Monday, April 26, 2010

Things We Will Miss About the IPL

Now that the IPL is done and dusted with, we will be left with nothing much to talk/argue about with our colleagues, friends, family, neighbor and the passenger in the local train who sits next to you. Love it or hate it, but the fact is that we just could not ignore it. IPL was more like "Rakhi ka Swayamvar", no matter how shallow it all seemed to the cricket purists they still wanted to keep a tab on what was happening in the biggest Cricket Tamasha there ever was. Here are a list of things which we will miss and some which we will feel glad to miss.


1. Extraa Innings - Pretty boys Samir Kochar and Gaurav Kapur and the not so pretty lad Angad Bedi will have to find a real job. They had their time in the sun all the while making us feel better that we were not them.

2. The Extraa Innings Expert Panel - Do you really take the opinions seriously of a panel which consists of:

  • Arun Lal: Who? - Well known for his moronic laugh (He he he) and Guru Gyaan about cricket that equates to Ghanta.

  • Saba Karim.... again.. Who? - One time Indian keeper who had his career come to a grinding halt after he was hit on the eye failing to collect a Anil Kumble spinner in a test match against Bangladesh.

  • Akash Chopra.... oh yaaa... wasn't he that KKR player who got kicked out of the team in the last season, a one time suspect for Fake IPL player and is now giving cricketing tips on Cricinfo? He is  no way related to Nikhil "who?" Chopra just in case you are wondering.
  • Atul Wassan.... Wat say?? The Indian version of Mike Whitney 
and last but not the least, the loud and bombastic Navjot "Jonty" Singh Sidhu whose opinions are as over the top as his fielding was in those days. 

3. The Ad in between balls - As if promoting (read whoring) for a brand was not enough with the DLFs and Maxx Mobiles and the likes that was thrown around with every shot, every catch and every wicket that was being taken, new means were now devised to "promote" brands and make money. An advertisement superimposed poorly on the big screen that was for your eyes only (the TV viewer) that was shown between balls and that's what it made you say "Bollocks!"

4. The Commentary Gems -  "That sped to the fence like a tracer bullet" - patent rights held by Ravi "Sten Gun" Shastri who along with his gang of merry men  assaulted our senses with some mind numbing over the top commentary. 

Sample some commentary gems relived -  

  • "In the final if you put runs on the board, you can put the opposition under pressure" - Ravi Shastri comes up with something we never knew before. 
  • "That's a BIG one... that's a BIG one... that's out... not so big." - Sunil Gavaskar could atleast change the context faster than the speed of his batting.

    "The reason why it's called a mongoose is because the mongoose is a ferocious animal" - Ravi Shastri the zoology teacher.

    5.Dada and his honest opinion - "We played like rubbish", "If this is how they play, God save their careers" were some incisive comments we heard from Dada on the mic after his team suffered defeats with the youngsters failing the litmus test. After reading my blog Dada thrusted his opinion "You write rubbish" " If this is how you write, then God save your non-existent writing career!". 

    6.Gautam Gambhir and his Gambheer remarks - "They are an ordinary side" remarked  Gambhir after his team thrashed Rajasthan Royals, the least glamorous side of the tournament. One wonders how he must have felt like after having failed to miss the final four along with the side he called "Ordinary". Gambhir after having read my blog went on to call it "an ordinary piece of writing". 

    7. Danny and the Double-D's-  One wonders if Danny Moronson Morrison took his eyes off the action on the field and concentrated more on "grabbing"  some opportunities off the field whenever he fondly referred the Delhi Daredevils as "Double D's", no wonder with a name like that he was backing them to go the last mile.

    8. The Pimps and the Blimp-  Sivaramakrishnan, Sunil Gavaskar, Robin Jackman, Danny Morrison, Ravi Shastri have all spoken highly of MRF which has suddenly come to the forefront of technology by putting up a Dick shaped Zepplin high in the sky. The blimp was spoken about with a lot of affection and fondness, on cue every four overs whenever the camera focussed on it, as if it were the love child of Morrison and Sivaramakrishnan. It took the centerstage this year much like the fugly IPL trophy last year.

    9. Corporate Pimping- Added to the DLFers and the Citi Moments of Success were the Karbonn Kamaal ka Catch and the Maxx Mobile mandatory timeout where teams discussed "strategies" to counter the opposition. Now in the next edition we may see a bowler bowling a Navaratna yorker which will be converted into a Godrej fulltoss and dispatched through the Nokia covers for a TVS four.

    10. Eye Pee Yell @ twitter - If we had the Fake IPL Player last year then we have the Eye Pee Yell this year who has a photo of an Alaskan snow dog as his display image on twitter, giving a sarcastic and rude in-your-face ball-by-ball commentary this year through his witty tweets. Woof ! Woof!

    11. Yuvraj Singh, the Paunch and his Princely sulk - If you had seen any game of the Kings XI Punjab, then you would not have missed that sulk that Yuvaraj Singh seemed to dish out as frequently as he used to dish out those sixes in his heydays. If he seemed uncomfortable with the idea of a foreign national lead his team, he made it seem quite clear with the contortions his face made. He did throw his weight around on and off the field, pun intended, to show that all was well within the camp  but to no avail.

    12. Modi and his tweets - "Think before you tweet" should be the new adage coined thanks to the storm that those mere 140 characters raised across the nation. Death threats, the resignation of a minister, the exposure of the rich and famous and the greedy, and the fall of a Messiah ( so proclaimed his stooges in a chest thumping manner). All of this thanks to that blue twitter bird which was Modi's pet, that finally  went on to crap on his head.

    Honorary mention

    Sreesanth' s "Appam Chutya" moment- Every IPL feels incomplete without a Sreesanth "Appam Chutya" moment. If in the first IPL we saw Sreesanth whimpering away after having been slapped by Harbhajan, then in the second IPL we saw him run all the way to the third man boundary celebrating Dhoni's wicket after having bowled him, that further went on to affirm the fact that the guy really was living upto his nick name. But this time around Sreesanth took the chutiyapa to a new level when he clapped sarcastically at the umpire for having signalled him for a no-ball, and then turned around to clap at the batsman who had promptly dispatched him for a boundary on the free hit delivery. 

    Thus ends this year's IPL which was known for the controversies off-the-field than the cricket on the field. With IPL's ageing superstars, the Warnes, the Jayasuriyas, the Haydens and the Gilchrists, and the Gangulys probably having made their final appearance, it remains to be seen if the administrators realize that at the end of the day its not the glitz, the celebrity owners, and the cheergirls who bring the people in but it is these legends who bring the people in. At the end of the day, its all about cricket, and no amount of glitz, glamor and greed can ever rise up to be greater than the game.




     


Saturday, April 24, 2010

Ganesha Goes for a Bath

As kids, we all have done something silly which we now look upon fondly. Those were our wonder years- our age of innocence when any wrong we did was dismissed with a peck on our cheeks. Punishments would not be too harsh for us when we were at a tender age. The best thing about being a kid was that we possessed the freedom to be honest, we had no fear of being judged, we had no sense of right or wrong. We had no idea about how babies were born, we were made to believe that babies were "God's gift", rather than the result of being naughty. We closed our eyes (in my case I was forced to close them) whilst watching intimate scenes in movies, we were the apple of everyone's eye so much so that we would be spared of gobbling up the last piece of any delicacy. We were spoilt, we were pampered, and we loved it. We were honest and curious, as kids sometimes our honest questions and opinions would only make the elders wonder. We were pure. 

The late 80's and early 90's was a great time to grow up. There was no IT boom, there was no cable television with scores of channels that showed the same saas-bahu saga and unreal reality shows, there was no IPL, and the older version of Mile Sur Mera Tumhara gave goosebumps to us much like it does today. We grew up watching "Chitrahaar", while our folks watched the Common Man's saga like "Hum Log", "Buniyaad". We grew up watching cricket when a score of 220 in 50 overs was considered to be a match winning one. Those were the days when the Khans of Bollywood had not captured our imagination like they have now, and the topic of a nuclear family raised eyebrows. Those were the good old days.

Growing up in a joint family was fun, I was paid much attention from all the Chachas and the Peripas and Perimas and the Paati who was a sort of Mother Hen to the family. Festive times were more of a time to rejoice with new clothes and sweets and all the good camaraderie that was shared between the youngsters and the elder ones in the family. We kids, the Chunnus and Munnus would get together playing hide and seek and gully cricket and Chor-Police when PS2s, PS3s hell even the brick games were unheard of! We were educated on the importance of every festival, and that it was more than hogging sweets we could digest. 

Ganesh Chaturthi captured my imagination because this was a festival where Ganesha idols would be immersed in the sea, or in a well in the backyard with chants of "Ganapathy Bappa moriya agle baras tu jaldi aa!". He was garnered with flowers, and was presented with modaks(kozhakattaes in tamil, try saying that!) which I feel were the best sweets made of all the festival sweets that we have. It aroused my curiosity as a kid on why would you buy something and adorn it with flowers, bow your head and pray and seek his blessings and then throw him in the well?. To stop me from whimpering I was told that he was sent for a bath, and he would be pulled up later once he was done. We believed anything and everything as kids, I believed it too, I acted accordingly and spent the day waiting for him to finish his royal bath. 

The next day the water tasted of soap, it was bitter and it gave a soapy scent. Making a tea seemed impossible, tasting that water seemed a challenge. "Ghar main peene ke liye paani tak nahi milta!" roared my father. Fingers were pointed towards the sloppy Peripa who bathed near the well, the Usual Suspect in every mess up that happens in the home, for he may have been the one who must have dropped the bar of soap. There were cries from the elders of  "I told you so!", poor Peripa denied every allegation thrown at him bravely with a feeble voice. It felt the whole world was against him. Watching the Big Guns of the family fight amongst each other made me as confused as a baby in a topless bar. I was informed of the reason of the commotion, I intervened with the revelation of truth that it was I who had put in the soap. Now the gun barrel faced me, "Why?" asked someone, I replied with complete honesty - "You had sent Ganesha for a bath but you had forgotten to give him a soap!".


Glossary:
Peripa - A term for the Father's elder brother
Perima - A term for the elder brother's wife
Chacha- A term for Father's younger brother
Chunnus and Munnus - Common pet names for little Kids.
Paati- The Grand Old Lady of La Famiglia.
Modaks a.k.a Kozhakattai - Sweet delicacy specially made at Ganesh Chaturthi