My first memories of cricket was invariably watching Sachin play. He was the first cricketer I knew by name. At 6 or 7 years old, despite not knowing the difference between silly point and deep fine leg, I knew one thing – Sachin was a legend. He was my first hero. As years went by and my cricketing brain developed I found other heroes to worship, some of whom I liked more than Sachin. But then he had a special place. Maybe because he was my first hero, or maybe it was because his career coincided with my growing up days. Whatever it is, Sachin was, is and will be very very special.

I mean can you imagine (if you are Indian, that is) any other player in the whole wide world like Sachin, for whom your heart sinks into a bottomless abyss when he gets out? I don’t think so. And the genuine bliss you get watching him hit a four or a six you never get from anyone else. It’s not Lara’s flair, Sehwag’s flamboyance, Warne’s rock-stardom, Murali’s charm or Dhoni’s charisma. It’s something different – unique only to Sachin. I mean, for a second just forget what he is and then look at him for a while. It beats me, how a person can be so humble, calm and quiet despite being the most paid, most adored, most famous and arguably the best cricketer of all time. He is the perfect role model. This is how you should treat success according to me. I can’t remember one incident of arrogance in his entire career. That is just absolutely incredible for a person of his stature.

I cannot imagine the day he hangs up his boots. I’m sure I’ll be that emotional child again who weeps in his heart when he gets out. Oh how do we explain to the next generation that such a man walked the pitch one day. We were lucky, to be born in that generation to see a legend in all respects in action.

Well despite the complicated name, the actual game is quite simple. It also goes by the more pronounceable name of Bavarian curling. The rules are simple, we take turns throwing and sliding a computer joystick like contraption made out of granite(?) and try to get as close to a small puck. Kind of like bowling in reverse – throw the pins to hit the ball! :D And to make things a bit touchy, all this happens on rock solid ice! My fear for ice is well established thanks to the number of times I have slipped already. But what the heck, team building is more important :(

Anyways I was expecting to use this trump card that this was my first ever time doing this, just in case I sucked at this sport (too!). But alas, apart from 1 or 2, none of my German colleagues had ever tried this before and they had only barely heard of this sport. Hmm… there goes my excuse! And I did pretty badly to begin with. But towards the end, I somewhat got the hang of it and helped my team win 1 or 2 rounds. It was all pure luck, but still we did win them hehe. The other Indian guys except Priya were pretty good at this though, with the newest German team mate Timo even quipping that Ginu “has finally found his sport.” :D

All in all, great fun… Maybe we should start up a federation in India and I could make it to the national team.. Hmm.. evil plan hatched!

9 of us met at the Stuttgart Hauptbahnhof on Friday ready for the grand adventure. And boy there was excitement even before we started the journey. One of my friends forgot to take his tickets for the race and he announced that minutes before our train was scheduled to leave. Well.. we had no choice, but to continue.. We weren’t going to miss the race because of a minor memory lapse! We send him packing asking him to take the next train and meet us somewhere on the way. The initial part of the trip was thus spent on speculating whether or not he will make it in time. He did eventually and we all had a good laugh about it.

That settled, we continued our journey in the night. It was really an adventure reaching the place. We had to switch 7 trains in the night and didn’t get more that 15 minutes of continuous sleep that night, despite which we were all in high spirits till reaching the Mayen Ost station, the nearest that the German railways would take us to the circuit. Then came the surprise. To our shock there was no bus or no other easy way to reach one of the biggest international sporting events in Germany! We struggled to find a taxi and finally when we got one we had to pay dearly for a 25km ride. No option, we had to take it or miss the qualifying. We reached on time and the taxi guy atleast left us within walking distance of our stand. All that was soon forgotten. As soon as we heard the engines of each of those amazing machines roar we forgot all that struggle and all that tiredness. It was crazy! The noise was defeaning as we enjoyed every second of it all. We even had a glimpse of the crash of Lewis Hamilton just around the corner where we were located. But all this was just a demo of what was awaiting us at the race next day.

After a struggle to get back, we finally made it to Cologne where we had to spend our night. It was a pity that we couldn’t explore the nightlife in the city thanks to our tired selves. It seems to be a wonderful city and I’m definitely going back to visit. But now our focus was on F1 and we needed to get a good sleep if we were to enjoy ourselves at the race on Sunday.

Next day we reached on time, all set for the race. It started. It was the kind of excitement you would never get watching a race on TV. The atmosphere was truly wonderful! And lo.. just as the race started, it started raining.. and it rained heavily. We had not been prepared for the rain and got totally drenched but no one really bothered. All we were interested in was the race. And after a few crashes and mistakes the race got stopped! It was a pity since an unknown Markus Winkelhock was leading by nearly 20 seconds at that point that too in his first race! But the restart spoiled everything for him and it was back to the same old story. Ferrari and McLaren chasing each other. And towards the end, a brilliant drive by Alonso saw him overtake Massa and win the race. We joined the celebrations with all the fans there witness to a great race.

After the race too there was plenty to do. There were some stalls set up by the teams and it allowed us to see some F1 cars close up and also see some stunts. We had a lot of freebies to take home too.. from photos with the F1 chicks to team posters. Wanting even more we did a bit of souvenir hunting and I controlled myself to grab just a model car and an authentic team cap – needless to say, both were of Renault. It was a pity that Renault were no where near their world championship class of a year ago. I am sure I would have enjoyed the race even more last year when they made everybody else look like minnows. But nevertheless it was a great experience. I wouldn’t say once in a life time, because I am sure that this is not my last race!

I had booked the tickets long before I even left India and needless to say this was going to be one of the highlights of my visit. And it was. I am not sure if anything can beat this experience. It was worth every single Euro I spent (and it was a lot!). Finally even I can declare – I was there. I saw it live. :)

India and winter are not two words that really go together. Add Olympics to that, it becomes even more bizarre. While going through The Hindu today, I read that India is participating in this years winter Olympics! Big surprise! What’s more, India had been represented in the last two Olympics too. Guess by how many athletes? Yeah, just one! And his name is Shiva Kesavan. Never thought that winter sports existed in India, simply due to the fact that winter doesnt exist in most of India ;). I had my eyes pop out when I learned that his dad was from my very own Kerala – that’s as tropical as you can get in India! A winter athlete from Kerala? Not even in my dreams!!

He was also some sort of hero during the 2002 Salt Lake games. The American media, made this guy really famous, calling him one in a billion. How true! And amazingly I don’t remember a single mention of him here in the Indian media before.

He has turned out to be a hero to me instantly. How proud must he have been representing 1,000,000,000 people at not one but two (and soon three) Olympics. The guy obviously never got much support from our government and had to participate in his event with borrowed equipment… oh… and his event is called Luge. It is a high-speed race on a sled down a fixed track. I remember watching it once or twice on TV, seemed fun :D

In 2006 though, Shiva is not alone for India. The official site lists 3 more athletes. Good lord. Are winter sports catching up in India? :o

Anyway do support Shiva in his quest. The Turin games are live, here in India on DD Sports from February 10. Whether he wins or finishes last, he will be a big hero to me!

Further Reading:

• India’s lone luger » (the-south-asian.com)
• “900 MILLION STORIES: THIS IS THE BEST ONE” » (Mitch Albom – Detroit Free Press)
• Did an Indian compete at Salt Lake? » (melvindurai.com)
• Official Site » (torino2006.org)

What a wonderful test match it was! I would have never thought Australia would have reached so close, needing more than a 100 runs to win with just two wickets remaining. For the first time, in a long time, I could see Australia having to fight for a win… and boy wasn’t it good! The match was outstanding even before the last day, but the final act made it truly unforgettable. Kudos to Warne, Lee and Kasperowicz. I knew Lee and Warne could bat a bit, but Kasperowicz… that was a surprise. It was fun seeing both sides fighting till the end… congrats to England, for not letting their heads down even when it was all slipping away. But amidst all this let’s not forget Andrew Flintoff, who made it all possible. If it had not been for his explosive batting and accurate bowling, the Aussies would have simply walked away with all honours. Too good a match to miss folks!!

Whoever that told me test cricket is boring, must have been joking!

Further Reading:

• Scorecard » cricinfo.com
• When defeat is beyond unthinkable » cricinfo.com
• England beat Australia and level the series » the corridor of uncertainity
• ‘I’ll replay the ball for life’ – Kasprowicz » cricinfo.com
• Great Tests that went down to the wire » mirror.co.uk

I like the first rule. Three blocks of fielding-restrictions (now called as Powerplay). That I think should really add some twists to the same-old-story during the sleepy overs from the 15th to the 40th. During the Nat-West series however this wasn’t really tested, since all the matches were low scoring and almost always the team had a very slow start allowing the teams to finish off the powerplay blocks by over 20. It still looked like a normal ODI. But in high-scoring games say when a team has to chase a 300 plus total, this is definitely going to be more exciting.

Rule #2 was substitution. Previously the substitutes could only field and hence were almost of negligible importance (They didn’t even appear in the statistics of the game!). But now this option is now made more powerful, trying to make it at par with substitutions in football. Substitutions can now be made at any time and they can bat, bowl or field just like the other 10 on field. So is it working? Frankly, no! I do support the idea of substitution, but in the current form of implementation, I seriously doubt whether it adds anything more to the “excitement” of the game. It makes the toss even more powerful I guess. Suppose Australia wants to bat first and goes in with one extra batsman, thinking that they can substitute him for a bowler in the second innings. This will work if they win the toss and elect to bat. However if England wins the toss and they decide to bat, the whole plan is spoiled. Australia will have to substitute their player right at the beginning of the innings, absolutely wasting their extra batsman. The reason for this problem is that the playing 11 has to be submitted before the toss. One solution I can see for this problem is that instead of the playing 11, the entire 12 member team is given before the toss and the captain after the toss can decide who the substitute is.

In my humble opinion, substitution must either be improved or scrapped completely and the powerplay rules must be retained. Lets see where all this would bring cricket to. Anyway nice to see that ICC is innovating and are genuinely interested in promoting the game :)

Further Reading:

• ICC to trial one-day rule changes » espnstar.com
• ODI changes: revolutionary or gimmicky? » cricinfo.com

First of all Michelin should have done better. They screwed up big time, no question about that. But they had the guts to own up their mistakes. Commendable, that when so many millions are at stake, they were able to see the human side of it.

Ferrari must have thought, we haven’t got plenty of points to play with, our tyres are all ok, better take this golden opportunity for that. I can see that from their point of view. They are a racing team and had no reason not to race. But what about the FIA? Why didn’t they think of the big picture? There were 100,000 people who paid to watch a real race plus the millions watching at home. Don’t they have any commitment towards them? I was really disappointed with them especially when 9 out of teams, including Jordan & Minardi, were willing to make a concession. I just don’t believe that the FIA would not permit the changes, despite the teams willing to forfeit championship points for the race to go on for the sake of the fans. In their statement FIA says that the teams could have asked the drivers to go slow at turn 13. Are they out of their mind? They are racing drivers for heavens sake!! In a full-fledged race, how would you expect anyone to pull back on their pace, when they think the can get more out of the car!!

I don’t think the Michelin teams really had any other option, when FIA refused to introduce the chicane. I believe the teams did the right thing. They put safety first. Good thing that the team bosses had the common sense. This one was a real low point in F1 history, but had they raced and someone’s tyre had blown out, you never know what kind of tragedy would have played out.

Seeing the unity of the other teams, I now have big doubts about F1′s future. The alternate GP proposed by most major teams except Ferrari seems like getting more and more support with incidents like this. Too bad! I read that F1 has already lost out in US big time because of this. Nice way to woo the American crowds, Mr. Moseley.

One small “silver lining” to come out of all this – an Indian got F1 championship points for the first time in history. Congrats to Narain. Also felt nice that Minardi did score some points too. That should help them tremendously.

Hope F1 does recover from this deep ditch.

Further Reading:

• Race Report » rediff.com/Reuters
• Mosley Plays Chess with F1 » planet-f1.com
• Stoddart calls on F1 boss to resign » Melbourne Herald Sun
• Venom » f1talk.blogspot.com
• FIA Statement

Just think about it… It is somewhat like a Division 2 side in the English league defeating Brazil in football! Consider Bangladesh’s record before this match. Played – 109, Won – 9, Lost – 96. The odds of Australia loosing was tipped at 500 to 1 by Ladbrokes! Now that puts it into perspective doesn’t it?

I have always been a strong critic of Bangladesh. I never understood why the team was allowed to play at the highest level of cricket. It never seemed like they were even trying to win a match. But however yesterday’s performance was just so good. It wasn’t as if the Australians didn’t score any runs. Bangladesh had to chase a fairly good total of 250. Honestly before their innings started I wasn’t expecting them to cross even 200. But what a performance by the young team. They just withstood all the pressure against probably the best bowling attack in the world. Amazing!

I just hope this isn’t just a one-off. They are a very young side. People have already started drawing analogies with Sri Lanka, who were once a struggling side like Bangladesh and in the end managed to win the world cup in 1996. I think it’s a bit too pre-mature for that. But still this victory will immensely improve their confidence and more importantly will earn them some respect.

Further reading:

• Scorecard (Cricinfo)
• Match Reports : Rediff | ABC Sport | Bloomberg
• Cricinfo – Ten biggest one-day upsets