Carnage in Christchurch

New Zealand tour has always proved to be a nightmare for the Indian Cricket team but, this time around the situation is altogether different. Team India is on a roll now and in the past two years they have only grown from strength to strength in all formats of the game. While India remained the undisputed champions at home, their overseas performance has always come under criticism. Fair enough! Who would tolerate a quality test team from not even posting a total of 200 in neither of an innings of both the test matches played, when they toured New Zealand last time around? When India toured New Zealand the last time around in 2002-03 just before the start of the world cup, the Indian batsmen just couldn’t put a proper bat on ball. The lethal bonding of Bond – Tuffey tamed the famed Indian batting with much ease. Moreover, Christchurch has so far only proved to be a Devil’s Den where India vs. NZL has a 0 – 5 victory ratio. So, as always the thought of watching a cricket match on T.V, laid back at home proved irresistible to me.

India took on the Kiwis in the third ODI at Christchurch on Sunday (8-03-09) in the five match National Bank ODI series. The second ODI was washed out due to incessant rain. India were already one up in the series and the make up of the third ODI was all the more luring with the Little Genius Sachin showing glimpses of his batting geniuses in the second ODI. I got back home on Saturday (7th of March) and was dying to watch the match the following day.

Friday, the 7th of March, at around 19:15 Hrs, I met a couple of my school friends at our very own RK paani puri stall. As always our conversation touched all spheres of possible imagination and at last settled down to Sunday’s plans. Decision making was never a tough task for us, if it was on hangouts. We decided to go for a movie (sorry, they decided and as usual I just nodded my head pretending to be okay with the decision). I would never sacrifice a chance to watch a match for some dumb movie. My friends did their best to persuade me for the movie and even went on to state that the Sunday’s match would definitely be a rain washout. I tell you, that did not please me one bit.

Beep, beepp, beeppp….. Like a visually impaired individual, I stretched my hand across the table to shut the screaming cellbore (My MutePhone). I woke up hastily and switched on the T.V set, only to find out that I was a touch late to miss the toss. A sigh of relief to watch the stadium bathed in bright sunlight contrary to what was predicted by my friend. Shewag and Sachin strolled in. I dislodged my blanket, adjusted the pillow and comforted myself to watch, what promised to be a splendid game of cricket.

Initially, Sachin was very cautious and selective in his shot making and at the other end; shewag had no method to his madness and soon perished playing a tail ender’s slog shot. His Delhi teammate Gautam Gambhir walked in as the number 3 batsman for India and he too looked off color and was very tentative in his shot selection. He got out trying to run down a delivery to the third man area. He got out in the same fashion for the second time in this tour.

Yuvraj started off his innings with a splendid cover drive and looked good right from the start of the innings. Sachin and Yuvaraj resurrected India from the initial jitters and gradually stepped on the gas and started playing some beautiful cricket shots all around the park. Sachin carried his momentum from his last game and outclassed and dictated terms to the Kiwis. Just as everything looked bright for India, everything turned dark at home. Power cut!!!! Imagine my plight! Once in a while I get to watch a cricket match and when I do get a chance to watch sachin in full flow, these things happen. By the time my T.V got back to life, the Kiwis hopes had already died. Sachin had butchered their bowlers all around the park and with cameos from Yuvaraj, Dhoni and Raina, India piled up a huge total of 393 on the board.


As expected, the black caps came out all guns blazing and Jesse Ryder proved too hot to handle.

The Ryder bazooka fired time and again and with Mccullum playing the way he normally does, the duo batted India out of the game. The Indian captain led from the front but, this time for a lost cause and dropped an absolute sitter behind the stumps off the bat of the marauding Ryder, then followed a flurry of drop catches, high school bowling and sloppy fielding. The ball sailed past the ropes time and again and the opening partnership was soaring at a pace of 8 runs an over. It looked as if the Indians gave up hope and their body language on the field was evident of this fact. They were waiting for the Kiwis to make a mistake and fortunately for the Indians, Ryder obliged to their unsung request and committed a fatal mistake by chancing Raina’s arm only to leave his helpless partner in absolute despair. That very run out cost New Zealand the match and that triggered a string of wickets to fall and all of a sudden the black caps were down in the doldrums.

Even after losing 8 wickets, the Kiwis never gave up. The spectators got their moneys worth and were treated to some delightful stroke play even at the fag end of the match. The new ball partners Southie and Mills used the long handle to good effect and sent the spectators in the crowd for cover. Munaf Patel, the weak link in the Indian pace attack experienced the drubbing of the summer from the Kiwi tail Enders. The best part was that, even after such humiliation he managed to project a smile, Kudos to the selection committee. Much to the relief of the Indian fans, he was removed from the attack for sending down two consecutive beamers in the same over. India finally managed to get their noses in front across the finish line.

The only consolation of the match was that of Sachin’s delightful innings. An absolute treat to watch. SACHIN, 43 AND COUNTING…………

Midsummer Night’s Dream

I could hear the murmurs from the other side of the door. The shadows gradually sneaked into the room. I tried my best to avert my attention from the engulfing dark shadow and turned off the lamp hoping to fade away the stretching silhouette. The rhythmic spattering of the rain drops on the asbestos knocked on my senses with equal intervals. The thought of spending the remaining six hours alone in my room haunted me. For once, time haunted me! The beautiful white curtains which had its moments of admiration and praise have now turned its ugly face on me. Familiarity breeds contempt but that very night it catalyzed the willies. My little room out of no where started showing ominous signs of hostility. My pupil dilated as I tried to discern the aberration in the normalcy of my room. I slowly slid into my slippers and ambled across my study table and edged close to the windowpane.
I couldn’t digest the fact that my yellow bordered little window that portrayed the finest of morning hours that embraced the golden rays with balanced dignity is now pretending to be a host for several hundred raging, blood thirsty demons. I turned around at a pace that would have made the wachowski brothers proud. I looked at the wall clock, a sigh of relief as the clock ticked past four. A sudden gust of wind pushed me back and it howled out in the trees. I threw myself onto the cot, rolled under the blanket and slid my face amidst the pillows. I began to chant all my forgotten prayers; I started cursing myself for opting not to accompany my parents and for resorting to stay all alone. Little did I move, I could feel the pulse motoring up, the bedspread wrinkled into a spider’s web in no time. The illusion of someone breathing down my neck loomed large. Phat, Phat, two familiar heavy blows on my back. I was on the verge of letting the world know how loud I could yell. I did the superman thing, stood up all of a sudden holding onto my blanket and starred at a figure that has co-existed with me for 21 years. The darkness has evaded and everything looked the way it used to be. Time to School, blurted the silhouette standing in front of me. Gosh! Chimera was better than reality.

3 SHADES OF TRIVIA

The desperation to make my blog better than my previous posts has for once turned trivial to me. Well, as you guessed it right, I am very much not in the mood to blog. The very thought of today’s flop show (21-02-09) gets me worked up a little. Defeat has embraced me as frequent as victory has but, still it annoys me when I get so close to tasting success and at last end up with bitter defeat. To be fair enough I haven’t even made anything clear as to what I am talking about. Okay! Let’s get on with it.

Wednesday (18-02-09):
This week (16th of Feb ’09 to 22nd of Feb ’09) has been a mix of fortunes as far as my quizzing stint goes. On the 18th of Feb ’09, “The Economic Times” hosted a quiz competition at GRD College. The quiz master for the competition was “Tata Crucible” famed Giri, a burly man whose voice could well be classified as Death Metal genre. GRD has always proved to be an exotic college if not for educational aspects but at least for other reasons. It wasn’t a working day so, our anticipation went in vain. Much to our surprise we came to know that it was an out and out business quiz and not a general quiz. We were under-prepared as always but, still stuck to the ritual of giving it a shot. The prelims proved to be relatively easy and we did fairly well. When the results were out, we were a bit upset that we couldn’t make it to the finals. The frustration peaked all the more when the Quiz master disclosed the prizes for the top six finalists. As always we stayed back to watch the finals and that did not go in vain as we managed to grab four audience prizes. Post Quiz, we managed to have a word with the Quiz master. We told him about our Quiz club and that we also have a proposal of hosting an open quiz in our college.

Thursday (19-02-09):
The department of Computer Science hosted an intra college Quiz competition as part of their 3 day fest which they termed as Sieger. We managed to win the quiz even though there was stiff competition from my club mates. That proved as an impetus for us and the win in the quiz competition made us to top the list after Day 1 of Sieger.

Saturday (21-02-09):
/>My outdated gizmo missed out to wake me up by 5 ‘o’ clock and fortunately, Deepak did the work of my alarm but understandably with a humanly delay of half an hour. We were instructed by our Placement officer to be ready by 6-15, that meant I had only 45 minutes before hell broke loose. I managed to be there on time, only to find that not all are as foolish as I am. Only a few had come. We (I and Deepak) decided to take a look at the proceedings leading up to today’s (22-02-09) eco club trek, a trek primarily organized for the first years. We reached the cricket field where around 50 first year students were present along with a handful of club coordinators, who were supervising the others. We started from college by 6-45 and reached PSG medical college by 8-15. The event TRANSITION’09 organized by CTS encompassed many events like movie making, paper presentation, ultimate techie, stall presentation and the all important Quiz (“AWE”). It was clinically organized and the event got underway at around 10-20 a.m. Much to our surprise, around 100 teams were there for quiz alone. The prelims got underway with “Lloyd” being the Quiz master. The preliminary round was easy and we got 15 out of 20 correct.

We had to endure a long break between prelims and the finals, which was the final event of the day. Fortunately, the anchor kept me occupied for the major phase of the idle period. She reminded me of my school senior. A tall and fair complexioned lady tidily attired in a dark green saree. She was gorgeous till lunch, (doesn’t make sense eh?) well, post lunch had a different story altogether. After lunch, I went in search of the free ice-cream that everyone was relishing on. I grabbed my cup and tasted it standing in front of one of the entrances to the auditorium. I accidentally happened to spot this girl sitting on the steps along with few of her friends. She was the odd one out of the bunch because, she was in salwars and the rest wore jeans and t-shirts. Coincidence you may call it, we both glanced at each other at the same instance. She looked like a mallu and that spurred my inquisitiveness further. She had the look of an innocent chubby kid with gleaming eyes beautifully bordered with an eye liner. I then resorted to concentrate on my ice-cream (this is how I portrayed myself) and occasionally I gaped at her. I decided to seek my classmate’s assistance to confirm what unfolded before my eyes. I then, asked ambi (rengerajan) to check if she was looking for me and I decided not to look at her again. Ambi as always proved to be a master in these matters, answered me in the affirmative and tell you what! That pleased me in fact, that delighted me. She then went inside the auditorium and I obliged to her silent invitation and convinced my friends as well to enter the auditorium. For about one hour this fairy tale continued before she left the place. I couldn’t do much as the results for the prelims was about to be disclosed in a matter of minutes.

I was a bit tensed and was on the edge of my seat. The quiz master disclosed the first name and much to our surprise we found ourselves as the first team to qualify. I was very much excited and we ambled across to the stage with huge applause from the mammoth audience. I was so absorbed by the moment that I just did not notice the beautiful anchor giving us some instructions. The quiz then got underway with teams from KCT, PSG TECH, AMRITA, CIT AND GCT (I GUESS) completing the top six teams. The first round did not fetch us any points but, by the end the second round we were tied at first place with CIT. The next three rounds were buzzer rounds which meant pace had to be mixed with caution, caution of earning negative marks for a wrong answer. We were out of sorts and couldn’t do much about the remaining rounds. The last round had only 3 questions and carried +15 for a correct answer and a -10 for a wrong answer. We had no other option but to go after the questions if we were to finish among the top 3 spots. Two wrong answers and that put us on the darker side of zero. Disappointment, frustration, anger and everything except happiness crept in one by one. Though everyone consoled us saying that it was a brave effort to risk in the final round, we couldn’t digest it that easily. I had to return home so that I could finish off the police verification for my passport.
SO CLOSE, YET TOO FAR.