Monthly Archive for March, 2007

Mutter With Megha

[GB says: We interrupt our regular programming to bring you an "interview" Megha Murthy and I did in "honor" of my winning Indiblog of the Year at this year's Indibloggies. Debashish who coordinates the award asked for an interview and well...just read on. This post is mirrored at Indibloggies and at Meghalomania]

In light of the Greatbong’s unprecedented landslide victory in the Indibloggies, the powers that be felt that winning an award (well actually, two) wasn’t enough of an ego trip. So they decided that one should do an interview with him as well. Perhaps a more serious, ‘getting to know the man behind the blog, his passions, his drive’ type routine. Of course, if seriousness is what one wants, one shouldn’t ask the resident flake of the blogosphere to do the interview. But now the deed has been done, and it’s time for the public to pay the heavy price for it. So here you are. Styled after her idol K-Jo and his koffee, and channeling the I-will-get-husky-voiced-for-no-reason-at-all Simi aunty, here’s Mutter with Megha. In conversation with Greatbong.

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Post Mortem Part 1: Chappell

Now that some of the raw emotion unleashed at having had our nose rubbed in the ground by Bangladesh and our asses whooped by Sri Lanka has slowly dissipated, it is time for some analysis.

I have observed a persistent tone in some comments on my previous posts: that being that I am perpetually critical of Greg Chappell because I have an axe to grind with the man for his pro-active (to put it mildly) role in the removal of “Bong icon” Sourav Ganguly. So let me, in clear words, with no trace of sarcasm that may be misunderstood, try to explain why I think Chappell has been an unmitigated disaster for this Indian team.

As we all know, Chappell has always been a proponent of “current performance” and not past records. Great. Now let us apply his own criterion on him.

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It’s Over

The collective wet-dream of the blue billion (that of winning the World Cup) fuelled by carbonated empty calories, Mandira Bedi’s cleavage and the “breaking news” hype-driven media ended pre-maturely today as wet dreams usually do: with frustration, an absence of a satisfying climax and a lingering feeling of overwhelming futility.

When the final Indian wicket fell, and like many others whose rational mind tells them not to believe in the Men in the Blue and yet whose heart hopes, against all hope, that the moments of drama we see acted out in cellphone commercials realize themselves for once in real life, I was engulfed with grief. But the grief, as intense as it was, soon gave way to tear-drenched clarity.

Sad to say, it’s not a bad thing that we got eliminated in the first round itself. We are just not good enough to play in the Super 8. If we had somehow gone through, we would just have had to endure more moments of heartbreak and aggravated more ulcers because our body parts would have been handed to us on a platter by the Australias and the South Africas and the New Zealands.

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Pulling Down the Bermudas

As 270 pounds of quivering man meat flung itself through the space-time continuum, defying Newton’s assertion that gravitational force is proportional to mass, in the process giving us glimpses into the crazy world of sub-atomic particles, and plucked a catch out of thin air while the first time wicket-taker Malachi Jones weeped copiously out of disbelief or what Govinda would say “abhe yeh to zyada emotional ho gya” , the only thought that passed through my head was that God was punishing India for its sins—like exposing the world to Rakhi Sawant’s bouncers, selecting Agarkar for no rhyme or reason and for letting Rahul Gandhi get anywhere near a microphone.

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Three Farewells

If there was any proof needed of how high the stakes have become in the world of cricket and what unbearable levels of stress players and officials are subject to during the course of high-profile tournaments like the World Cup, Bob Woolmer’s death, most likely due to the emotional stress of Pakistan being knocked out of the Cup in the first round, is it.

Revolutionizing the role of the cricket coach from the glorified drill-instructor of the pre-Woolmerian days to the “laptop” supremo performing computerized data-analysis to mine weaknesses and strengths of team players as well as those of opponents, Bob Woolmer will always occupy a special place in the history of the modern cricket game. And ironically it is that modern cricket game, bankrolled by obscene corporate sponsorships, driven by media hype and fuelled by pulp patriotism, that by putting immense pressure on its stars to perform has brought them to their physical and emotional precipices, from where one push can send them over the edge — a disquieting fact now brought into cruel focus by the death of Bob Woolmer.

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