Musings

With the world cup debacle for India getting slowly forgotten, there is one more deamon opened up by our great coach Greg! I have admired his stern and straight forward approach to the Indian cricket. I thought he will bring in the much needed professionalism into this Indian squad. With a focus on grooming youngsters and experimentation policy India were on a high with consecutive victories (read in the subcontinent conditions !) in the initial phase of Greg's coaching. Everything seemed to have fallen into place, with the exception of the Ganguly saga, and everything looked bright for the Indian cricket team. Now then, I think everything started deteriorating after the 'disastorous' tour to West Indies where the Indians were beaten 4-1 in the ODI series. This really set the tone for the decline of the team's performance and it seems like a never ending story. It has really upset whatever plans the captain and coach had for the world cup campaign. Suddenly, all the you...

As the world cup campaign for the Indian team got over last Saturday, with Bangladesh beating the Bermuda, the 'stars' are coming back home.. There has been a lot of media reports touching upon the inherent revenue loss for the broadcasters and advertisers alike due to the premature exit of the Indian team. Reports claim close to Rs. 2000 Cr of revenue loss :? Well, thats a huge sum of money to invest in a game of cricket (or any other sport for that matter) that too on a set of hugely non-performing, over-hyped players. At least, this World cup woes will set things right and bring sanity into the commercialization of the sport and the sports-person alike. I guess we may no longer see a Sachin, Dhoni, Dravid, Ganguly, Sehwag et. al., coming before us to drink a bottle of Pepsi or Boost or what not. In a way, this exit has been good to bring down the expectation of the 'Blue Billion'. One of the Economic Times article fears that the cricket tours India is to undertake co...

As like many in India, I'm also a great follower of Cricket. It doesn't get bigger than a World cup. With so much of hype surrounding the MIB (not the SNMP's Management Information Base :), this stands for the Men In Blue, a term coined for Team India based on their jersey color), I was waiting for the matches. Being an ardent fan of Sachin Tendulkar, I expected fireworks from this Little Master blaster, especially with 'minnows' like Bangladesh and Bermuda around. Alas, what a disappointment! Not in my wildest dream that I imagined our favorite MIB will crash out of the first round.. The defeat against Bangladesh set the tone for the team. They never looked like willing to win the match at all. If Dravid and Co thought of just being at the park will ensure a win against the 'minnows' (read Bangladesh!), they are mightly mistaken. For the Bangladesh team had already 'upset' the strong Newzealand in the warm-up games.. and they did have a shrewd coach...