The end of the world as I know it has arrived. Because there is an athlete in my house. And it ain’t me. I was supposed to be the sportswriter jock. Friends were supposed to ask me about form. Quiz me on pain. Now they flick me off like cheap lint and talk fartleks and carbo-intake with my wife.

This is wrong. My wife spent her life yelling: “Don’t put your sweaty self on the sofa.”Now it’s the other way around. On Sundays I close the curtains against the heat and she goes and runs into it.

It’s mad, it’s beautiful. After nearly 25 years since I first saw her in a badminton skirt that played hell with my blood pressure, I am learning sport from my missus. At 50 – older than me which cuts the fragile male ego even deeper- she can run further, and faster, than I ever could.

These days I hit the 5km mark on the treadmill and think I’m Rocky. She did a marathon last December after starting to run for the first time in January 2009. I know women are smarter, tougher, but this is plain cruel. Maybe that’s nandrolone she ingests in the morning? So I checked. Bah, vitamins.

My wife wasn’t keen on watching sport. She wonders why there are Gunners in football and if Formula One is a maths problem. Except now there are seven pairs of sneakers in the shoe rack and only one is mine. There is a skyscraper of sports books on the bedside table and they’re hers : anatomy of a runner’s body, Born To Run, Murakami’s musings on running, Runner’s World, a running manual.
It’s an education I tell you. For me.

My wife’s running told me you have to find the right sport to suit your personality. I crave the tension of playing someone; others, like her, relish the freedom of the lonely road, the company only of the ticking watch, the fight against the painful voices within that cry: “Stop.” It’s told me that there’s no time set to fall in love with sport, or as a line in Time’s recent cover story Forever Young reads: “The meaning of age has become elusive.”

What is age-appropriate anymore? The laws that applied to middle-aged people –  without being unreasonably risky – have been run over. A 76-year-old climbed Everest; a 92-year-old has just run the marathon. The road in front is only as hard as you make it out to be.

When they, the so-called has-beens, line up at the marathons – 3,367 of 54,982 at last year’s Standard Chartered event were 50 years and over – it is like they’re reinventing life’s finish lines.

Abruptly, my wife has become another person, immersed in timings, shopping for Vibram FiveFingers, sending me off to parties alone. I have to guess my Glenlivet calorie intake, she charts hers at home on a graph. But I am a new person, too. I have a minor degree in sports-bra selecting, energy-bar buying, vaseline-slatering. I thought Hammer Perpeteum was a WWF wrestler till it turned out to be endurance fuel.

When she leaves the house she resembles Clint Eastwood with her gunbelt of tiny, powder-filled bottles and assorted armaments of chest strap, shoe sensor, heart rate watch. The woman’s a walking gadget display. But she’s challenging herself at 50. She’s discovering a person within she hasn’t met before. She’s found a private space which I, rightfully, am not invited to.

I am learning close up from her – and her tribe in this city whatever their age – about perseverance. Because I don’t have it. But true athletes are conquerors of pain, they step through walls of exhaustion that are impenetrable on first look.

It reminds me of David Halberstam describing the rower Tiff Wood in his book The Amateurs: “When he thought of rowing, the first thing that came to mind was the pain. After the first 25 strokes of a race… his lungs and his legs seemed to scream at him to stop. The ability to resist the impulse, to reach through it… while others were fading, made him a champion.”

It’s what my wife is for me.

She comes home, calf complaining, glutes aching, but her face shines with a satisfaction I wish I could feel. In last year’s marathon, her first, she ran 32km, cramped, stopped, then forced herself to limp the last 10km. It’s a story that is echoed in lanes and roads across this land. I used to think people who didn’t run the entire race didn’t deserve the label marathoner. I was wrong.

Now, I like the fact I sleep next to a warrior – except for those damn 5am alarms. Some mornings, semi-awake, I see her shadowy figure slip out, a stranger in tight shorts on a journey of her own invention. There is no medal beckoning, no grand prize, but just the most precious of victories to be won on a silent street of no applause. Victory over the self.

A boy has Sachin Tendulkar embossed on his underwear. A salesman peers over a crowd for a glimpse of cricket on a TV in a shop window. An entrepreneur sends his chauffeur to a darkened stadium to pick up discarded ticket stubs of a great match. Walk a lane in Pakistan, a street in India, an alley in Sri Lanka, and if cricket is on, you can see it. Faith.

Faith is the thread that stitches admirer to athlete. Faith, wrote my friend Sambit Bal in Cricinfo is “the most important aspect of this relationship”.

The fan can be imperfect himself, his adulation can be ugly, his manner parochial, but he believes deeply in his team. He dislikes losing, he cribs, but he comes back, he has hope in better days. Because faith is a handshake, it is a deal, it is cricketer saying “come cheer”, it is fan saying “of course, just give your best”.

In the subcontinent, this handshake is like a lifeline, for the game transcends entertainment, it translates into escape, into hope, into a distraction from the hard lives. The game on is a life turned off. To cheat then, which some Pakistani players have been accused of, does something cruel, it tears at the fabric of this faith.

Cheating isn’t new because humankind isn’t. Tour de France cyclists were once rumoured to leap on trains en route and boxers soaked their hands in plaster of Paris.

There is no moral grading with cheating either. The football diver, the spying manager, they all corrupt their sport and lower its credibility. Some of it is so pervasive that we even let it go with a lazy shrug: Such is life! Everyone does it! As fans, perhaps we have become too forgiving.

But when an athlete sells himself and thus his team, he doesn’t just undermine the idea of contest, he reveals himself as the worst thing: hero as fake. Talent may not work on a particular day, but it can’t be up for the highest bidder.

The fan can’t reconcile himself to it, for as a former state cricketer from India says: “There is something of me in my team.” Maybe there is no more disbelief, not like the kid fan plaintively asking baseballer Joe Jackson, who was banned after the 1919 World Series fix: “Say it ain’t so, Joe?” Maybe there is only despair now.

The problem with faith disappearing is that it is replaced with cynicism and we know this from the apathy that followed cycling for a while. Now the Pakistani fan must wonder, cricket again wonders: Which other acts and matches were counterfeit?

Cricket’s spot-fixing can be so minor – pre-deciding which ball to bowl a no-ball on – and may not even affect the result, yet it taints the game. Because we might look at ever easy catch dropped, every absurd run-out – all natural occurrences of everyday sport – and shadow them with suspicion. It is like wondering if an awry Steven Gerrard backpass was fixed. It’s why an Indian cricketer tells me he is “sickened” for trust has eroded.

Other sports can absorb a level of chicanery by virtue of their breadth. If a lesser tennis player fixes, we are reassured by the chivalry of the many great ones. If a second-division Bundesliga player fixes, we are comforted that Manchester United and their elite peers are cleaner.

But cricket is a relatively miniscule game, not in fans, but in teams, for only nine nations play test cricket. To ban one team is to amputate a sizeable part of the game, to have one corrupt team causes seismic activity across the entire sport.

Restoring faith requires the help of players, captains but mainly cricket’s clumsy administration. Cricket has a fresh fascination with money, the game – in some nations – is rich and it has wonderfully given young men strong livelihoods. But it is also fraught with dangers.

Money can turn into obsession, for those who have it and for those – like Pakistani cricketers who were left out the lucrative Indian Premier League – who don’t. Money can bring a charmless crew of hangers-on, shady agents, greedy coteries, all grasping at the vulnerable young player.

This seductive universe requires wise navigation but there remains an appalling failure of guidance. Mohammad Amir, the Pakistani allegedly involved in the current fix, arrives from a small town of Gujjar Khan. You wonder: did anyone tell this 18-year-old of fixers, agents, information seekers? Has he been taught to invest his earnings? Has he a cricket counsellor for inevitable hard times?

Cricket’s true beauty in the subcontinent is that it is more democratic – anyone can play for Pakistan or India – not just city boys. But opportunity is not enough without direction.

We owe that to these young men, to the game, to the fans. Else an ineffably sad mail will arrive, as this one did from the fine Pakistani cricket writer Osman Samiuddin yesterday. As he wrote to me: “I was telling someone the other day that my reaction has been like that of someone who has seen someone pass away.”

For him, alas, faith has long gone.

John Isner, Nicholas Mahut and History

The match generated a huge amount of interest as it indeed should. Across all media –  newsprint, television, blogs, facebook, twitter and the coffee machine chatterbox – it remained a central discussion piece. This piece by Rohit Brijnath I thought best did justice to the match.   (From the Straits Times, Singapore)

IN ANCIENT and grimmer times, boxing had no roped rings, no gloves, no set rounds. Punches flew till a man fell and could not rise. It is not the sort of contest one expects on Wimbledon’s aristocratic lawns, yet John Isner and Nicolas Mahut produced something similar in a spectacular tennis epic that spanned three days and passed 11 hours before Isner prevailed. It was sport pared down to its raw, unadulterated basics. Sport that was all breathtaking, bloody-minded commitment. It was last man standing stuff that flirted with the fictional.

Their story began on Tuesday, when the day ended with 28-year-old Mahut, the Frenchman, tied with 25-year-old Isner, the American, 4-6, 6-3, 7-6 (9-7), 6-7 (3-7). On Wednesday, they played just one single unfinished fifth set, 59-59, over seven hours and six minutes. That set alone was longer than the previous longest tennis match of 6 hours 33 minutes.
Last night at Wimbledon, combat continued, and Isner-Mahut remained joined at the hip, tennis’ inseparable Siamese twins locked in combat till the American finally won 70-68 in the fifth set.

The fifth set defeats the imagination for no analogy fits. Even 60-59 in a penalty shoot-out won’t work. This was not 22 men taking a few kicks, but two men serving, sliding, lunging. Two men, scrapping for longer than six football matches. Two men, unbending. “It was madness,” Mahesh Bhupathi, the Indian doubles star, told The Straits Times. “It was ridiculous. I saw the match. Pretty much everyone in the locker room was watching.”

They watched, entertained and awed, because this was tennis’ perfect storm and we are naturally drawn to the outlandish, seduced by the possibility that what is before us will never be repeated. Said Roger Federer: “I have almost no words any more watching this. It’s beyond anything I’ve ever seen and could imagine.”

Sport rests on the assumption that a human will eventually err enough for a rival to take advantage, or an inspired shot will tilt a match or luck will intercede. But this is freakish. It is inexplicable that it took three days to separate them, even if you factor in their big serving which made them hard to break. When they finished, Isner had 112 aces, Mahut 103.

It was beautiful because it was sport devoid of gimmick or controversy. There was no distracting talk of equipment, pay cheques, coaches. Distilled to its essence, this was simply about will. Every person has quit in them. It is part of our measure as athletes, amateur or professional. At the 10th km, one man halts; at the 14th, another stops.

Humans push till they collide with what seems their breaking point. The knees weep, lungs cry. Courage is defeated by weariness and a contest does not seem worth it any more. We give in. Psychologically, we leave boxing’s white towel of surrender on the green grass.

But not Isner, not Mahut. They ate, drank, grimaced, taped fingers, fell to their knees. But they would not quit.

It was beautiful, too, for they played for nothing really. It was not a final, but a first round. Not on centre court but on court no. 18. No million dollars at stake, but $38,700 to the man who got through. No country depended on them nor a teammate.

The comparative irrelevance of the match makes their performances stirring. For they were playing for personal pride. Just doing their day job. Professionals giving everything. Trying to earn ranking points. Trying to bend their bodies into one more serve. Just one more.

They had no boxing trainer to wipe the face. No football masseur and coach to rub legs and give advice at half-time. It was just two men jousting on a court. Nothing else. It is why Wimbledon’s refusal to have a fifth-set tie-breaker is right. To win, sometimes you must go to the very extremities of the self.

On Wednesday night, the match unfinished, Frenchman Mahut, who single-handedly has shamed his football team with his desire, said of Isner: “He’s just a champ.” No, they both are, irrespective of result. Because what they did out there on court no. 18 wasn’t just tennis. It was what sport desperately needs in these hair-jelled, overpaid, pretentious times. An unadorned show of human spirit.

Its a piece as much about boat racing as its about other sporting disciplines and in my view, captures the essence of sport.

Here is the link to the piece. But I’m not going to take a chance with a link dying somewhere down the line – and so here is the piece in full.

The Boat Race: a joyous celebration of pain

Sport is supposed to be a sorting process, one that separates winners from losers, first-raters from second-raters, champions from also-rans. The Boat Race tells another story: 16 faces alike in distress, two crews united in the democracy of pain.

Winning is bad enough. To lose the Boat Race is perhaps the most devastating defeat in sport.

There is no consolation. There is no money for coming first, let alone second. There is no fame. The Boat Race offers nothing but the staggering drudgery of training, impossibly combined with some form of academic work, and the return to obscurity. Boat Race oarsmen pass from nonentity to nonentity through a brightly lit valley of pain.

And if you happen to be watching the Boat Race with the wrong sort of person, say a would-be intellectual smartarse or a girlygirl without sensible shoes, you know what follows: “Why do they do it? Why? What on earth’s the point?” One answer – if you don’t know, I can’t tell you.

But let’s look a bit farther. Most of us who read the sports pages will be sympathetic to the view that there is a point in rowing yourself stupid and feeling agonies you never thought possible. But all the same, what is it?

It’s not a bloke thing. I remember, years ago, standing at the finish of the Devizes to Westminster canoe race, an event that makes the Boat Race look like a paddle round the Serpentine. It’s 125 miles, takes 20 hours if you’re good and if you’re less good the agony lasts a great deal longer. Men and women take part and I met woman after woman leaving her slight boat with extreme difficulty and saying: “Never again!”

“The first time it’s a challenge to complete the run,” one contestant told me. “You don’t even consider doing it twice. Then around Christmas you say to yourself, ‘The old DW is coming up again…’” And they’re back again, and they paddle again and they finish again, and they step from their boats and what do they say? You’ve guessed it.

So here are some of the things that bring a person to an extreme event like the DW, like the Boat Race – bearing in mind that women have a Boat Race, too, and it hurts just as much and they don’t even get an audience.

Beauty

Rowing feels good. Each stroke contains a beautiful, stretchy moment when, as you withdraw your blade, the boat glides on. It’s as if you get more for your effort than you put in. Most sports are in some senses lovely to do: to kick a ball, to run, to ride a horse or a bicycle – these are things people do for the simple pleasure of it. Being very good indeed at such things makes them feel better.

Pain

Your smartarse and your girlygirl will look at the rictus of agony on the faces of the dying oarsmen and sneer: “They must be masochists.” This is a shorthand term we use without much thought, meaning someone whose wiring is wrong, someone who finds pleasure in things a normal person would find intensely disagreeable. But pain proves you have done something. Pain tells you that you have done the best you could. Pain tells you that you have pushed your limits and probably shifted them a bit. Pain is a validation.

Team

Some social anthropologists explain that the English love sport because it is a social facilitator. We use it to get over our awkwardness and relate to other human beings. It’s an excuse for intimacy. While I would reject a lot of this (see beauty, especially), it is certainly true that for many people, being part of a team is a supreme experience.

If you share an experience of great intensity, you have links with that person for as long as you both live. A chance meeting with old members of the Tewin Irregulars is not a trivial matter to me. Sharing big matters is a powerful thing. I remember, a few months ago, sharing an evening of quite extraordinary euphoria with a group of strangers after an incredibly close encounter with bears. Sport unites.

Competition

Sport gives you someone to beat. It gives you a simple and irrefutable reason for doing something. In order to be part of us, you need a them. It is a concept that brings life down to a brutal and glorious simplicity. Sport divides.

Elitism

To take on something a little out of the ordinary is to promote yourself. You do something special and you are a little bit more remarkable. You have taken the road less travelled by; and that makes you slightly special. People will run the marathon for that reason. No one runs the London Marathon for charity. Rather, charity is the beneficiary of the urge to be a little special. Raising a lot of money for a good cause by running a very long way – it’s an incredibly potent combination.

Addiction

As you push the beauties of doing the thing to a higher level, so you find a new kind of beauty. In rowing, in running, in endurance riding, you find a self-hypnosis, a meditation, a way of stepping beyond yourself that is as near as we get to meditation in the West. It is not purely a matter of endorphins, either. It is the setting aside of self, the ultimate simplification, in which you do not take on a task, you become that task.

Ambition

When you do something that matters to you, you want to do it better. If you run for exercise, you want to improve your time. If you cook, you want the next meal to be the best. If you watch birds, you want to improve your field skills. The desire to do things a little better is part of the pleasure of doing them. You want to go beyond your own boundaries, and as you do so, you are inspired by the thought that you can do still more. You find twitchers who want to see every bird in the world, you get athletes who want to set world records. If you are good at rowing, you want to row still better. A great event, and better, a victory in that event, is a peg on which such ambitions can be hung.

Self-knowledge

There is a strange attraction in the idea of testing yourself. You really don’t know whether or not you will pass. You want to be the sort of great person who doesn’t break, but in order to find out, you have to put yourself to the test.

Anti-death

All these matters come down to this last. All the guff about dreams and challenges and honour and glory come down to this: the seeking out and accepting of an opportunity to live more intensely. It’s about being alive, about knowing you’re alive, about celebrating being alive. Look at the losers in their agony – they look as if they’re dying, they feel as if they’re dying, but they have never been more alive. So don’t sneer. Don’t pity. Envy.

I’ll leave you with a tale told by Sir Michael Parkinson: “We were sitting together watching the World Cup on television and Holland were awarded a penalty. The taker scored but was ordered to retake it because of a technical offence. As he placed the ball on the spot looking nervous, the commentator said: ‘Who would want to be in his shoes at the moment?’ ‘Oh, I would,’ said George Best. ‘Oh, I bloody would.’”

The following piece – penned by Rohit Brijnath – appeared this morning in Tabla.

The question it asks is one that we should ask in the good times. If this is the wind beneath the team’s wings, what can we learn from it. Too often, we’ll wait for the bad spell before casting blame.

Also, is this all Gary K’s doing ? Or are the BCCI gag orders responsible. Does it matter, either way.

Read on.

Gary Kirsten is apparently the coach of the Indian cricket team. This is sometimes hard to tell. Certainly he is hardly to be seen in the newspapers, a fellow more low profile than a sulking mole. This is not altogether unpleasant for the last fellow in the job had yet to meet a microphone he didn’t like. Greg Chappell talked too much, Kirsten seems to talk not at all.

It might be argued that Kirsten’s job is not to talk anyway but to teach. Certainly John Wright could be a recluse, but in front of Kirsten he resembles a campaigning politician. Kirsten has learnt from Chappell’s error, that the spotlight belongs to the player not the coach, but this low-profile act, probably not of his making entirely, has gone too far.

Since the team is winning we presume Kirsten is having a fine effect. We must presume because there has been no major profile worth remembering, containing Kirsten’s thoughts, in an Indian paper (though, unusually, there was one in an English paper last year). Certainly the team is a choir singing his praises, but otherwise he’s as familiar to us as a blind date.

How does he cajole Sehwag and cool down Bhajji? What ideas are propelling this team? What areas does the team need to sandpaper? How do they balance the three teams? Questions abound. One of India’s finest commentators, says simply: “I don’t know anything about what he thinks.”

Is this bad? Well, it’s not a national crisis, not reason for chest-beating or office-burning, but let’s say this much. What Kirsten is doing, Indians especially deserve to know. Fans have the right to be part of this journey, they invest in their team, they might want to understand the mechanics of their team’s tilt at greatness, might like to know the man running their team. It’s not their right to know everything, but enough.

If Kirsten prefers not to speak, it’s a shame (though this is unlikely since he was blogging till told to stop). More likely, Kirsten is not being allowed to speak by the BCCI and that’s silly. A gag, if it exists, is an overreaction to Chappell and fails to recognise the obvious truth that no two men are the same. It is also immature. As if to say, we can trust a man to guide India’s precious team, but we can’t trust him not to be indiscreet.

Coaches can be engaging customers, whose creative enthusiasm allows us to keep looking at cricket differently. The late Bob Woolmer was full of original thought; the professorial John Buchanan is never shy of speaking. Sport needs ideas in the public domain, it makes for more interesting discourse.

Undoubtedly, the predatory part of India’s media pointlessly spins controversy from even a banal quote, and some wariness is warranted. But Wright gave strong, sensible interviews occasionally, one particularly famous one to Sambit Bal of Cricinfo in 2002, giving us an insight into his self and his mission.

Kirsten should tell the board he is smart enough to pick his words and his journalists. He should reveal parts of himself, tell us what he thinks about Indian cricket, let people look into his lined face and make up their minds, instead of emailing answers to India Today’s Sharda Ugra, whose intelligent enquiring questions were recently met by stilted, bland answers.

The fine, intelligent coach at work with this team, it would be nice to know him a little. As requests go, it hardly sounds unreasonable.

Thoughts welcome.

It was the same Dr. Mallya who has been in news recently over pledging of a decent chunk of his shares in the UB group. The Kingfisher Airline is on the verge of being grounded as the state run oil marketing companies are threatening to pull the plug on their ATF supplies. One may still argue that the KP buy need not be looked at in tandem with his other business ventures. That it is in the Royal Challengers’ interest. With the captain (?) Rahul Dravid already under pressure for a place in the team and Mallya hinting at KP being considered for captaincy (a man who lost 5-0 in India and was fired by his selectors), there is going to be tremendous turmoil in the team in the near future.

One suspects though, that it was ‘brand KP’ that attracted Mallya with his super sized playboy image. He found his own mirror image in KP and he knew that he had to buy KP, come what may. He had already got the flambouyant Uthappa transferred from Mumbai in exchange for Zaheer Khan. KP would make the change from a supposedly dour, boring team (RD, Kallis, Chanderpaul, Jaffer) into an exciting one, complete.

If one looks back at the auction, this open desire of Dr. Mallya to have KP in his team cost him USD 200K more. Dr. Mallya started off the bid at 1.35MM.. one could clearly see that no other team had any real interest in KP, especially as Freddie had gone for USD 1.55MM earlier. Then Rajasthan Royals put in a bid at USD 1.45MM. Now it was an open secret in the auction room that the RR bid was just to make Dr. Mallya pay higher. And as a smart businessman all one had to do was not to hike the RR bid. The RR bid was a bluff which cried out to be called. Imagine what problems the RRs would face if KP went to their team. Warne has already talked about getting an increment on the paltry sum that he was bought for last year. KP getting 4-5 times his fees would have been interesting. Add to this volatile mixture, Graeme Smith and you would have a potential money spinning reality show on your hands.

Lalit Modi has famously announced that IPL is free from the dreaded ‘R’ word. The IPL II results haven’t been convincing enough. The same day that KP was bought at the astronomical sum, Kingfisher Airlines announced a cut in its pilots salary by Rs. 80k per month. Welcome to the bad times!!!

Posted by Rahul

The sun sets in the east?

Roger Federer was left wondering where will the No 14 come from as he was beaten yet again by his nemesis Rafael Nadal at the Australian Open in 5 thrilling sets. The quality of tennis was outstanding at times but the result crushingly familiar for Federer. Nadal may actually claim to be a better all court player than Federer, having won 3 slams on different surfaces. Even Federer hasn’t managed that and barring injuries to Nadal, the French Open trophy looks like a distant dream.

Andy Roddick had famously commented ‘ I need to win once in a while to call it a rivalry’, when questioned about his tennis rivalry with Federer. Federer may not say it but coming out second best to Rafa 5 times in a row gives the same deja vu feeling. The last time Federer won against Nadal was in November 2007. And Nadal is improving consistently where Federer seems to be caught in a rut. The vintage Federer has gone missing some where and though we see some glimpses of his mojo, it doesn’t seem like the same anymore.

Maybe it’s all in the mind for Federer when playing against Nadal is concerned. The only way to equal and then surpass Sampras’s record is hope. The hope that Nadal is beaten by some one else. The hope that Nadal gets injured. Or maybe to get back that mojo, the motivation to improve. Nadal’s irresistible march to Tennis greatness continues. Time will tell if Federer managed to slow the march down.

Posted by Rahul

The moment Dale Steyn was dismissed and the Australians began celebrating their victory, there emerged from the shadows of the SCG stands, a man with a mission. A man who refused to lose. Graeme Smith might have had a broken finger and a sore elbow but he also possessed a stout heart. He walked out in the middle to partner Ntini, who himself had shown admirable gumption in sticking around. Smith’s heroic gesture was a captain’s message to his team. The captain never abandoned his ship. He went down with it. It was a message to the opponents. South Africa was not willing to give an inch even in a dead rubber. They would scrap all the way down. They would use all their reserves and more.

In the same match, the opposite number had acted the dual role of the plaintiff and the judge, a throwback to the good old Sydney 2008 days. Some crucial decisions went against the South Africans and the final match result also was painfully similar to 2008. But in Sydney it was not surprisingly the opposition captains who walked away with all the glory. Kumble for his steely but calm reaction in 2008 and Smith for his show of defiance in 2009.

Kevin Pietersen resigned from the England captaincy (or was he asked to go?) following his not so private tiff with Peter Moores. A man who had emerged as a statesman for his efforts to make his team tour India after the tragic events in Mumbai, was suddenly finding himself standing alone sans the team. What had happened in a month to alienate himself from the team members who were solidly behind his decision to tour India? One should know of the reasons in a few months in his next biography.

The shock though was reserved for another statement.

http://www.financialexpress.com/news/satyam-fraud-full-text-of-rajus-letter-to-board/407799/

The leader of one of the largest software companies in the country, one which had received the Golden Peacock award (for excellence in corporate governance) a few months back, was admitting to commiting a massive fraud on an ongoing basis for many quarters. A company that was started, built and nurtured by him was being taken down by the same man. A company of 53,000+ employees was left rudderless.

On January7th 2009, a captain, in physical pain, in batting for his 10 team mates ended up making a nation proud. On January 7th 2009, a captain, a leader of 53,000 people, pulled down a proud nation by a couple of notches. It was a good day, it was a bad day.

Posted by Rahul

A normal middle class background, comprising of a strict father, a doting mother and a brother and a sister, was an unimaginable breeding ground for a chess prodigy in that era of Russian champions manufactured by the dozens in special chess schools. His was a happy, if unexceptional childhood. He sometimes had to skip playing chess for months if his academic performance was not up to the mark. There was no special treatment meted out to him at home and he was never made to feel ‘special’ or ‘better’ than anybody else by word or deed. It wasn’t that his parents were just passive spectators in his march towards glory. His father sponsored his Junior World Championship at Manila and Anand was supported wholeheartedly by them through his career. But it was just ingrained in him that success was not something to be advertised by shouting over the rooftops and failure was to be accepted as a part and parcel of life. Chess was not a ‘be all and end all’ of his life. He went and studied Business Economics after his high school because he was afraid that he was becoming a ‘chess nut’. He loves listening to music, especially U2, loves Monty Python and Hitchcock movies and loves reading. His upbringing has been largely responsible for his being the person whom we know today. The genial genius!

Anand’s marriage to Aruna in 1996 gave him another source of strength. Aruna handles his appointments, schedules his interviews, looks after his travel arrangements and playing itinerary and, most importantly, is just ‘there for him’.

Maybe it was the background that made a lot of people (especially the Russians) question his killer instinct. He himself has admitted that he doesn’t like conflict and as a personality most comfortable in peaceful surroundings. But his genius remained unquestioned at any point in his career. His 5 chess Oscars stand testimony to this fact. It seems fitting for a person who loves travelling and has visited 49 countries at the last count, to win the Oscar bronze statuette titled ‘The Fascinated Wanderer’.

The speed of his game has always given him an advantage over his opponents and has brought him success in all forms of Chess; classical, rapid and blitz. He is the first World Rapid Chess Champion, the first to win the World Blitz Chess championship and now the World Champion. What he has achieved can be compared to a cricket team being the champion in all three formats of the game and more. MSD and team, who are supposed to present Anand with a diamond ring in a ceremony organised by the Indian Chess Federation, should feel privileged to do so.

The story behind the preparation for the match against Kramnik is fascinating and intriguing at the same time. In an interview given just before the match Anand had come up with some stunning observations and a brief insight into his strategy. The 12 game match was not a straightforward ‘go their and play your best game’ situation. Both Anand and Kramnik had played against each other over the past 15 years and both knew each other’s game pretty well. The player who could neutralise the other’s strengths and who was well prepared for a similar strike from the other side would be better off in their exchanges.

For starters, Anand had been studying Kramnik since the end of April 2008. If shown a position from a Kramnik game played in the past 20 years(which number in the thousands), Anand was confident of identifying atleast 90% of the games. He knew that Kramnik knew this as well and that Kramnik would try to surprise him by playing a bit differently. On the other hand Kramnik would be doing the same and Anand had to find an answer to it. Both were trying new paths with the computers and their seconds by which they could attack differently, defend the opponent’s strengths and be ready for a surprise.

There were rumours before the match that Magnus Carlsen, the new star on the horizon, was acting as Anand’s second for the match. When quizzed about it, Anand declined to answer it, saying it was a part of the pre-match psychological games and it was for Kramnik to figure out if this were the case. It turned out finally that Carlsen was not his second.

Anand knew that Chess is as much about making one’s moves right as about being emotionless on one’s exterior. To show any emotion in a long drawn match was giving a glimpse into one’s thinking to the opponent. He declared that he didn’t look much at his opponents’ face as most top players, sans Kasparov, didn’t show their emotions openly while playing. He had an answer to it. He actually would concentrate on the opponent’s breathing!!! The speed of breathing was a pointer for Anand on his opponent’s state of nerves. Anand talked more about emotions, gestures and other softer aspects of the game before the World Championships. Maybe this was a strategy in itself.

Anand had finished last in the Master’s tournament at Bilbao, just a month before the World Championship. Whether this was done in order to prevent Kramnik from guessing the direction in which Anand was likely to approach the match is an open question.

Here is what Gary Kasparov had to say about the actual Match: “It was a very well-played match by Vishy. Except for the loss of concentration in the tenth game he played consistently and managed to enforce his style. His choice to open with 1.d4 was excellent. He reached playable positions with life in them, so he could make Kramnik work at the board. Anand outprepared Kramnik completely. In this way it reminded me of my match with Kramnik in London 2000. Like I was then, Kramnik may have been very well prepared for this match, but we never saw it. I didn’t expect the Berlin and ended up fighting on Kramnik’s preferred terrain.”

Anand was born on 11^th December and this is our ode to the World Champion.

Anand’s mother when asked about which game was her favourite had the following reply: “I like all his games. I always think he is going to be the winner!
Like all mothers feel their children are the best in the world, I also feel the same for my son.”

In Mrs. Susheela Vishwanathan’s case one can’t argue.

Posted by Rahul

Kumble & Team India

Now that one thinks about it, it couldn’t really have been any other way.

The country, as was often the case with him,  cribbing and questioning in the background. The batters scoring 600. And the team failing to win from that position. But Anil Kumble battling on till his body wouldnt do his mind’s willing anymore. One hand hurt going for a catch that would ordinarily have been well left by most in the team. That hand then administered 11 stitches under general anaesthesia. Kumble asking if the stitches could be administered under local anaesthesia ( I need to bowl tomorrow) and being told that it was a medical decision and not a cricketing one. Then coming out to bowl the next day and taking three wickets including a caught and bowled. All this while, as we now know , having decided that the next day would be his last in Tests. Waiting then till the game was safe before informing all that this was it. That every last ounce of effort and grit had been squeezed out by him. He couldn’t take it anymore and didn’t want to let the team down. That yes, there was unfinished business and he wished he was part of it – and he would be there in Nagpur – but not in the team shirt but still with the team spirit.

It really couldn’t have been any other way.

Sportsmen are like that. They crave performance. And the win. What else is there, after all is said and done. But with this man, somehow always plagued with questions, there has always been more.

India played Australia earlier this year under his captaincy and we remember Sydney but forget Perth way too easily. What does it take to come back from that ? What kind of leader is it that so inspires his men in a foreign land that after 16 wins, its the winning captain who’s inviting criticism ? What kind of man so lives the spirit that when he says that only one team was playing by it , it doesn’t evoke Jardinesque memories? Controversy, dubious umpiring , relentless media pressure, errant behaviour, 0-2 down in the series heading to the favourite turf of the world’s no 1 team. And we won.

And yet we thanklessly questioned.

Earlier this series, in Bengaluru, Ricky Ponting called it right and on a no-help pitch , he bowled 40 nagging overs in the first innings to make the Aussie juggernaut seem like a caterpillar crawl. Then the shoulder acted up and he couldnt bowl for a good part of the second. And we told-you-so-ed. And then, with a billion people in the know, he came out to bowl again and as the cameras tried their darndest to help us, we couldn’t catch a grimace.  But that we ignored and we looked for turn where no one got any. And we thanklesssly questioned.

But now, he’s gone. And because he wasn’t the kind that marketing gurus would like to project in their infinite wisdom , we won’t see him in too many advertisments , like we haven’t in his career. But he will remain a model.

Many years ago, he did an ad campaign. Here are the details from an India Today story which captured the essence of the man after his 10 for …

Tears stream down Vasanth Raghuvir’s face when she remembers the son she had — and lost. Velan, 19, died on May 21, 1998, his body unequal to the battle his mind waged against his corroding muscles, the degenerative muscular dystrophy. But Raghuvir’s tears fall not just from her grief; they’re her tribute to a little-known love Kumble offered Velan with the same dedication that he brings to his bowling.

Raghuvir does not try to understand the bond Anil Kumble shared with her dying son. “All I know is that he made a tremendous impact on Velan during the last year of his life,” says Raghuvir. For, that year Kumble was Velan’s life support, visiting him frequently, talking to him or when he couldn’t speak, simply being with him. She recalls a day in December 1997 when her son’s lungs collapsed, his body stricken with pneumonia. Kumble called that day, bound for Sharjah. “We told him Velan was critical and could not talk to him, but Anil insisted we just put the phone close to Velan’s ears and he would talk to Velan,” says Raghuvir. “My son was battling for his life and here was a man who until a few months ago was a complete stranger to all of us infusing him with life, with determination to fight back.” She recounts Kumble’s final visit to her son in his critical state. “It was,” says Raghuvir, “probably the happiest and greatest year in the life of my son.”

Velan, a first-class 2nd year biochemistry student in Chennai, was wheelchair-bound since he was 10 years old, when his wasting muscles took away the use of his legs. One day in May 1997, Raghuvir got talking to Rahul Dravid whom she met at a shop. She explained how she could not take her son to a cricket match because no stadium in India had a ramp, how it was humiliating for him to be carried. Dravid promised to introduce him to Kumble. On the appointed day, the spinner was there — 15 minutes early. “He need not have paid so much attention, but he was hovering around Velan, just being by his side.” Before leaving he fished out a giant autographed poster for Velan. “I can never express the joy I saw on my son’s face at that moment.” It was the start of an uncommon relationship. As it blossomed, Velan one day asked Kumble if he would appear in a campaign to build ramps for buildings. There was no hesitation, just an immediate yes. Kumble flew to Chennai and did a seven-hour shoot, all gratis. “The standing ovation he got for his 10 wickets is not enough, he should be given one every time he walks into a room,” says Raghuvir. “Just for his golden heart.”

Today, he says that in the future he plans to start an academy for budding cricketers. The future seems bright already.

Thank you, Jumbo.

Not that its an excuse for being absent from the blog and if an India v Australia series doesnt get me going , virtually nothing will. Who knows, it might even be therapeutic …

So, efforts on to get back to blogging. And cover this series and matters related.

Rahul’s already underscored Dada’s farewell that will run through the series, but as the Steve Waugh farewell tour showed, emotional undercurrents aside, the cricket between these sides always scores.

Highlighting this, is a typically wonderful prelude to the Tests penned by Rohit Brijnath. It followed a beautifully written Elegy for the long player, the romanticism of which seemed to awaken the Twenty20 generation to the subtleties of Tests and related sportswriting.

The following piece was carried yesterday in the Straits Times, here in Singapore.

THE All Blacks in New Zealand. Rafael Nadal on clay. Chelsea at home. Michael Phelps in any water. Every sport has its ultimate challenge. In cricket, subcontinental patriots will insist there is possibly only one thing harder than beating India in India, and that’s beating Australia anywhere. And so when Ricky Ponting’s posse come to Anil Kumble’s turf, a confrontation between gum-chewing mates and white-trousered gods, we’re about as close as we can get to cricketing nirvana.

India versus Australia, which begins again on Thursday, is a fresh tradition in an antique game, it’s a duel of contrasting philosophies, it’s a contest of shared respect and constant misunderstandings. It is, if you take some artistic licence, a bit like Ali-Frazier, it’s skilful, edgy, passionate, brutal.

It’s had walkouts threatened and racism charges hurled, it’s had spats and sledging, and it’s had some of the most incendiary cricket we’ve seen this decade.

Of the 15 Tests played since 2001, six have been won by Australia and five by India. And even the draws have not been dreary. Why these sweaty, cricketing mini-series aren’t played out over five Tests (like Australia-England, or now England-South Africa) is just another bemusing decision by cricket’s unsure officialdom.

The Indians run world cricket; the Australians own world cricket. Indians have a fine affection for a broken-Hindi-speaking Brett Lee, and Australian crowds rise wherever Sachin Tendulkar goes. The visitors, more aware of and open to India, have learnt there is more to Indian curries than a vindaloo; the hosts, less bashful after these exchanges, have learnt that toughness and professionalism are at the core of Australia’s consistency. For two nations, geographically distant and culturally disparate, cricket has been teacher, ambassador, meeting point, battleground.

It is a series that has re-energised cricket and helped nations connect. But like all young relationships, it is an imperfect and often tempestuous one. When Indian observers whine about how well a local Indian association has treated the Australians with regard to facilities, they are incredibly suggesting that a hospitable nation is somehow being too hospitable. When Australian journalists write that Tendulkar’s breaking of the most-Test-runs record would relegate the capture of Osama bin Laden to page three, it is a flippant lack of understanding of how deeply wounded India is by terrorism. Cricket, perhaps, can teach only so much.

This is the fifth India-Australia Test series already this decade and worse overkill is found only in a Schwarzenegger movie. Duels need time to breathe, time for victory to seep in, defeat to be digested, revenge to be plotted, teams to learn new tricks. That said, so bereft is cricket of the competitive, high-class contest that no one is complaining too much. There is talk that Australian cricket’s halo has lost its shine, their aura punctured, their crown askew, but it is all cheap blather. The only proof in sport is victory.

India have to win this series to give substance to the word “rivalry”. The boys in blue grabbed the Twenty20 World Cup and outplayed Australia, in Australia, in their last one-day encounter, but in the Test arena total triumph has been elusive. India’s team have learnt to roll up their stylish sleeves and compete with a compelling fierceness, but they have won only one Test series of the past four against Australia, and none of the last three. Victory seems for some only a matter of time, but Australia’s resilience is underestimated by only the ignorant.

India have to win else their treasured reputation at home will be further eroded, and losing will help dissolve one of the great mythologies of cricket. India have to win because cricket can do with some evenness. The game’s one-sidedness is not the fault of the incomparable Australians, but the sloth of their competitors. If indeed Australia are not as potent these days, yet still win, it says even less about their rivals.

India have to win because it is in cricket’s wider interests. At the game’s new headquarters, the cult of Twenty20 is dominant, and this exciting, energetic but amputated sport (about as much a test of cricket as doubles is of tennis) is threatening to overshadow the traditional game. Test cricket is a harder sell to the young Indian, for it is a longer, sweatier process to greatness, it offers none of the immediate fame and instant riches of Twenty20.

It is why Kumble and his gang must play brilliant salesmen, must produce performances of bravery and imagination, must construct a seductive advertisement for their form of the game. If the Test game has to be saved, the great battle for it must be fought on Indian soil.

Finally, India have to win else it could mean the cricketing death of a band of the game’s grandest heroes. The end of Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Kumble, Sourav Ganguly, V.V.S. Laxman is imminent anyway, but victory will extend their lives a few months, another year. The Australians will not care. Like all majestic teams, they make a living writing epitaphs.

Fight fire with fire
Ending is near
Fight fire with fire
Bursting with fear…………

Metallica

Dedicated to the man who made one proud just for the fact that the Australians hated him. He, who showed his six packs much before his team owner did. He, who was born a prince, became a king and ended a commoner. He, who always had something prickly to say to the opponent. He, who always had statistics to throw at his critics (many times factually incorrect). He, who was Adam in the gardens of Eden. He, who was the first cricketing representative of a changing, confident, abrasive India. He, who jogged a single when there were three for the taking. He, who could pierce the off side with the precision of a swiss watch. He, who was a demigod in his state, an enigma to many others. He, who kept on rising like a phoenix. He, who taught us how to fight. He, whose autobiography, will be one of the most eagerly awaited in India. He, who, even in his departure will garner attention, as the captain/ selectors can’t drop him for the next 4 tests against Australia. Master stroke from a master striker.

Au Revoir Dada!!

Posted by Rahul

The SMS waxes eloquent on the end of the 84 match unbeaten streak at home for Chelsea. Man United have scored a goal and the message sender is going gung ho over it. A calm-down request from self, pointing that the match has another 70 minutes left falls on deaf ears.

Next message is from this side of the fence blasting Joe Cole for blasting the ball over the goal. A lot many messages are exchanged on the favorable treatment meted out to MU by various referees and comparisons with the Australian cricket team are used in abundance.

The other side is under the impression that the match is being watched at a watering hole and on the motto of ‘chance pe dance’, goes on to hail Scholes as the ‘best midfielder in the world’. Seriously, this is one of the better jokes I have heard in quite some time and the appreciation is instantly conveyed.

By the end of the first half, the other side is going ballistic on all the first win at Stamford Bridge since almost 4.5 years. The 2nd half is as exciting as it can get with one team in complete control. Anelka and Joe Cole keep on missing the target with boring frequency. I get delirious messages when Ronaldo is introduced. “God has arrived” is the gist of most of them. ‘God’ has an immediate impact on the game by falling at the slightest touch. A few messages discuss the ‘ground beneath his feet’.

The rescue act is done by Kalou. 1-1. Suddenly the victory dance has stopped and tension mounts. After 90 minutes of intense football the match is drawn. The SMSs continue for another half an hour post the match. The final SMS from the other side says ’1 point was what we came to Stamford Bridge for and so we go away happy’.

The wife can’t take it anymore and snatches the instrument and changes the SMS alert tone. “Were these exchanges about the MU-Chelsea match?” she queries. “Yes” comes a sheepish reply.

“But why were you so worked up? you support Arsenal don’t you?”

Posted by Rahul

Formula One hasn’t been an exception in the recent past with the budgets of the top 2-3 teams putting a few emerging countries in the shadows. The ‘also rans’ were there to make the numbers, with little money to invest in technology or hire drivers with proven talent. The minnows had to get the engines from the Big Boyz and give chances to untested talent. Winning a Formula One race wasn’t within the realms of reality. Picking up the crumbs left for the 6+ places in a race was the best they could hope for.

There was an air of expectancy at Monza on the 14th of September 2008, when a laggard team’s driver was going to start at the pole position on the grid. The pole was attributed chiefly to the rains during the qualifying sessions and nobody really expected a rookie with an average car to hold on to the lead for too long. It was a flash in the pan, more like the lighting in the storm clouds that hit Monza on the Saturday qualifying sessions. Sebastian Vettel proved everyone wrong by a mile and more. Controlling the race from the beginning, the 21 year old drove a dream race, winning it comfortably in the end. It reaffirmed one’s faith in the uncertainties of sport where by every passing day; the odds on the favourites have been shortening. It encouraged the willingness to dream, the willingness to believe that impossible is nothing and that even in this Orwellian world of ‘some people being more equal’, fairy tales do happen. Sebastian Vettel and Toro Rosso have given every F1 lover a reason to cheer, a reason to smile.

But one doesn’t want to stop where most fairy tales end. What happened to David after he slayed Goliath? Did he become another Goliath? The philosophical problem here is that once David has slain Goliath, he doesn’t remain a David. He is not an underdog any more. In Vettel’s case, we may hear in a few days  that he will be driving for a Ferrari or a McLaren. One tends to read these stories of small football clubs unearthing talent and then being forced to sell the talent to a bigger club because ‘the player wants to play the champions league’. One can’t argue against the individual player’s right to define his career goals and priorities.  And the romantic idea of ‘sports for sports’ sake’ can’t and won’t stop the commercialisation of sport. Gravity pulls everything down and money is the gravity for today’s sports.

Maybe it’s still all about money!!!! But maybe we can return to being cynics tomorrow…

Back in December 2007, when Sehwag had been out of the Indian test team for more than 6 months, the selectors decided to exclude him from the list of 24 probables for the upcoming tour of Australia. For a man, who was the only triple century maker for his country, this was a cruel blow. In those 6 months, Sehwag had played a few ODI’s and was also a part of the T20 World cup winning team, but had failed to impress with consistently decent scores. To top it Sehwag had not performed in the domestic matches as well and his previous record in Australia was not enough for the selectors to augment a place in the list. Gautam Gambhir, who was initially included in the list, got a shoulder injury and Sehwag was surprisingly included in the final 14 declared for the Australian tour 2007-08. It is widely believed that captain Anil Kumble’s support tilted the balance in his favour. Kumble might have lost a few crucial tosses after that, but had called it right on one of the more important moments in Indian cricket.

Over the past few years, Sehwag had emerged as the man most feared in the Indian Test team. For a man who came to the team as a SRT clone and who had opening thrust on him due to a packed middle order, this was some achievement indeed. Tendulkar was almost revered, Dravid was hugely respected by their opponents. But when it came to pure unadulterated fear, Sehwag was your man. When an opposition captain was asking the Shakespearean “To declare, or not to declare” question, for setting the final target, the Sehwag factor added a few more runs to the equation. The sheer presence of the man contributed to the team in times of crisis. The significantly lower second innings average, notwithstanding. But he seems to have been coming to terms with that statistic as well after his brilliant 151 at Adelaide. The worrying factor for the opposition is that the man always seems to tide over his short comings. The ‘Bowl short pitch at his body’ mantra worked for some time, doesn’t work too well now, ‘bowl incutters to him’ was temporarily effective but may not be any more. He is not a complete player and one is not trying to attribute qualities to him out of thin air. Just the fact that by the time you get the ball in the right area he might have actually scored 50+ is a headache for most opponents.

Sehwag evokes a gamut of reactions in fans of Indian cricket. Amazement, wonder, awe, anger, frustration, disgust, one gets everything at the Sehwag show. There’s a very thin line between amazement and anger, wonder and frustration and awe and disgust. It’s as thin as the line between ‘carefree’ and ‘careless’. Ask Kevin Pietersen. But the fact that Sehwag averages above 50 reveals that more often than not, it’s his ‘carefree’ approach that wins the day.

‘‘The man hunched over his motorcycle can focus only on the present instant of his flight; he is caught in a fragment of time cut off from both the past and the future; he is wrenched from the continuity of time . . . in other words, he is in a state of ecstasy; in that state he is unaware of his age, his wife, his children, his worries, and so he has no fear, because the source of fear is in the future, and a person freed of the future has nothing to fear.”  – Slowness  by Milan Kundera
Virender Sehwag’s batting style seems to fit the abovementioned fragment from “slowness”. It seems like a daredevil approach to the game. He enjoys his game and the absence of any fear of the future leads to his pressure free game. One feels that some how it doesn’t capture the essence of Sehwag’s batting. It’s not all wham bam. Maybe it is more nuanced.

One is not sure if this description of a speed demon applies to the top F1 drivers of our time. The present instant of his flight is what the driver may be concentrating on, but at the same time he has to be perfectly attuned to his current position, the condition of his car, the track conditions, the weather, team instructions and the strategy that he is running on. It’s not the straight line speed that can be achieved by his car that matters as much as his ability to control that speed and brake at the last possible instant on curves and bends.  The split tiny micro second more that he takes to brake than the other drivers may be the differentiator for the championship standing. What also matters is the reliability of the car, the speeds it can give on various segments of the track and the car’s braking ability. Being a relative greenhorn to F1, one may be excused for any unintentional errors. But there is little doubt that F1 is one of the ultimate tests of man – machine combination.

Maybe Sehwag’s essence can be described as this combination of man and machine. He has the talent, the hand eye co-ordination required to hit the ball better than most. Maybe he is the ‘natural born hitter’. But at the same time his mind is not in a tizzy at times of his exhilarating stroke play. He seems to be on the way to becoming a great race driver as well. He knows what the team strategy is, he knows what the conditions are, he knows whether he has to push himself or just sit back a bit, he knows that he is control of the immense speed which has been gifted to him. He is on the way to becoming a more consistent driver. All F1 drivers make mistakes, so will he. It’s the consistency that can propel him ahead.

But does the protagonist’s description as a cricketer who bats phenomenally and bowls occasionally does him service. One would tend to disagree. There’s more to him than his cricketing skills. Ishaant Sharma’s extra over to Ricky Ponting at Perth which decided the fate of the match is a point in case. Sehwag has shown a keen cricketing brain beneath his easy going exterior and the fact that he is the vice captain for the SL tour bodes well for the future of Indian cricket. Who will take over from Kumble when he hangs his boots is an interesting poser, though one would believe that MSD is going to be the front runner, his ‘rest’ notwithstanding. The selectors have given enough hints about MSD’s elevation to India test captaincy and they wouldn’t want to upset the apple cart unless MSD is finding it tough to be in the Indian test team at that time. But this is just speculation, and at present post Dinesh Karthik’s sterling contribution in SL, the bike loving (no reference to the Slowness piece intended) MSD would be the odds on favourite. But Sehwag is surely going to be considered for the job.

Virender Sehwag should do well to remember Shakespear’s quote from Twelfth Night – “Be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them”. Amen.

                                                                                                                         Posted by Rahul

The news paper headlines screamed that Pepsi had decided not to continue with SRT as its brand ambassador. His endorsement contract which had expired was not renewed. A couple of reasons were assigned to it by unnamed sources. SRT’s endorsement fees were deemed to be “too steep” AND Pepsi wanted to focus on the younger generation, who they felt, would not be attracted by him. Pepsi had earlier dropped Rahul Dravid and Saurav Ganguly as its brand ambassadors as well. Informal estimates now put MSD as a higher earner through endorsements than even Mr. Tendulkar.

Given the current happenings in the world of Indian cricket, this didn’t come as bolt from the BLUE. Youngsters are ruling the world of limited and super limited cricket in India and the veterans are sidelined (?) to play Test cricket. The Indian audience wants it staple diet of limited overs cricket and it identifies with the game of the ‘youth’. The brands obviously want men/boys who are under constant public glare and hence the abovementioned fallout. Demographics are the name of the game.

A few hours later MSD conveyed his wish to be rested for the Test match Series in Sri Lanka citing fatigue from playing incessant cricket over the past 15 months. And there was no doubting the veracity of his statement. From Jan 01, 2007 MSD played 14 tests, 55 ODIs and 9 T20 matches, which amounts to a possible 134 days spent on the field playing international matches. He also played 16 IPL games captaining the Chennai Superstars team in the IPL league. One is ignoring the Ranji trophy/ Challenger tournaments that he participated in during that time frame. To put things in perspective, he captained and kept in 39 of the matches in the smaller version of the game and captained in a test match as well. The pressure that was being soaked up by MSD was enormous. He raised his misgivings about the back to back matches scheduled at the Asia cup at a press conference. The BCCI immediately jumped on his statements suggesting that any player feeling overworked should opt for a rest. Its reaction was too swift, too sharp and not in good taste. The guy was only complaining about back to back matches. But being MSD, he converted this threat into an opportunity and conveyed his decision to rest during the SL tour.

This is one of the rare occasions in the annals of Indian cricket when an Indian cricketer has voluntarily rested by himself. And that too for a test match series. It’s a reflection on the confidence of the man and also on the consistency of the selection process. Just a few years back, this step would be looked upon as a career limiting move, but no more.

While saluting the tireless efforts of the ODI captain and his need to have some rest, one has an uncomfortable, niggling doubt at the back of one’s mind. The timing of the ‘rest’ and the occasion seem to be like a typical MSD shot. Powerful, but lacking grace.

MSD’s step has reopened the simmering debate of playing for the country v/s playing for money and the priorities of the post modern cricketer in terms of Test cricket v/s the smaller format. To further complicate matters, maybe even a ‘seniors’ v/s ‘young turks’ cold war has been alleged by some parts of the media.

One has not heard of any formal communication between MSD and the current test captain and whether there was any discussion about his decision. Being the vice-captain of the test team makes it even more imperative for getting the captain’s nod. MSD may have had the captain’s go ahead, but one hasn’t heard of any such newsflash from the ever vigilant media.

Another question that is left unanswered as of now has been Dhoni’s availability for the SL ODI tour. Now that is a million dollar question (frankly given the current numbers thrown around as remuneration to cricketers and the depreciation of the USD, it should be a ‘billion’ dollar question). If MSD indeed joins the ODI team in SL, it will throw up a lot of uncomfortable questions. Does his being the ‘captain’ of the ODI team matter in his decision making? Is he giving more importance to the limited version of the game?

Being a ‘professional’ player, Dhoni has every right to make his future secure. So one is not even getting into a debate of whether he should have skipped IPL to get his ‘rest’. Though one still has doubts about the reasons for his playing as a wicket keeper for a major part of the IPL tournament even when Parthiv Patel was a regular in the Chennai team.

This decision throws up a few questions for the future to the selectors as well. Will they have a candid chat with MSD about his future as a potential test captain? What happens if Dinesh Karthik performs splendidly in the tests? Will the selectors have the guts to drop MSD? He has, by no stretch of imagination, been the MVP of the Indian test team. They have to decide whether this fact is acting as a motivator or otherwise on him.

In India, when the going is good, especially in cricket, everything one does is turned a blind eye to. A possibly ‘selfish’ decision is hailed as a ‘brave’ one. Dropping senior players out of the 30 probables for champions trophy is termed as ‘forward looking’. Players attending fashion shows and parties and ad shoots, is a photo op. One feels it’s better to be a cynic in rosy times rather than being one in disastrous ones. Look at all those brave souls on CNBC who talked about Sensex touching 40k when it was at 21k.

Sachin Tendulkar might have passed the baton to MSD in terms of endorsement contracts. But maybe in terms of his legacy as a ‘brand’, if this is the passing of the baton, one reserves the judgment on whether it has indeed passed in the right hands.

Posted by Rahul

“…Now, on Nadal’s ad side there’s a 16-stroke point. Nadal is serving a lot faster than he did in Paris, and this one is down the center. Federer  floats a soft forehand high over the net, which he can get away with because Nadal never comes in behind his serve. The Spaniard now hits a characteritically heavy topspin forehand deep to Federer’s backhand; Federer comes back with an even heavier topspin backhand, almost a clay-court shot. It’s unexpected and backs Nadal up, slightly, and his response is a low hard short ball that lands just past the service line’s T on Federer’s forehand side. Against most other opponents, Federer could simply  end the point on a ball like this, but one reason that Nadal gives him trouble is that he’s faster than the others, can get to stuff they can’t; and so Federer here just hits a flat , medium-hard cross-court forehand, going not for a winner  but for a low, shallowly angled ball that forces Nadal up and out to the deuce side, his backhand. Nadal, on the run, backhands it hard down the line to Federer’s backhand, Federer slices it right back  down the same line, slow and floaty with backspin, making Nadal come back to the same spot. Nadal slices the ball right back – three shots now all down the same line – and Federer slices the ball back to the same spot yet again, this one even slower and floatier, and Nadal gets planted and hits a big two-hander back down the same line – it’s like Nadal’s camped out now on his deuce side; he’s no longer moving all teh way back to the baseline’s centre between shots; Federer’s hypnotized him a little. Federer now hits a very hard, deep topspin backhand, the kind that hisses, to a point just slightly on the ad side of Nadal’s baseline, which Nadal gets to and forehands crosscourt; and Federer responds with an even harder, heavier cross-court backhand, baseline deep and moving so fast that Nadal has to hit the forehand off his backfoot and then scramble back to get back to centre as the shot lands maybe two feet short on Federer’s backhand side again. Federer steps up to the ball and now hits a totally different cross-court backhand, this one much shorter and sharper-angled, an angle no one would anticipate, and so heavy and blurred with topspin that it lands shallow and just inside the sideline and takes off hard after the bounce, and Nadal can’t move in to cut it off and can’t get to it laterally along the baseline, because of the angle and topspin – End of Point. It’s a spectacular winner, A Federer moment, but watching it live, you can see that it’s also a winner that Federer started setting up four or even five shots earlier. Everything after that first down-the-line slice was designed by the Swiss to maneuver Nadal and lull him and then disrupt his rhythm and balance and open up that last, unimaginable angle – an angle that would have been impossible without extreme topspin….”

This, of course, was 2006. Roger Federer won in 4 sets. But it highlights how things have changed. In that grand magnum opus of a final on Sunday, for the most part , it was Rafael Nadal in control. For much of those five hours, it was he that was maneuvering the pace and forcing issues. It was not just about somehow keeping the ball in play. This Sunday, he was just that much further than he was last year and just as he was making near impossible geometric threading-the-needle angles on court, so also was he making some deep inroads into what had seemed thus far to be a near impregnable mindset of the ice cool Swiss.

The fact that all this was happening in Roger Federer’s own den is what makes it all the more special. Lets get the stats out of the way. The last time the Fed had lost anywhere on Grass was 2002. He had a 65 match unbroken streak going into the finals at Wimbledon. 5 straight Championships. No sets dropped en route to this final. At the start of this year, with 12 Grand Slams, it seemed that the only real challenger he had was history itself. So complete has been his dominance that it seems almost incomprehensible that he never made it past the quarterfinals in the first 16 Grand Slams that he entered. (Of the next 21, he’s won 12, been a finalist 4 times and a semifinalist thrice.) Most importantly, in Roger Federer, Tennis has the kind of champion that the sport deserves.

Its ironical that Wimbledon’s Lawn Tennis Museum in a section about the history of the rackets used there has a climax which reads thus :

Today’s lightweight frames made of space-age materials like graphite, boron, titanium and ceramics, with larger heads – mid-size (90-95 square inches) and over-size(110 square inches) have totally transformed the character of the game. Nowadays it is powerful hitters who dominate with heavy topspin. Serve-and-volley players and those who rely on subtlety and touch have virtually disappeared.

The irony is amplified because this is, and has been Roger “Subtlety and Nuance” Federer’s decade. Tennis should be proud.

And on Sunday, so hard was the challenge, so determined the competitor, that the champion was virtually forced to win every point (ok – the majority of the points, but allow me the emotional overdose for its only been 36 hours) through extraordinary shots and he nearly did it !

Which brings us to Rafael Nadal. Hopefully now, we (amateur commentators) will stop equating him with muscle and power and speed and recognise him for that rarest quality that he shares with the greats of most sport. Aggression devoid of hostility. Oh and yes, some indefatigable determination. And this ability to be inspired by defeat. And stay grounded in victory. And that apart from all the technical attributes of the sport that enable somebody to so quickly transform a game from complete dominance on the clay of Rolland Garros to the, admittedly increasingly sunbaked and hence slower, grass of Wimbledon. 

If this was a passing of the baton (and it is too early to say), then its in good hands.

The hallmark of a true champion has always been the fear and respect that he generates in the minds of his opponents and the continued dreading that he can and may win against them even from impossible situations. Federer generated that awe in his opponents from the start of 2004 when he became the top seed. He generated a kind of hopelessness and despair in an opponent which was rarely seen in the sport. The frustrating part for the opponents was that they couldn’t even hate him for that. He was not overtly aggressive. He wasn’t in-your–face. He was too polite to be engaged in verbal warfare.

For all these years Rafael Nadal had stood between Federer and the unofficial title of the ‘all time great tennis player of the world’. Nadal was his Achilles heel. Nadal was his nemesis. Nadal was his Kryptonite. Nadal was the only current player to have a better head to head record against Federer (if one takes a minimum of 5 matches or more, else Andy Murray also qualifies) 10 – 6. The French open trophy was the only one missing from the cupboard, thanks to Nadal. Federer hired Jose Higueras, a clay court specialist as his coach in April 08 in a desperate attempt to fill this void on his trophy cabinet. This was after a hiatus of playing without a coach for almost a year. This showed his desperation to find an answer to the Nadal riddle.

A few points to note in this entire Federer – Nadal rivalry was that, in spite of the better head to head stat for Nadal, there was still a yawning gap between them in the ATP ranking points. The head to head on a clay court was favoring Nadal 9-1, which meant that on all other surfaces it stood at 5 – 1 Federer. The fact that most clay court skirmishes had happened in the finals was ample proof that Federer himself was no mean clay court player. The fact that they met only 6 times in non-clay court tournaments with Federer winning many of them (the tournaments) & more, also is self explanatory. But all this analysis to Roger would be nothing but a pointless excuse. The search for perfection didn’t stop with 2 surfaces, nor did it stop with the ATP rankings. Not for Roger for sure.

The year 2008 hadn’t been too kind to Federer. A Win/Loss record of 26-7 with only one title to show, losses to Mardy Fish, Radek Stepanek, Andy Murray and a stunning straight 3 set loss to Novak Djokovic in the Australian Open semi final didn’t bode too well for his chances at the French Open 2008. He later revealed that he had suffered from mononucleosis during the Australian Open. But critics had started questioning his aura of invincibility. Was he past his prime? They had built a super hero image around him and a super hero wasn’t allowed a slump in form. The appointment of Higueras had given mixed results. He lost to Nadal twice at Monte Carlo and Hamburg in the finals. The entire world’s eyes were fixed on the French Open though. If news paper reports were to be believed Roger limped through to the finals. 3 out of the 6 matches that he played were won in straight sets, 3 were won in 4 sets. The 4 setters included the quarter finals and semi finals. Raffa on the other hand had blasted through his opponents without dropping a set. He seemed to be in imperious touch. It was one of the most eagerly awaited finals. Bjorn Borg, whose record Raffa was set to equal had put his bet on Roger, stating that he had become more aggressive and this could be his year.

Cometh the final, Roger Federer was rudely reminded of the gamut of feelings his opponents went through while playing him through out his glittering career. Hope at first, a bit of irritation at missing a few, a feeling of frustration when one’s best is not good enough for the guy on the other side of the net, desperate new measures and tactics to get a toe hold in the match, a sense of helplessness to see those tactics fail and finally complete abject surrender. All this happened in a span of less than 2 hours.

One feels that more than the result or the manner of losing, what would have stung Roger more would be Nadal’s reaction on winning the match and his comments there after. When Nadal closed out the victory, his celebration was muted. He briefly raised his arms and walked to the net, where he and Federer put their arms around each other.

“Today it was tough for Roger, I think,” Nadal said, “and I have to be respectful with one very good guy.” “Roger, I’m sorry for the final,” Nadal said. An opponent feeling sorry for you is the worst thing one wants to hear after a crushing defeat.

Roger Federer for a long time needed tremendous self motivation to go out there and perform because of the lack of any real consistent threat. How long can one sustain the motivation for improvement if one is already way above others? Others start catching up with one and if one’s form dips a bit one’s supremacy starts getting seriously challenged. Maybe Federer still thought that it was his dip in form which was losing matches for him. Normalcy would return once he recaptured the elusive form. But the French open was more than a loss. It was humiliation and a humiliated champion is like a wounded tiger.

There is an interesting story about Aravinda de Silva and Kapil Dev. That was the time when Aravinda had just arrived in international cricket as an extremely gifted batsman and Kapil was just slowing down a bit with age. In those days bowlers normally were not given the charge. But Arvinda had started to give him the charge even before the ball was delivered. Arjuna Ranatunga who was batting with him came down and asked him to mellow down. He said some thing to the tune of “don’t arouse a tiger, even an old one can destroy you”. One has read this story many years back so the details may be incorrect.

Roger Federer is only 26, not an ‘old tiger’ by any stretch of imagination. The French open defeat may sting him into some serious introspection & action.

Federer won the Halle tournament last week in an emphatic fashion. With this victory he took his unbeaten record on grass to 59 matches. He didn’t drop a set or even his serve through the tournament. Raffa at the same time won his first grass court title at Queen’s club in London beating Djokovic. Wimbledon 2008 promises to be riveting.

Tiger Woods is another name that comes to mind which generates that sinking feeling in an opponent sans any hostility. To take the latest example, the reaction of Rocco Mediate to Tiger’s magical 15 feet birdie put that took the 108^th US Open to a 18 hole play off –“You can’t ever expect him to miss”. How can one believe that one’s opponent, who is struggling with a knee injury, on the last hole, one stroke down, can make that shot under that kind of pressure? Mediate did. Tiger made him think so. The play off was equally exciting but Woods prevailed as was expected. No wonder Nike saw a great opportunity in bringing together 2 of the greatest sport icons in the form of Federer and Tiger Woods in their promos in 2007.

This was the Roger – Tiger ad from Nike last year

The difference of 2 remains constant, though the score has moved to 14-12 now. One wounded tiger will be chasing another wounded (literally) Tiger’s record. The saga continues.

Posted by Rahul

But what the heck, one needs to laugh at oneself and other fellow cricket lovers once in a while. 

Cricket’s the National Sport of Time Wasters

I understand that England recently lost a game of cricket. Good. The more we lose, the more our interest in the game wanes and the less it will dominate our newspapers and television screens.

Cricket – and I will not take any arguments – is boring. Any sport which goes on for so long that you might need a ‘comfort break’ is not a sport at all. It is merely a means of passing the time. Like reading.

Of course, we used to have televised reading. It was called Jackanory. Now we have Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which is much better. Things have moved on, but cricket has not.

I’m not sure that it can. Even if Nasser Hussain, who is the captain of England, were to invest in some new hair and marry Council House Spice (aka Claire Sweeney, the ex-Brookside actress turned Big Brother contestant), it wouldn’t make any difference.

Nobody is quite sure how cricket began, though many people believe it was invented by shepherds who used their crooks to defend the wicket gate to the sheep fold. This would certainly figure because shepherds had many long hours to while away, with nothing much to do.

The first written reference to cricket was in 1300, when Prince Edward played it with his friend Piers Gaveston. And again, this would figure. Princes, in those days, were not exactly rushed off their feet.

Cricket was spread around the world by British soldiers who found themselves marooned in godforsaken flea-bitten parts of the world and needed something to keep them amused, not just for an hour but for week after interminable week.

Today Australia dominates the game – which furthers my theory. Of course they’re good at it. They have no distractions. And the only way we can ever beat them is to round up the unemployed and the wastrels and give them all bats. Certainly, they’d feel at home in the pavilion. It’s exactly the same thing as sitting in a bus shelter all day.

Let me put it this way – is there a sound more terrifying on a Sunday afternoon than a child saying ‘Daddy. Can we play Monopoly?’

Like cricket, Monopoly has no end. The rules explain how you can unmortgage a property and when you should build hotels on Bond Street but they don’t say, and they should, that the winner is the last player left alive. And what about Risk? You make a calculation, based on the law of averages, that you can take the world but you’re always stymied by the law of probability and end up out of steam, throwing an endless succession of twos and ones in Kamchatka. Still, this is preferable to the modern version in which George W. Bush invades Iraq and we all die of smallpox.

Happily, my children are now eight, six and four so they’re way past the age when board games hold any appeal. Given the choice of mortgaging Old Kent Road or shooting James Bond on PlayStation, they’ll take the electronic option every time.

Then there are jigsaws, which I once had to explain to a Greek. ‘Yes, you spend a couple of weeks putting all the pieces together so you end up with a picture.’

‘Then what happens?’ he asked.

‘Well, you break it up again and put it back in the box.’

It’s not often I’ve felt empathy with a Greek, but I did then. And it’s much the same story with crosswords. If scientists could harness the brainpower spent every day on trying to find the answer to ‘Russian banana goes backwards in France we hear perhaps’, then maybe mankind might have cured cancer by now.

Crosswords like jigsaws and cricket, are not really games in themselves. They are simply tools for wasting time. And that’s not something that sits well in the modern world.

We may dream of living the slow life, taking a couple of hours over lunch and eating cheese until dawn, but the reality is that we have a heart attack if the traffic lights stay red for too long or the lift doors fail to close the instant we’re ready to go.

Answering-machine messages are my particular bugbear. I want a name and a number, and that’s it. I don’t have time to sit and listen to where you’ll be at three and who you’ll be seeing and why you need to talk before then. And even if I do pick up the phone personally, I don’t want a chat. I’m a man. I don’t do chatting. Say what you have to say and go away.

British film-makers still haven’t got this. They spend hours with their sepia lighting and their long character developing speeches abd it’s all pointless because we’d much rather watch a muscly American saying ‘Die, m**********r.’

Slow cooked lamb shanks for supper? Oh for God’s sake, I’ll get a takeaway.

Cricket, then, is from a bygone age when people invested their money in time rather than in things. And now we have so many things to play with and do, it seems odd to waste it watching somebody else playing what is basicallyan elaborate game of catch.

Please stop watching – then it will go away

This was penned by Jeremy in 2002. Before Twenty20.
Posted by Rahul.

The day started normally. One had no intentions to watch the match at the stadium. Long discussions on the previous evening had convinced every one in the room (cant call a dealing room a department) that watching the match in a pub with friends was far superior to going through the trials and tribulations of a Wankhede visit. Come noon, a few brave souls had started calling up friends to enquire about their well being in general and availability of extra tickets in particular. The replies were encouraging but needed a wait of another couple of hours. There was an air of quiet confidence in the group. Things began to change over the passage of a couple of hours. Confidence gave way to hope, hope to expectancy, expectancy to stark reality. Reality is like a life jacket. It takes long to sink in. One could hear growing mutterings about the stupidity of sitting in a packed stadium watching some pointless match. A couple of hours before the scheduled start time, plans were afoot to watch the game at a pub, when Christmas reached the shores of Nariman Point a tad early. Someone had caught hold of Santa Claus and arranged for 10 tickets.

This caused a surge of excitement across the room and frantic calls to the better halves were made excusing themselves for the evening. As is the norm in this country droughts are followed by floods. Sipping cold barley water at a watering hole, trying to fortify against the inhuman heat of the city, one suddenly realized that 15 tickets for 10 people was a bit of the American style of living. 5 lucky co-guzzlers were the recipients of Santa’s benevolence. Their initial reaction was of frank incredulence. They checked and rechecked the tickets to figure the catch. There was none. Having done the good deed of the year, one proceeded to the stadium.

The semi final was billed to be a clash of the titans. Shane Warne had turned an average Rajasthan Royals (RR) team into an outstanding one. Virender Sehwag’s Delhi Dare Devils (DD) was well balanced. One was interested in the spectators’ reaction to the two teams as the home team was already out of the semi finals. Royals seemed to be winnings hands down in this category. The huge roar that preceded McGrath’s first ball was just an anomaly. The majority were backing the Royals. Normally Indian crowds back the underdog. A team which was standing at the top of the points table in the league stage couldn’t be termed as one. But the perception of RRs being a weak team, which was built up before the start of the IPL seemed to be lingering after a span of some 40 odd days. Or maybe it’s just that Mumbaikars disliked Delhi more.

Graeme Smith, who was injured in the prior two matches was opening with Swapnil Asnodkar. The first over went off quietly without any major cricketing action. Mohammed Asif seemed to forget that Asnodkar was a passable boxer at a young age. Upper cuts and jabs and pulls continued to form a large part of his cricketing prowess. A straight bat was anathema to him. A couple of short ones from Asif and the floodgates opened. Graeme Smith immediately pulled one of his many muscles and asked for a runner.

Whether Sehwag commented on this later in the post match conference is not known. If a player who has sat out of 2 matches with a suspect injury is played in a crucial tie with common knowledge that he may get unfit during the course of the match then the opposition captain has every right to deny him a runner. Adam Gilchrist had commented on the DDs strategy of using good fielders as substitutes. It did bring into picture the concept of fair play. Smith’s inclusion highlighted it.

With Smith and Asnodkar giving a flier of a start, Yo Mahesh decided to contribute. And boy, did he contribute. He was pulled, flicked, cut with impudence. Maharoof dropped a sleeper (it was easier than a sitter). The momentum seemed to be turning the Royals’ way. Smith departed, followed by Asnodkar with Maharoof trying to make up for his earlier lapse. In walked Shane Watson. The stadium erupted. His name was chanted with a religious fervour. He didn’t disappoint. Along with some help from Yomy, he never let the run rate slacken despite wickets falling at regular intervals. Sehwag got Asif back desperately trying to get Watson. Why he didn’t try to bowl himself or throw the ball to Dilshan will never be known. The highlight of the evening was a gala solo from who else but, dear reader you guessed it right, Yo Mahesh. A Watson shot sailed in the air towards deep mid wicket. YM who was probably wearing a telescope lens in the reverse, thinking the ball to be far ahead of him rushed forward gallantly. The ball seemed to have reassessed the situation and decided to jump and kick a bit more. YM was seen lying flat on his stomach on the practice pitch and the ball was lying outside the boundary. That one moment encapsulated the day for the DDs. Yusuf Pathan got into action with his customary swats and the scoreboard showed 192 by the end of 20 overs.

It was heading to be a good close match. Sehwag and Gambhir had been in good touch and with the likes of Shikhar Dhawan, Dilshan, Dinesh Karthik and Manoj Tewary to follow, the match was on. Well it got switched off pretty early. In fact it never was switched on. Watson cleaned up the top 3. Even Munaf Patel looked threatening. The crowd was getting restless. It had come to watch a breath taking contest but only the extreme heat and humidity seemed to be succeeding in doing that for them. By the eighth over the fat lady had sung and the stadium was emptying out. Watching Warne bowl was the only reason that kept one glued to the seat. Once that objective was achieved one was out of the stadium in a flash.

The walk back home was not pleasant. Cabs were at a premium and after half an hour and a 4 km walk one was back at one’s castle swearing never to watch a live game again.

As one is writing this, frantic calls are being made to check the availability of tickets for today’s game.

Posted by Rahul