A Different Pujo...

This is the first time in my not so short existence, that I have decided to give the Pujo in Kolkata a miss.

But after 28 succesive pujos at 9 Mandeville Gardens, I have decided I would give Kolkata a miss.

So to a very Happy Durga Pujo to all of you.

Eat drink and make merry.

Cheers

Take a bow

Ladies and gentlemen, take a bow.

MC Mary Kom has won her fifth world championship title. You might not have heard much about her feat till Sachin Tendulkar heaped praises on her achievements.

If you want to learn more about her

http://www.marykom.com/marykom/index.php

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Kom


We need more champions like her who have braved the odds to win. I hope she brings home 2012 Olympics gold.

Cheers

What went wrong with England ?

This is the second part of my analysis of a few team from the World Cup. I had started off with France in one of my previous posts. Now its time for some English bashing.

England came into this World Cup as one of the favorites alongside Brazil,Spain and Argentina. I still do not understand why they were labelled as favorites. Yes they were on a good run in the Qualifiers.They were in a pretty simple group where Croatia were the ones they posed any threat. The matchups were hyped even further as Crotia beat them twice in the Euro 2008 qualifiers. A comprehensive beating of Croatia gave the English media and fans a sort of self belief that maybe they never had in the last 6 years.

The Euro 2008 debacle was long forgotten in the run up to South Africa. England now had a new coach in Fabio Capello, a man with pretty decent coaching credentials. He had managed a couple of Europes top clubs in AC Milan and Real Madrid.

This engine of this England unit is still based on England's golden generation of the 2000's, (they have one every decade). This set of players included Terry,Gerrard,Lampard and Owen. Michael Owen unfortunately had fallen out of favour with Capello. The hype was huge. Rooney was having the seasson of his life at United. Four months before the world cup things were about to change.

Rio Ferdinad got injured while on club duty, Garreth Barry is injured towards the end of the season, lampard a minor knock and then the major blow that I thought was the turning point. Wayne Rooney is injured in the first leg of the Champions league 1/4 final against Bayern Munich. He is taken off. He forces himself to play the second leg and then Van Bommel(I would dedicate a blog on him later), gets the better of him ina tackle. Rooney has to go off, United lose, their season derails. Such was his form last year that he could alone have taken them to league and CL glory. Rooney never recovered and so did England.

England's opening Group B fixture was against the USA, a good team coached by Bob Bradley. In their ranks they had a quite afew good players who plied their trade in the Premier League. England were still the favorites going into the game. Their captain for the world cup, Rio Ferdinand took the flight home before the first game. David Beckham suffered a really bad injury at Milan and was ruled out for 9 months atleast. He took his place on the coaching staff. Coming back from injury were Rooney and Ashley Cole arguably the only two world class players in the English setup. Gareth Barry figured in Capello's central scheme of things in the run up to the cup. His injury was a setback to their preparations.

Capello's team selection left a lot to be desired. With Barry out of the team for the first game, he preferred to play James Millner, the young midfielder from Aston Villa. Lest I forget, dropping Walcott from the 25 man squad which was announced caused the maximum flutters all round. Walcott plays on the right wing and he was competing for a place with the likes of Aron Lenon and Shaun Wright Philips. Lenon has good pace on the wings, but he would have been better off plying his trade in sprints rather than on the football field. His clubs performance in the league last season was also one of the factors that contributed to his call up to the team. Wright Philips continues to be a boy wonder, his height and his boyish looks at 32 maybe helps create this notion, but I think he will remain one all through.

So England start off the first game with Rooney and Heskey upfront, with Gerrard playing in a widish left position behind them. Millner links up play to Gerrad from the back. Lenon plays out right and surprising Lampard plays the role of the central midfielder. The defence consists of Glen Johnson on the right, the Liverpool man who makes good runs down the right but his crosses leave a lot to be desired. Tracking back during a counter attack is again not one of his favorite things. The central defence consists of Terry and King. Mr. Chelsea, John Terry was not having the best of seasons which was compunded even further by off-field problems. Ledley King was in inspite of his no practice only matchday football condition because there was no once good enough other than him to play in the centre of the defence alongside Terry. Ashley Cole played in the left back position. Cole is a super player, whose speed moving up and his ability to stop the best i business on the right side have won him accolades the world over. Inspite of all this he has never shown his best form for England. Cole's biggest achievent in his carrer was the way he took to Cristiano Ronaldo when the latter was playing for United. I remember game when ronaldo had to moved out right or to a more central position in matched agianst Chelsea to nullify the Cole threat. Make no mistake as CR7 was voted the World Player of the year that season. In goal for England you had Robert Green, the West Ham United man, a controverisal choice considering they had the eccentric David James and Joe Hart to chose from. Hart was coming off a brilliant loan season at Birmingham City, a performance that has seen him replace Shay Given as the first choice keeper at Eastlands.

Stevie Gerrard put England ahead after he combined well with Heskey. That I think was the only high point for England at the World Cup. USA equalied through a Clint Dempsey strike which I think was more of a Green howler. Robert Green it seemed had BP oil on his hands and the Americans slipped one through. Millner got injured in the first half(replaced by the boy wonder) and King was replaced by Carragher. The game was a disaster. Luckily England managaed to retrieve a point from it. They were plain lucky.

As I finish the first part of the English bashing I would like to ask a few things to M/s Cappello and Pearce.

1. Why was Walcott not included in the squad of 25 ? Are Lenon and Wright Philips better ? Didnt Capello watch Walcott play the Champions league game against Barcelona ?

2. With Barry not sure whether we would play the group games, why did Capello play Carrick in the warm up games only to replace him with Millner. Playing Carrick simply has its own advantages. The quality of Carrick's distribution is better than Barry/Millner on any given day. As for the defensive qualities, all of them can be rated at the same level. For me England sorely missed Hargreaves in th centre of midfield, his longterm injury meant he missed a lot of football.

3. Even after failing for 3-4 times at major competitions why wasthe Lampard - Gerrard combo tried out. Lampard somehow never manages to link up with Gerrard and Capello should have taken note of that. Gerrard links well with Rooney and the huge number of goals in the qualifiers gave Capello a false sense of confidene.

4. With all this central midfield option what harm would it have done Capello to bring Scholes out of retirement, something which he just did not have th guts to do.

5. This brings me to the goalkeeper. Why was Ben Foster in the reckoning, when he was having a horrid time at United. The first choice goalkeeper was never decided. Capello it seems gambled on Green right on the morning of the game but alas it did not pay off. Hart for me would anyday have been better option.

6. Micheal Owen may have fallen out favor with Capello. He may not play again as long as Capello is the boss. But if Capello was playing a 4-4-2 in the first place I would play Crouch because of his aerial superiority and his ability to climb over the opposition and score. With his pruned team he should definitely have played a 4-5-1. But again I do not have a coaching badge. How can Heskley play international football, the guy just dosemt have it in him. Crouch and Defoe are a million times better.

Will continue on the England story and also on the basic issue...

Is the Fed-Ex era in tennis over ?

It been a while since I have been up all night watching a game of tennis. Last Saturday night/Sunday morning, I decided I would watch the Federer v Djokovic semifinal. I had not watched a single match at the US open this year. I had been reading reports of Federer's form this year at Flushing Meadows. There was a lot to write home about or so the newspapers would have me believe. The match report of the 1/4 final vs soderling was ample evidence that the great man had regained some sort of form.

2010 has been one of Federer's worst years on the tour. He really didnt have much to show after the Australian Open win in January. There was an injury setback in March which kept him off the tour for a while only to make a comeback three weeks before Paris.
Paris has been a place where more often than not he has come up second best to Rafa. Even though he had won last year, Nadal was in top form and the most optimistic of Federer fans wouldnt have backed him to win this time around. Federer's come back to form was halted rather early by Soderling who put in a sterling performance to erase his 0-12 head to head carrer record against Fed-Ex. The worst though was yet to come...

Day 1, The Championships,Wimbledon. Defending champion Roger Federer V unknown Colombian Alejandro Falla. 90 minutes of tennis and Federer is 2 sets down. Third set, everyone expects a federer comeback, instead he is down a couple of match points. The great champion that he is, digs deep and finds a way to win the game. Federer never looked so fallible. Come the 1/4 finals he loses to Berdych. Huge shock on Day 9 of the Championships. The All England Club is still coming to terms with the loss me thinks :-P

The vulnerability that has crept into his game this year was something that has never been seen. He dropped to number 3 in the rankings for the forst time in maybe 6 years.

Now why I think the era of the Roger is coming to an end.
1. His ground strokes are'nt as lethal as they used to be. They are still very good, but unforced errors have crept in.
2. The new guys, hit the ball so hard that at times it seems that during long rallies Federer can in no way get past the other guy. The defensive game of these players is again very very good. They run everything down.
3. If you observe closely that this on the rise smack of the ball has also ensured that he has had to resort to use the drop shot far too often. Fantastic change to his game and on his day people generally do not manage to get to the drops.
4. His single handed backhanded versus Nadal's top spinning curler, something that he has never managed to control.
5. The problem with ground strokes has led him to depend on his serve too much. Make no mistake he has one of the best serves ever but then there might be a day (last Saturday) where you manage to put in 55 percent of your first serves. The opponent dosent have much to do. Lots of second serves to attack and slice defense can be breached by some real hard hitting.
6. Too many unforced errors have crept into his game.

Federer dosent seem to be the master that he used to be. He is still one of the greats to have played the game and I just hope that he keeps winning more grand slams. I want him in more finals, playing Nadal in some awesome matches like the 2008 Wimbledon. It is the best game of tennis that I have ever watched.

Though I now doubt whether we would see matches of that quality in the near future..

I cant stop you...can i ??

Just as I start off on this post, there goes the familiar sms beep on my phone for the thirty-fifth time today..is it. It very well could be as I have already lost count of the number texts that I received today or for that matter any other day. It has become a nuisance.
I do not know if we can call this an invasion of privacy, because maybe I do not think we are left with any. I seriously do not know why such extensive telemarketing us required to sell homes, sauna belts, jyotish predictions predictions you name most unwanted things and you have it.
To cut the long story short, whoever came up with this mass market/bulk sms idea provided a stroke of genius for lots of people. It was a welcome relief to the ailing telecom companies who are trying to get a foothold in the market. They need revenue from somewhere right ? Hence the bulk sms business. I you have ever noticed closely, the sms'es on your phone come with a contact name written as AD-xxx TM-yyy. This AD or TM will help you recognize the operator who is sending the bulk sms. The biggest offender in this regard is Tata Mobile. With the small/non-existent customer base, they have had to move to the bulk sms business to look for revenues.
So let us consider a situation, where you are traveling abroad and you have an international roaming SIM card activated. In the middle of your Nile cruise, you might be interrupted by someone selling houses on the Greater Noida expressway and you are set back by a cool 30 bucks as soon as you recieve the SMS. On an average a user in the NCR region recieves atleast 10 such sms'es in day. That translates to a whooping 300 bucks to your monthly bill multiplied by the number of days that you are travelling.
How do we tackle this ? Mr J.S.Sarma the current TRAI chief has eluded the question for the time he has been in charge. I see only one way to tackle this problem that is to fine the operators for each such bulk sms sent. They could possibly charge the operator 5 bucks per sms recieved. In general they could end up pay fines to the tune of Rs 10000 atleast per sms. Maybe only then would they understand the unnecessary pain and irritation these people cause.
They have nullified the concept of a text. Now when I recieve a text, I generally assume that it is junk and someone is trying to sell me something that I do not need. As a result I miss out on texts which are important every now and then.
I believe that the DND(Do Not Disturb) service which I believe is a filter that is controlled by TRAI is slowing getting more and more effective. Atleast with respect to the tele-marketing calls that we keep recieving selling life insurance and what not. But there is still some way to go wrt the bulk/marketing sms'es.
I read a few days in one of the dailies that Bharti has announced a date for exiting the bulk sms business. I just hope that is the beginning of the end....

Why I did not like Karl ...

Freaky topic for a post, but I just finished Cyrus Broacha's Karl Aaj aur Kal. Started reading the book with huge expectations hoping that it would be a laugh riot considering Cyrus is the most famous funny man in India.

Cyrus on the screen is unbelievable, his comic timing, imagination and the innovation with words that he comes up with is rather good. Few can match him, at least I do not see anyone who is anywhere as good as he is on Indian television. Though he is not a stand up comedian on the lines of a Robin Williams or a Russel Peters at least on screen the genre of fun he brings to the screen is tough to match.

Enough said, alas his book disappointed me. The story is about two boys Karl and Kunal who are langoti yaars. There is sense of camaraderie which they exhibit during their years of growing up. What am i doing here ?? This is not a book review column and no one pays me for reading and reviewing books. So lets the get the facts straight

The books gets off to a nice start, especially the references to Amitabh Bachchan. The part where the boys grow up have been presented in a nice light, something that I have not read before. The Indian adolescent, his obsession with porn, women, cigarettes and bunking classes. The humour is a bit dark in certain places but worth the read.

The book wanes away once these guys go the US of A to some acting school. Maybe Cyrus was under some sort of pressure to meet some deadline form his publisher or he simply ran out of ideas, the chances of the latter being remote. The plot goes haywire from here and their meeting with the famous Bollywood star who take a liking for them, his obsession of remaking a Night at the Opera is rather uninteresting.

This is where the book loses out though the way he presents the politicians love for glamour is rather humorous, the book for some reason cannot keep you glued to it for a very long period of a time. It is more like a sine wave with a very short time period. As soon as you reach the crest, he takes you on a downward spiral and then picks it up again. I would say that he tends to be good in paragraphs.
Enuff now this book had the potential of being an Indian comic classic considering the way he delves into the darker comic side every now and then. Sigh, I hope his second effort would be infinitely better.

Group A -- Les Blues take the early flight home.

So the month long razzmatazz is over. I thought I would collate my thoughts on what I liked and what I did not from this quadrennial showpiece. I would rather stick to the general who dunnit and who didnt as of now..

Lets get going with the teams that got this started, the ones from Group A. This according to me was the veritable group of death, I mean how can you not call this one when you have France, Mexico, Uruguay and South Africa.

France, yes have had the occasional hiccups as in the 2002 edition and the 2008 euros and not much was expected from them this time considering that they Raymond Domenech as the coach. Too many reports of players not on nice terms with each other too did not help their cause. This team has immense potential, but the environment in the camp did not give too much hope.

The squad selection too left much to be desired, Viera should have been in the squad even if he did not start and Benzema too was an absolute must. The starting lineup put up by Domenech for the first game was surprising, playing anelka as the lone stiker through the middle is never a great option and the rich vien of form that he carried forward from last season in the Premiership with Chelsea was mainly due to playing down the right and having a strike partner in Didier Drogba.

The problem was that they never got their combination right, a draw against a nervous Uruguay was the only point that managed to garner in the tournament. This was followed by a 0-2 loss to Mexico whose impressive movement in the first game against the hosts finally materialized into goals in their second game. Will get back to Mexico later, but can you give me one good reason why you not get Henry on and get Gignac on instead. Anelka played the worst 45 minutes a striker can play and maybe the worst freekick taken in this tournament. Aye sad but what followed this game completely erased whatever mathematical chances they had of making it.

The off field fracas that followed was a shame to French football and the game in general people striking calling names ensured that their captain Patrice Evra would sit out the last game that they would go on to lose 1-2 to the hosts and ultimately take an early flight home.

Ribery I think has always been an overrated player to say the least, his claim to fame the 2006 World Cup was plain lucky playing off the creativity of one of the greatest players of all times, Zidane. Since then he has been part of multi million dollar transfers and interests from all the big European clubs, alas no show i would think as far as his performances are concerned. He never sticks to a club for too long, and yes he has this great ability that he gets people sent off, maybe this could be an asset with his current club which boasts of players with similar skills as Van Bommel and Arjen Robben :-). The stats for Ribery are alarming, the pass completion rate stands at a measly 59%, again this percentage looks much better than it actually is, no telling final balls, that tells you the story. He was a sore to the eye. Enough Ribery bashing.

The playing eleven selection was again the biggest concern. Florent Malouda comes off a super season, and he gets on in the 75th minute in the first game are you joking guys ?? Ask a left winger to play through the centre, Ribery plays through the left by the way. They were a team with far too many left minded wingers when all of them should have had a start in some other team. Sidney Govou was a joke on the right wing, playing a Ribery would have been better.

The French defence left a lot to be desired, Willam Gallas question marks were there on this fitness before the cup, he was clearly left in the lurch in the game against Mexico. No pace no positional coverage and dos santos hernandez and vela and for that matter the the grand old man blanco had a ball against him. Bakary Sagna had an okayish world cup. Patrice Evra looked tired and jaded, not his usual self.

Abou Diaby for me would be their best performer this time around. Good play in the midfield. Gourcuff playing from the centre of the midfield had no support from his teammates, people unwilling to pass the ball to him. There are pages that we can write on this, as to why domenech preferred Gignac to Henry in the half time substition against Mexico, why Gourcuff saw so little of the ball from hos teammates. I would like to draw the line here.

France in the World Cup of twenty ten never arrived, they were never there. Alas a good team who could have gone much further never made it past the first round. Is it Henry;s hand ball to blame ? ..maybe..we will never know