5 idiots

Way back in 1988, Mohinder Amarnath had called the Indian cricket team selectors as a bunch of idiots. 21 years later, they continue to prove Jimmy correct..!!
After the Indian cricket team lost the home ODI series to the injury hit Aussies, the selectors had the tough task of uplifting the morale of the down players and the team on the whole and at the same time select a 'good' team for the home series against the in-form Lankans, but what they presented can easily be called as more of a joke than team selection. Except for the selection of Sreesanth(Dhoni finally seems to have forgiven him for his running around act after taking his wicket in the IPL) and Zaheer Khan in the team, the rest of the team selection seems like a joke.
-Three spinners were picked up viz. Harbhajan, Mishra and Ojha.Now we all know that Dhoni prefers to play a single spinner in his lineup unless the wicket is too spin friendly and given the quality of spinners in the Lankan side, it will be a foolishness if they decide to make such a wicket.
-The out of form Ishant was again given a chance with the likes of Nehra and Munaf ignored.However, the selectors cited the reason that Nehra needed some rest and himself opted out of the test series.
-Given India's 'strong' batting lineup with Sehwag, Sachin, Yuvraj, Laxman, Dhoni, Gambhir and Dravid, it seems completely pointless to pick up Tamil Nadu's Murali Vijay and Subramanium Badrinath in the side with no likely role for them..!
-The team was chosen with the match between the Board President's XI and Sri Lanka yet to start, so it could be thought what the players would play for, as cited by the BP XI captain Rohit Sharma.

so... the selectors proved their critics right.... once again..again and again...!

the magician.... is back

Maybe he has got more critics than fans....but he remains the undisputed master of world cricket.

Almost 600 international appearances and 30K international runs later, a man who will celebrate his 20 years in international cricket on november the 15th 2009 perhaps won't regret anything in life more than the fact that after a splendid act of scoring 175 against australia at 36 years at a strike rate greater than what he did against the same opposition at sharjah when he was just 25, could not make his team win the match and eventually the series from a very commanding position.

Seeing Sachin Tendulkar play on the 5th of november 2009 at the Rajiv Gandhi international stadium, Hyderabad was something everybody would compare with his act against the aussies at sharjah more than 11 years ago, where the same man took his team from a position where they were even thinking if they'd qualify for the finals to winning the series.The only difference in the two acts were that on the former occasion Sachin made his team win, but on the later one his heroics went in vain as the Indian team once again proved that there is no resurrection of them without the little master.

To me, as a fan of indian cricket, it was a more heartening loss than the WC'07, T20WC'09, or CT'09 exits, and will continue to hurt me as long as i watch the indian team play.

Lets hope that the master decides not to retire from international cricket for quite some time now, otherwise god save the Indian cricket team.

Durga Puja 2009

another durga puja is over.... if i am right, this was the 21st durga puja of my life and i celebrated it with the same zeal and enthusiasm as for the 20 before this one.although many of my friends were missing this time, and they had their own silly excuses for not making it to home this time, but that perhaps made me spend more time with my parents.as far as my grey cells work, this was some 4-5 years later that i once again went out with my mom and dad for the regular puja parikrama on almost every day of puja this time. the RADHA MADHAV MANDIR puja, thats the closest to my house had erected a superb idol of godess durga, which truly reflected her power..!

the puja started with saptami and i had a very bad start as for me, some indigestion caused serious problems on the first morning of puja.the evening i spent at the aforesaid place watching the very famous "dhunuchi naach".

the next day ashtami, started for me with pushpanjali and the evening was dedicated to my friends with whom i had a nice time galloping the local pandals.

navami has always the usual meaning for me... nice food as after almost 8 days of eating vegetarian food, we had a nice feast in the house and believe me, the mutton was awesome..!

come dashami and the morning generates a feel in you that the long awaited durga puja is finished..!

starting the day with writing durga naam on mango leaves, watching mom n other married women from locality play holi with sindoor and ending it with friends, u already start to miss the last 4 days....

really durga puja was over with cries of "asche bochor aabar hobe..!!"

here is a picture of the durga puja i am talking about....

review: 2 states

just read chetan bhagat's new novel which is called '2 states'. the book looks good(i wont call it awesome as i did in the case of the previous 2 novels and later got thrashing), but believe me, its awesome.i would really love to know if it is really all what happened to him and his wife before their marriage.as usual, his language is his best tool which at some places fills up the voids in the story.funny as ever,at some instances he makes u laugh your heart out.moreover i got the feeling that it is a continuation of his debut novel FPS, though the characters in the two novels aren't same.
it is quite well known that FPS was'nt fully a work of fiction as chetan tried to make his own college life story a base before adding the masala in it.
2 states is by far chetan's best effort since FPS and to me, it is like one of those light mood hindi movies that you would love to watch with a few cups of coffee and a bucket of popcorn not including the usual tissues for a change.... :)

welcome back

finally i am back again...posting after a year and a half n that too i felt like posting when i felt really angry upon a set of people.
well..recently i was going back home on my diwali vacations and faced a unique situation.was on a bus, going to catch another, had an hour at hand and was stuck in a 2 kilometer long traffic jam!
could you just imagine a situation worse than this..?
anyways yours truly was on a clear cut mood not to miss his bus back home and took some very bold decisions(which included walking almost a km with my heavy bag on my shoulder) and thankfully, finally got my bus..
i think there must be anyone else cursing the person responsible for this more than me.. our great politician miss mamata banerjee.she and her unique ways,this time she decided to call on roadblocks on several points and removed all the grease from the wheels of the city.many people cursed her, many even praised her(maniacs) but i felt like %#@###*^&..... u guessed it right.... ;)
india and its politicians....could not stop me from going home on diwali....!!