Points taken from SCG - boxing day test

The recently concluded second test match of India vs Australia raised a lot of questions on the umpiring skills, the Australian teams integrity and their spirit towards the game. We also got to see Ponting the Umpire declaring Ganguly out, a lot of decisions going against India, the racism appeal against Harbhajan Singh and India nearly pulling out of the tour. But amidst all this chaos there were a few noteworthy (if I may call it) performances in the game.



From the Australian perspective firstly Symonds getting to 150+ for the first time in his career (albeit a few decisions favoring him) , then there was Hussey who just need a chance to push his average more and more closer to the 100 mark again came up with a 150+ not out. And how can I miss out Hayden who’s just getting sweeter with his timings as age progresses. Some splendid bowling performances by Stuart Clarke and Brad Hogg to name a few.

On the Indian counterpart there was the ever reliable, zero controversial, not a huge turner of the ball - spinner, jumbo (as Kumble is popularly known) who is steadily inching towards the 600 wickets mark with just one short of it. And he has also shone with his bat in this game too. Well my friends now know that whenever I write about cricket one persons name has to be there, yes! Dada, he did contribute with his bit in this game too. And then the God himself Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar- I have never seen him as ecstatic as he was after reaching the three figure mark. It was certainly a moment to cherish – he raising both his hands towards the sky with his head held up... Given the fact that he was dismissed more that 7 times last year in the nervous nineties its quite understandable.




Now Hussey, Symonds and Tendulkars performance raises a question in my mind. All these players crossed the 150 mark but still in the records they will have just one more century against their name. Well what is the point of toiling in the heat to score the additional 50 ? My point here is once a batsman scores 150 he must be awarded one century and one 50, when he touches the double hundred mark he must be given 2 centuries against his name. Well doing this would certainly give him his rewards by improving his statistics and would certainly inspire him not to throw his wicket once he reaches a milestone. Think about it ?

All said and done, India has moved on with the series and it has a lot more exciting moments to offer. One more suggestion I had was to send Sreeshant to join the team at this point of time, given the existing rivalry he has with Hayden and Symonds it would just make the heat of the moment even hotter 

Now that Bucknor has been replaced with Billy lets hope we have a good game at the Oh! So Fast Perth. Good luck team India…

photos courtesy - cricinfo.com

TZP

one of the sweetest things in a long time....

just came back watching the movie taare zameen par, and i have to say there was no one in the movie theater who didnt have a heavy heart when he/she left the place.
amir khan has come up with a master piece and his direction is just flawless.
he is certainly one of the best things to have hit indian cinema and with this movie here comes a director whos here to stay.
it certainly is a tough job to convey your emotions through someone else and its all the more difficult when the person on the other end is a kid.
the kid in this movie has just done a phenomenal job and his emotions are expressed by the tears of the audience.

i personally like movies that touch my heart and bring out the emotions in me. TZP is certianly up there on this list and is highly recommended.

A must watch for each and every one and given an option between Welcome and Taare Zameen Par both released on the same day and both of which
fall in different genre of films i have just one this to say ...
' Welcome to Taare Zameen Par'

a long way to go...

it’s the eve of my 28th birthday and I was thinking what life has given to me till this point of time and what’s left to achieve
And one things for sure, that the chapters life presents to you comes in variety of flavors.

I was just having this conversation with my dad about how fast the days have rolled by. It was just yesterday when I was taking that shortcut to school, just yesterday when my secondary school results were announced and I decided to take that dreaded jari-mari route to my junior college eventually graduating to the best chapter in everyone’s life, the engineering college.
Those carefree days would certainly be cherished throughout my life. But when I take a step back in this fast paced life and glance an eye upon the juncture of life I am presently in, is when comes the facts.

There was a phase of life when my dependents column was empty and now is a phase when I have two prominent names in the list, that of my lovely parents.
There was a phase when my father used to discuss investment with his friends and now is a phase when I am fascinated by that word
There was a phase when I had my first crush and now is the time when I have to find my soul mate.

Life still remains the same with the little joys it presents each day but in this hectic cycle I have realized that this is the right time to tighten my boots and plan out the much coveted journey called 'Life'

I take a deep breath and feel satisfied that I have achieved quite a bit in these 28 years of mine, but I do realize that there is a long long way to go....

go ganguly ...

as all of you'll must be aware I am an ardent ganguly fan, so much so that he was my computers backdrop for one whole year
(just to be replaced by the sweetest thing to have his planet earth - deepika padukone)
2007 has certainly been one of the most memorable years for dada, the vengeance with which he made his comeback into the indian team is worth a thousand praises.

In the recently concluded indo-pak friendship series ganguly had shut the mouth of all his critics in the most efficient way - by letting his bat do all the talking.
his first century in his home ground followed by a double in bangalore was one of his best innings till date. At 35 i believe his is in the best form of his life and still has atleast 2 more years of cricket left in him.

With a tough series ahead (india down under) things are certainly not going to as rosy as it was in our back yard but dada has already shown that he has a lot to offer by hitting his first half century in the warm-up game. Lets hope he shines as usual and the series is a memorable one for india...

It would indeed be a sad day for cricket when he decides to hang his boots, but I can just say this dada... you have done well!

The Independent message

This is a small message I wrote on the 60th Indian independence day anniversary.

Hope you'll find it a good read..




As INDIA embarks into its 60 Independence day,
its indeed a pleasure to see how a third world country is slowly and steadily making its mark in today global war. Here a small note....


Where the mountains touch the velvet sky
Our soldiers die with their heads held high

For you, oh mother, thousand sacrifices we can make
Conquer each obstacle and countless risks we can take

Name a field and we are good at it
Conquering the world with determination and grit

We stand behind you oh mother, as u march towards glory
For hundreds of years shall remain your eternal success story...

and its not long before we are gonna be a force to reckon with....

heres wishing each Indian , home and away a very happy independence day and heartiest congratulations for making India proud by contributing in whatever way possible.

keep the flame burning,

Jai Hind!!!

sms shayari

Have joined this new firm and as the normal cycle goes, it involves a huge learning curve initially.
Was going through the technical docs one boring afternoon when i received this sms from one of my close friend. What followed was a very funny sms conversation that bought out the sleeping shayar ( if I may call it ) in me.
Statuary Warning: - Read it at your own risk. Knowing hindi would certainly help!

Here it goes....

My friend: -
'Yaad hum bhi aapko karte hain, yaad aap bhi hume karte hain,
Farak Sirf itna hain ae Dost, ke hum yaad aane par sms karte hain
Aur aap sms aane par yaad karte hain '

Should say thats a good one. And here my reply,

Me: -
' Aap humko yaad karte hain aur SMS aata hain,
' Magar yaad toh woh aate hain, Jinhe Bhulaya jaata hain '

A fitting reply eh ? He replies back

He: -
'Nehle pe dehla, Bahut Siyana ho gaya re tu toh!'

Well not a shayari reply but nevertheless had to give an answer to this one, so heres my reply,

Me: -
' Murdoon ke shehar main aastin ka saanp hoon '
' Yaad Rakh ae dost main tera Baap Hoon '

Well just couldnt resist that the shayar in me came back after a long break, so thought of blogging this.

Hope youll found it an interesting read...

An Inconvenient Truth

It’s been a while since I have seen a movie that stays with me for over a week. The latest movie that shook me to the core, that had me all shaken up and that has exposed a very sad and true fact about the world around us is the movie ‘An Inconvenient Truth’

An Oscar award wining movie, which shows the realities about planet earth in a very thoughtful manner.

Al Gore has come out as a brilliant thinker, showing great evidences to prove his statements, and above all it’s a pleasure to hear him speak. He is such a great orator that he’ll keep you engrossed till the end.

All thanks to my room-mate who ordered the movie from block buster (online), hadn’t heard about the movie till then, and now am promoting it to every one I know.

Just to give you a gist of what the movie is dealing with, here I go…

The amont of CO2 in the atmosphere is increasing day by day and carbon-dioxide along with other gases warm the surface of the earth. Some of the side effects of this effect is that the Glaciers are melting, plants and animals are being forced from their habitat, and the number of severe storms and droughts is increasing. Some past realities are the series of hurricanes in Florida and the massive flooding in Mumbai.

He has shown some drastic differences in the way things look compared to a few years from today. Given below is a picture of the Kilimanjaro Mountain - in Africa.




It’s true that we in our life times will not experience a severe effect, expect for the fact that after 20 more year’s things might just look a bit different around us, but when we think of generations to come it give me an adrenile rush. It’s time we took the right step and do something to make the world a better place.

I seriously appreciate the efforts put in by Al Gore to awaken the people all around the world to this harsh fact. So lets join hands and put our right foot forward.

I would suggest each one of you to watch the movie and for some more details kindly visit http://www.climatecrisis.net/

Have a good read and a great day!

Orkut - the social network revolution

Call it a new virus; call it an obsession but the orkut fever is growing like wild fire.
I was introduced to it briefly in 2004, found it interesting back then and now am totally hooked to it. It still amazes me how Google comes up with such good products each and every time. I am sure that like any other obsession this too would die out in a while but am giving it all the attention I can and it’s hogging all the lime light.

The best thing I liked about orkut is that its very user friendly. I do agree there are other socializing networks in the market that are equally good, but the fact that it’s a Google product makes me biased towards it.
Yes! I am a big fan of Google and like the fact that they keep enhancing their products and coming up with more featured time and again in each of their product.
The same thing holds true with orkut too, it has instant scrap reply feature, friends map feature, mutual friend’s lists and the list goes on and on.



Created by Orkut Büyükkökten an employee of Google Inc. (it’s named after him), it started as one more of the then existing social network service like Friendster and MySpace.

If you want to get an estimate of the popularity of the site let me throw some figures at you. Launched in Jan 2004 by the end of July 2004 it had surpassed 1,000,000 members and the latest figure obtained in December 6th 2006 stands at 35.2 million.

Of course every good creation has its own cons and so does orkut. To name a few, there are fake ids, hate groups and obscenity.
But hey, looking at the positive side of it, it has indeed swept the social networking circuit, and its here to stay.

So folks enjoy the biggest thing in e-social networking today and keep scrapping.

Welcome Dada!!

So after a sabbatical of 6 months I am back to what I do decent enough, blogging J
Would start off by writing about a sport in which I take keen interest. Yeah, it’s too tough to guess right? Me being an Indian it had to be cricket..
So here’s to the player whom I respect..

A player whom the whole media had written off. A player who had reached the lowest point in his whole career the last year. Yes, no price for guessing as the title suggests a lot, I am talking about Saurav Ganguly.

He is one guy whom I have really liked as a player, as a leader and as sportsman. Had always felt that he was made a very bad victim of the shitty politics in the Indian sports arena.


I had always admired him as an opener and then the way he handled the young Indian team in the last world cup was praise worthy. But my respect for this man went up even further by looking at the treatment the BCCI had given to him. However bad a player’s form is on the field, if the player has been an ambassador leading the country to a prestigious tournament he doesn’t deserve such a rude treatment.

The just concluded tournament of SAF showed us one more facet of the current Indian team. They looked like a bunch of guys having no direction been led by a man who himself is a puppet in the hands of Greg Chappel.(Yeah, I am talking about Dravid)

Dravid is a great batsman, one of the best in the world, but a leader?? Nah, I would prefer someone more aggressive.

There were a few successful knocks in the tour, with centuries by Jaffer and Laxman respectively, but the man who was on a comeback trial to the team couldn’t have done better. He topped the batting average in the three test series. And that apart, I saw a different Ganguly this time. His stance, his posture, everything about him reflected a man with a mission. He had the fire in his eyes and was surely looking like the old Bengal tiger that we have all known.
And of course we all know that he is a great player, the figures speaks for itself, he has debuted in 1996 in the ODI’s and has already crossed 10K runs, a true genius.

The board has come out with the list or players for the ODI tour in WI and the 30 probable’s list for the world cup and as expected one name is certainly there. ‘Saurav Ganguly’
So with the new attitude and determination I am sure this time he is here to stay and psst…It would be fun to have a look at the best opening pair again in the ODI’s (sachin and saurav)
So here’s Kudos to dada and welcome back to the Indian side.

Roar! The Bengal tiger