Hyped World Cup!!!!

14 Teams, 210 players, ONE CUP………. Nice slogan to read and advertise for viewership in India. I doubt if they had to advertise a cricket match in India ever as even the practice matches drew full house.
The Cup gets underway tomorrow when India take their arch rivals Bangladesh. I said “arch rivals”, I think; I must say arch rivals of the World cup as India sometimes just fail to lift their game above the minnows. The talent in Indian team is better than them but I just think sometimes we are too complacent or just don’t lift our game as they do in a crucial match of the world cup.
For the first time; I liked the format of the world cup. It’s not boring and won’t go on and on as the last one in West Indies and I think IPL season to follow is one strong motivation to get to this format. I always thought why there should be some other motivation to get to do something new in cricket. Why can’t the administrators be proactive enough? For example they needed an ICL to come up with an IPL, they needed an IPL to cut the duration of the cup and make more matches interesting and what this format has done is most matches in this edition would be critical. I always believed that once the knockout starts then and only then you can differentiate the men among the boys. The intensity is back and pressure is immense as you have that day to make it or break it.
The group stage is just a formality so that top 8 nations reach the quarter finals. The group stage is more or less predictable and we can safely assume that top 8 teams in the rankings to go through with no surprises. I think this is something that I failed to digest why would teams like Canada, Kenya Holland play only in the World Cup and they add no value to the most important event in the Cricket calendar. I think ICC did ban the Triangular Series to be played in any nation in the pretext of having all countries play all countries in the home and away leg to determine the TEST Champions. What they can do is add one minnow team to the ODIs that follow a Test Series to make it a triangular series with 2 main test teams and one minnow like Canada or Kenya. This will give more opportunities for the minnows to play the best in the world and can improve their game or at least know what they lack and the lesser known players can interact with the greats of the game. This would probably make the minnows add value to the Cup and the Cup is more competitive. Playing once in 4 years those 2-3 matches does not add any value to them; the new format is at least letting them extend their stay in the World Cup.
The richest sporting institution will be richer by hosting the world cup, the commercial angle to this is enormous and I really cannot imagine how much money has this pumped in India. But is this money reaching the grass roots, is the money reaching remote India to prosper or harness the talent, is the money helping the less fortunate and financially challenged aspirants to make the grade. I have my serious doubts on it.
Forget doing so much at the grass roots, they even cannot make the domestic format interesting or for that matter the standards of domestic matches nothing less than the international matches. I was just watching a Ranji match and bowler was Ishant and he was really bowling quick but the ball was actually stopping and coming not more than knee or max thigh high to the batsman. If he had to unsettle the batsman with a short ball he had to pitch it so short that the batsman had ample time to move away or pull it. It was such a demotivating to bowl on that wicket as a fast bowler that I really thought if India has the fast bowlers that they have then India is really fortunate to have them. The only way he made the batsman realise how quick he was; by bowling a Yorker right beneath the bat in the block hole.
Two aspects come out of such sluggish wickets first; the Bowlers don’t know what length they had to bowl when they actually gets a fast, hard wicket in SA or Aus. I think the second and most important thing is suddenly the fast bowler is the most important person to get you 20 wickets in the match rather than spinners. He gets this importance and becomes significant when he reaches a foreign soil and therefore at times we see our bowlers struggling for the line and length as they are either too full or too short that batsman can evade them. If we watch these matches carefully then the times the batsman got beaten and/or missed the edge is higher as due to lack of line and length and therefore batsman gets the extra time to correct in process they get beaten but don’t nick the ball.
The batters have a completely different proposition, the knee length ball now does not exists at all and the range of the delivery is from head to waist rather than from knee to waist as in India. This change is too much to handle in addition with the pace and occasional movement in air and off the pitch. You cannot expect a batsman to tackle it when he is playing international cricket or just a before a tour practice something in Nets and get going. It’s as if the batters know their theory of how to play the short swinging ball but haven’t done their practicals much.
We should have some strategic solutions to this and BCCI with so much money should do something about it in terms of pitches and improving the ground conditions. The Kanga league was one of the best solutions thought of in 1948 after India’s dismal performance in England. The peculiarity of Kanga League was it was played in June to September in Mumbai when no one plays cricket during the rains. The motivation was to create a natural English rainy atmosphere, the slow sticky, seaming English wickets which would happen naturally due to rain and a wet outfield. The overcast conditions in rainy season made the ball swing as in England and also the batsman was habituated to play in diminishing light as was the case in England then. It was such a success that we hardly see our batsman struggle in England after the advent of kanga league.
The world cup if India gets it home, then all the credit should go to the players and support staff and nothing to the administrators which is so unfortunate. We have most successful batsman against fast bowling of West Indies of 70s and 80s in Sunny, we have the most successful fast bowler in Kapil but I hardly see any former successful player helping the team and getting into the grass roots of Indian cricket. I initially thought that some won’t be interested but all are not interested is hard to digest. We need more internationally successful players to come forward and help kids and various institutions build a talent that no one can challenge.
Some great Australian player had said the 2nd best team in the world should be constituted of players sitting on the bench and not the team you’re playing against. This is so so true and if we can harvest such talent not only in cricket but in every other sport that India plays then we can well and truly become a sporting super power. At times I just feel it’s a matter of will than anything else and if our administrators improve or we improve the quality of administrators sitting at the helm things could make a difference. I was so happy to see Srinath, Kumble and Prasad winning the KCA elections and I hope that we see some good genuine world class bowlers from Karnataka as India best threesome spearhead the cricket in that state.
Just think as spectators we were so demotivated to see Common Wealth games due to the news of scams and other ill deeds, I can’t imagine from where did the players found their motivation and will to participate in the games. I think they did for India as representing the country was most important rather than all these things. But at the same time, I see someone going with all the money and medal winners struggling to find even the practice area is rather shameful. I always felt there 2 very important people who are not treated well in our country and one of them are sports person playing a sport other than cricket and other set of people is the ARMY. The 2 most neglected set of people represent the nation and make us feel proud about being an Indian.

The "isms" and the "ists"

The title of the blog seems to be very strange and if you are wondering what I am up to this time then don’t worry "your ideas would get clear here on".
I was just relaxing and watching “The BUCK STOPS HERE” a talk or debate show hosted by Barkha Dutt a senior journalists. The topic was Ajmal Kasab court trial. There were lot of distinguish personalities who were throwing a lot of ideas and thoughts, interpretations, conclusions and Barkha was catching everything and collating them together for the viewer to analyze and ponder on it.
Some basic jargons, if I dare say to that language, which was spoken in the show, was terrorists, fundamentalists, Islamists, communalists, fascist, racist, extremist etc. As I was hearing them speak and most of the related shows on even other issues in India we often hear similar verbose to the one above. The point I am making here takes us to the title of the blog, rather makes half of the title i.e. THE “ISTS” part of it.
What I wanted the distinguished guests to tackle or speak about is THE “ISMS” behind every such “ISTS” i.e. for example when we speak about terrorists then what about Terror”ism”. If we are speaking about Extremists then why don’t we speak about Extremism and so on………
From what as a English language student I understand is a Terrorists or any “…ISTS” is completely dependent on the “…..ISM” that motivates and propels the individual to become an “IST” of that nature.
The very notion above is good enough, to make us realize what we have to do in order to achieve what we wish to. For example we want to end Terror then finishing terrorists is not going to solve the problem. We have to work towards solving TERRORISM. If the “ISM” ends then the motivations that propels people to kill so many also is killed. The base on which this game is played is no more the motivation.
If I look at myself and see what today can propel me to be a part of a plan to kill so many innocent people, it would need immensely high level of motivational talk aided with proofs, images, statistics, fundamentals which would then create a high amount of emotional turbulence in me and I would want to take revenge by whatever means being made available to me. Basically I want to revenge whether if it’s the right way or wrong its immaterial for me. Such a high motivation is generated in people like Kasab which is very dangerous. The basic point is there are some people who has something with them which can create Kasabs. This again boomerangs a question onto us that have we done something wrong which is being used against us. Is the onus on us here rather than them???
I mean there could be more than what we see here. The motivational facts would be false but not entirely. There would be some strong reasoning which we are overlooking and/or missing something to this whole issue of Terrorists and their Terrorism. We have over these years, failed to understand their problem or the motivation that they provide to people like Kasab to go and create such carnage.
Here I am not justifying what Kasab did but I am saying there is more to it than mere act that he has performed. By hanging him, we can only revenge what he did but I think that neither makes our lives secure nor guarantee that there would be no more of such attack.
Did our government, we as people tried implementing, learnt from what inspired him to kill so many hapless people. Forget that did we try to understand the “ISM” behind the “ISTS” in Kasab. There could some starch realities, some mistakes we would have done that has reaped us the crop called Kasab. Are we even contemplating such a thing?
If we assume that Kasab was motivated from outside India and we as a nation can’t do much about it then what about the Maosits, Naxals or BODO. They are the locals and not someones who came from outside. Did we ever try to de-alienate the local people from the insurgent groups? Where are these groups of terror getting recruits from? They have a steady flow of recruits, which is a proof that they have something to tell and motivate people to join them. They can’t sustain by making people join them by force for such a long time. This motivation given to people is the root of the “ISMS” that has created the “ISTS”.
Any ill “ISMS” should be tackled and the problems have to be nipped in the bud, neutralize the motivations that make up the “ISMS” whether its Terrorism, Pessimisms, casteism, Racism etc….. we try to change individual and make him, bring him on other side of the “IST” spectrum but fail because the “ISMS” remain in the background and the change is therefore superficial.
The danger lies in the “ISMS” that we knowingly/unknowingly create due to our vested interests and not the “ISTS” that come up later. The “ISTS” are only the immediate consequences of the “ISMS” and they don’t die till the time “ISMS” exists. We can only prevent and feel lucky that we did not fall prey to the Consequence like Kasab this time but this does not guarantee any future setbacks to us.