FIFA world cup.. where are we..??

Someone has truly said that if cricket world cup is of the size of an elephant.. then its football counterpart is like a big blue whale!
Its not a biased comparison, if we look at the number of teams participating in the two events, or more importantly the nations playing it as a regular sport, we can easily come to the same conclusion.
If there are 10 major cricketing nations, along with a handful more who have a few amateur cricketers playing for them occasionally, there are more than 132 in football, atleast the ones who are ranked above India by FIFA!
If we dig into the history of the Indian football team, we find surprising results.
The official Indian football team was formed in 1948 and since then, it is affiliated to FIFA. India got a chance for a direct entry into the 1950 world cup finals, but as we say in India that even our lives are decided by the politicians, the then sports ministry decided to go against the opportunity quoting that there wasn't enough practice time along with selection process, inspite of the fact that FIFA had agreed to bear a major part of the Indian team's travelling expenses.
Just to cover up their inefficiency, the government came up with a unique blame game, blaming the then captain Shailan Manna and his team that they didn't participate in the world cup because they wanted to play barefoot, which was not accepted by FIFA!!
Shame on these politicians...!!
That was India's only chance till date to participate in the largest world event. Since then, India has never even been close to qualify for the finals of the football world cup.

A major reason for the game's plight in our country is unavailability of infrastructure for the game.In a country of a thousand million people, is it so difficult to find 11 men who can be coached to match the skills of the best football players in the world?
This question remains to be answered by the politicians and all the men behind football in India.
It is also a long standing belief in our country that football has not been able to prosper in our country due to the menacing growth of cricket. Well, to some extent is is true. To a youngster choosing sports as his career, cricket is always more elusive given the huge gains in the sports. A cricketer playing for India is paid handsomely, in range of a few lakhs per match he plays, along with a yearly contract, leave aside the wealthy endorsements they get adding to their celebrity status.
On the contrary, a football player gets a petty match fee of a few thousand rupees and a slim contract money. These players hardly get any endorsements and talking about celebrity status, most Indians won't be able to name all the players of the Indian football team!!
If we compare India's most successful football player, Bhaichung Bhutia (who has 102 caps and 42 goals to his credit) to the most successful football players in the world like Lionel Messi, Wayne Rooney or Kaka, we would come to know of the status of football in India.
However some consolations for India are the recent wins in Nehru Cup and other Asian tournaments, however a Football world cup BERTH, still alludes the nation!

Aaj Ka Gunda'RAJ'

The word 'Hooligan' was out of my mind for a very long time, until very recently, when i figured out what Mr.Raj Shrikant Thackeray and his so called 'party workers' are.

Truly, he has inherited something from his great uncle very very well.

Perhaps he is trying to get his name into the Guinnes Book Of World Records for getting the maximum number of cases registered against his name.

Shiv Sena is a party long known for their long 'Hindu' favourng views. Recently, after breaking off from his uncle and creating his own party, Mr.Raj Thackeray thought of taking up another issue...

'ANTI NORTH INDIANS'. His party workers started harrasing Bihar and Uttar Pradesh people residing in Mumbai and other parts of Maharashtra.Most of the poor north indians who were harrased belonged to the lower classes of the society and were mainly cab drivers or petty businessmen and daily wage earners. People started getting harrased and beaten up for no reason at all and the 'Gundagardi' continued.

The most surprising part of all the drama has been that, the Maharshtra Govt., has behaved as a puppet in the hands of the MNS and Shiv Sena, though it is run by Congress, with NO support from the above mentioned parties!

To sum it up finally, the Maharashtra Govt. recently announced that all new cab drivers have to be Marathi to get their licences(they have to have a domicile and should know to speak marathi).

In the most funny way, the CM was seen changing his statement TWICE DAILY, sometimes with pressure from the centre and sometimes from the GUNDA'RAJ'.

They have proved it that Maharashtra, specially Mumbai is under a GUNDARAJ!

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....!!