In God's Name: Decoding Sachin Tendulkar Troller's Mind

Myopia. For Ophthalmologists it may be a disease or ailment, but for us it is wired into our DNA, as ingrained as paan stains on our country's walls or potholes on roads. Better get used to it.

Detractors say cricket is played in few countries, but aren't they one of the most populous ones. India, Pakistan, Bangladesh ... all eternal baby boomers and look at the way we fill up stadiums and stay put for the whole day (and leave them filthy), we have the numbers on our side and the world better take note of it. We care two hoots for who is the best baseball or rugby player (memory cells are in short supply as we refused to grow up), but they better know our God.

Don't know which yeda (fool) termed cricket a gentleman's game. For us trollers any form of propriety is alien and any form of decorum are meant to trampled at the altar of message boards. Woe betide if anyone tries to insult our god. Period.

If provoked (it could happen for just about anything) we replicate the nuisance pattern of locusts or crows on cyber space, don't even dare to test our prowess. For the victims the spam messages and memes we leave behind has the same effect as the sardine smell - the stink refuses to go away.

PS: Sorry Alia Bhatt, didn't mean to insult you. But then you happen to be the dumbest bimbo in contemporary Bollywood so we had to invoke your reference to run down a dumber sportswoman who didn't know our God's name.

Also Read: Bangalore Beat

Scaling Mighty Obstacles

While cricket pundits were splitting their hairs over why Sachin Tendulkar's footwork is no longer what it used to be, an Indian athlete with a congenital disability in left foot had his leap-of-faith moment at London paralympics.
 
Girisha Hosanagara Nagarajegowda, a 24-year-old from Karnataka did the country proud by winning its first ever silver medal and that too in a physically demanding event like high jump. Paralympic games are a regular feature and happens after the conclusion of every olympics. But the event comes nowhere near the viewfinder of the country's media or its collective conscious. The reasons are not far to seek. Firstly the country's sports culture is nothing much to write home about and secondly the society's attitude towards disability oscillates from callous disregard to downright patronizing.
 
Somehow this year, after the country's best ever showing at Olympics, the TV cameras lingered on in London. Quite predictably controvesies soon followed and got greater visibility. An Indian power lifter Farman Basha had complained that he was not provided with an escort and even his coach was not allowed to stay with him.
 
But nobody in their wildest dreams thought India would open its account at the games. In fact few people were even aware that the country had sent a contingent for paralympics.
 
Now that Girisha has won a medal government and other agencies are doling cash awards and other trappings that come with sporting achievements. But I am sure it will be far too modest compared with other Olympic medal winners and microscopic when compared with IPL pampered cricketers.
 
Reading about his life one gets a snapshot of how miserable it is to be born poor and handicapped in our country. Most notably how these sections of population can no way access medicare. Girisha was born with a defect, which was curable. But his parents could not afford the surgery required to rectify it.
 
In our counry to be hadicapped and be able to lead a semblance of normal life is in itself a major struggle. Hence to take part in a sport like high jump is asking for the moon. Hence no adjective in the dictionary would be apt enough to describe Girisha's achievement.

Saina Nehwal's kind gesture
The badminton ace was so touched by Girisha's feat that she decided to gift him Rs 2 lakh. Hope our Ferrari/BMW driving sports stars (read cricketers) take cue from it.

Also Read: Bangalore Beat

Whimper Down Under

Let me confess at the outset that I am no cricket buff. I mean, I do not sit glued to Neo Sports to watch how our Men in Blue are doing or listen to what cricket pundits have to say at the end of the day, nor have I bookmarked Cricinfo site on my computer. But since I flip around TV news channels a lot  and the way they cover cricket,  I just can't help its corrosive influence. In fact I chose the headline as a spoof on CNN-IBN's ‘Thunder Down Under’.

The hype in news channels began much before the tour began. The hoopla over the eternal wait for Sachin Tendulkar's 100th century keeps TRPs on the roll. I feel the marketing guys may be secretly wishing that “May this suspense continue - Let him reach his milestone after a drought of 50 innings!”

At the outset I did feel the Aussies were not all that formidable as they were licking their very recent wounds caused by a humiliating defeat to New Zealand in the second Test, and that too in their home soil. For most Aussie blokes the feeling was similar to what cricket fans in India may feel if the Men in Blue lost a series to Kenya at home. These Victoria Bitter guzzling folks may grudgingly accept their neighbour's supremacy in Rugby Union, but definitely not in cricket. And, of course, the records also prove that their cockiness is not out of place - the Kiwis have never tasted a Test victory on the Australian soil since 1985.

The Melbourne Test began on a promising note with youngsters like Umesh Yadav and Ravichandran Ashwin making impressive debuts, though our middle order made us painfully aware of what the expression Achilles’ heel was all about. Each day brought surprises with the Test proving to be a cricket equivalent of neck-and-neck races we witness in Formula One or MotoGPs. No team seemed to have and edge and even on the night before the fourth day I went to sleep feeling it was anybody's match as two days of play were left.

But by the time I switched on the TV next day, the Aussie speedsters had Indian batsmen on the ropes and it was only a matter of time before the Test ended up with a bloody nose for Dhoni's men. But surprisingly the usual lemon squeezing Indian media gave them a kid glove treatment - all thanks to a Bihari politician Rajniti Prasad. His hideous act of tearing the Lokpal Bill in Rajya Sabha diverted the spotlight from the humiliating Melbourne defeat. On hindsight I think it won't be a bad idea for Dhoni and his men to give 10 per cent of their match fee to this Lalu Yadav protege!

The attention later shifted to Sydney and newspapers started predicting that since Tendulkar has a good batting record there, he may have his tryst with destiny on the SCG and even some Aussies like Hussey felt so. Glenn McGrath came off with spoiler remark that the Indians are in for a 4-0 whitewash (he initially said 3-0, assuming it was a 3-Test series) and Tendulkar won't reach his milestone in this series. This set the Indian Twitterati alight with many running down on him and calling him 'pigeon-headed' an allusion to his nickname pigeon.

But as the Test began the Aussie pace legend had the last laugh. On day one itself Team India's fate was sealed. The much famed batting line up meekly capitulated and from then onwards it was one free fall. Like Melbourne this one too got decided on fourth day. Looks like this series is going to be more nightmarish than the England series. Then at least we had Rahul Dravid who did manage to put up a fight, but here he too seems to have joined the ayaram-gayaram batting line up. Same seems to be the case of VVS Laxman, who used to play well in Australia, is now struggling even to reach double figures! And guys like Virender Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir anyway never did well beyond the pitches of Indian subcontinent. Sadly we seem to have totally run out of alternatives.