By Shivani Gupta
Cricket
Team Anna Vs Team India?
Aug 28th
All of us have been glued to the TV sets, keeping abreast, with bated breath, with the latest on Anna’s movement.
I’m doing the same, even though now I’m getting a little fatigued. But it’s also creating another problem.
As a sports journalist, no-one’s really paying attention to my work. In fact work has dried up. There’s no space for sports, something recreational and not as important, to be on air right now.
But then I thought, if we did have space what would I do. Talk about India being whitewashed in England again? I’m bored of that too. There’s nothing left to say. The series was so one-sided that the same is being said about India since day two.
This reminded me of this joke going around.
How Anna has taken the attention off the Indian team…. Funny. But true.
But this evil (Team Anna) is definitely better than the other (Team India).
At least the movement against corruption will lead us somewhere, if not immediately, then in time. At least give us a path for the future.
The movement against the corruption of the BCCI is more a losing battle.
Because the solutions for Team India are much simpler (no deliberations on what is constitutional or not, no ordinances, removing a bill, all-party meets or anything).
There are egos involved nonetheless and some losses to make. But you can’t expect the BCCI to come around on either of them.
Where’s the ‘Wall’?
Jul 31st
Watching another tame draw between India and Sri Lanka at Colombo, surely, brought the same thoughts to everyone’s mind.
What are we doing with test matches like this? Where are we heading? Are we achieving anything?
Its remarkable how for atleast 5 years, the ante has been ‘upped’ as far as the longer version is concerned, but not much has changed. Talks about how something needs to be done to preserve the format are abundant.
But still, even the most basic actions are nowhere to be seen. Isn’t it the simplest of solutions to have better result-oriented pitches? But no, seems like that is too much to be asked for. I wonder what is the commitment that anyone, including the ICC, has for the game.
But there’s nothing to be gained harping about this, especially not in this blog.
The shower of runs in the two matches in Sri lanka brought some other thoughts to my mind. Some that are becoming hard to ignore now.
So let me just put it in front of you.
At the cost of sounding paranoid, I think aloud: Is Rahul Dravid waning?
In the two test matches so far in the series, the middle order miracle has scored only 65 runs in three innings!
And this on pitches that we will called mine-fields by all comparisons. Surely, everyone else made the most of them.
There have been a total of 2 double hundreds and 6 tons from both sides in the two matches. Not only that, there have been 10 half-centuries.
But Dravid managed a top score of only 44.
He didn’t even look like getting it on, if you know what I mean. He constantly looked in pain, as if suffering hard to eek every single run. A pale shadow of himself really. How he managed to skip under the radar without a trace?
Something didnt look right.
I was more surprised than worried ofcourse. I cant quite understand how someone of his quality and persistance didn’t do any better.
Is Dravid getting a little bored like of the rest of us?
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