, why should piracy be stopped? If I am OK with the low quality of the pirated tapes, why should I buy the original? Why should I pay so much more than I think they deserve? If I don't want to wear the supposed high quality clothes from westside or shoppers stop and can make do with the clothes sold by street vendors, what am I doing wrong? If I am OK with the bug ridden seats of the small theater and don't want to pay Rs.200 for a multiplex ticket, nothing wrong being done here, is there?

With only one person buying an original DVD at Rs. 400 versus 10 people buying the pirated DVD at Rs.40 each, no wonder the piracy industry is flourishing. We all know that a empty VCD or DVD does not cost much. All one needs to do is figure out, how to make profits while selling to the masses at lower rates. Apparently, Moser Baer has figured this out and trying to change something in this regard. Hope these guys succeed for the sake of all the Malaika Aroras and Mallika Sherawats of the world. :-)

Movie Review: Guru

"Guru Bhai Guru Bhai aveche, dhoom dhadaka {something}che"

The long awaited Guru released to expected full houses in Bangalore. My completely Mani Ratnam/AR Rahman smitten cousin took the trouble of standing in the long queue and got the tickets 2 days in advance. So, there I was waiting to see the opening scenes of one of the most anticipated movies of this year.

This is one movie where the promos and the media speculations more or less gave away the entire story. A dreamer from a small village in Gujarat, toils and fights his way to name, fame and money. The story is based on or inspired by the life of Dhirubhai Ambani and the chants of Guru Bhai heard during the movie almost sound like Dhirubhai! The movie starts with Gurukant Desai(Abhishek), telling how he didn't listen to his dad and dared to dream and the story just follows his dream from then on. He is smart, witty and a quick thinker and hates to hear NO for an answer. He is so obsessed to make it big in the world of business that he decides to marry Sujatha(Aishwarya) to get some dowry that would help him start his business. He goes to Bombay and gets going, but finds out that the business of his interest is run like a fiefdom by a wealthy textile magnates son. In his process to get a foothold here he seeks the help of an honest editor of a newspaper, Manikdas Gupta(Mithun Chakraborty) {if Gurukant is Dhirubhai, is Manikdas Ramnath Goenka?} . Manikdas is moved by Gurus plight and starts reporting the ways of the business magnates son. The business magnates son gives up and Guru is now in business! Guru looks up to Manikdas as a father figure and revers him. But during the course of his rise, Guru uses tactics which were not legal or fair and in one such instance uses the newspaper whose editor Manikdas is, to write a false story about the rich textile magnate(whose son pissed him off to start with) who tried to intimidate Guru into selling his business. This irks Manikdas who then starts a crusade to bring down Guru. He apparently still cares for Guru but can't stop being the honest guy that he is. For this special purpose, Manikdas chooses Shyam Saxena(Madhavan), who is an young and honest reporter to start investigating into the meteoric rise of Guru and then expose his misdeeds.

This rivalry results in Guru facing a lot of flak from the people who have invested in his company and this hurts him mentally and physically. He ends up with a paralytic stroke and during his hospitalization receives summons from a tribunal which is looking into his company's finances. He takes a couple of months to sort of recover and attends the hearings with his wife talking on his behalf. When the closed door hearings are finally opened to the public, the silent-till-now Guru suddenly feels a lot better and gives a longish speech about how he cannot be stopped just like India cannot be stopped. The speech apparently does the magic and he is only fined and otherwise left scot-free.

I have of course skipped many parts of the movie, for e.g. the whole character of Meenu(Vidya Balan), the handicapped grand daughter of Manikdas who has a special place in Gurus heart and towards the end marries Shyam Saxena. This role though very well essayed by Vidya Balan has very little significance to the overall plot of the movie. She is there just to keep reassuring the audience that our hero is actually a hero and has feelings and is not just a money monger. The character does this job and nothing more. Also conveniently forgettable was the item number by Mallika Sherawat which was more sexy than I expected and did nothing to the films story. Probably will manage to pull some guys to the theaters one more time. :-)

Now coming to the real review, the director has done a decent job with the script in hand, but there wasn't really any flashes of brilliance. We have come to expect a lot more from Mani Ratnam. Mani usually tries to convey a message through his films, but here, in an attempt to send a message across he has short sold the core of his story. Guru should either have been arrested by the tribunal or Guru should have cheated his way out of trouble, either would have done the job. But Mani chose the safe way out and this gave an abrupt end to the movie. The cinematography by Rajiv Menon is excellent, especially in the song Barso Re. The low light effects that Mani had shown us in Bombay is again visible here and the viewer can continue to appreciate the special skill that Mani and his cinematographers possess. The music by A R Rahman is apt (though I remain disappointed by it) and the background score is quite good. Everybody in the movie has acted very well with a special mention about Abhishek who has done a fabulous job. I felt Aishwarya also did a good job and in fact surprised me with some above par acting in a couple of scenes. One of the plus points of the movie is its casting which is just excellent. Didn't notice anything special in the choreography by Saroj Khan and the screenplay with respect to couple of songs i.e. their placement in the movie was very bad. I felt they were out of place and just jumped onto the screen when least expected. This is quite unlike Mani who usually manages to blend the songs into the storyline. The movie moved along at a good pace in the first haf, but I felt the storytelling tapered in the second half. You could see that Manikdas and Shyam were getting to Guru, but Guru wasn't really winning over them. He didn't win any confrontation by hook or by crook and this was something the viewer would have expected after the way the first half ended. The "winner takes all" speech towards the end by Guru in front of the tribunal was the masala that Mani should have avoided. But he just had to end the movie this way, and I can guess his reasons.

Mani was playing it safe! He was not going to let the young dreamer from Gujarat lose. After Dil Se, Mani has firmly decided that he is always going to end his movies on a happy note. The Indian audience are just not mature enough to understand that a tragic end to a movie could also be the best ending the film demanded or deserved. Take Alaipayuthey, take Kannathil Muthamittal, take Yuva, he compusively gave these movies a happy ending. Logically he could just as easily have killed Shalini's character in Alaipayuthey, but he didn't. He afterall needed the hit, he didn't want his brother and producer of most of his films including Guru to try committing suicide again!

None the less, Guru will be a winner at the box office. It may not be one of better films of Mani, but it is not among his worst either. A decent fair and definitely worth a watch(or more). I give it a 7.5 out of 10.

Copy Cats

Was doing some blog catch-up today and came across an interesting link. A desi blog search engine called byindia is doing more than just helping people search for blog content. They actually copy blogs verbatim and republish them under their blogs section with a different authors name! Plagiarism at work people and its luckily or unluckily going unnoticed. What could they possibly be getting out of this? Maybe proof that some very good bloggers blog with them?? Either way... they have brought down those copied blog links now.

Now, should I be happy that my blog was not copied or miffed that they didn't find my blog worth copying? :-)

p.s: Stop the narcissistic undertones... will ya! ;-)

Good or Bad

Last year was quite something for anybody who invested well in the Indian stock exchange. The BSE started the year at around 10K and ended around 14K, thats a 40% increase in just one year! WOW!!

No surprise that our economy is on steroids. Since we are performing so well, its obvious that we will get more sponsors, so to speak. Everybody is taking a piece of the NSE and the desi companies are only more than happy to sell their stake. Now, this is not very thrilling news in my opinion. The US generally has this philosophy of taking what it wants and then leaving the other party high and dry. I hope they don't do the same with our economy and even if they do I hope we can withstand this. After all, no matter how much you study and not speculate, the big guns always decide the course of the market. :-(

Be prepared...

Star World is bringing the hit series "Heroes" to India this year. Going by Star World standards, if they are advertising this now it will probably be aired in 3 months! None the less, this is quite different from the rest of the series that run in US that hit the Indian idiot boxes. This highly popular series has not not even finished screening the first season in the US!

Anywayz, you have been informed. Don't miss it, it comes highly recommended{by me}. :-)

The drama called politics

The new year partying was not over yet and the drama of politics soon acted up. The festival Eid was on the 1st of Jan. Though this is a religious event what also marks this event every year is the bevy of political heavyweights attending Eid prayers and Eid-ul-fitr parties. The Wakf minister in Karnataka, Zameer Ahmed had one such prayer session planned. If you remember, Zameer Ahmed was one of the trusted lieutenants of the now chief minister Kumaraswamy, who supposedly drove the minibus that took the the state MLAs to a resort somewhere outside the city (to prevent horse trading, the bloody horses!!)when Kumaraswamy was plotting the coup to down the then Congress government.

When such an established friend of the chief ministers tells his loved supporters that the chief minister would come to the Eid prayers he has planned, and then the chief minister doesn't turn up, what would he do? The obvious of course, threaten to quit. Now, when the chief minister didn't really bat an eye lid, he had to follow it up and come good on his threat. Now things had gone too far and repair work had to start. There is already speculation on BJP getting restless to take over the CM's seat and with such infighting in the Kumaraswamy camp he is gonna have far less bargaining power. So, a couple of days later, this photo hits the news stands.




Hail the very best actors in our state!!

No more secrets

Google off late has been having network and server problems and also closed down a service, Google Answers. But this time around, they are lauching a new one, Google patent search.

Go here for a simple search or here for a more advanced search.

Go ahead and figure out if you friends actually did get a patent of have they been just pulling a fast(maybe slow) one on you. :-)

Movie Review: Kabul Express

It was new years eve and we were looking at watching a movie before we hit Brigades and MG Road and eventually a food joint. My choices were Bhagam Bhag and Kabul Express. Since Bhagam Bhag is a rehashed Mallu movie by the remake specialist Priyadarshan, I gave it the miss and decided on Kabul Express. I somehow have grown to respect Aditya Chopra a lot and with an interesting title like it has, there is definitely bound to be some good stuff in it, but not to be...

The film starts off with two totally naive reporters (John Abraham and Arshad Warsi) trying to get an interview of a Talib and hence in Afghanistan. They seem to quite easily meet the right set of people to be able to get to the elusive Talib. Anywayz, though they get very close to one, they barely escape with their lives. Then quite coincidentally, the same Talib gets hold of their convoy and orders them to take him to Pakistan. During the course of the story we get to know that this Talib is actually a member of the Pakistani army on deputation working with Taliban. Then on the movie tries to show how India is the evergreen hero, the people of Pakistan are also nice people, the government of Pakistan is under force to desert their own men among the Taliban and how US is the villain. The story goes along expected lines and the supposed fun is that the movie is all real-time and unfolds within the course of a day. But there isn't enough happening to make you fell like its all in a day and that its exciting and that they are running out of time.

There is no real heroine in the movie and there are no songs either(though there is a soundtrack). The female US reporter is added in to dilute the otherwise overflowing testosterone and she is quite cute. I looked up on imdb and find she is not doing well in the entertainment industry in the west. I also quite surprisingly saw her in a song sequence in the Vijay starrer Tamil movie Sachin. In short she is just a filler with no real significance in the movie. The whole movie is more like a documentary with only Arshad Warsi in some comical pieces doing a good job.

All in all a disappointing fair and not worth the money. I rate it a 5.5 out of 10.

Whats next? Guru of course, finally releasing on the 12th of Jan!!

Some more equal

India just lost the 3rd test to South Africa. The proteas have one bad day on the 1st day of the 1st test and they lost it. Similarly we had one bad day on the 4th day of the 3rd test and we lost it. Overall a very well fought series considering that we expected almost nothing after the one-day drubbing.

But I want to write about something that is more generic in nature affcecting Indians and possibly other asian countries getting a raw deal on many departments of cricket and its administration.

1. We never play 5 match test series: I don't really get this. I know Australia vs England are always 5 match series. The Aussies vs Windies are also 5 match series. But how come the rest of the world does not play 5 match series? Statistically speaking this has quite an impact on records. For e.g. Sachin Tendulkar made his test debut a good 4-5 years before Glenn McGrath did. Yet, at the time of McGraths retirement Sachin had played only 11 tests more than him!

2. Umpires are not equally fair: This may be a very generic statement, but this is not a fresh complaint. Daryl Hair has done many a thing to prove that he does not like the Asian teams and many other umpires have followed suit. For e.g. Steve Bucknor took it upon himself to give all his wrong decisions against India in a particular series. He was so bad that Ganguly had to go on record stating that Bucknor does mediocre umpiring. This at a time when Bucknor was considered the best umpire in the world. If Sreesanth can be fined for his antics in the 1st test, how come Nel escapes the whip everytime?? As new as today, Daryl Harper warned Dinesh Kaarthick for excessive appealing for the very first appeal he did today! How many of you watched the last Ashes? The great Shane Warne was literally shouting into the umpires ear every other ball for the better part of the Collingwood double hundred!

3. Cricket epicentre: The HQ of cricket was moved from England to Dubai. I can never understand why Dubai was chosen. Agreed that the Sharjah tourneys are well held, but is that good enough? Even if you want to give the sport a boost in that region, do you have to have your HQ there? When 40% of the test playing teams are in the sub-continent, we should rightfully be the HQ. Not to mention that most of the money for ICC comes from this area of the world. Hell, we have Lara, Ponting, Vaughn, Flintoff, Fleming etc doing Ads in India, not to mention the likes of Brett Lee crooning in India.

Even in this modern day and age and cricket being this religion in India, the sports administration makes us feel that we are still living in the colonial era!!

After thought: Do I really care about all this or is it the test defeat speaking?

In case you missed...

Didn't want to start the year with this though it was one of the most googled news on any given day of 2006. Hence threw in a harmless one on Indian cricket which almost borders on humour. :-))

Its always disturbing to see a person being killed, but the outrage in India over this is just not understandable. What did the people expect? That US would spend all those billions to catch the guy(and get his oil) and leave the place without killing him??

Disclaimer: You would think this would need a disclaimer but again it does not coz you hardly see anything!!

Supposedly the last minutes of Saddam Hussein.

Here we go again...

A new year and still things don't change a bit in Indian cricket. Melodramatic presentation, but as if anyone expected it to change. We started the 3rd test at Newlands with both Jaffer and Sehwag finding a place in the team. Both have played well enough some 4-5 matches earlier too, but as of now they just don't deserve a place in the team. The question that begs to be asked now is does any one in the reserves deserve a place in the team?

Jaffer scores a century on a benign pitch where even a makeshift opener, Dinesh Kaarthick scores a fifty. The pitch would not seam or have sharp/indifferent bounce. Quite unlike any South African pitch and quite like an Indian pitch. No wonder the never blossoming flowers chose the right time to show their every so deceptive colours! On this pitch, Sehwag coming in at 6 or 7 will also score and then we will have Jaffer and Sehwag for the rest of the year. Nothing wrong if they play well though, which they will once we get back to India. India very smartly decides to prepare for the ODI World cup by playing more cricket in India! Duh!!

But on the other hand, maybe this was very well planned. Someone in the Indian cricket administration understands the Indian psyche. You threaten an Australian's place in the squad and he is very likely to score a century or take 5 wickets. You threaten and Indian's place in the squad, he is likely to perform worse than he ever has and Chappell is learning this the hard way. Similarly, if the Aussies want to prepare for the world cup, they would like to play in the West Indies not far from the world cup. But the Indians, no.... you don't want them to go before time to the West Indians and risk losing and hence being void of any confidence. Lets bring them here, to our home and thrash the living daylights out of them. Make the viewers feel good and this means the sponsors feel good! We then go to the West Indies and start cribbing about the pitches and start making excuses for the bad performances!

Oh well... still forms basis for interesting discussions in office. :-)

Have a great year ahead folks!