Archive for the ‘General’ Category
India’s bowling conundrum
Posted on: August 22, 2011
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A demoralizing and humiliating 4-0 whitewash, India’s first such loss overseas since their 3-0 loss to Australia in 1999. The team which had made a huge headway over the past couple of years collectively came down crashing against a team which was much more organized. The Indian bowling has always been a cause for concern.
The bowling attack sans Zaheer has always struggled and this series was another example for the same. The failure of the batsmen did not help their cause either.
The spinners are struggling; the fast men are not consistent enough. Everyone knew that if India had to stay at the top of the rankings they need to develop a good bowling attack. India has failed to do the same and it showed in the current series.
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In recent times reading some movie reviews has become a tedious exercise. A normal movie buff looks only for certain things in a review, the positives and the negatives, performance of the lead actors and the music. Basically an outline as to whether the movie is to his/her liking or not. This information should as far as I am concerned be expressed in simple understandable language. In the recent times when I read reviews written by certain writers I feel that it’s an essay for an English literature class. The reviews are extremely complicated to understand and for sure is not in simple language.
I sometimes cannot understand what writers are trying to prove by writing such complicated reviews. No one wants to break their head in trying to understand what is written and for sure none of the readers are here to appreciate your command over English. If your target audience is English professors and literature students then I can understand the logic behind such complex writing. I am not saying that all the reviewers are the same as there are a few who write extremely good reviews without using complex sentence formations.
It’s nice to have great command over the language but one should not lose the basic plot of the task in hand. We need to communicate things which are easily understandable even to someone who isn’t extremely proficient with the language. Writers should keep in mind as reviews are a mode of giving your opinion of a movie to an audience who just want to find out if this is something they want to watch or not. If you are writing these in your personal blogs then it is fine but when you write for a website the accomplishment of the task at hand takes the priority.
- In: Cricket | Cricket and Sports | General | India | ODI | postaweek2011 | Sports | Teams | Test | test cricket | Test match
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The West Indies tour continued to suffer as more first choice players from the Indian team continue to pull out ahead of the test series. This time it is the turn of Zaheer and Sreesanth. The Indian team will now be without their first choice seamers for the test series. Abhinav Mithun and Praveen Kumar have been named as the replacements. Sometimes it is hard to understand the thinking behind some selections and Praveen’s is a curious one.
Mithun though I understand as he did not do that badly in the test series against the Sri Lankans last year but Praveen’s selection comes as a surprise. If Praveen gets a game this will be his debut for India in the longer format. Munaf and Ishant are already part of the squad, so I am assuming they will be in the starting X1 for the first game at least. Mishra and Bajji will most probably play in most of the games considering how poorly West Indies batsmen have handled spin on this tour. If the need arises to play a third seamer it will be interesting to see who India will play in the X1. So the Indian team who are already light on experience in batting will be suffering the same in the bowling department too.
The Indian team needs to win 3-0 in the test series in order to not lose any points in the test championship race. With the pull outs it will be miraculous if they achieve the same. The batting now will completely rely on Dravid and Laxman and the bowling on Bajji and Mishra. I hope that the youngsters can perform well and continue the good work they have been doing in the series already. The team under Suresh Raina has already won the ODI series and now Dhoni’s challenge would be to captain a young team to victory in tests. The pull outs though have made the series more competitive and give the West Indies a chance to upset the Indian team.
Test squad: MS Dhoni (capt), VVS Laxman (vc), M Vijay, Abhinav Mukund, Rahul Dravid, Virat Kohli, S Badrinath, Harbhajan Singh, Ishant Sharma, Mithun, Amit Mishra, Pragyan Ojha, Praveen Kumar, Munaf Patel, Suresh Raina, Parthiv Patel.
Article first published as Wimbledon 2011: After Nadal Can Federer Reclaim His Fortress? on Technorati.
Rafael Nadal proved last Sunday that he is truly the king of clay court. Rafa, who admitted ahead of his semi-finals clash that he was not playing well enough to win the title, did exactly that playing a brilliant game of tennis in the finals. Federer who was on a high after defeating the pre-tournament favorite Djokovic found Nadal too hot to handle in the final and went down fighting in a four set battle. It was a brilliant win for Nadal as he once again proved what a great player he is on any surface.
Now after the French open is complete the focus now shifts to grass courts of Wimbledon. The surface which was once a fortress of Roger Federer till it was breached by Rafael Nadal in the year 2008. Federer had won the championship 5 straight times prior to that and that was the time Nadal started to prove himself on different surfaces. Federer though came back to win the title in 2009 but lost in the Quarters last year. That was the first time Federer did not make it to the Finals of a Wimbledon championship in 8 years.
Roger has not been in great form since his fabulous win in the Australian Open 2010. He has been often upstaged by Djokovic and Nadal over the past year or so. He reaching the finals of the French Open against all odd should give him immense confidence ahead of the Wimbledon Championship.
It all began for the Champion in 2003 in Wimbledon and what a great career it has been till now. It has been a brilliant journey and I hope that he has one last hurrah. A win on his favorite surface will for sure give him the much needed confidence to keep going for couple more years.
I hope that we have a great championship once again on grass, a surface I just love watching tennis on. Roger is my favorite tennis player since Sampras and Agassi and I will be rooting for him all the way at the Wimbledon championship. For now let’s congratulate Nadal for his brilliant win on clay and hope Federer can repeat the same on grass in a month’s time.
The Indian challenge in the French Open singles was kept alive by Sania Mirza who recorded an impressive win over Kristina Barrois in the first round. Sania who is ranked 72 in the world played a brilliant match against 57th ranked Kristina win the game in straight sets 6-3, 6-3. It was a great win for Sania and I hope that this inspires her to keep going in the tournament. Sania will be playing her doubles match later today where she is paired with Elena Vesnina from Russia and the pair is seeded 7th in the tournament.
Somdev though wasn’t that fortunate as he crashed out of French Open singles earlier today when he lost to world No 37 Ivan Ljubicic of Croatia. Somdev who is ranked 66 in the world found Ljubicic extremely tough to handle and lost in straight sets, 6-4, 6-3 and 6-4. The men’s doubles round are yet to begin where Leander and Mahesh will try to win their first Grand Slam after their reunion last year. I wish them best of luck and hopefully we will have couple of titles this year at the French Open.
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The 58th National awards were announced yesterday in India and the major awards were collected by Tamil and Malayalam movies. Dhanush won the best actor award for his realistic portrayal in the film Aadukalam along with Malayalam actor Salim Kumar who won it for his brilliant performance in the film Adaminte Makan Abu. The best feature film award went to Malayalam film Adaminte Makan Abu.
Aadukalam was the star of the National Film awards announced yesterday as it bagged 6 awards including the Best actor, Best Director (Vetrimaran), Best Original Screenplay (Vetrimaran), Best Editing (TE Kishore), and Best Choreography (Dinesh Kumar).
Saranya Ponvannan won the best actress award for the film Thenmerkku Paruvakkatru along with Marathi actress Mitalee Jagtap Varadkar for Baboo Band Baaja.
The best supporting actor award went to actor Thambi Rammaih for his excellent performance in Mynaa and the supporting actress award went to actress Sukumari for the Tamil film Namma Grammam.
Namma Grammam also won the award for costume design for Indrans Jayan.Enthiran also bagged couple of awards for best production design (Saby cyril) and Special Effects (V Srinivas M Mohan). Vairamuthu won the best lyricist award for Thenmerkku Paruvakkatru.
With all the awards going to the regional movies Dabaang winning “Wholesome Entertainer” award was kind of a consolation for Hindi films. Vishal Bharadwaj also won the Best Music award for the film Ishqiya. His wife Rekha Bharadwaj won the best Playback singer award for the same movie. Do Dooni Chaar won the “Best Hindi Film” award.Ishqiya also won the award for Best Audiography (Debajit Changmai).
The Best Backgound Score award went to Issak Thomas Kottakapally for the Malayalam film Adaminte Makan Abu. The Best Cinematography award went to Madhu Ambat for Adaminte Makan Abu (Malayalam).
Nargis Dutt award for the Best film on National Integration went to Bengali film Moner Manush. The Best Film on Social issues went to Marathi film Champions. Indhira Gandhi award for Best Debut Film of a Director went to Marathi Film Baboo Band Baaja.
So overall it was a great day for Regional movies this time. Tamil movies bagged 14 awards in various categories and Malayalam films bagged 6. The 58th National Awards was great one for the Southern Film industries and a particularly proud one for Tamil. Congratulations to all the winners and hope that the winners will strive to achieve greater success in the coming years.
Note – I haven’t published all the award winners, just a few of the important ones are mentioned in this post.
Recalls, Wildcards and celebrations
Posted on: May 17, 2011
- In: Airtel Super Singer | Chennai | Entertainment | General | General Lunch Time talk | Hariyudan Naan | Indian Cities | Jaya TV | Kollywood | Movies | Music | postaweek2011 | Real Life | Reality Show | Star Vijay | Tamil Movie | Television
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Watching an Indian talent show is like watching a mega serial. The concept is same, if it’s doing well, stretch it as much as possible. Sometimes as fan of talent shows as me, it becomes pretty draining and boring to watch. The last show I really followed and watched to completion was Airtel Super Singer 2008. Even that one at one point got irritating but I somehow pulled myself through to watch it to completion.
The major problem with these shows is that, there are so many meaningless episodes. The countless recalls, Wildcards and celebration rounds get on your nerves sometimes. I started watching Hariyudan Naan, the other talent show on a different network and after a while when it started to follow the familiar pattern, I gave up. I had no intention to watch it till the end. It’s funny when the channel tries to justify these extra episodes with some weird logic. When I switch on to watch a competition, I would be happy if there is one. Like for example Airtel Super Singer comes 4 days a week, and if there is a festival on that week they go into a celebration round. Celebration round means, there is no competition, no eliminations but just some time for the network to stretch the show.
Then comes the wildcard rounds, no idea what that means. Suddenly when they have a top 10 or 15 identified, they pop this in. No idea why, suddenly they have 2 weeks of getting the eliminated singers to comeback and compete and 2 or 3 of them are called back. So 15 becomes 18 after couple of weeks and then you are back to eliminating those 3 in another 6-8 weeks before we get to 15 again. Amidst all these we suddenly have the episodes where the judges become incredibly generous and after rigorous competition and judging they say that there will be no eliminations this round. This last minute revelation keeps the audience engaged till the fourth day, because they will have no clue that the judges are going to drop this bomb on them at the end of it.
The funniest of all is the recall round, not sure what’s the difference between a recall and wildcard. Different networks use different terminologies but all these exist on almost every talent show. I did not watch Hariyudan Naan completely but I remember Airtel Super singer when they had top 7 contestants and just when we were hoping to get to the finals soon, they pulled out this recall/wild card out of the hat and had two separate rounds of that too. First the contestants who were left judged and then the judges themselves did later. Well what a great trick to extend the show.
When these shows begin the producers probably wait for the TRP and once they know that it is a hit, they just try to prolong it as much as possible. Some people enjoy it but some get terribly frustrated. It’s fine with me if they have one recall/wildcard in the entire length of the show but having multiple of them and also having these celebration rounds gets on my nerves. I just hope that we get a show which after getting to the serious competition works towards completion rather than finding ways to stretch it as much as possible. In the day and age of mega serials, it will be great to have a decent and up to the point talent show. We don’t want a “Mega” talent show too as we have enough of the mind numbing TV serials already.
- In: Australian Open | Cricket and Sports | General | Nadal | Novak Djokovic | postaweek2011 | Roger federer | Sports | tennis | Tennis
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Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal now have to battle for Supremacy with Djokovic in a three way race to the top
Few years back world tennis was all about Nadal and Federer. Even though there were others, none of them challenged the supremacy of these two greats and they remained the undisputed world number 1 and 2. In the last year or so, with the emergence of Novak Djokovic we can see there is a shift in the tide. Djokovic who won the Australian open championship this year has a perfect record of 24-0 in 2011 and is yet to be beaten on the tour this year. He has already displaced Federer at the number 2 spot as has constantly beaten Nadal in their recent encounters.
The recent win in Miami against Nadal further confirms his rise to supremacy. The year 2011 has just begun and it is already promising to be a great year for tennis fan. With the rise of Djokovic the battle to the top is now a three way thing and I feel that the Federer Vs Nadal rivalry is now thing of the past. Nadal also has been dominating Federer in their recent meetings. So I guess the rivalry between Djokovic and Nadal has more weight in the current scenario. Djokovic is now the man to beat in tennis, both Nadal and Federer have found difficult to beat him in recent times. The Serbian in his recent interview has said that becoming the world number 1 is his ambition will want to begin the quest with the clay court season. Clay is a surface which has been a fortress of Rafael Nadal and a win there would almost confirm Djokovic as the next tennis great.
So Federer and Nadal now have a battle in their hands and with players like Andy Murray and Del Potro also close to their heels, we might have a great 2011 ahead. The French open will be interesting as Djokovic would want to extend his supremacy on clay too. It will be interesting to see who will finish as the best player in the rankings at the end of this season. And for the first time in few years it will not be a battle just between Nadal and Federer, which is a good thing for men’s tennis.
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Finally the fans have gotten what they wished for, an India-Pakistan game. Just two days to go for the mother of all games and the hype surrounding the same is unbelievable. An India-Pakistan encounter is a very rare occurrence these days, so every game carries huge expectations among the fans of both the countries. The politicians, the movie stars, the business tycoons all will be in attendance at Mohali on 30th of March for this mouthwatering contest.
The teams though would not want to fall into this hype. They would want to keep this game simple and concentrate on their performance on the field. They would want to stay away from all the commotion which surrounds this semi-final game. I pity New Zealand and Srilanka as they have hardly got any attention ahead of their semi-final game tomorrow. So let’s take a look as to how the two teams stack up for the game on Wednesday. Both India and Pakistan have had their ups and downs during this world cup. Pakistan though contrary to the pre-tournament predictions has had a wonderful world cup. Except for the one slip up against New Zealand, they have done exceedingly well. Their bowling has clicked almost in every game and their batting has contributed enough to take them through.
Their win against West Indies in the quarters shows how well they have gelled as a team this tournament after all the off field issues they had prior to the same. Gul and Afridi have been brilliant and the addition of Misbah and Younis in the middle order has given the solidity the team was lacking over the last few months. So the Pakistani team would be quietly confident regarding their chances in the Wednesday’s semi-final game. The batting will be under the scanner and they would know that their bowlers cannot have an off day.
The Indian team on the other hand has had a mixed tournament. Their bowling and fielding has struggled and the batting has been inconsistent during the course of the tournament. The bowlers have failed to defend 300 twice in this tournament and the batsmen have collapsed from great position twice. The Indian bowling has heavily relied on Zaheer Khan who has been brilliant in this world cup. He has been the second highest wicket taker in the world cup and along with Harbajan Singh has been India’s consistent performer. Ravichandran Ashwin’s inclusion though has given India a definite edge over the past couple of games.
The Indian top order has been in great form and Raina’s inclusion ahead of Yusuf has given the team the necessary depth in batting. India would take a lot of heart from their performance against the Australians where their bowling and fielding was top notch. The Indian fielders put on an incredible performance to restrict Australia to an achievable total. The bowling was also pretty consistent and it was probably their best performance on the field in the entire tournament. That shows that probably the Indian team is peaking at the right moment for an important tournament like this. The Indian batting too showed that they have the necessary depth and quality to chase down a difficult total on a tough wicket.
Sachin, Ghambir, Yuvi and Kohli all looked in excellent touch. Sehwag coming back from an injury did not look that comfortable against the Aussies but knowing him, he will be very much ready for a contest as big as this. Raina who was included at the last minute showed amazing maturity to play a great short innings under pressure to guide India to victory in the quarterfinals. The win against the Aussies for sure would have been a great confidence booster for Dhoni’s men. On paper though you would say that the Indian team should win 9 times out of 10 but strength or form counts for nothing in India-Pakistan encounters. It’s the performance on the day which matters.
Indian management’s decision to not allow the players to interact with the media is a masterstroke as this will keep them focused on the game. It’s unfortunate that the Indian government is trying to make this a political game by inviting the Pakistani prime minister. This puts a lot of pressure on the players in the middle. I don’t know when the politicians will realize that this is just a game of cricket and politics has no place in sports. The pressure on the players is enormous as it is and they would appreciate a little respite.
Just couple of days to go for the D-day and fans from both the countries would want their team to win this game. I don’t even think anybody is worried about the finals as of yet as this game is as good as the final for the people of both these countries. I just hope that this game lives up to its billing and produces a wonderful contest. C’mon India!!!
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Yet another inept performance by the Indian team hands them their first defeat in the World Cup 2011. The bowling and fielding problems were already well documented in the media and with this performance; the batting also joined the problem list. The middle order problem started even before this game but wasn’t taken that seriously as we were chasing miniscule totals but it hurt us big time against the saffers. The top order delivered again led by brilliant Sachin Tendulkar. The little master yet again delivered when mattered with the help of Sehwag first and then Ghambir got India to a commanding position.
Once the top three were back in the hut, the rest fell like a pack of cards. Dhoni was furious after the game, accusing the batsmen of playing to the gallery rather than for the team. It might be true but I got the feeling that the batsmen wanted to score big and make sure that SA are batted out of the game but failed miserably in their quest. Losing 9 wickets for 29 runs is something which even the associate nations would be embarrassed about after the position India were in at that time. The problem now for India is that they have to wait for 1 more week before they can try to rectify the situation. As Ricky Ponting said at the start of the tournament, the gap between the matches are ridiculously long. The gap probably is affecting the Indian team as there can be no momentum for the team and there is very good chance that the Indians will turn up rusty for every game they play.
The bowling too had their issues as except for Zaheer and Bajji (Second spell), the rest were pretty pedestrian. Munaf and Nehra were all over the place and were not able to bowl at the death and for some reason Dhoni did not use Yusuf Pathan that much during the middle overs. The decision to play three seamers kind of backfired for the Indians as Nehra’s lack of match practice was shown up against the Saffers. To give such an important last over to Ashish was a tactical error by Dhoni as Bajji would have been a better choice. The fielding too did not help the Indians as they dropped couple of dollies in the outfield. Ghambir and Yuvraj were the major culprits on that front.
India now has to win against the WI to make sure they don’t end up fighting for the Quarter-final spot with England and Bangladesh. I hope that India plays Ashwin in the all important game against the WI. At the moment it seems like India would find it hard to go past the Quarters with this bowling and fielding performance. India is lacking in all three disciplines at the moment and I don’t think they have enough time to fix any of those. Suresh Raina might also get his first game against the WI next week replacing Kohli as he gives an extra option with the ball for Dhoni. India needs to do lots of thinking with the squad and come up with a better all round performance in the next game if they have any thoughts of advancing beyond the quarters. Based on the performances so far it does not look that promising for India in this word cup.
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