IPL the season 2

Cricket's latest baby, INDIAN PREMIER LEAGUE is a sensation beyond the format of a game, A phenomena beyond geographic borders. Yes, Indian Premier League has proved to be most popular championship in the cricket arena conveniently surpassing the World Cup organized by the game's apex body. This may be because of the money involved, or due to controversies associated with it, or because of T20 format or may be due to the factor of bollywood. Accepting the changes brought by IPL and appreciating the maza of IPL this is my observation of the second phase of the cricket's richest tournament of present day.

Firstly, finds and failures:

If Gautam Gambhir is the sensation of IPL-1, it is the turn of 22 year old Pragyan Ojha in 2009 . The Hyderabadi has matured into a confident bowler not caring the batsmen's credits. His deliveries has a loop seeing which Bishan Singh Bedi would be proud of. His courage to toss the ball up and invite the batsmen for a shot turns him into worthy prospect.The wicket of Wander Merve in the final was a treat to watch. More importantly his orthodox bowling action will not give any chance to the Australian umpires who are always eager to find a suspectable bowling action from a subcontinent player.

Manish Pandey, the teenager from Uttaranchal has the class of Dilip Vengsarkar and the adrenalin of King Richards. His square drives during the semi final epitomizing his timing cloned a right handed Saurav Ganguly. Though it is too early to compare him with the likes of a Rahul Dravid or a VVS Laxman, it will be stupidity at its best if one ignores him.

Ross Taylor, the Kiwi middle order batsmen has nothing to prove as his batting skills are very much evident in the longer formats of the game. But this IPL has only shown what kind of destroyer he can be if given the licence to kill. The cameo against the ill fated Knight Riders has manifested the hard hitting skills of the NewZealand Central Districts player.

ANIL KUMBLE, whats new about him? Yes, nothing new about him but many things should be observed regarding BCCI which ignored some master leadership skills for almost a decade. Many things can be realised if the "GOD FATHER" funda of Indian Cricket is understood. I mean no insult to Ganguly and admire him as the advocate of trading fire to fire but seeing this IPL any sensible Indian cricket follower would have thought " this man should have been the captain of my national side for a much longer time"

Kevin Pietersen along with his English team mate Freddie Flintoff stands as the biggest failure of this year IPL. With a forgettable average and a discouraging strike rate KP is certainly the front runner for the worst of IPL contest. Dr. Mallya's hot favorite is no way near his prime performance and this not only affected RCB batting but kept some one of Anil Kumble's stature away from much deserved captaincy.

Flintoff, the big purchase of CSK looked like a tyro unsure about his place in the playing XI. The Ashes'05 conqueror has sustained an injury by the middle of the tournament but his performance prior to that would have disappointed all the English fans aspiring an Ashes regain. The way Abhishek Nayar dispatched Freddie's 90MPH deliveries in to the press box would have left Andrew Strauss sleepless.

Viru and Gauti combo is next only to the English pair. Both of them suffered miserably to adapt to the bounce of the safari grounds. Seeing their play in the IPL no Indian fan would be happy about the preparations for the T20 WC which is due to start within a fortnight.

Here comes Controversies:

Akin to IPL-1, IPL-2 also have enough controversies to add the much needed spice for the newer version of the game. the fakeiplplayer blog started the whole thing with funky names to the characters around and interesting stories about the Mandira Bedis and the Shilpa Shettys.

May be a coincidence, the popularity of the fakeiplplayer blog matched only with the notority of the Knight Riders. They never looked like Knights and they are not ready for a ride even! The only good thing did by the disastrous performance of the KKR sorry KR is the running away of over acting, ill spirited SRK aka the frachise owner.

The multiple captain theory of John Buchanan ultimately led to the news that the team is split based on racial bias. The demand of John Buchanan for more foreign players added insult to the injury. His latest discovery that the loss was due to the absence of Pakistani players did no good to his identity as a cricketing brain.

There are other topics of controversies like the Sachin dropping himself and Sanath down the batting order in a must win game against the Rajasthan Royals but none matched with that of the King Khan's franchise.

With unconditional affection and equal admiration, I dedicate this article to Sachin, the GOD wishing him all the best for the next edition of IPL. People say Sachin failed many times and calling him GOD is a mark of insanity. But I challenge, even GOD failed many times so as the mastreo!

sarvejana sukhinobhavantu

-Karthik

Me and HYD

INDIAN PREMIER LEAGUE-2009 just got finished and the DECCAN CHARGERS emerged winners outplaying the Royal Challengers Bangalore. Despite being the supporter of the RCB team I could not resist but appreciate the way Gilli's team has played. People around me are scolding me for not supporting Hyd team but somehow I never connect myself with Hyd in a positive way. HYD means pain thats what stored in my mind!! may be because of the journey time from here or because of some nasty things in the past. what ever the reason is, I'm never a hyderabadi and i will never be one. At one point in my life I'm always eager to go there but there used to be many a hurdle but now I dont want to go and people are asking me to come time and again.
thats life!! so unexpected, so spontaneous and so very interesting!!

Next month I'm due in hyd for some work and i'm trying my best to escape from that. I have to travel for more than 30 hours and i will be with people over there for less than 30 hours this is a real pain. people say there are companies in hyderabad which pay real big money but i'm sorry its hyderaBAD and its all very BAD :)

sarvejana sukhinobavantu

-Karthik

Velupillai:Martyr or Maniac?

In 1973 four people killed the Jaffna mayor, the police killed three of them and the fourth is "PRABHAKARAN". I never heard his name without the prefix "VELUPILLAI". when I first heard of him in my school days I thought he is another one like Veerappan!! but later in my 7th-8th classes I made a detailed study about his history and other things happened in the Emarald's Isle(courtesy: India Today special edition, sometime in 1996-1997). I used rate him as one of the greatest warriors world has ever seen, becasue he took the audacious step of taking responsibility for his race at the age of '17'. By doing so, he became Robinhood for the Tamil diaspora across the world. If LTTE became so huge an organization, went on maintaining its own navy and airforce its not because of the capability of Prabhakaran alone but strength of Tamil Diaspora across the world. As I observe Tamil diaspora is stronger than most other races (I would say only Islamic diaspora is stronger than this). Coming to Prabhakaran, in the early stages of the violent struggle he appointed very young people as commanders or leaders of his ranks and it worked very well be it due to the adrenalin they carried or due to the support of the Indian governement. But with time passing on, his "BLACK TIGERS" became notorious for their murders and attacks on innocent people. Despite all the attacks he remained as the sole representative of the Tamilians in SriLanka. When dealing with an issue as sensitive as racial conflict, even one sigle blunder can change the tables and thats what happened in the case of LTTE.

Like many other so called great leaders Prabhakaran also kept his personal or organisational vandetta before the interests of tamilian community and that made him to order for their biggest blunder:Rajiv's Assassination. Rajiv Gandhi's assassination remains as their worst mistake without which they would have had a shelter zone on the other side of Indian Ocean.By doing so LTTE moved away from the sentiments of their Tamilian brothers in India. The hostile stance taken by India proved very costly for the LTTE.

Despite of all the killings LTTE made, I could not help but appreciate the way Prabhakaran motivated his members and thats really great motivational skills. But he forgot the fact that interests of the people should be interests of the leader and so remained on the loosing side. Even peopl like Gandhi committed the same mistake and that costed India dearly in the freedom struggle. This is the reason why I dont consider Gandhi as a great leader but nonetheless I carry huge respect to Gandhi as an individual. Prabhakaran's ideology about the carrying cyanide is a real trend setter in the modern guerella warfare.

personally, I neither support Prabhakaran nor hate him. This is just my observation.

sarvejana sukhinobhavantu

-Karthik

Article and my response

last Friday, there was an article in The Hindu where Mr. Hasan Suroor explained how muslims in India are being ill treated and how that is turning 'moderate muslims' into 'orthodox muslims'. he took example of Shabana Azmi and her statements about the Babri Masjid issue. I am placing the article here. After reading the article, I mailed my response to The Hindu and they published a part of it. you can find it here. I am glad that atleast one news paper in India has the courage to present two sides of an aspect. As a matter fact, I wrote about the very topic some time back, I guess after the Delhi blasts last year. Below is my actual response to the article:

Dear Sir,

Below is my response to the article by Hasan Suroor on 8th May, 2009 in your esteemed news paper. I request you to publish in the letters to editor column.

It is true that the Babri Masjid incident is certainly a black mark in the history of secular India. But taking it as a reason to become hardlined about religion is nothing more than the individual's moral bankruptcy. if Babri incident made Shabana Azmi to take her muslim identity more seriously then Hindus in this country have thousands of "Babri Masjids" in the last several centuries. From Somnath temple to Varanasi, thousands of temples have been vandalised by the muslim rulers. We hardly find ancient temples which were not attacked and robbed by the muslim rulers. So, if we apply the logic of Shabana Azmi all Hindus should turn violent. It is unfortunate that a news paper of The Hindu's reputation is endorsing such destructive logics by giving space in the main columns page.


Karthikeya Indrakanti

11 months..

It is exactly eleven months ago, on the 8th of June, 2008 at 17:30 hrs IST that my mobile got a call from a number starting from +44. I didnt had any clue of who will be on the other side and what was it all about. when I got that call I was actually mocking my friends and having a gala time. Once the call started, the game has begun some smart talking has been done by the one on that side. Despite understanding the situation I'm present into, people didnt had the courtesy to disconnect the call and made me to listen to a lot of CRAP. People say it all happened because of insecurity feelings etc etc. But thats no fun for me either!! I had my life at stake and still people lacked that humanity. Let me not go into all those rubbish episodes. Coming to the call again, it lasted for almost 2.5 hrs and when I want to disconnect the call, the one on the other side said "Please dont disconnect the call Karthik!, I will feel bad" and the irony is that after some 5 months the same person disconnected my call when I was talking! of course thats life!! and no one gauranteed a fair treatment.

Well, as far as the call is concerned, I coin it as the doom's call. Simple reason behind that is its the only time when I wished that the burial infront of my house would succumb into it. The words used on that day are so painful that even today, I feel that pain. But i didnt cry that day, coz I told myself that I am not born to cry and also I dont want my friends to see me crying. There are people in my life who would turn violent by seeing tears of my eyes and so I have to keep this call away from all those sweet buddies. Becasue, EOD its not proper to hurt others for the reason that they hurt us!! just pity them.

though all of this happened sometime last year, why was I writing about them now?? Because exactly a year ago, something really gr8 happened in my life and I was euphoric that day, celebrating with my friends. This happening has got a very high correlation with the DOOM'S CALL. So I'm just recollecting all those incidents. Overall, 2008 is an eventful year for me. with people playing with my life left, right and center. I dont expect people to regret or remorse or apologise me because EOD what ever has been done is done by choice so a "sorry" dont mean a damn!!

the comic part of the whole drama is that people on the other side remarked that my choice of words is bad, but my conscious later told me that my choice of friends is really worst and thats what making me pay so dearly!!!


sarvejana sukhinobavantu!

-Karthik