2 weeks of Cricket, Chennai and getting Married

• Put simply, the Melbourne Cricket Ground is just too damn big for us
  
• A bowler who bowls 145+ kmph is special. But me thinks that a bowler who bowls 129.9kmph for 4 out of 6 deliveries in one over is very very special. Step forward Stuart Clark. Comparisons with Glenn McGrath are so easy and so obvious and so bloody true.
• The Melbourne cricket pitch is just too suited to Stuart Clark
• The loss at Sydney affected me more than any match since India lost to Pakistan at Chennai and Kolkatta in 1998-99.
• Nothing kills like a silent killer. With the obvious killers, you know what is coming. Symonds is one of those obvious ones. You prepare for him. You plan for him. You lay a trap for him. Nothing guarantees success, but that is all you can do. Brad Hogg is a silent one. We did not worry about him. We weren't prepared for him. We did not have a plan for him. As a result, we paid a price because of him.
  
• When it comes to marriage expenses, the saree is a silent killer. Apparently, jewels for the occasion are procured from the time the bride was born. The cost for renting the marriage hall and the cheque for the caterers are spoken about rightaway and allocated for too. Then comes the day when the parents from both sides and the bride get together to shop for sarees. I knew that there would be one for the wedding and one for the reception. And that both of these would be expensive. What I did not know was that, there would be one for the engagement, one for the 'maru veedu' and one because the bride liked something she saw. In case a friend is reading this, and wondering why he/she was not invited for the engagement, let me clarify that we did not actually have an engagement ceremony. We just have a saree for that occasion.
  
• Honestly, if that is all there is to this saree thing, I would not have brought it up. But no, it does not stop there. Not even close to there. Any woman, closely or vaguely related to the marriage, who wants a new saree, is gifted one. Who does not want a new saree for free?! Even I want one!
• One friend who got married on February 1st said that she got SEVEN sarees, including one for the wedding night and excluding the gagra choli that she was going to wear for the reception. Another one, that is set to tie the knot on March 9th, said that without any considerations over buying a number that is required for the various events around occasion, she just gets ELEVEN dresses for her wedding. Totally unaccounted!
• Watching India's victory over Australia at Perth was my favorite wedding gift, and I got it the day before the wedding. Initially, I thought that it would have been perfect had it happened on the actual day itself, but on careful analysis, I conclude that if it was going to happen on the wedding day, I would have either gotten married or gotten the gift. There was no room for both. So, this was just perfect!
• Chennai traffic does not matter! You just need to be in the right mood to disregard it completely.
• Chennai weather does matter! Whatever mood you might be in, it is hard to disregard the beads of sweat running down your face.
• So, if visiting Chennai, visit during winter. I am referring to those 30 odd days that get labeled as winter. It is nice out there during those days. There is no sweating. So, you are in a good mood. So, traffic does not matter. Still, don't push it. Stay away from T.Nagar!
  
• Brett Lee was one of the reasons we dominated and drew 1-1 with Australia when we visited during 2003-04. The primary reason for Australia winning the 2007-08 series 2-1 are well, Benson and Bucknor, but Brett Lee gets the vote from amongst the players.
  
• Australia have been carrying Lee in their test team for more than 5 years. Now, they are reaping the rewards. By the looks of it, they got their timing just about right by blooding Mitchell Johnson now. 5 years hence, when Lee retires, Johnson will be the Lee of today.
  
• The word 'stain' has a negative connotation. A physical stain is typically looked upon as disgusting. Strangely though, volunteering to get crap on one's hand evokes admiration, and the stain it leaves behind elicits 'Oohs' and 'Aahs' and becomes the focal point of so many conversations during marriage time. Welcome to the girly world of Mehendi.
• Manly Ponting getting worked over by new boy Ishant means that our hypothetical pace attack is getting stronger by the series. The star list now reads Zaheer, RP, Munaf, Sree, Pathan and Ishant. Hopefully, this means that when the next series comes around, we will have atleast two of them fit to play!
  
• I am a bigger fan of Sachin now than ever before. Not so much for his batting, but more for his general demeanor and his realization and acceptance of the passage of time.
• I am a lesser fan of Harsha Bhogle now than ever before. I refer to Harsha the commentator. I still enjoy his columns, but listening to his commentary after ages, I realized that he caters primarily to the least intelligent cricket viewer. I don't belong there.
• I miss Ricky Ponting manning backward point
  
• I was all for bringing in an appeals system wherein television could play a much bigger role in decision making, until I realized that Channel 9 deliberately did not show a single replay of Clarke grounding the ball when he rolled over after 'catching' a ball that might or might not have bounced in front of him.
• This blatant 'no-show' was the equivalent of the incorrect Dravid dismissal being shown for 24 hours on all Indian news channels.
• Extensive media coverage can be quite a problem. While I don't think it can be termed as the same, getting photographed through the day on that day, made me quite uncomfortable. So much so, that by the end of the day, I did not just consider the photographers to be a nuisance, but to be proper Tamil movie villains. One day later, when I viewed the raw images taken on that day, my opinion of them remained the same. 5 days later, after viewing the album filled with digitally enhanced pictures of myself, I look back at them as the angels that made a memorable day, a rememberable, memorable one.
• People that came onto the dais, and embarrassed me by asking if I recognized them, in spite of the perfectly decent smile with which I greeted them, while not having a clue as to who they were, are just cruel people. I met a lot of cruel people that day.
• I met some more cruel people that day - they gave flowers as gift!
• At a perfectly decent restaurant, a fairly unruly roar erupted when the TV screen showed Rajnikanth being awarded with the title of "Man of the Year" for 2007. My brother, an ardent fan, while grinning from ear to ear, remarked that only Rajnikanth could bring about such a response. Half-heartedly, I remarked that maybe Sachin would too. But deep down, I knew that that in Tamil Nadu, Rajnikanth fans would outnumber Sachin's or anyone else's fans by 10 to 1. A pretty sad 'state'.

Our Captains and their Decisions

Earlier this year, when Australia landed in India for the one day series (immediately after our Twenty20 triumph), Dhoni had to choose between Harbhajan and Powar for a spot in the playing eleven. Powar had been a consistent presence in the side through the tour of Ireland and England and had done really well. In fact, Powar and Chawla tossing the ball higher and higher during the middle overs of the one dayers with a fair bit of success is a romantic memory that lingers from the past year.

Harbhajan, on the other hand, had been dropped after the ODI World Cup and was making a comeback into the ODI side based on good performance in the Twenty20 competition. One can't really take away the success he had during that tournament, but anyone that watched his bowling, would know that it was success based on consistent flat blockhole or thereabouts bowling rather than flight based deception. In fact, he did not seem to have much else to offer. When Misbah moved deeper into the crease and went after him in the finals, Harbhajan could not do much. Still, overall, he was a success story from that triumph.

Coming back to the Ind-Aus ODI series, Cricinfo ran a preview, in which, it was stated as a given that Harbhajan would be preferred over Powar. It took be by surprise, but I grudgingly accepted that that was a reality of Indian cricket, wherein, star power would trump on-field performance. On matchday though, Dhoni, the new captain, much newer to the international arena than Harbhajan himself, played Powar.

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Now, during this backlash after the Melbourne loss, Sehwag is the man that has been anointed by the media as savior of this Indian team that is taking on the mighty Australians in their own backyard. This is the very same Sehwag whom the whole world thought was getting a free ride in the Indian team just a year ago. Nothing much has changed. He made a comeback in the one dayers. Did not succeed. Some old failings showed up. And apparently, he has been in the same form in domestic cricket that Brian Charles Lara was in the ICL, without the record dollars per run scored though.

Ian Chappell had perfectly valid reasons for including Sehwag in the Indian playing eleven. India gives away too much in too many departments to the Aussies. So, in order for them to stand toe to toe with the Aussies consistently, they would need something special. His pick Sehwag, made a career out of playing special knocks until a couple of years ago. He hasn't done that in a long time though. So, picking him, as Ian made clear, would have been a gamble and nothing more.

Unfortunately, because of the fact that the negatives of our performance from the Melbourne test are theoretically solved by the solution, that is Sehwag, everyone appears to be taken up by it. A gamble was suddenly deemed crystal clear logic. Instead of weighing up skills, respective styles of batting was all that mattered in discussions and debates.

By the time the test match came about, I had taken it for granted that Sehwag was in and that Yuvraj would miss out. Much to my surprise, Kumble has selected an unchanged batting lineup. I suspect that the actual batting order might differ from Melbourne, though, I wouldn't be surprised if all we see is a change in attitude towards run scoring.

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One decision, one knock, one spell - these things don't mean much over an entire career. But a great career is something that has many of these 'ones'. Kumble and Dhoni have put up an excellent 'one' against their names with their respective decisions.