When cricket became much more than just a sport...

A few days back as I turned 25 (Jesus! Still can’t get over the figure), a wise elder told me, “ Maybe your mind keeps on wandering back to the past, you may wish for it again or you may have regrets but you don’t need to fear that your best times have gone or that you have not achieved all that you have wanted to because your life is only just beginning .” 

I probably didn’t give it much of a thought till the absolutely gutting news of the death of a 25 year old Australian cricketer Phil Hughes due to a freak accident came in. Truth is I barely knew this cricketer. I must have seen him a couple of times on TV and I remember seeing his name as the first one in Australian scorecard all those times where Cricinfo was the only means to follow cricket. That is why even if the face didn’t stick, the name did. I didn’t even know the guy was dropped and was fighting to make a comeback. Maybe it’s a testimony to the fact of how attached I am to cricket (and cricketers) that despite almost have stopped following the game and barely knowing the player, a news like this left me so shell shocked that I found myself dabbing my eyes frantically so as not to make a complete ass of myself in my workplace where I read about this horrific piece of information on my computer screen. As I lay awake that night, I asked myself - what was it about this news that shook me to the core? Was it the fact that in the history of the sport I have followed since childhood, nobody has died on field (ofcourse there have been close calls) and this death has happened in a time when batsmen protection gear is at its most sophisticated? (to think that there was a time where there were no helmets!). Or was it because he was a 25 year old just like me?

Phil was giving it his everything to get back to the Aussie side. He apparently was almost on the verge of getting back into the squad. He faced setbacks, he fought hard and was heartbreakingly so close to achieving his goal. And then most unfortunately that fatal ball struck him. I wish he had been rewarded for fighting like a true champion when the chips were down. I wish that he would have felt the rush of relief, euphoria and accomplishment when receiving the news that he had earned a test recall. I wish he had felt the satisfaction and pride of donning the coveted baggy green cap again. I wish that we would have made a name for himself in international cricket. I think he should have got all of this. I guess thats why for me, it is fundamentally distressing to see '1988 - 2014' below his name.  His life was only just beginning not just professionally but am sure in all other aspects as well. He didnt deserve to have all his hopes, dreams and aspirations cut short like this. No one does. Makes you wonder how valid all the slob about how in life, everything happens for a reason and for the best is.

I feel for his family, his friends and most importantly Sean Abbott - the bowler who bowled the fatal bouncer. I recalled an instance in my childhood where by sheer accident, I caused a kid who was playing with me to get a couple of stitches. I remember not being able to show my face to anyone, locking myself in a room and howling away to glory the whole night because of the terrifying guilt I felt despite it not being my fault. I cant even imagine the kind of nightmare Sean is going through who will have to live through this tragedy his entire life. I sincerely hope he gets through this cause like the cricketing community, I dont even one bit think its his fault.

Somehow, when you are in your mid twenties, you tend to feel that you are invincible. You most likely are at the peak of your youth and health. Where I am concerned, I dont think I have ever been so demanding of what I expect from life - personally and professionally. I now understand what that lady meant when she told me that my life is only beginning. It seemed incomprehensible to me that my life can possibly be taken away from me at this stage. Guess this whole episode really hammered in one fact for me - you really never know when your time is up. Life is really short to be taken for granted and to push trying for things you really hope for to 'someday' or 'one day'.

For me, Phillip Joel Hughes 63 not out in that fateful match before he passed away is symbolic of right till the end, striving your best to become the person you have always wanted to be so that even if you have to make a premature exit, you go with no regrets.

Rest in peace, Phil. In the words of your buddy, Michael Clarke - We love you.
 

Pet tales

Once, when I was travelling with 2 of my friends on a train journey, one of them struck a conversation with our co passenger seated in our berth. Basically all the lady could do was gush about her pet dog and how she missed him and how she was looking forward to meeting him. While she showed like what seemed like a ghazillion pictures of her dog on her phone to my friend whose interest was clearly waning by the minute, me and my other friend were giving each other those smirks signalling 'one of those crazy dog ladies' which can only be shared between really good pals.

I recalled this incident as my family had to give up our first ever pet to another family a few days back because we are shifting houses. She was a really gorgeous, sweet natured and as affectionate as a cat can be cat who we named Sushi and completely out of the blue, she entered our household four and a half years back spreading much joy. Its weird the extent to which the news of her not being our pet anymore really stung. Something inside quite hurt. Having a pet is probably the best example of minimum investment, maximum returns. Of course the lowest of investment is taking care of a cat while the maximum return part is taking care of a dog. Not being able to see Sushi ever again gives me almost that same feeling of hollow of not being able to see a person who I have grown attached to. Because the truth is animals, like humans have distinct characters. And you can never replace those unique set of characteristics and specifics that unknowingly capture a place in your heart forever.

I think I should stop here before I sound more like a 'crazy cat lady'. I have noticed that especially in India, people who obsess about their pets are viewed with amusement and sometimes even ridicule (which even I have been guilty of as I narrated in the incident in the beginning). Fact is only when you own and lose a pet , is it even remotely possible to understand the kind of fondness and affection that can be involved with living things other than human beings.

I'll remember and cherish you forever, Noogs! Farewell.

A random philosophical thought

There are these moments in life which are really special, where you just KNOW that there is some magic involved in them. About which it’s not even worth the effort trying to describe them because it can be only felt. It creeps up on you when you were least expecting it. It can include the smallest of things like the feeling you get when you have achieved something remarkable, that unexplainable spark and connection you feel when meeting someone really special for the first time, having a deep conversation with someone, attending a fantastic music concert in a cold winters night, the day your pet enters your household spreading so much of joy and uniting your family, those places and sights during travel which knock your breath away, floating in a beautiful beach in the middle of nowhere feeling every pore of your body relaxing, random kisses, those periods of uncontrollable laughter with your best friends, attending a wedding ceremony where you are convinced of the fact that you are in the presence of true love, a person making you feel incredibly special through a very sweet and thoughtful gesture etc. I guess most of the times it’s another person who is responsible for these kind of moments. I suppose I now understand one of the main reasons why people have such a tough time getting over breakups. It’s because their partner gave them these kinds of moments of euphoria and with them gone, they wonder if they will ever be able to feel the same way again. 

Of course these are the moments which make life worth living. But sometimes I think that people pine and cling on to them more than necessary. They put those people who were responsible for creating these moments too much on a pedestal. Majority of the time, the moments in our life is 'unremarkable'. What about those people who help you get by these 'dull', 'uninspiring' and 'monotonous' moments? Those people who stick with you no matter what, provide support and love, those who you trust and can count on, those who offer a kind word of encouragement, who randomly make you smile….parents, friends, cousins even acquaintances. Forget people, what about all the music, good books, simple walks….those small things in life which we take for granted because they provide intermittent happiness and not that intoxicating euphoria which we all crave for. Of course the people who manage to make you feel feelings which are on another level of the stratosphere are special. But maybe I have hit the realization that more special are those people who are solid during those periods which we describe with a sigh “that life just goes on”…those are the people worth cherishing and worthy of more appreciation.

A New Voter’s Dilemma

So my lifetime has seen 7 Lok Sabha Elections till date. The 2014 elections is going to be the first time, I would exercise my right of franchise as an Indian voter. I honestly have always been irritated with all those cynics (which include amazingly intelligent, smart and educated individuals) who can but refuse to vote yet never shy away from grumbling infinitely about our ‘deeply flawed democracy’ and our ‘system’ and how it will never change. I probably would equate our democracy to a really large dysfunctional family. Individual members might be very different and the dynamic between them really crazy but at the end of the day they chug along and somehow manage together. Which is why I do think it is important to vote. Considering how vast and diverse our country is, there is an urgent need of some semblance of stable leadership at the center.  

On April 10^th 2014, I will get a chance to vote from the Ghaziabad district (which is a very important one that borders Delhi) of Uttar Pradesh. The candidates that I am aware of include

-       General VK Singh (BJP) – Current sitting MP and party president Rajnath Singh will be fighting from Lucknow this election

-       Raj Babbar (Congress)

-       Shazia Illmi (AAP)

I look at these names of candidates and parties flashing at my face and my moral high ground of how I am contributing to the good of the country over all those cynics who are not voting just seems to vanish into thin air. I got to say deciding who to vote for especially in this election is ridiculously difficult. After much confusion I have decided that as its Lok Sabha, and as I am giving my vote essentially to the party and its leader who occupies the central government of India, I will overlook the candidate and choose a party. If I go party wise:

BJP: The implication of NaMo becoming the Prime Minister of India is just too enormous where deciding to give my vote to this party is concerned. I have never known a political figure to be as polarizing as Narendra Modi is. There must be at least a million articles about this. Where my feelings are concerned about him being PM, I’d just like to direct any person reading this post to the below link which is an answer given on Quora.

https://www.quora.com/Politics-of-India-1/Would-you-as-a-member-of-a-minority-community-in-India-confidently-vote-for-Narendra-Modi-to-become-PM

I couldn’t possibly write a better answer and provide a simpler logic as the writer of this answer has provided as to why I wouldn’t want him to become PM. I find it difficult to believe that people don’t feel the slightest bit uncomfortable deep inside about wanting to vote for him. Anyway it seems that BJP is trying desperately hard to shoot itself on the foot with all the idiotic infighting going on within and the whole Pramod Muthalik episode (what on earth were they even thinking? I remember the epic time in my college days where so many of us sent pink chaddis as a part of a protest campaign against this moron’s party members attacking a bunch of women in a pub in Mangalore). I gotta say considering the Congress has pulled out all stops to ensure that it doesn’t have an iota of chance of winning, BJP messing up this golden opportunity for itself will be like snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

Congress: If it were any election before this, I admit that I would have blindfolded myself and just voted for the Congress as my family has always been traditional Congress supporters. I guess the logic was that they were ‘secular’ and (with the risk of being torn apart for saying this) they had the most balanced view point on policy issues compared to the extreme left or right alternatives. But considering the performance (or the lack of it) of the UPA 2 government and the sheer disgust it evokes from the disillusioned Indian population now, the congress guys might as well start warming their arse on the opposition seats of the parliament before the polling even begins. I had some respect for outgoing PM Manmohan Singh but his appalling lack of leadership and complete inability to put his foot down and take a firm stand during crisis situations like all those various shameful scams was bitterly disappointing and infuriating to say the least. If the thought of NaMo becoming PM is scary, the thought of Rahul Gandhi occupying the chair is really a bad joke. And it really doesn’t help that the latter chose to showcase himself as a clueless idiot on national television.

AAP: The despair with the current political set up is what led to the formation of this party. And to be fair, I do appreciate the intentions of this party. It takes tremendous guts to leave a comfortable life and all that you have been doing to get into the dirty and mucky world of politics to try and change things for the better like a lot of the prominent personalities of this party have done. But these guys are rank beginners and really have a long way to go But as one of my best friends put it, not having an ideology is very problematic which does make it difficult for me to vote for them because I don’t know what their stand is on so many critical issues. As per their own admission, they are still evolving. I think Arvind Kejriwal mentioned in some interview that they were “not leftists, not right wing, not centrists but solutionists”. Have to admit that right now it sounds like amusing ideal speak.  They have and continue to assimilate such a motley crew of people from such extreme ideologies, that you sometimes can’t help but wonder how they are going to find a common ground and figure out their stance on so many of the vital issues. Their short stint in Delhi was marred in controversy and really did reflect their inexperience and immaturity to some extent. In short I’d be really hesitant in voting for them because I am quite confused as to what they really bring to the table and whether they would be able to transition from activism to governance.  

The Left or regional parties like SP, BSP etc etc: No way in hell!!

NOTA: Gotta say, this is damn tempting under the current circumstance. But rationally speaking I really don’t get the point of this. Might as well not vote than to give into this option.

After writing all this, I just wonder – should it be so difficult to vote for a politician in India? Why don’t there appear to be men and women of great caliber who are a part of this profession? How is it that being a blood relative of an existing politician, a cricketer, a Bollywood film star guarantees you such an easy ticket to becoming one? How the f#%$ do people with frightening criminal records and pending cases even get the opportunity to contest in elections? Why isn’t there a really tough screening process, like say the UPSC process for government officers, before entrusting politicians with one of the biggest responsibilities of running a country? My granddad is a retired IAS officer. There is a famous story in my family about how he one night fainted in exhaustion because of excessive studying for UPSC exams. We may really curse the bureaucrats but they really prove their worth by going through probably the toughest screening process in the world to become government officers. For what really? To report to some incompetent inept person who got an easy ticket to become a politician. It’s not that my dad or subsequently I inherited my granddad’s power. Why should it be any different for a politician’s kid? I don’t know whether it’s true but I read somewhere that the Congress had approached Sachin Tendulkar to contest elections directly versus Narendra Modi. Is this some cheap type popularity contest? I was under the impression that we were talking about running a nation here. Uggggh!!

After this rant, I am exactly where I started. No clue who to vote for. April 10^th should be interesting….

Latest Update: Just a day after writing this, turns out that due to last moment plans, I am not in town for voting on polling day. Maybe its better given my confusion but am disappointed none the less.

The most important lessons I learnt from the Beatles

So one of the Quora questions go like - "What is the most important lesson that you have learnt from the Beatles?" Hell since its about the Beatles, I am the last person who would be left behind expressing my views on this.

To start with Beatles music is some sort of magic drug for me. But to avoid mushy intros and get straight to the point about the lessons learnt:

1) There are a few things in life which are worth hoping for and getting hurt for….love is definitely one of them!

2) Happiness, hope and optimism is NOT found in some major profound event but in the small everyday highs of life like getting by with the help of friends, coming home to a loved one after a hard day, dancing with your crush, learning how to be ‘you’ in time, knowing that someone still loves you despite badly messing up etc

3) It’s unbelievable how the biggest of inspiration can lie in the simplest of lyrics in some of the most mundane songs of the Beatles. So I'm talking about this song called "Birthday". In this there's this line which goes, "I would like you to dance....to take a chance!!"

Basically for a painfully reserved person who always would prefer to stay away from the dance floor as far as possible (both literally and metaphorically)  and would choose to watch from the sidelines, this one line is sort of a mountain of encouragement to take risks and put oneself out there. Ok to be fair, my best friends have been my biggest cheer leaders for doing a lot of the "courageous" things that I have done and I honestly have a long long LONG way to still go in this regard. But the fact is when my friends are nowhere around me to bulldoze me into doing something I really want to do, when I am feeling shit scared and all I want to do is play safe, I actually play these lyrics in my head. And trust me Paul McCartney crooning "Take a ch..ch..ch...chaaannce" with so much of conviction is really difficult to ignore! And believe it or not I have done things like making new friends, being more open about my feelings, trying out new things which I would ordinarily never have the guts to do, singing in public…

4) Shit happens. You get royally rejected (in job, love anything), you fall out of love, you miss the past, you act like a complete jerk sometimes and seriously regret it, people treat you badly and drive you crazy... Its ok to brood, feel lonely, intensely negative, depressed, paranoid and really insecure sometimes. But it's really better to minimize the time you feel sorry for yourself, get up your ass and do something about it or move on because ultimately things get better and work out in the end....that is if you choose it to be.

5) After time, music is perhaps the greatest healer.

Cricket Musings

I haven’t followed cricket properly for the last 6 odd months. So this blog post has the danger of sounding naïve and uneducated. Last 2 years have seen a huge number of high profile retirements in the international arena. My heart just broke with the retirements of Rahul Dravid and Jacques Kallis. Somehow I really can’t help feeling that the exit of these 2 and all the others who I have grown up watching has firmly placed an expiry date to my cricket watching days (unless I get to work in the ICC or ESPN Cricinfo. How kickass would that be??? :D). I guess this gloomy prediction is also due to my complete aversion to IPL which just seems to be getting bigger every year despite all the murky and sleazy shit that take place in this tournament. Even the T-20 world cup or any T-20 match for that matter seems so shallow. Wow, think I have really become a boring dingbat of a grandmother at the age of 24!

I am going to pen down my thoughts on a couple of cricketers for the time being.

Graeme Smith -  I never really liked the guy I admit. It mostly had to do with the fact that he replaced, as captain of South Africa, my favourite cricketer Shaun Pollock who had been sacked in an awful manner after South Africa crashed out of the 2003 World Cup in a tragic and really bizarre manner. He was just 22 when he took over as captain and I found him a big loud mouth, really brash and arrogant which was in complete contrast to the gentleman that Polly was. Fast forward 11 years later….Graeme Smith retired from international cricket last month…..still as the captain of South Africa. And to be honest, I find this in itself a remarkable achievement. Any bloke who survives as the captain for 11 years in a cut throat international sport environment, taking his team to great heights (despite not winning any world cup as usual) without being an extraordinary player himself – is truly worthy of praise. He was a natural leader. He had this fire in his belly, was supremely confident, had this real urge to outwit his competitors, wouldn’t take bull shit from anyone, was pretty ruthless, infused a lot of passion and a never give up attitude in his team and fiercely protective of his team members and his country. Under him there was definitely a spark in the SA team for sure. That incredible 438 match versus Australia where SA beat all odds to win the greatest match in ODI history for me for truly representative of what the SA cricket team became under his leadership. (He himself scored a quick fire 90 in that match). I read an article in cricinfo which said it South Africa would find it more difficult to replace Graeme Smith than Jacques Kallis as it is way more difficult to replace a fantastic leader than a fantastic cricketer. Keeping my personal liking aside, I agree with the statement 100%

Farewell Biff! You truly were extraordinary and you will be missed.

An observation that struck me after writing this: In the gentleman’s game, it is ironic that the ‘gentlemen’ don’t seem to make good captains. Think Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar, Shaun Pollock (who were all sacked) as opposed to Nasser Hussain, Sourav Ganguly, Michael Clarke, Graeme Smith etc.

Alastair Cook – Oh boy! This might take a while. So my only blog post last year was ridiculing what a flimsy team Australia had become. I had even posted it as a comment on Cricinfo which got published as a “Featured comment” much to my pleasure. When my dad read it, he warned me that if I looked at the past, Australia is a team that has a legacy of never remaining rubbish for too long and I would really feel foolish in the near future for having posted that comment. Turns out the man was right……as usual L.

The 2013 Ashes drubbing in Australia was a nightmarish disaster to put it in the mildest sense for a person who was supporting England and considers Alastair Cook as one’s favourite current cricketer. From Cook’s point of view as captain, Murphy’s law played out in the most perfect manner possible. There wasn’t even one English player (including the captain himself) – bowler, batsman, allrounder who was in some semblance of form. Trott went home suffering from depression. Graeme Swann announced a shock retirement bang in the middle of the series. Thankfully I didn’t get to watch any of this on TV but from what I read and heard, English players had never looked so clueless, unprepared and hopeless.

I gotta say I feel desperately bad for Cooky. I do get what it is like to hit such an alarming professional low. I guess that in his case, the stakes are so much higher. Now he faces biting criticism about his style of captaincy (all past achievements of winning 3-0 in England Ashes, winning a test series in India and leading his team to Champions Trophy finals almost winning it don’t count for squat apparently) and about the way he handled the Pietersen issue. To be brutally honest, I was quite shocked maybe more disappointed about the way he seems to have handled Pietersen or at least the way it has been reported. After all it does seem abysmally foolish to let go of your by far best player who is clearly a world class genius in terms of talent. I have always thought of Alastair Cook as a man of integrity and don’t even now think that he’s the kind of person who would not own up to responsibility and escape punishment by putting the blame squarely on someone else. KP’s really one maverick. Even his most ardent fans would agree that other than his match winning knocks, one thing that he’s really been consistent in is creating quite a nuisance in the England set up. Independent of my personal liking towards AC, I personally felt that KP’s messaging of derogatory texts about his then England captain, Andrew Strauss to the opposition should have spelt the end of his career. But they stuck with him and it’s really unfair to say that England hasn’t given him a chance. The fact that he has played 100+ tests is a testimony to this fact. You know from personal experience, I think there reaches this unbearable breaking point where it is not possible to take any more bullshit from a person and you lash back in the most vicious manner which might actually be quite harsh. Probably that is what happened in this entire saga. Who really is to know?

Coming back to Ali Cook, the most important reason why I really like back is his ability to bounce back from horrid failures. I remember in June 2010 series in England versus Pakistan, he was in such bad form that he was in the verge of getting sacked. By his admission that series was the closest he had ever got to crying. Then came the December 2010 Ashes in Australia where he scored an extraordinary 766 runs in 5 matches. After not even being considered in the England ODI side for the World Cup in India 2011, he was appointed as ODI captain amidst severe criticism of being “a plodder with the bat and a donkey in the field” by former English captain, Mike Atherton. As a result of tremendous hard work (by training with his county Essex during off season) and determination, his average and strike rate shot up dramatically. The dude is really a fighter. The blunt fact is that is skills are not are expansive and incredible as some of his contemporaries, but the point that his stats is comparable with theirs if not better despite his limits and hitting all these lows that he has. This speaks volumes of his mental strength and the toughness of character (qualities which are unfortunately very very underrated) and the fact that he is one person who has really earned his success. So will he bounce back from the catastrophe which happened in Australia? It was obvious he was shaken out of his wits. He was actually contemplating resigning from ODI captaincy (England got mauled even there 4-1) which is something that I would never ever expect him to do. It seemed that he had enough. I really hope that a rejuvenating break and his yet to be born first kid infuses his life with positivity again.  Somehow I know he will get out of this rut. He always has bounced back……and the day he does, I won’t hesitate to write a blog post which says “Man, I told you so!!”

MH 370 mystery

Have really been disturbed and hauntingly intrigued by the news of the disappearance of the Malaysian airlines flight to Beijing 5 days back. After all in this age of sophisticated technology, how can an airlines just disappear into thin air with everything seemingly fine before it mysteriously vanishes from the radar? Also with all the multi country intensive effort, how is it proving to be so difficult to locate this plane? It must be just so unbearable and devastating for the relatives of the passengers of this plane to have no clue what has happened to their loved ones. More than anything else, it is perhaps the feeling of utter, sheer helplessness they must be experiencing as all they can possibly do in such a garbage dump of a situation is to wait and pray. The fact is not knowing is probably a million times worse than knowing for sure that the worst possible outcome has taken place because somewhere humans by nature have the tendency to cling on to the tiniest of hope, however unreasonable, that things might just turn out to be ok. I am a great believer in hope but in the event of the most tragic outcome taking place and not having knowledge of it - this very same hope can prevent you from getting closure and ultimately moving on in life with time. I saw this picture splashed on a news site of a 4 year old Chinese girl praying for her father to return safely. There was something about that photo which just makes you feel that someone has wrenched your heart out of your body and powdered it into pieces. It made me think how much we take our life and our loved ones for granted. That it can just take a microsecond for our world to crash. That we fret over and feel sorry for ourselves and our lives over the most IDIOTIC SHITTY things in life. That it is just a matter of pure luck and chance (and maybe a God) that we or a loved one is not at the wrong place at the wrong time. There are so many theories floating around including frightening possibilities like a terrorist attack etc. I really think it would be very insensitive and disrespectful from my part to the feelings of the relatives and friends of those passengers who must be going through such agony and increasing mental torture with each passing minute to speculate and debate over what's the most 'logical' explanation of what must have happened on this forum especially in the scenario of almost zilch evidence. I found it sickening that in todays news they were casting aspersions over the competency of the young 27 year old co pilot over some past irresponsible behavior. God, if you are listening, now would really a good time to validate the belief of your most ardent of your followers and convince your skeptics that miracles do exist..

Latest Update: The Malaysian PM has officially declared the plane as lost. Really hope for the sake of family and friends of all the passengers and crew on board, that they discover with concrete evidence, what happened to the damn plane.