I'm Mr. Brightside
Well. It's official. India
But being the eternal optimist that I am, I choose to see things in a more positive light. At least he hasn't been murdered as yet. Furthermore, as if that wasn't good news enough, I am not one of those thousands of crazed cricket followers who have made travel arrangements and ticket reservations worth crores of rupees to travel halfway around the world to be able to catch the by now sold-out Super Eight (How I hate that phrase. Never liked Super Six either, but at least that had the entire alliterative jig going for it.) match to be held on Sunday, the 15th of April, rubbing their hands together with glee and drooling copious amounts of, well, drool, keenly anticipating a succulent India-Pakistan encounter inBarbados
They shall now all be fortunate enough to witness Ireland play Bangladesh, in probably the most evenly matched of the Super Eights; just the kind of encouragement the minnows (Never liked that word either. Reminds me of fish, a section of the Animal Kingdom I most singularly abhor.) need.
After all, isn't that what the Cricket World Cup is all about.
But being the eternal optimist that I am, I choose to see things in a more positive light. At least he hasn't been murdered as yet. Furthermore, as if that wasn't good news enough, I am not one of those thousands of crazed cricket followers who have made travel arrangements and ticket reservations worth crores of rupees to travel halfway around the world to be able to catch the by now sold-out Super Eight (How I hate that phrase. Never liked Super Six either, but at least that had the entire alliterative jig going for it.) match to be held on Sunday, the 15th of April, rubbing their hands together with glee and drooling copious amounts of, well, drool, keenly anticipating a succulent India-Pakistan encounter in
They shall now all be fortunate enough to witness Ireland play Bangladesh, in probably the most evenly matched of the Super Eights; just the kind of encouragement the minnows (Never liked that word either. Reminds me of fish, a section of the Animal Kingdom I most singularly abhor.) need.
After all, isn't that what the Cricket World Cup is all about.
posted by Manu Saxena at 11:12:00 am
10 comments
10 Comments:
nt a big cricket fan, bt evr thot tat mayb dis is d best thing 4 indian cricket? u need some kind of reality chk 2 shock u out f ur complacency n tk a gud hard look at urself n move forward, rite?
felt bad abt d woolmer thing tho...
hey i came here thru mannz blog...n i think i knw u...IMS right??
nice blog...u write really well...bout d post, i am not really a cricket enthusiast but i wish we had done better!!
Mann, I am not really a cricket enthusiast either, but I was looking forward to the World Cup with much anticipation. And what did I get. A perfectly good team which came a cropper against substandard teams from neighbouring countries.
Surely, this is not the best thing for Indian cricket. If we needed a reality check, why couldn't we have gotten one during, say, a three match series against Bangladesh at home? Was it necessary to travel half the way across the world just to be publicly humiliated and get a reality check.
But then, I don't blame the cricketers. I blame the ICC. There is a time and a place for making weak nations play strong nations, and the World Cup is just not it. What we have on our hands now is a supposedly world-class tournament watered down thanks to the skewed format that the ICC advocates, with two ridiculously weak teams taking on the Titans of world cricket, all in the name of exposure, which means little more than proving, occasionally, that a weak team can, on a very good day, when playing out of their skins, by freak accident, in a one-off isolated match, defeat a good team hung-over from the previous evening.
It's crazy, effing crazy, if you ask me.
Gunj, I'm glad you like the way I write, and thank you for the comment. Do keep visiting.
As for IMS, please desist from citing the name ever again on this blog. Such vile, wicked and malevolent witchery shall not be dignified with a mention on this hallowed page.
nw m truly zapped... u actually sound lk my dad!!! [:O] papa... is this u pretending to be manu?
bt i agree... dr is a time n a place and it is effing crazy...
It is not mere coincidence that makes me speak like your father. I echo the views of about 80% of the Indian male population.
God save us from Australia-Ireland encounters.
No, Manu, I don't think it is right to fault the ICC for India's debacle.
I also don't think the Sri Lankan outfit that we had lost to was substandard in any way. If anything was substandard, it was India's batting performance.
Even after being beaten by Bangladesh, we still would have progressed into the next round if we had won against the Lankans but we didn't have the fight in ourselves.
Rewind to the last World Cup (when we sprung back after the hiding at the hands of the Aussies at Centurion), and you'd know what I'm talking about.
If you had taken the time to see Australia vs South Africa or even Sri Lanka vs England, you'd know India and Pakistan had absolutely no business to be in the Super Eights.
And one ostensibly ridiculously weak team (freakishly?) defeated South Africa today. I hope you followed.
Rishi, I am in no way condoning India's abysmal performance. They played pathetically, and paid for it. The team, as you correctly pointed out, didn't seem very keen on putting up a fight, even in a do-or-die situation. And seeing the general quality of matches in the Super Eight stage, I completely agree that, at least on present form, India would not have belonged.
However, and I don't believe you can argue against this, the presence of Bangladesh and Ireland in the Super Eights really does bring down the level of competition. Half the matches have completely lost their importance. And though Bangladesh can, as they have demonstrated a couple of times already, spring a few surprises, they will remain exactly that. Surprises.
As Graeme Smith said before the Bangladesh-South Africa match, any half-decent test-playing nation would defeat the Bangladeshi outfit 97 times out of a 100. What you do not want is one of those 3 times occurring during the World Cup.
India played badly, and Dav Whatmore has definitely done a wonderful job with the Bangladeshi team. But the fact remains, the Super Eights with India and Pakistan in them would have been more sensible, and infinitely more entertaining.
Unless you really do believe that team Bangladesh is genuinely better than team India, in which case you are completely justified in thinking the way you do.
Oh, and nice to have you back here. How have you been?
All I'm saying is that the team that plays better on the day wins, however cliched that may sound. I don't think they are genuinely better than us (In fact I know we'll ruthlessly whitewash them in May), but the fact remains that they played better than us on that day, and ended our World Cup dreams.
Sachin, Sourav and Dravid may have had 40,000 ODI runs between them coming into the Cup, but what did it amount to? Zaheer, Agarkar and Bhajji may have snared 500 wickets between them, yet they couldn't bowl Bangladesh out for less than 192.
And as for these "surprises" that Bangladesh springs, you could say the same for India's victory 24 years ago, or Sri Lanka's 11 years ago. I mean dude who would have imagined India upstaging the West Indians, and Sri Lanka defeating the Aussies? And look where they are now.
I have no problem with Bangladesh emerging as a cricketing power. So what if they get knocked out of the Super Eights? I think they've done their job.
I'm doing fine.
Which is, in effect, exactly what I am saying as well. The team that plays better on the day wins, irrespective of how well (or poorly) they play throughout the rest of the year. What results, therefore, is a pattern that does not account for accidents (and I shall continue to refer to the India-Bangladesh match as one), and, consequently, a lopsided draw in a stage as crucial as the Super Eights of a competition as important as the World Cup.
But then, I guess that this is a generic aspect of all sports, and probably a contributing factor to the glorious uncertainties of any game.
It's good to know you're doing well. Do keep visiting.
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