Sour Grapes

The more I see Australia play and less I hear them talk I have to admit that they deserve to take this cup ..... until I switch back to watching Murali. Then the intellect is quietly packed away and pure emotion taketh over..... GO SRI LANKA... do the unthinkable (and probably undoable).

More realistically speaking, if there is a team that can at least pose a few questions it is them. SL has to play first, score 250+ and then quickly dismiss Ponting (it doesn't matter who gets out first Gilchrist or Hayden). Then at least they build pressure. Obviously, the game would not be over still but with Murali tightening the screws and Malinga providing the variety there is a good chance for Sri Lanka.

It is not my bias, I don't think Australia bowled exceptionally well during the semis. It was more a case of self-destruction from SA. Definitely it is not easy to score 300 with Australia, but teams other than SL have such a mediocre bowling attack that they had no option but to try and perish in that effort. The most underrated bowler in this tournament is Brad Hogg and during the Sri Lankan innings it would be crucial that their batsmen give him the due respect. I have a feeling that if the SL batting collapses it would be more due to Hogg than the other bowlers. Tait has been improving each game, it is amazing how the Australians are always improving.

The umpiring standard in the first semi-final was atrocious. The two decisions, one thick inside edge and the second leaving the leg stump by miles were really bad. Thank god the umpires were not Asian, otherwise there would have been snide comments from the chatteratti about Asain capabilities.

Peter Roebuck had written an atrocious article in which he says "Pakistan must be banned from international cricket for five years. If Bob Woolmer was indeed murdered by corrupt players, then they should be ousted for a decade. What has been their contribution since Imran Khan left the scene? Ball tampering, match fixing, zealotry, chucking, steroid taking and tantrum throwing."

If you look at the list of litanies probably every one of these accusations (what does he mean zealotry? growing beards?) applies to one or another Australian player in some point of time. Warne was suspended for drug abuse, Warne again for match fixing along with Mark Waugh, Lee's and Tait's fast balls are as close as Akhtar's in terms of action. Ball tampering charges were not proved, does he read the papers at all. In the recent debacle in England, Pakistan had come clean! Such unabashed racism! In a world where winning is all that matters, if Australia behaved the same way in the pitch as they do now and were losing, people would have come down heavily on them for their on field behavior.

May be they should have a coaching session from Roger Federer on behavior, on and off the field. Good behavior doesn't mean that you are loser. I guess if they stop aping the US and start getting an identity of their own they might improve in that department.

(Is all this griping a question of sour grapes? :) )

Oh Murali!

The torchlight eyes and the spectacular smile makes cricket all the more worth watching. For me, the moment of the first semi-final was when Murali took a diving catch of a Styris scoop and jump in sheer joy only to realize it was a no-ball. His facial expressions changed not to disgust but just muttering under his breath. It was just fantastic. You can keep watching this man play, it reminds me of the old West Indians, sheer joy. Somehow one does not get the same feeling when the Australians or South Africans triumph, it is more clinical and definitely superior but not joyful.

An earlier Murali moment was when he took KP's wicket against England. A beautiful doosra, a good catch and a priceless expression. I am sure even without these powerful TV cameras Murali's eyes would have been caught back in 1983. It is not just about winning or losing but how you play the game. Sadly, I don't see any Indian cricketer do that any more. I guess the endorsements are back in their mind all the time. With West Indies in terminal decline and Pakistan in shambles and the rest only clinical, we had to look for some joy in the inconsistent Bangladeshi tigers and of course the Sri Lankans. But Murali is the only beacon of hope in this cup.

I have to admit I was hopeful of Freddie Flintoff. After a long time it appeared that a true cricketer was emerging out of England, Kapil/Botham style. But he was very disappointing in this series. It would be good for world cricket if he bounces back. Another loss was Brett Lee. A cricketer whom I enjoy watching. There is something about their attitude and how they play their game which is more appealing to me than their actual performance. McGrath is any day better than Lee but I would prefer the latter any time.

I guess Murali's action is definitely suspect, but I will set all aside just for his personality and attitude in the field. Go Murali, make cricket worth watching..

P.S. - It is sad to see here that most Indians have stopped watching the game after India was out. Young boys were playing outside when Jayawardene was building one of the classic innings in the game. I don't see much hope in Indian cricket improving....

Summer Camp

The schools are closed for the summer vacation. This year the Karnataka government has decided that they would provide the noon-meals even during the vacation time! So the teachers are expected to come during the summer vacation and keep the schools open. I have taken this opportunity to have a kind of summer camp for the children with more informal sessions. The government’s plan is, as usual, not very well thought. There are around 25 students (out of almost 300) who turn up. The meal provider has so far (it has been one week) not provided the noon meals.

I now handle 10 children and it is lot more enjoyable. There is direct interaction with each and every child and I am not playing any policing role at all. We still do English and Math. I bought these bi-lingual picture books from Tulika, which has both English and Kannada on the same page. The idea is that the children would read the Kannada and know the story and I would help them read the English bits and slowly they would be more comfortable reading and speaking English. I also work on Math using the decimal blocks and Cuisenaire rods.

Since the class strength is reasonable, we have lot of conversations outside and along with the teaching/learning. Here are some snippets:

Dogs

Out of the 10 students almost all of them have been chased or attacked by stray dogs. 3 of them have actually been bitten and had to get those horrible injections for rabies. Anyone in Bangalore or even outside of it would have heard of the recent happenings in this context. The dogs are a serious health problem and I really don’t understand these “animal lovers”. Do they let cockroaches roam in their houses and not kill them? Are dogs endangered? Would they upset the ecological balance? Just cull them. It is nice to sit in houses with security gates and travel in cars and wax eloquent about their concern for dogs. Let their children be chased every day by dogs and be bitten by them and then I would like to hear from them.

Mobile Phones

All their families have mobile phones. Some families have more than one. Most of the children remember the 10-digit number of the phones in their families.

Private Schools

There are 3 children who come to my summer class from private schools in that area. They belong to the same socio-economic background as the other children. Two go to “Blossom” school. They have better capability than the government school children but only marginally. A class 6 student, Annapurna, who has supposedly learnt English from class 1 can just about read a simple English book. But her attitude was amazing. She took the book back home, worked on it hard and the next day could fluently read it. This is very different from the government school kids. Though I have given them the books for a week, I doubt any of them even open the books at home. This drive to perform could definitely be seen in the private school children. Another kid, Hemanth, goes to “Orchid” private school. He is in the 1^st class and he is very good! He can already read simple English books. His brother Manjunath, who just finished 4^th class in the government school, can barely read English. Seeing the difference in performance from the same family but in different systems makes me wonder if I should re-calibrate my opinion on private schools, at least in the urban slum context. For "Blossom" the kids pay Rs.85 per month and a Rs.750 donation. I was not able to find out how much is the fees in "Orchid".

Lords

“Rent seeking generally implies the extraction of uncompensated value from others without making any contribution to productivity .....”

I guess Indian cricket gives a new connotation to Lords. The so-called senior players are more like rent seeking feudal lords than professional cricketers. I am amazed at several comments about how Tendulkar should decide when he should quit, till then he should be kept in the team! If this is not feudal, hierarchical mind-set what else do you call it? I guess in a country where hierarchy has religio-social sanction through its caste system and enforced by the system of marriage, you can’t expect anything better. Under the guise of ‘respect’ for seniors we are just continuing to sing paeans to hierarchy. Current performance does not count. The results are obvious. The Australian team has shown what professionalism and performance is all about. For all our flirtations with modernity we remain fundamentally a feudal nation.

It was most satisfying to see India kicked out of the tournament in the first stage. With 16 teams playing we could not figure in the top 8. It is not cricket anymore; it is a huge joint venture between BCCI-Product Advertisers-Players. The game is secondary. Otherwise how can we justify the ‘blue billion’ hype of winning world cup for a team which was ranked 6^th! The posters and banners popping in Bangalore wishing the team good luck along with the photo of the local politician (goonda) were intolerable. The same organizations, which have spent money on this, would balk if they had to do some awareness campaigns on issues that really matter like sanitation and health (polio campaigns or bird-flu). Hype took precedence to actual performance.

With the trash out we can now watch some real cricket and we got it in that beautiful innings of Jayasurya against West Indies. He started watchfully after two quick wickets. Got a good look at the pitch and bowlers and then in his inimitable style just took the bowlers to the cleaners. Now, this is performance.

Well, there is another hype that will bust soon. A year or two back I was in IIT-Powai interviewing computer science students. One said his favorite subject was Algorithms, I asked what work he has done on that and he answered that he wrote a library information system. Get it?