A Random Thought

Following on from the theme of my previous post, here's a random thought that I just had as I was browsing Google News. Just take a look at the Sports and Entertainment sections on the India-specific page. What immediately struck me was that hardly any of the news on the Sports page is India-specific. Whereas, on the Entertainment page, almost everything is about Bollywood, Kollywood, etc. Is this just the Indian media's obsession with sleaze and scandals of our stars? Or, is this essentially the result of what most Indians care about? After all, reporters write more about what readers want more! Anyway, though the above links on Google News are surely going to change over time, I am going to bet that the proportion of India-specific articles on both are going to remain more or less the same.

BTW, Google News is made just for people like me who get bored of coding every hour. Every time you hit the refresh button, you are almost certain to get pointed to some new articles and so, you always have something to read. This ensures that you will surely waste time every time you switch from your terminal to your browser. But, I would like to look at this as that it also ensures you always return to work with renewed enthusiasm :D Anyway, long live Google News!

Update:
My reasoning turns out be incorrect. Right now, the Sports page is completely filled with India-related stories and more than half in the Entertainment section are not related to India. So, looks like cupping dog's suggestion that Google's indexing and ranking in an Indian context sucks seems right. Dog, as usual you score over me!

Cheers,
Harsha

Are we too meek?

Here is an interesting article by Prem Panicker that he had recently linked to off his own blog. This is a fairly old piece but I guess much of it is still true. Most of us have often questioned about the apparent racism in the fines/suspensions handed out to Indian cricketers, though the Aussies and South Africans seem to get away with similar if not worse transgressions on the field. But, the above article brings into focus another point that I have often wondered about. Teams visiting India invariably crib about the dust bowls that we serve them. A tour to India is not complete without the visiting captain claiming at some point that "This is the worst pitch I have played on!". But, all that India is doing is playing to its strength (questionable if that still holds!) in the spin department. When we in turn go to Australia or South Africa, we never crib about having to play at Perth or Durban. Why is a pitch that helps spin any worse than a pitch that aids pace and bounce? When our batting order crumbles on those hard greentops, we complain about their techniques. When the Aussie lineup falls like ninepins facing Kumble et al., they crib about the pitch! Has anyone from the Indian team ever responded with a statement that the opposition should learn to play spin better rather than comment about the pitch? I don't recollect any such instance. Please do point me to it if this has ever occurred.

Anyway, I don't really have much time on my hands right now to write a longer post on this. Maybe I'll add on to this post later. Till then, hope to hear comments from some of you on this.

Cheers,
Harsha

Cryptic clues about the Ashes

My friend Sumit has contributed a set of cryptic clues about the Ashes. He posted them in the comments section of my previous post, but I thought I'll put it out on the main page as well. Here they are:

1. A bigger boat leads the Aussies all at sea
2. Will have to make merry in his own royal land.
3. The first man to not cross any significant batting landmark in an Ashes since 2004
4. Comic hero finally retired from lecturing in England
5. DCth saves himself and country of ignominy from teammate
6. Acted like Mike, Alec and others but not anymore; still sounds like Shane
7. Required air towards the end but to his credit did suck some out of the opposition.
8. Had a perfect hold of gili-danda.
9. A couple here and there, and the freak would have no chance
10. Carriage took a lot of flak from the captain, but deftly substituted its worn wheels

Sumit, I'm hoping these are not PJs :-)

Cheers,
Harsha

Check it out!

With one of the greatest ever Test series having just ended, I guess the statistics about this series should be fresh in all our minds. Well, then, check yourself out in this quiz over at BBC's webpage. For the record, I scored a paltry 6 out of 10! :-(

Also, check out this page in The Times where readers have listed out how they helped England win the Ashes. One of the readers says this:

Firstly I must apologise to Andrew Strauss, Michael Vaughan and Ian Bell. Unfortunately I must travel through one of the Mersey tunnels to and from work. As it is impossible to listen to the radio whilst journeying through them, I am forced to break my otherwise uninterrupted listening. Each time I emerged from the other side I found a wicket had gone down. This was the cause of Strauss's dismissal in the first innings. Due to a slow moving bus I was delayed in the tunnel on Monday morning and, when I did emerge, Vaughan and Bell had fallen victim to this tunnel of dismissal. Sorry guys.

:)) I myself do this often - making bets with myself that "In the next 5 seconds, if something does not happen, then something good will happen". I was especially guilty of doing this during my JEE days. I used to make such ridiculous bets! For example, if someone I was going out with was kick-starting a scooter, I used to say to myself that if the scooter started within 3 kicks, then I would make it through JEE, else not. And obviously, whenever my bets failed, I used to switch to the best-of-three mode and bet on two other ridiculously high probability events soon after. If several bets failed on a day, that day would go by in a particularly glum mood. It's good to see that there are other psychologically impaired people out there :)

Cheers,
Harsha

More Ashes coverage

Ok, we are into the final session of the Ashes now. For all those who have been following the dreary ball-by-ball commentary on Cricinfo until now, check out the coverage on the Guardian instead here. It is clearly much more refreshing to follow. The commentator throws in comments received from several readers and most of them are extremely hilarious. Some excerpts:

"I have the answer to cricketing success: ear-rings," says Richard X. "Just look at the success of players with them: Warne, Flintoff and Pieterson. I think McGrath may have one too. Someone should have pierced Bell's ears before this Test?"

Meanwhile this from Richard Moore. "Apparently my wife's boss, who only learned the rules of cricket yesterday from her young son, has announced in a conference call with the Sydney office that 'Shane Warne is a perfect sporting example' for her young son, and that 'she hopes he grows up just like him'. There was an obvious guffaw from Sydney, closely followed by the sound of my Wife's head hitting the desk due to a sudden dizzy spell."

Even if you read this post only after the end of the match, going through the commentary on Guardian (links to the commentary of every session of each of the 5 Tests is available on the Guardian's Ashes page) would make for exciting reading. Anyway, for now, I can certainly say that the commentators are going to suffer heart attacks if the Aussies go on to win from here :-)

Cheers,
Harsha

Misery at the US Open

I finally made my visit to this year's US Open yesterday and it turned out to be pathetic! I guess I should have trusted Federer for delivering a damp squib :-( As I had mentioned in an earlier post about my adventures in trying to attend the Sania vs. Sharapova match, I had booked tickets for Thursday as I wanted to catch a competitive match live. And, the men's quarterfinals seemed the only option available that would not cost me a fortune. Due to a sudden spurt of work, I began contemplating on Wednesday that I might as well sell the ticket. However, the schedule for Thursday showed up on the US Open webpage sometime on Wednesday evening, and the thought of getting to see a Federer vs. Nalbandian match enticed me into going for it. How I wish now that I had gone ahead and sold the ticket!

Watching the matches of Federer in the earlier rounds at this year's Open, it was apparent that he was nowhere near his best. He really had to scrap for a win even against mortals such as Santoro and Kiefer. Also, until an year ago, Nalbandian had Federer's number consistently. Before yesterday's match, the record between the two was 5-2 in favor of Nalbandian; the 2 wins for Federer coming after the 5 defeats. So, I was certainly justified in hoping that this would be a hotly contested encounter. Sadly, Federer chose precisely the wrong match to return to his sublime form :( I hardly remember Federer making an errors while Nalbandian piled on the double faults and groundstrokes in the net to help out. After the match started off on a great note with Nalbandian breaking Federer's serve, it was pretty much downhill from there.

The only exciting part of the match was that there were 6 Argentinians sitting behind me who were in really high "spirits"! They cheered every point that Nalbandian won wildly. Those points unfortunately were two few to stretch the match beyond two hours. The match that followed this one was a senior's doubles match, which I certainly had no intention of watching. I have no clue how they can schedule such a ridiculous match for a night session on Center Court!

So, I was at the USTA Tennis Center for just a little more than 3 hours. The Federer-Nalbandian match was to begin at 7:30 and so, I was at the venue by 6:30. During the one hour before the match, I saw Conchita Martinez/Ruano Pascal losing to two females that I had never heard of (BTW, Ruano Pascal is going to partner Sania in doubles at some WTA event in Kolkata. Sania is certainly beginning to get the right contacts!), saw John McEnroe catching some tennis practice before heading into the studio for his commentary stint with USA, and walked by Billie Jean King. While returning from this miserable outing, I was to endure more because of a fire on the tracks in New York Penn Station. Having left Flushing Meadows at around 9:45, I reached home at
1:30am!

What depresses me more about yesterday's match, is that all the other 3 men's quarterfinals before this one had been rivetting. All of them had been 5-setters going right down to the wire. I managed to catch only the Agassi-Blake match on TV though and it was awesome. Just my luck that I ended up attending a match featuring Federer. If Federer's dominance continues for much longer, I might begin to abhor him just the way I loathe Michael Schumacher. I am the perennial supporter of the underdog!

BTW, to end this post, I must remark that I have been pleasantly surprised by the quality of women's tennis at this year's Open. The Clijsters vs. Venus match especially was a classic. The athleticism of Clijsters is really amazing. The player I hate most though on the women's side is Dementieva. She has a joke of a serve and her game is all about consistency. Not entertaining in anyway and certainly not worth watching. I am glad Pierce managed to prevent her from making it to the finals. Of course, I am happy for Clijsters too that she made it to the finals. Hopefully she can finally do away with her Grand Slam jitters tomorrow night.

Cheers,
Harsha

Ashes coverage

For all those who haven't discovered this all through the first 4 Tests of this amazing series, live commentary of the Ashes is available online on BBC. Here is the link to the page on BBC; needless to say, click on the live commentary link on this page :P

As I have religiously listened to every word the BBC commentators have uttered since the last day of the 3rd Test, I have become fascinated with the English accent. It is so refreshingly different from what we get to listen on TV daily out here. Sometimes it is fun when what one of the commentators says cannot be understood even by his colleague! Also, considering that I'm backing England, it certainly helps that the commentators are vociferously doing the same. Listening to commentators who support the Aussies would be pathetic. You would get to hear the commentator moaning about a big six from Flintoff with the crowd applauding in the background!

Anyway, let's hope this Test turns out to be a cracker too. From what I heard on the last day of the Old Trafford Test, the BBC commentary panel (which btw comprises of Henry Blofeld, Jonathan Agnew, Christopher Martin-Jenkins, etc.) does a great job of capturing the excitement out there in the field (I sadly couldn't catch the end of the Trent Bridge Test :(). At the moment, the Aussies seem to be slightly ahead thanks to Warne ...

Update:
Excerpt from an article on Cricinfo:

John Howard, the Australian prime minister, has asked bosses to go easy on their staff this week if they turn up yawning after watching Australia's push to retain the urn.

From a search on Google News, looks like the Aussie PM did say that! Amazing :)

That reminds me of this excellent article on Rediff yesterday where India's lone medallist at last year's Olympics argues why any Indian would be motivated to get into a sports career. For once, the reader's comments on a Rediff article were also worth reading. Oh, btw, John Howard's comment reminded me of this because Rathore compares the sports culture in Australia with that in India ...

Cheers,
Harsha

The Sania Mania!

On Friday, it became known that Sania Mirza had become the first Indian woman to reach the 4th round of a Grand Slam and that she would face off against Maria Sharapova on Sunday. I had already bought tickets for the men's quarterfinals, but the prospect of catching this match in person was too much for me to resist. So, I decided that spending another 50 bucks for this opportunity was worth it. I managed to rope in a couple of my friends too. The only problem was the schedule of play for Sunday was not yet out on Friday evening. However, at that time, tickets were available for Sunday only for the night session on center court. Well, with Sharapova in the match, we were certain the match would be on center court. But, obviously the chances of it being in the morning or evening were even ... After pondering over the situation for a few minutes, my friends and I decided to go ahead and buy the tickets for the night session on Sunday. Clearly, we were just gambling and if the match turned out to be in the morning, we would be screwed. But, we decided that if match does get scheduled for the evening, we shouldn't have to blame ourselves later for not grabbing the tickets while they were available.

Then, on Saturday afternoon, the schedule for Sunday was put up on usopen.org. And, as lady luck would have it, the match did get scheduled for the AFTERNOON! I immediately checked again on ticketmaster, and obviously there were no tickets available for any session on Sunday. Still hoping against hope, I kept checking for the next hour. Also checked other random sites found by googling that were selling tickets for the Open. No luck. After getting over the depression that this had brought forth on me, I decided there is no point going to the night session. I would get to see Kim Clijsters and Roger Federer in action, but their opponents were pathetic. Having already been to the US Open last summer, I certainly had no excitement left in me for "just going to the Open". Last summer, I had been to the US Open on the second Monday and though I was excited and all, the fact that both the matches I saw were not hotly contested by any means left me wanting for more. That is why I decided to go for the men's quarterfinals this time (the tickets for the semis and finals were way too expensive!). Amidst this mindset, watching two damp squibs on a Sunday night certainly didn't seem appealing.

So, I set out to sell the 3 tickets I had. After googling once again, I found a couple of random sites where I posted that I am looking to sell three tickets for Sunday night. I was certainly not very hopeful of these tickets getting sold. But, within half an hour of me putting up the posting, my phone rang! It was some desi dude called Suresh from Delaware who was interested in buying my tickets. He was extremely excited and he even offered to drive all the way to NJ to pay me by cash. Then, after talking for a bit, I asked him "You are looking for tickets for the night session, rite?". He immediately lost all his enthusiasm and cried out "NO!". It turned out that one of the sites I had posted on had goofed up and listed my post under both the day and night sessions. In the next half an hour, I received 4 more calls. All from desis around NY and I first up asked them the question "You are looking for tickets for the day session, rite?" and as soon as they said "Yes", I added "I only have tickets for the night session." and broke their hearts. I received a few emails too, and all were asking for tickets for the day session. That Suresh dude also called me back and asked me if I knew someone who had tickets for the day session. I guess he thought I was some sort of broker/agent! :)) Clearly no one was interested in buying my tickets for the night and so, I went back home on Saturday night consoling myself that I'll atleast get to see Federer from close quarters :(

I came back to the lab today and found that 10 more people had called me! All of them must have been for the tickets; none were from numbers of people I knew. I received one more call within a few minutes of coming in and I asked him the standard question by now whether he was looking for tickets for the day session. And lo and behold, he said "No". And he was looking to buy all 3 tickets too. Great! So, finally, I did manage to dispose off with the 3 tickets bought by gambling in the heat of the moment. If Sania does reach the higher echelons of the tennis world sometime in the future, I guess I'll be going around telling this story often :)

Anyway, I did catch Sania's match on CBS today afternoon. The only other time I had seen her play was when she faced off against Serena Williams in this year's Australian Open. At that time, having absolutely no expectations from her, I was pleasantly surprised by her power-packed game (remember my earlier post about Satisfaction = Performance - Expectation? :)). Her forehand was awesome and she whacked off numerous winners with it even against an opponent as formidable as Serena. But, her consistency, both in terms of groundstrokes and first server percentage, was pathetic. It seemed like all you had to do beat her was put the ball back in her half of the court consistently and she would self-destruct. I did not manage to catch her game on TV again after that, but her ranking had progressed by leaps and bounds into the top 50. So, I was hoping her game would have significantly improved by now. Based on the evidence of her match today against Sharapova, that clearly is not the case. Her serve is still pathetic and she makes as many errors as the number of winners she pulls off.

I am certainly not belittling her game. All that I'm saying is that there are clear areas for her to work on, assuming she aspires to continue her rise through the WTA rankings. Her current game may ensure that she wins the first 3-4 rounds in most tournaments and keeps her ranking around the 40 mark. But, to break into the top 20 and go further in Grand Slams, she'll need to work on her game. I hope all the hype around her doesn't get to her, and that over the next couple of years, she does manage to improve her game. Though tennis is an exciting sport, having an Indian to support certainly makes it all the more exciting :) Go Sania!!

Cheers,
Harsha