The world cup fever is beginning!
The T20 world cup brings alive memories of the astounding victory of 2007 and sends me into a reverie.I can still clearly visualise the scenes in my hostel's T.V room.The room was cramped like a compartment from a local train of Mumbai.There was an unusual silence when Mizbah hit consecutive fours in the beginning of the last over and threatened to pull off an unbelievable comeback.Mizbah failed to scoop the next ball above fine leg and Sreesanth caught the most important catch of his career.The room erupted!For the next half an hour noise levels soared to new heights.People were jumping,shouting and dancing and the atmosphere was absolutely electric.We had to stand on top of the chairs to get a glimpse of the television.Cricket had just united a nation!
That win brushed aside all speculations on whether Indian cricketers will be able to adapt to the new format.Two years down the line you wonder,"Can they really do it again ?"Fortunes take few minutes to change in a T20 game.The unpredictability of the format makes it very hard to pick a favourite.But if one had to pick a favourite it has to be India.There is great depth in the batting, more variety in the bowling,a lot of experience in the format (courtesy IPL)and last,but not the least,a skipper who's arguably the best that India has ever produced.
Team India is ready.Bring it on!
Showing posts with label Sports. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sports. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Saturday, May 9, 2009
Federer vs Nadal :The race to be the best
Well, you may have deciphered my fascination for sport by now.Today i pick up a topic which is one of the greatest rivalries in contemporary sport.What is it about these nadal-federer epics that gets our adrenaline to flow and spines to tingle?Let's look at these champions one at at time.
Roger Federer's exploits are phenomenal,to say the least.237 weeks at the top.Nobody even close to him.He's arguably the greatest player the sport has ever seen.But how could a player who's the greatest ever have a record as poor as 6-13 against another player?(i'll come to this point a little later)
Now Rafa.The epitome of strength,stamina and ruthlessness on the court and a very humble person off it.The current no1 in the world and boy, he must be one real talent if he has managed to oust the great roger federer off his throne.Six grand slams by the age of 22.A prodigy.If form continues,who knows,he may leave even federer far behind.
The rivalry.
One thing i'd like to point out about the head to head is that these numbers provide a distorted image. Ten of their matches have been played on clay and nadal has a 9-1 record.Without doubt Nadal is leaps and bounds above federer on the red surface.Meanwhile Federer leads 5-4 on other surfaces.Another point i'd like to make is that early in his career nadal used to not make it past the early rounds in hard court tournaments .We would have probably seen a more narrow margin if there were more matches played on the other surfaces.
Out of 19 matches 5 of them have been 5 setters(many of the matches were best of 3).There's absolutely nothing to choose between the 2.And they produce their best tennis when they play each other.The Wimbledon Final of 2008 was hailed by many as the greatest game the sport has seen.I think federer is unfortunate to have played at the beginning of an era which has produced a player who will eventually end his career as the greatest clay courter ever.But nothing better could have happened for the sport.It has produced some of the most electrifying encounters and the two of them have taken tennis to a level which was unseen.Though we haven been fortunate enough to watch the likes of rod laver and bjorn borg, when we watch players like nadal and federer one is forced to think "Can there have been be players who were better than this?".
And the respect they have for each other is overwhelming.True connoisseurs of the game.
The next 2-3 years will probably determine where the two of them stand on the pedestal of history.One thing is definite.The battle is far from over.
Roger Federer's exploits are phenomenal,to say the least.237 weeks at the top.Nobody even close to him.He's arguably the greatest player the sport has ever seen.But how could a player who's the greatest ever have a record as poor as 6-13 against another player?(i'll come to this point a little later)
Now Rafa.The epitome of strength,stamina and ruthlessness on the court and a very humble person off it.The current no1 in the world and boy, he must be one real talent if he has managed to oust the great roger federer off his throne.Six grand slams by the age of 22.A prodigy.If form continues,who knows,he may leave even federer far behind.
The rivalry.
One thing i'd like to point out about the head to head is that these numbers provide a distorted image. Ten of their matches have been played on clay and nadal has a 9-1 record.Without doubt Nadal is leaps and bounds above federer on the red surface.Meanwhile Federer leads 5-4 on other surfaces.Another point i'd like to make is that early in his career nadal used to not make it past the early rounds in hard court tournaments .We would have probably seen a more narrow margin if there were more matches played on the other surfaces.
Out of 19 matches 5 of them have been 5 setters(many of the matches were best of 3).There's absolutely nothing to choose between the 2.And they produce their best tennis when they play each other.The Wimbledon Final of 2008 was hailed by many as the greatest game the sport has seen.I think federer is unfortunate to have played at the beginning of an era which has produced a player who will eventually end his career as the greatest clay courter ever.But nothing better could have happened for the sport.It has produced some of the most electrifying encounters and the two of them have taken tennis to a level which was unseen.Though we haven been fortunate enough to watch the likes of rod laver and bjorn borg, when we watch players like nadal and federer one is forced to think "Can there have been be players who were better than this?".
And the respect they have for each other is overwhelming.True connoisseurs of the game.
The next 2-3 years will probably determine where the two of them stand on the pedestal of history.One thing is definite.The battle is far from over.
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Champions league : Barcelona-Chelsea
Firstly what a match! And another perfect example of how a few seconds can change a game.And probably history too.
Semi final stage of the tournament and the eqation after the first leg at the Nou Camp was 0-0.The fact that Chelsea did not allow Barcelona to score from the home leg in itself was an achievment.Against a team that plays a brand of football unseen anywhere else in the world.A team which scored 6 goals at the bernabeau against real madrid in the following game.
Come stamford bridge.Essein scores a blinder in the 9th minute.Chelsea 1-0 up.Arguably the best goal of this year's champions league.You would undoubtedly need a piece of brilliance if u would have to beat a team of the calibre of barcelona.Chelsea defended valiantly for the next 90 minutes.Barcelona had the major share of possesion but did not have any clear cut opportunities.On the other hand chelsea had contoversial hand ball and penalty claims given against them.Drogba had 2 clear cut opportunities and despite his tremendous physical strength he will never be a world class striker unless he starts finishing such easy chances.The standard of refreeing was pathetic.Apart from the controversial claims,Eric Abidal did not deserve the red card(though he probably deserved to get it earlier for a tackle on drogba).These are all debatable issues and will remain so for quite a while.
Now we come to the climax.In the 93rd minutes iniesta scores a stunner.The score is 1-1 and barcelona go through to the final on the away goal rule.The bridge is silenced.As they say, anything can happen in football!What i want to discuss over here,though,is something else.
What hurt me the most about the game was that at the end of the game most of the commentators(and the articles i read online) claimed that barcelona deserved to go through.They claimed chelsea didn pass enough. blah blah.But i bet you that ,had that piece of magic not happened, atleast 3 quarters of these people would be hailing the valiant chelsea defence and would have claimed that chelsea deserved to go through.And i say why not.No other team has prevented this barcelona team from getting jus 1 shot at goal the whole match .No other team has kept them shut for 182 minutes throughout the entire season.Well barcelona may play pretty football but does it mean that they deserve to go through? They are going to play beautiful football almost everytime they enter the field.Does that mean that they deserve to win everytime?What's more important..entertaining or winning?..In this case the team that entertained ultimately triumphed but that does not happen everytime.Chelsea may not always have entertained but more often than not results go in their favour.Tonight was an exception.And a team like arsenal who have produced some of the most beautiful football in recent years end up winning almost zilch silverware.So i pose a food for thought question agin..whats more important..winning or entertaining?
Hopefully i'll get some reviews.And comments :)
Semi final stage of the tournament and the eqation after the first leg at the Nou Camp was 0-0.The fact that Chelsea did not allow Barcelona to score from the home leg in itself was an achievment.Against a team that plays a brand of football unseen anywhere else in the world.A team which scored 6 goals at the bernabeau against real madrid in the following game.
Come stamford bridge.Essein scores a blinder in the 9th minute.Chelsea 1-0 up.Arguably the best goal of this year's champions league.You would undoubtedly need a piece of brilliance if u would have to beat a team of the calibre of barcelona.Chelsea defended valiantly for the next 90 minutes.Barcelona had the major share of possesion but did not have any clear cut opportunities.On the other hand chelsea had contoversial hand ball and penalty claims given against them.Drogba had 2 clear cut opportunities and despite his tremendous physical strength he will never be a world class striker unless he starts finishing such easy chances.The standard of refreeing was pathetic.Apart from the controversial claims,Eric Abidal did not deserve the red card(though he probably deserved to get it earlier for a tackle on drogba).These are all debatable issues and will remain so for quite a while.
Now we come to the climax.In the 93rd minutes iniesta scores a stunner.The score is 1-1 and barcelona go through to the final on the away goal rule.The bridge is silenced.As they say, anything can happen in football!What i want to discuss over here,though,is something else.
What hurt me the most about the game was that at the end of the game most of the commentators(and the articles i read online) claimed that barcelona deserved to go through.They claimed chelsea didn pass enough. blah blah.But i bet you that ,had that piece of magic not happened, atleast 3 quarters of these people would be hailing the valiant chelsea defence and would have claimed that chelsea deserved to go through.And i say why not.No other team has prevented this barcelona team from getting jus 1 shot at goal the whole match .No other team has kept them shut for 182 minutes throughout the entire season.Well barcelona may play pretty football but does it mean that they deserve to go through? They are going to play beautiful football almost everytime they enter the field.Does that mean that they deserve to win everytime?What's more important..entertaining or winning?..In this case the team that entertained ultimately triumphed but that does not happen everytime.Chelsea may not always have entertained but more often than not results go in their favour.Tonight was an exception.And a team like arsenal who have produced some of the most beautiful football in recent years end up winning almost zilch silverware.So i pose a food for thought question agin..whats more important..winning or entertaining?
Hopefully i'll get some reviews.And comments :)
BHU cricket tour
This was an article written for my college
newsletter a year ago.Unfortunately the newsletter never got published
.So i thought i'll put it here.
The success story of BHU is one which very few of us will
forget.Firstly, for the majority of us, it was our first medal
for college..After a couple of tours in which we missed out
by losing close matches this was a sweet culmination to the
It began against JEC,Jabalpur.In an intense match with
lots of hooting we won convincingly by 7 wickets with
3 overs to spare.We were chasing a target of 129 in an
18 over match.I'd claimed 5 wickets but the stars of the
day were undoubtedly Yadav(45*) and Sudhanshu(35*)
who played sensible knocks at a critical point in the game.
The following game,against AEC,was a cakewalk.Abhishek
scored 45 and contributions from Varun,Yadav and
Sudhanshu saw us pile up 158 in the 20 over game.Our
opening bowlers Sahil and Varinder cleaned the
top-order and we had them all out for a paltry 52.
The semi-final was a game with a bit of history to it.
one year back,we had lost to YMCA Faridabad at the
same stage of the tournament on the last ball of the game.
This time around we scored 120 in 20 overs with good
contributions from everyone.Same team,same ground and
a similar situation but 1 year down the line the result was
different.We beat them by 20 runs.We had our vengeance.
We fielded extremely well and played with incredible team
spirit.
The final went like this.IT-BHU scored 145 in 25 overs.We
fell short by 3 runs.Blaming the partially biased umpiring
would be poor sportsmanship.I'd rather blame our batsmen
(including me)for poor shot selection at important moments
in the game.Second among 17 teams iscertainly respectable
but only we know how close we were from being the best.
Sport can hurt but life moves on.
Some things i'd like to mention which were essential elements
of our success are Varun's incredible keeping,Pradeep's high
catching,Sudhanshu's direct hits,Yadav's flat throws from 60
yards,Sanjeev's full-fledged dives and Yogesh' zeal.Our bench
strength deserves special mention for their tremendous and
untiring support.I may have missed a few names but we all
know that each and everyone of us had a vital role in making
this beautiful story happen.Sahil's leadership was inspiring to
say the least.He'd believed us at times when we had lost faith
in ourselves.You will be missed dearly sir
newsletter a year ago.Unfortunately the newsletter never got published
.So i thought i'll put it here.
The success story of BHU is one which very few of us will
forget.Firstly, for the majority of us, it was our first medal
for college..After a couple of tours in which we missed out
by losing close matches this was a sweet culmination to the
rigorous practice we had for a month after college began.
It began against JEC,Jabalpur.In an intense match with
lots of hooting we won convincingly by 7 wickets with
3 overs to spare.We were chasing a target of 129 in an
18 over match.I'd claimed 5 wickets but the stars of the
day were undoubtedly Yadav(45*) and Sudhanshu(35*)
who played sensible knocks at a critical point in the game.
The following game,against AEC,was a cakewalk.Abhishek
scored 45 and contributions from Varun,Yadav and
Sudhanshu saw us pile up 158 in the 20 over game.Our
opening bowlers Sahil and Varinder cleaned the
top-order and we had them all out for a paltry 52.
The semi-final was a game with a bit of history to it.
one year back,we had lost to YMCA Faridabad at the
same stage of the tournament on the last ball of the game.
This time around we scored 120 in 20 overs with good
contributions from everyone.Same team,same ground and
a similar situation but 1 year down the line the result was
different.We beat them by 20 runs.We had our vengeance.
We fielded extremely well and played with incredible team
spirit.
The final went like this.IT-BHU scored 145 in 25 overs.We
fell short by 3 runs.Blaming the partially biased umpiring
would be poor sportsmanship.I'd rather blame our batsmen
(including me)for poor shot selection at important moments
in the game.Second among 17 teams iscertainly respectable
but only we know how close we were from being the best.
Sport can hurt but life moves on.
Some things i'd like to mention which were essential elements
of our success are Varun's incredible keeping,Pradeep's high
catching,Sudhanshu's direct hits,Yadav's flat throws from 60
yards,Sanjeev's full-fledged dives and Yogesh' zeal.Our bench
strength deserves special mention for their tremendous and
untiring support.I may have missed a few names but we all
know that each and everyone of us had a vital role in making
this beautiful story happen.Sahil's leadership was inspiring to
say the least.He'd believed us at times when we had lost faith
in ourselves.You will be missed dearly sir
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