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Sreesanth – Will he ever learn to behave?

Shanthakumaran Sreesanth has a wonderful name! His last name means ‘prince of patience’ and his first name emphasizes and adds further respect to ‘patience’. With loads of virtue in his name, he should not be the same personality as he is today, both on and off the field.


There are a number of people who creates controversies on the field. This chap however seems to carry his troublesome tongue and body language further to his life beyond cricket as well – latest being his tussle with the hotel staff in Bangalore, over a noisy air conditioner in the room.

It is not even two years since he shot up into fame. All these years he was put up in a middle class family home that had no A/C and further he rises from one of the most humid parts of India. Getting disturbed by the room A/c must be the last thing one could think off to pick up a fight – Height of arrogance, what else?

Kerala has produced some wonderful sportsmen over the years who have brought fame to the state and the nation. A few names include P.T. Usha, I.M. Vijayan, Jimmy George, T.C. Yohannan, Cyril Valloor and Anju Bobby George. These people are/were not only highly successful over so many years in their respective career but also maintained humility despite becoming international fame. On the other hand, this chap, Sree-Ashanth, is not complementing his amazing talent with diplomacy, composure and emotional maturity, which probably is going to cut short his career. If his behavior is not fixed right now, it will be bad for himself as well as for Indian cricket. I sincerely hope that his parents, mentors, friends, captain and BCCI inject some sense into his arrogance-filled-brain affected by instant fame.

What do we call when people have such ironical names v/s behavior? OxyMORON??

Tailpiece: BCCI has launched an enquiry into the matter and has even asked for Hotel Ashoka staff for explanation or their version. What do BCCI think of themselves? Are they the supreme court of India or something?

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KP’s innovation triggers controversy

Kevin Pietersen is not really like Sreesanth Santhakumaran, Harbhajan Singh, Andrew Flintoff or Andrew Symonds. Though others are good/great cricketers skilled with talent, they always get into trouble or rather create news for wrong reasons.

KP’s latest innovation on the field, during the first ODI against New Zealand has created some controversy though. The extremely talented batsman hoisted Scotty Styris for a six by changing the stance to that of a left hander while the bowler was yet to release the ball.

Now, the grand old body of cricket in England, the MCC, is meeting to discuss the legality of the same. It is good that they are very proactive on it – especially when a side is touring England – and it shows their hospitality as well.

I am a great fan of Kevin Pietersen and his never give up and arrogant attitude. However, what he did is not exactly like what batsmen do when they want to do a reverse sweep for example. He changed the stance while the bowler was yet to deliver. Now, there is a rule that field settings cannot be changed while the bowler is on his run up. I guess the same is applicable to the batsman as well. Because, the bowler decides on his side (over or around the wicket) to bowl to a batsman of a particular orientation (left handed/right handed etc) and with certain skills. If he dynamically decides to change his stance, can’t the bowler as well swich suddenly to around the wicket or vice versa while running itself?

Though innovation is good, it should also make sense and justice to both the parties. However, in this particular case as there are no rules defined we can bail out KP!

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Ford Ikon – In a league of its own

I have been fascinated by cars and bikes from a very young age. I always watched, studied and admired them along with the various aspects of automobile engineering from my childhood. We did not have any car or bike in my house at that time and hence never got to try my hands on those coveted machines (if you can call them so) of that era. My first hands-on with a bike was at the age of 7 whereby I tried to ride my uncle’s Luna (do you remember that moped?) and got nice scolding and a couple of whacks for the same.

After I got my first job, the very first thing I did was to buy a bike. I, in fact, bought a Royal Enfield Machismo at that time – which was obviously a little too much for my thin frame :). After moving to the US for about three years, I got to experiment with a lot of good quality cars but most of them were auto-transmission models.

Coming back to India in 2001, gave me the opportunity to experiment with various nice cars. Since I always preferred driver’s cars over those who looked great or provided good mileage, I picked Maruti Zen as my first car in India. It was an awesome car to drive but I was yearning for more and hence in 2004-’05 I switched to a Ford Ikon 1.6 Petrol which, at that time, was probably the best driver’s car in India.

Ford Ikon 1.6 Review

Though, I have been writing car reviews here and there, I thought of organizing my auto reviews a little bit and hence started publishing them on my blogs. Unfortunately, some of them got closed due to other blogging priorities and hence I moved some of my reviews to Mouthshut.com.

My Ford Ikon review on Mouthshut is the first organized and complete review of that kind. You may please read the review and provide your feedback there itself. At some point, I plan to consolidate all my reviews on this blog.

Happy Motoring!

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IPL: Nothing royal about Bangalore Royal Challengers!

As a Bangalorean, one of the fears that I had in mind during the IPL auctioning was about the composition of the Bangalore Royal Challengers team. Its owner, Dr. Vijay Mallya being an aggressive business man having ample sports acumen as well, I was expecting him to come up with an aggressive team setup – players and staff – as well.

Instead, Dr. Mallya entrusted Mr. Rahul Dravid with the team selection and composition. With all respects to Dravid, who is my favorite Indian test cricketer along with Mohammed Azharuddin, I should say that he is still living in the 1950s. My doubts on the team’s performance have become real, match after match.

As many termed it, what we have with Bangalore RC is a test team – more precisely a veteran’s test team. I don’t understand what Sunil Joshi, Anil Kumble, Jack Kallis (Twenty-20 dropped by SA team), Rahul Dravid himself has to do together for the cause of T20. Rahul Dravid has started performing of late, but others have been pathetic. Another thing is that they have some great recruits like Shreevats Goswami and Abdur Razzak who are not even getting a chance. Almost all the matches they featured 7 to 8 players above the age of 30.

There have been some good things about IPL where youngsters got to play with international stars and icons of the game. However, some undue importance given to locals has started hurting many teams and Bangalore RC is the biggest loser among them. Hopefull by next season some of our great names will retire and Twenty 20 – as the name suggests – will be the game of players in their twenties or lesser.

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Home tigers roar again!

The third and final test between India and South Africa will be remembered for all wrong reasons. Due to IPL hype, most players mind was already with the Twenty20 format. But what hurt the true fans the most was the under-prepared pitch in Kanpur. In fact, after seeing the match I recalled the similar experience cricket fans (and the touring team) had after the final test match in Mumbai when Australia toured India in 2004.

In both cases, the home team was trailing the series and had to save their faces. The easiest way to do that is to prepare a dust bowl or an uneven pitch that has no bounce on which our bajjis and bondas will thrive – and they did exactly that this time around as well.

South Africans getting all out for 120 in the second innings tell the story. The case was even worse with Australians in 2004 where they could score only 90 odd runs chasing a mere 107. In both cases, the ‘turbanator’ fetched India the win, which probably even he himself would not like to take credit for.

What I don’t understand is the mindset of people behind such decisions in order to win a match at any cost. During Ganguly’s captaincy there has been reports that he had almost always influenced the curators of grounds in India to prepare pitches that match the team composition. While other teams must be doing the same thing, they never ever came out with unplayable pitches.

If this situation continues, top teams around the world will be touring India only to make advertisement revenue and not with the intention of doing any good to test cricket. I guess, BCCI doesn’t want to do anything about test pitches as they are busy cashing in One-dayers and Twenty20s and the business is running pretty well already.

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Plagued by the 20-20 war…

After a short break from India’s tour to Australia, I was looking forward to see some good test cricket action from the current set of series – ie. West Indies v/s Sri Lanka, England v/s New Zealand and India v/s South Africa. Unfortunately except for some good cricketing moments in New Zealand, the other series seem to be already disappointing.

Sri Lanka has just completed their first test victory in the West Indies. I should say that despite a lackluster West Indies batting (I wonder why Sarwan should be there in the team at all) and incomplete bowling attack, a win is a win. I particularly liked Srilanka’s upcoming batting heroes and veteran bowlers Vaas and Murali. But the pancake pitch again did not help the cause of test cricket.

After an exciting One day series display by NZ, England regrouped well and won the test series in New Zealand. Ryan Sidebottom and Tim Ambrose, the debutant, were exciting to watch. A test series that is ending up with good result-oriented matches is always a pleasure to watch and that way I liked this entire series. The highlight of the series also was Stephen Fleming’s last appearance for New Zealand. I will write him a little later, but definitely New Zealand’s test cricket will struggle without him as well as Shane Bond who retired to join the Indian Cricket League.

The test series between India and South Africa has started on a pathetic note in Chennai. Though the pitch build quality as well as the ground is good it’s still a flat batting track which will definitely help the flat-pitch-bullies on either side while RP Singh and Sreesanth will break their backs. Time and again, it’s frustrating not to see any action from BCCI in this regard. They seem to be fully concentrating on 20-20 premier league now.

The premier league is affecting the players’ approach to the game as well. Most of them look like preserving time and energy for the money making part of the game rather than being good to cricket. Though I am looking forward to see the 20-20 action as well, it’s almost sure that India’s (BCCI’s) approach to the business of cricket will soon land them in trouble.

God save test cricket!