Archive for January, 2006
A dream start… the kinds most cricket fans pray for the night before the match. One over into the match and Pakistan were 0-3. Soon enough, they were 13-4 and before you could say “jumping Jack Rabbit”, they were 39-6. About 3 hours later, they ended up with all of 245 runs.
Without taking too much away from the heroics of Kamran Akmal, the blame has to lie squarely on the shoulders of the Indian think-tank and the bowlers, who probably got too excited, and did not finish the job at hand. Ideally, Pakistan should never have crossed 120.
SPOILER WARNING
To Ik Pair Future te… isiliye to present pe moot rahe hain hum!
Words of wisdom, it would seem… or just another gimmicky line? Whatever it is, it is a perfect fit in the movie. Rang De Basanti is a movie you should watch. Great characters, terrific music, brilliantly slick and a strong concept.
Along the way, though, one cannot help but feel that a bit of the same-old same-old has crept in. The fight against the machine, the ‘awakening’ of the generation and most revolutionary acts within the movie happen because of a personal loss. This is completely against the parallel concept wherein the revolutionaries take to arms to rise against the general oppression of a people.
Warning again… spoiler ahead. To avoid, go here!
And it seems to be creating some interest among the cricket followers around the world. In one of his recent columns, he alluded to certain Indian players having to face the verbal music for ‘obvious’ reasons. He also mentioned that Syed Kirmani and M Azharuddin also faced this.
A large number of people seem to think that he should simply come out in the open and say what he is trying to rather than play the ‘suggestion’ game. Hmm…
What a boring match this has turned out to be. Despite the high scoring, only 7 wickets have fallen so far and we are already at the end of the fourth day. So much for the fast green tracks that were being predicted by Javed Miandad, Imran Khan, Wasim Akram, and all the retired Pakistan players.
Be that as it may, I fail to understand why none of them are ready to give the Indian pace attack its due. And I'm not referring only to records here. Sure Shoaib Akhtar has more pace but against India, so far, he has had more bark than bite. Ditto for Mohd Sami. Perhaps Naved Rana has been the one somewhat successful bowler for Pak against India. Let's not even get to Afridi and Malik.
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