Everything That Is Wrong With Indian Cricket!

Before the start of the India England test series everyone had been bemoaning the fact that India had lost 8 test matches in a row against Australia & England in “away” conditions. Almost all the players especially the batsmen had received flak except for perhaps Virat Kohli. “They cant play swing, they cant adjust to pace, they don’t know how to hold the bat…..” Our bowlers too especially the pace bowlers who were expected to do well in helpful conditions were found wanting. Everything from ‘Too much 20 – 20’ to ‘too many advertisements’  had been quoted as the reason for the failures by the public… As usual! The age old theory of how the pitches in India weren’t competitive were put forward by the cricket pundits…. As usual





Leaving all that aside, I found the above score card courtesy cricinfo.com of a match between UP & Maharashtra in the ongoing Ranji Trophy. And this one score card perhaps symbolises what is wrong with Indian Cricket. Here is a test match in which the side batting 1^st i.e Maharashtra batted for the first 3 days! Yes 3 whole days amassing 700 plus runs without even being all out. Some of the batting scores there are mighty impressive indeed.A triple century! Wow K Jadav should replace Sachin Tendulkar at no.4 in the Indian team, shouldn’t he? When was the last time the Indian team scored 700? 0r 600? Or 500 in England? Looking at the bowling card probably will bring you tears, what with bowlers bowling 40 to 50 overs without anything to show for it. In reply the Suresh Raina led UP didn’t do badly either. On a 4^th & 5^th day pitch they managed 600 odd runs without being all out again. Our world cup wonder Piyush Chawla scoring more than a run a ball 150 to punish the opposition for making him bowl 50 overs in the sun. Either there wasn’t any wear & tear of the pitch or the batsmen were exceptional…. No prizes for guessing which one.

How can one expect India to produce International cricketers if such matches are played at the domestic level. How can you expect better crowds in the stadium? Not even 2 innings completed, below average cricketers made to look like super stars. How are the selectors supposed to judge players from such matches. We shout over roof tops that we don’t have “really fast” bowlers in the Indian team when Pakistan seem to produce one every month. Who would be stupid enough to want to be a fast bowler & bowl for 3 days on a pitch that resembles a highway! Whats worse is that Maharashtra have roped in former English all rounder Dermot Reeve as their coach to polish their skills & make them better cricketers. Is this how he trains them, by batting for 3 days? Isnt there something called sportsman spirit in the game? He came under severe criticism from the opposition captain Suresh Raina, one will never know if Suresh Raina would have done the same if he had batted first but we have to give him the benefit of the doubt. But Raina better forget that & worry about the fact that he scored a duck on a pitch that Piyush scored 150, pretty embarrassing for both of them! And then they ask what is wrong with Indian cricket…….

A Love Story

I am an eternal romantic! And true to my nature I fell in love! Love that transformed into marriage. A love story that began with dance…. yes dance class is where I spotted her, internet is where I pursued her, the beach was where we shared our dreams & finally we walked down the isle to be happily married since a year now…I would love to tell my story if Harper Collins would give me this opportunity. Hence wont reveal anything more till I get a go ahead :-) And yes its a true story!

This blog post is a sample blog to be posted for Harper Collins "Get Published" initiative

Weekly Photo Challenge - Renewal

What can say RENEWAL better than a just born getting his 1st bath. This picture is courtesy my gynaecologist wife :-)

My Apps - TRUE CALLER

One of my favourite games on my Samsung Galaxy ace is Basketball. A real simple game which very light weight for my phone which obviously cant handle big games. But this isn’t about the game. I mention this because everytime I played the game, at the bottom of the screen around the corner of my eye I used to see a tiny advertisement for “TRUE CALLER”. Somehow I never paid attention to it coz come on, lets be honest, one never bothers about the ads while playing a game! Anyways it was only after I was told about the app by someone else did I try it.

They say android has millions of apps, but lets face it, most of them are crap. Only a few of those many are good & still fewer being excellent. So where does True Caller stand? To think that one can actually have a caller ID on his/her cellphone which will detect ANY unknown call is definitely far fetched. But here is an app that comes as close to it as possible. It actually does what it says!  1^st things 1^st. It’s a light weight app & hence my Galaxy Ace(which is halfway between a horse & a turtle) can handle it with ease. After you search & download it from Google Play, the final installed version looks like this.



Once you’ve done so, Ill bet you that you’ll spend atleast the next one hour trying out all unknown numbers just to know if the app works & also to know who your stalkers are & trust me when the app gets it right its loads of fun. . And boy its simple!! Open the app & just enter the number that you want to know in the search bar. It searches for about 10 seconds & gives you your result, yes in 10 seconds! The result can obviously be either the name or the “no matches found”. Though there will be a large number of negative results, its surprising how often it gets the number right. Considering the fact that its still in its early days with constant updating going on, the search results can only get better. Whats more is that it even has a live search i.e it detects the number when there’s an incoming call which is fabulous & does not interfere with the built in phone settings.

They also have an option of name search. Now I don’t really know how that is going to work coz its still not been enabled but sounds cool. Imagine typing in a name & getting their phone number! Plus a few other goodies like the usual facebook connect(which almost every app, every website has these days) & also a CALL FILTER which allows you to block those unwanted calls. All this for free with no irritating ads in between(Ironic coz I saw this app as an ad on the other app hehe) Now isn’t this a  power packed app & a perfect example of good things coming in small packages!