Monthly Archive for March, 2007

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They Blue It

Published on March 18, 2007 in Cricket. 87 Comments

As a customer who paid $200 to buy the World Cup package (which now looks like it has bought me only 3 India games), I would like to ask Rahul Dravid one question.

No it is not about his own batting failure in a big match or the catch that he dropped of Tamim Iqbal. I have nothing to say there.

My question is after winning the toss, why oh why did you decide to bat first on a pitch with a greenish tinge which, it stood to reason, would be the worst to bat on in the morning when it would be at its freshest? Was it because you wanted to give the batsmen some practice, the practice that they missed in the match against West Indies, since winning the match against Bangladesh was almost guaranteed either way?

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Under Siege

Published on March 16, 2007 in Bengal. 88 Comments

Who would have ever thought we would live to see the day the CPM government would be under fire, not just from the spontaneous bedlam generator otherwise known as Mamata Banerjee but from its long-trivialized Left front partners and the ever-sympathetic jhola liberals, when its activitists would be running scared from villages (the same villages where once their writ ran supreme) and when sharecroppers, small land-owners and minorities, the pillars of their 30 year old rule, would emerge as their most trenchant opponents.

Who would have ever thought this day would come.

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World Cup Snippets 3

Published on March 14, 2007 in Cricket. 37 Comments

The question that every cricket lover, who has ever sat on after a cricket match just to hear Inzamam speak, has been asking is: ” What is the real reason why Inzamam and the Pakistan team have been banned from speaking in English?”

Is it because Pakistan has been threatened with a “terrorist state” label if their players do not stop the abuse of the Queen’s tongue?

Well the answer is finally here. [Link]

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The Trouble With Businessweek

Published on March 11, 2007 in Media. 64 Comments

Businessweek, in its cover issue, “The Trouble with India” (cover picture of the stereotypical Indian elephant to the left ) paints, in my opinion, a predominantly bleak picture of the country’s infrastructure and dabs it up with terror tales of companies knee-deep in the Indian quagmire.

Infrastructure is one of India’s biggest problems and in that respect the cover piece is “on the ball”. No problems there. However in its haste to spell out all that is wrong with India as an investment center, the author resorts to what should now be known as Western “Sominism” (after New York Times’ Somini Sengupta).

At one place, the article says:

In December, a bridge in eastern India collapsed, killing 34 passengers in a train rumbling underneath.

Right. However this omits a very important fact, a fact present in the BBC report of the same accident.

The bridge, built 150 years ago, was being dismantled when it crashed onto a carriage at Bhagalpur station in the eastern state of Bihar.

In other words, the accident was caused by criminal negligence of the demolishing crew and not because of poor infrastructure (the fact that an old bridge was being demolished shows that there is at least someone doing something about the problem).

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World Cup Snippets 2

Published on March 8, 2007 in Cricket. 40 Comments

The first controversy of World Cup 2007. And it concerns a particularly insidious “gas leak” in the Hilton Hotel that Pakistan was staying in that led to the evacuation of the Men in Green.[Link]

“Mohammad Sami, the Pakistan fast bowler, told how he ran down a corridor to escape from the building after saying he saw smoke in the hallway. At first it was thought there was a fire scare, but later reports suggested the problem was gas.”

Gas. Now normally all cases of gas-related incidents are blamed on Abdul Razzaq who is addicted to spinach. But since he is not there, the investigative agencies are at a loss as to the source of this accident that led to a woman, with her face covered with an oxygen mask, being carried out of the main hotel building on a stretcher and into an ambulance.[Link]

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