Ganguly saw the ban coming?

Video link

You get to listen to yet another stupid wisecrack from Manjrekar as well at the end :)

(Thanks to Ankur for the video.)

Cheers,
Harsha

Musharraf's generosity continues

BTW, Musharraf continued with his charity work by announcing a cash bonus of 50 lakh for the Pakistan team on their return. Stay tuned for news on the collapse of the Pakistan economy ;)

Cheers,
Harsha

Maniacs in sports

Maniac ... that is the first word that comes to mind when I think of Marat Safin. On his day, hardly anyone in the world can challenge him. He gave ample evidence of that at this year's Australian Open, where he finally gave the rest of the world some hope by beating Federer. After he streamrolled Hewitt in the final, things seemed all set for a few Federer-Safin spectacles. Instead, what's happened is pretty unbelievable. While Federer resumed his usual routine and went off on a 25 match winning streak, in the five tournaments that Safin has played in following the Australian Open, he has won just four matches! However bad form one might be in, surely one expects the world No. 4 to do better.

Safin's temperament has always been questionable. His problems with Wimbledon are well known, where in his own words he "just gets bored". I think there was even an instance where after losing the match, he admitted in the post-match conference that he lost on purpose! (Imagine what would happen to an Indian cricketer if he issues such a statement :P) If Safin had been able to keep his ship afloat at all times, we might have seen a great rivalry being played out between him and Federer. Instead, with Safin throwing up his hand to be counted once in a blue moon, the responsibility of challenging Federer falls on Hewitt (I don't even consider Roddick in the scheme of things; I'm amazed how he manages to stay in the top 4, he's pathetic!), who sadly just doesn't have the game to challenge the world No. 1. So, we get to see Federer winning tournament after tournament, until some unheard of player called Richard Gasquet gets the better of him (maybe because Federer too is getting "bored"? ;))

Talking of temperamental sportsmen, I just remembered the interesting piece on Bobby Fischer that I saw on Sportscenter on Sunday. For those of you haven't heard of him, Fischer was the World Champion in Chess sometime in the 70s. According to the Sportscenter piece, Fischer's crowning as world champion was a really great event at that time as he crushed the then champion from Russia, Boris Spassky. In the times of the Cold War, I guess the event must have really filled with tension (I'm guessing primarily because I have never had much of a sense for how intense the Cold War was). After taking over the title, Fischer went into isolation and supposedly got involved with some cult. He then went against the wishes of the US and played a rematch with Spassky in Yugoslavia, at the time when the country was under sanctions. So, the US termed him an exile and he spent almost a decade in hiding, running around in South-East Asia. He was finally nabbed in Japan a few years back. I don't remember what exactly happened after that, but somehow he's now in Iceland, who have given him honorary citizenship as that is where he had beaten Spassky to become World Champion.

Anyway, the main point of this segment on Sportscenter was that during his heydays, Fischer had a mentor-like figure called Dick Schapp, who was his public face. And now, Dick's son Jeremy was the ESPN reporter covering Fischer's return to the public scene. After Fischer went into isolation, Dick had apparently issued a statement that "Bobby does not have a single sane bone in his whole body". Fischer was pretty pissed off with that and a good part of this Sportscenter snippet showed the verbal tussle between Fischer and Dick's son Jeremy. With Kasparov retiring from the sport, might be there's still time for Fischer to make a comeback now :P And, it's time Safin woke up from his slumber too!

That's it for today folks.

Cheers,
Harsha

Musharraf's awards

After Inzamam led Pakistan to victory in the 4th ODI, Musharraf announced an award of 10 lakh for Inzamam. And now, after Afridi led them to victory in the 5th ODI, Musharraf has awarded him too with 5 lakh. I was under the impression that the Pakistan economy was pretty much in shambles. Looks like most of the GDP makes its way into Musharraf's pockets! :P

The only other interesting news in sports over the last couple of days has been that of Federer's match winning streak being broken at 25 by unheard-of French teenager Glasquet, who's currently ranked 101 in the world. Anyway, Nadal has already dismissed off Glasquet in the semis and the Monte-Carlo Masters final is now going to be contested between Nadal and Coria. With the clay court season beginning, the Spaniards and the South Americans are back in the thick of things.

Cheers,
Harsha

The sorry state of women's cricket

I guess most of you would have read about the Indian team losing to Australia in the final of the Women's cricket world cup. Guess how much the team won for finishing up runners-up .... a paltry US$1600. I guess the team members would have been better off applying to grad school in the US :P

As usual, the US media is back doing what it is best at - building up hype. After Tiger won his 4th Masters on Sunday, already there are umpteen articles and polls around speculating whether Tiger is going to complete the Slam this year! Please give me a break. Anyone who saw Tiger facing off with DiMarco on Sunday will know that the title could have gone either way until the very last hole. The 16th hole was clearly a fluke (for the poor souls who didn't get to catch it live or on the infinite number of reruns on SportsCenter, here's a video clip; found this on some random blog and was shocked to see that he's using Coral!) and DiMarco's chip shot on the 18th didn't go in because the ball bounced off the flag-pole. So, I am certainly not optimistic of Tiger sweeping all the majors this year. Anyway, even if Tiger retains his good form, I hope atleast one of Mickelson, Vijay and Els will give him a good fight the next time round.

Cheers,
Harsha

Tying physics and golf

Just read this amazing article saying Tiger won because the principle of inertia holds!

http://www.ajc.com/sports/content/sports/masters2005/stories/12mastersshot.html
(you might need username and password from bugmenot.com if you haven't visited this before)

Anyway, just to state the obvious, I did see Tiger winning LIVE again!

Cheers,
Harsha

Reporting on cricket

Just discovered this weekly column that Harsha Bhogle writes for Indian Express.

http://iecolumnists.expressindia.com/columnist_index.php?columnist_id=38

Have wasted the last one hour reading his past columns and still not done with them all :)

BTW, I was chatting with my cousin in India a couple of days back and came to know the pathetic state of cricket coverage out there. The set of commentators on DD is the same as we get out here - Sanjay Manjrekar, Ravi Shastri, Arun Lal, Rameez Raja and Aamir Sohail. But, its the supporting the cast out there that adds all the spice. Firstly, there is the set of jokers who discuss the pre and post match scenario on DD - Mohinder Amarnath (ok not so bad), Maninder Singh (how much worse can it get), Krish Srikanth (does he ever talk sense) and DD's good old anchor for any kind of sport Charu Sharma. I can't even imagine how pathetic these discussions would be! But, one of my friends who returned from India a couple of days back claimed that they were decent ... don't know whether to believe him ;)

Only DD has the official rights to telecast the series live, but obviously the other channels are going to have experts review the situation regularly. Of course, ESPN-Star has the cream of the lot in Harsha Bhogle, Sunil Gavaskar, Wasim Akram and Geoffrey Boycott. But, the other channels have stooped to really low levels. Of all possible people around, Aaj Tak has Saba Karim on contract to offer his expert comments! And, Zee News, as though fighting to claim the "most pathetic expert award", has Salil Ankola express his opinions! I thought he had decided to spend the rest of his life acting in music videos and serials. I guess he too is looking to make some quick bucks and cash in on the hype. So, ignoring ESPN-Star, the best catch seems to have been made by NDTV who have the great Sardar Navjot Singh Sidhu on contract (isn't he an MP for god's sake!).

Anyway, my enthu for watching cricket is pretty low at the moment after watching the dispriting performance yesterday. It looks pretty certain that the toss is going to decide the result in each match of this series. Hopefully Tiger, Vijay and Michelson will put in great performances tomorrow at the Masters and drive up my spirits.

Cheers,
Harsha

Interesting tidbit

This year's Wisden Almanack was released yesterday. Cricinfo lists some interesting facts that this edition contains. One of them is an instance of a batsman facing three different appeals of the same delivery. I can think of one possible way of this happening - LBW + caught bat-pad + run-out. If any of you can think of any other way, please leave me a note.

Cheers,
Harsha

Dhoni is India's Gilchrist? No way!

When my roommate and I were returning back home yesterday night after watching Dhoni's blitzkrieg (actually, we pretty much missed out on most of it as we had gone out for dinner assuming that the middle overs would be boring as usual!), my roomie remarked that soon people are going to be comparing Dhoni with Gilchrist. But, having seen the complete lack of control he showed and the faulty technique he possessed, I managed to convince him that that would be a bit too far-fetched. On my part, I suggested that it is going to be interesting to see whether Karthick is going to retain his place in the Test side now.

And, lo and behold, both theories were suggested in one of CricInfo's column today! It just goes to show the stereotypical writing shown by sports journalists and reporters today. Anyone who saw Dhoni bat yesterday could clearly see that he could not be labelled a "top-order batsman". Comparing him with Gilchrist, who will surely be remembered as one of the greatest keeper-batsmen of all time, is heresy! Who knows, they might soon compare Zaheer Khan with Flintoff just because he managed to hit a few sixes at the end off the hapless Pakistani spinners :P

The best instance I remember in recent times of steoretypical journalism was before the Asia Cup, when it was widely reported that Sehwag had claimed that he could score a double century in a ODI. As it turned out, the true sequence of events was that some reporter asked him if he thinks he could score a double century in a ODI and he said "yes, he thinks he could"! What else do you expect him to say! The media promptly reports this as though Sehwag came out and declared that he wanted to score a double century.

Anyway, let's see how Dhoni's fate will unfold in the next ODI.

Cheers,
Harsha

Saw Tiger winning LIVE!

Finally! After all these years of reading about Tiger Woods' exploits, I finally managed to catch him winning live on television. As I had lamented about in an earlier post, Tiger has been in the worst form of his life ever since I moved to the US and so, in every tournament that I have seen, he has never been in contention on a Sunday. But, things finally seem to be picking up for him again this year. He started off the year with a win in Tokyo and then went on to win one of his pet events, the Buick Invitational. He claimed that he had been in bad form last year because he had been working on modifying his swing to adapt to the changes his body was going through, and that those changes were finally coming together now. I don't know if I want to believe that :-) ... but atleast he's back on track now.

Anyway, the tourney where I finally got to see him win was at the Ford Doral championship. I managed to catch the last nine of the final round and the tussle between Tiger and Phil Mickelson was certainly one for the ages. The momentum kept swinging with every hole and finally Tiger managed to win only because Phil *just* missed out on a birdie at the final hole! With the top four - Vijay, Tiger, Ernie and Phil - in such awesome form (all of them have won atleast two tournaments this year), I can hardly wait for the Augusta Masters this week. Hopefully it won't turn out to be a damp squib like The Players Championship last week.

The other champion, Michael Schumacher, with whom I have always had the bad fortune of seeing him win, seems to be in the doldrums for once. Renault is going great guns this season, having already won the first two races and Alonso again securing pole position for today's Bahrain GP. But, looks like Michael is back in contention now with the new F2005 car, as he is back on the front row this time. It will certainly be sad if he again goes on a winning streak now :-( As one of my friends suggested recently, F1 is never going to make much of a sense until all the drivers are given the same car to drive. This is pretty clear from the fact that even though Michael has dominated so heavily in recent years, no one can state with authority that he has achieved all that he has solely because of his ability and not because of Ferrari's advanced car. That certainly does not bode well for the sport!

Anyway, will be back with my comments about The Masters next week.

Cheers,
Harsha

Eternal Hoax!

On yet another April Fools day, here's remembering one of the greatest hoaxes of all time in sports:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/01/sports/baseball/01finch.html

Please do let me know if you know of anything good enough to match this.

BTW, for all those people who still vist my blog, I promise I'll be back with regular posts soon as summer is just around the corner.

Cheers,
Harsha