What Next?

For me India is Knocked out of the Cricket World cup . Still some of my friends feel that Bermuda will outclass bangladesh and we will be through to the next round. But i would go out with first round loss. With their current batting form i dont want us to be in the Super Eight. By exiting now we could avoid a defeat at the hands of Ireland which is quite a possibility. Atleast we could say we had one disappointing game against Srilanka and one terrible game against Bangladesh. Instead if we go to Super Eight, common man! it is difficult for me to come with seven new vocabulary for our performance. So what are we going to do next? first thing that came to my mind was that we will stop paying so much attention to a game. How stupid i am? my friend told me we should organise a series with Pakistan and we will still be watching it madly. Thats true. As Chappel said we haven't won a tournament overseas from 1985, there is still a serious attention needed. but we are always happy with a home series victory over bermuda. Next thing i thought was the safety of the players and their families. There is no point in harming them physically as they never asked you to have such a madness over a game. If you really don't like the way they play, Don't watch it! Thats all we should do!. After all this, let us look at what is needed at this stage. Foreign coach is not an option for a while after this debacle. So who will coach us? Sunil Gavaskar.Hell no! I dont want to see Rohan Gavaskar and Amol Mazumdar in the playing eleven at this stage of their career. So pick some one who played the game and have a proven record of coaching. They dont have to be an great stalwart in their playing days. Couple of names that come to my mind are Chandrakanth pandit, Kris Srikanth, Venkatesh Prasath, Javagal Srinath. But if we consider Srinath or Prasad we need a complete revamping of the team which i feel is good for the game. Dont just look at the age while picking up the player. True you need to look at the future, but it does not have to be at the expense of success. It is enough to look at 5 years ahead of us. This gives us enormous pool of players to select.

What should not happen

India successfully succumbed to Bangladesh. So what is going to happen now ? One thing i really don't want to see is Player's houses and relatives getting hurt. They are not responsible for any of these things. It's all our fault to have so much passion over a sport. It is not be all and end all for us. Even if we bow out in the first round we should not feel terrible. We in fact should view cricket as a sport. I think by this we could avoid lot of disappointments and those cricketers wont be getting a lot of money for playing in such a fashion. After saying this lets see what went wrong for us today. The team selection is absolutely wrong. I don't believe shewag should be anywhere closer to the Caribbean leave alone the team. I have not lost confidence in him (Though i never had any!) He just needs some break. He still have a future in Cricket and by keeping him in the playing eleven Dravid is trying to spoil that. Uthappa he never seems to have any understanding of the game. After all he is just into the scheme of things. All he knows is a horizontal bat. So if he is not opening i don't see him at No 3. With Shewag in such an aweful form we need some one to steady the ship so why not Dravid?. If they really need utahppa why don't they keep shewag down the order. We all know he could murder a spinner. I am not going to blame Sachin and Dravid for their failure. After all they are human. Sourav played gem of an innings as he used to play and Yuvraj setting the base. One thing that surprises me is the absense of Irfan Pathan. Sure they don't have a place for fourth seamer. But i feel that he should have been given a chance because this was supposed to be a cake walk for India. Either he could have got the rhythm or give us a hint about what our future 11 will be. Our Bowling looked good especially Munaf and Zaheer. Munaf can be trusted with new ball than one change bowler. With his height and pace and of course line he could wreck through a batting order.I would try Dinesh karthik in the next game against Namibia as it seems now shewag is not going to give us a lot. Lets "see" if they can build a sky scraper against Namibia and beat Srilanka.

Tit Bits

This time i am going to write about random things. I wish i could dig something apart from politics. But the chances are very remote. I am not sure how many of you read about an Indian MP who is not even a citizen of India. Mr.Mony Kumar Subba (I could not remember his original last name) a people representative from Assam is not even a Indian citizen. I meant he does not have legal citizenship till now (Sonia Gandhi has one! i should admit). He is the only one who never ages with years (Please leave the innocent saints off this!!). When he contested for the first time say he mentioned he was born on 1951 but in the last election his Year of birth became 1958. May be he went to kumarakonam after Atalji got his treatment and felt younger. The poor guy didn't know that he can only feel younger. But the funny thing is he forgot what school he studied. He never thought "Mahatma" would betray him. Little did he know that he is not in tamilnadu and they can open a school in the name of our "father of the Nation" even after 1967. The pity is that now only they found that all the documents he surrendered were scandalous. Leave all this! This guy is not fit to be in current politics. how come he is not blaming opposition for these findings. He should have consulted Lalu and Sibu Soren on this. Oops! Sibu soren is in Tihar right now. Anyways if at all our judiciary give him some punishment and send him to Tihar (may be in 10 years if things go well. Man! He is a MP of the ruling party!) he might get assistance. who knows he can even be a Minister? Above all this he could not use Secularism for this. Had he realised this before, he might have submitted another document proclaiming his religion. Wow!! I got an idea for this guy, Why don't he consult arjun singh and see if he can use class systems to use? (Not Eric Segal's "Class" folks, it is the BC and OC). He should have contested from Tamilnadu in DPA alliance. In that case he might have the backing of Karunanidhi who could make any statements made in the past void with his linguistic ability. But one thing is for sure his political future is really bright with impending punishment.

Next comes the Afzal hanging case. For those who know only Pakistan cricketer Fazil (I am sure there are many) he is the guy who is convicted of attack on our Parliament. He was given death sentence long ago.As usual he applied for Mercy plea to the president. After all that's the only decision of the Indian President that can be taken by him. I think this does not make a big difference to his power either. And it is still "Under consideration". I don't know why? may be Mr.Kalam is too busy with his future stint as a visiting Professor at MIT (Madras institute of Technolgy) his Alma mater. I am really happy for Mr. Kalam. He feels completely out of place there. You should be a bureaucrat to be in that position. If you are intelligent and have some conscience that's not the place. At least we could have avoided Insat-4B technical hitch and couple of unsuccessful launching. So let me get to the point. What is the purpose of having a capital punishment if we could not execute it? do we need a special court for faith? frankly that's what happening now. Not Mulayam singh and others came to help Nalini in Rajiv Gandhi murder. She got the same punishment for same crime. After all she was accomplice in murdering in one "to be" Prime minister. This guy was helping in plotting to kill 1 prime minister and 533 people representatives and bunch of other people. Just because the incident did not happen means he is not a criminal? or None of the VIPs died there ? What happened to those security personnel who lost their lives. if killing them does not deserve capital punishment why did you hang "Auto Shankar". He did not kill any popular figures. But by this apart from all these vote bank politicians, one common man (i don't know whether man is a term suited ) will be happy. He is our Moninder singh. He could also get absolved in Nithari Killings. But for that he should adopt a different faith. I am really hurt to say this, It is not good for our nation to see all the decision based on the religion the accused belong.