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Men In Blues

It was almost 3.00 AM. A series of lousy ads like Fit-kit biscuits, Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy's soul-mind garbage, Anda Khao-Haath thodo were being shown back to back. We, the devoted cricket lovers, were waiting to see the presentation ceremony of India-Srilanka match. We knew, we would be listening to the usual "We did not do what we were capable of", "things did not go our way" or "we were outplayed and outclassed in every department" crap! Its not the losing that hurt, but the way we lost - there was no pride, no commitment, no character. I remembered that old joke from Annie Hall. That two women were sitting in a restaurant. One says "the food here is pathetic". And the other says, "yeah, and in such small quantities". Thats how I felt about India's World Cup campaign - full of misery, suffering, unhappiness and its all over much too quickly.

All the channels were full of cricket analysis the next morning. One channel was running a SMS poll to decide who was responsible for the defeat. A - Sachin, B - Dravid, C - Dhoni, D - Chappell. Did anyone think we lost because we never play as a team? No way mate!
There was a scrollable message in some channel (is it called a ticker?) Harbhajan's mom says - "Team played well, but God was not with us". I wondered why Sehwag's mom did not say something like "Milk is very dilute nowadays" or Sachin's mom making a statement like "He did not take his full quota of fit-kit biscuits"!
Sharad Pawar was already making statements like Chappel may go and the need to get more youngsters into the team. Okay, agreed that he is the chairman of BCCI. But isn't there something called a selection committee? Dont you think there should be something more than knee-jerk reactions?
Angry "fans" were screaming their lungs out about how players were making millions from advertisements. It seemed like they were irritated more with the players' economic status than their performances (or the lack of it)

On a positive note, now that India is almost out of the World Cup, I can watch cricket more objectively (unless any Indian fans try to persuade God by doing homas, to help Bermuda beat Bangladesh)

Comments

rekha said…
did u read what narayan murthy told about our cricket in the times of india?

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