Should we start saying that captaincy is affecting his batting? He could not score against a hapless West Indies either.

ps: Please note the sarcasm; I am trying to act like the stupid reporters and naive cricket followers who start questioning a player’s abilities as soon as they get a chace to…

From Craigslist:

Just to let people know in a hurry, the site
www.pay-craigslist.org
has no relation to us, and we’re escalating dramatically now.
Please get the word out.

And that too against a pretty tough Aussie bowling lineup. Granted, there was no McGrath and that makes a huge difference, but still, to pile 5+ runs per over, over a period of about 80 overs is awesome.

But for the collapse at the end of the innings, England could have put this match away from the Aussies, especially after Ponting put them in.

Now, its up to the Aussie batting to pile it up and reply. Let’s see what happens. Should turn out to be an interesting day 2.

Yahoo Sports had some quotes from Pac-10 media day.

Of Leinart:

He mentioned meeting, among others this summer, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, and a string of sports stars. He was particularly impressed by meeting Maria Sharapova, saying, “That was sweet."

Alright, so 55 in 110 was not extremely fast, but on the other hand, he was the top scorer and if not for his knock, India would have been in deeper trouble.

Welcome back, Ganguly. And remember, class is permanent, form is temporary.

And this time he did not even score any runs.

Should we start proclaiming the end of his captaincy stint? Should we start demanding that Ganguly be brought back as a captain?

For fickle cricket followers who were asking for Sachin’s head and then Ganguly’s spot in the team, I would like to say those things.

For true cricket followers, who understand the game, I will keep quiet and let the selectors call the shots.

These were all forwarded to me…

Interesting - either as a replacement of or as a teammate of Button.

Its better for him personally, but not professionally. He is not going to get the type of exposure he gets as a Ferrari driver. But personally, he was pained to see that he was considered a step-child at Ferrari with all efforts directed at pushing Schumacher to the front.

Let’s see who his teammate is.

Read on for more…

I am referring to my earlier post.

McLaren Mercedes had another massive loss this race with Montoya going out with the lead. He was in fact cruising with about 9 second lead ahead of Kimi and he was only on a 2-stopper. So there was a good chance that he would have ended up winning it all.

A McLaren 1-2 would have brought them to within 4 points of the constructors' championship but it was not to be.

They better get their act together quickly because there is a realistic chance for them to win the constructors' championship and they should!

What a race for Kimi! A great start for him to go from 4th to 2nd, and for a change, Ferrari was outsmarted at the pits by the McLaren team.

Fantastic race in terms of points for Kimi because he gets 10 net points and the difference is now only 26 points with 6 races to go.

This has been a pretty wild championship. Even though Alonso is in the driver’s seat at the moment, he has never really run away with the lead (except the last week where the difference was 36 points).

I would still not bet on Kimi to win the championship but at least it keeps me interested because I was just about to give up on the rest of the season.

No more.

– and oh, great race for Ferrari, considering the tires sucked. Schuey was able to hold off Kimi until they passed him in the pit stops and then Ralf. Good work.

For those who want to jump on me for dissing Dravid and who want to point me to the next game where he scored an unbeaten 50 to make India win, please sit down. It’s a highly depleted West Indies team that we beat. Nothing to shout about. We should have won more handily.

Just like people say when Sachin scores a century against minnows, I would like to say, ignore this match because it was only West Indies. It does not count.

YAY!! It’s really been a while since I could write that. He is on pole in Hungary, and tomorrow’s start is going to be fantastic with Montoya and Kimi at #2 and #4.

Hope it works out for Kimi and Schuey.

So now I can point fingers at those Dravid fans who were waiting for him to be captain. He made 54, but he still could not win the match for India.

I like the guy, but when Dravid fans compare him to Sachin and say how Sachin is not a ‘match winner’ despite his lofty stats, I will put this against Dravid now.

Been pretty bad with blogging this week - mostly technological issues. At work, things just kept failing for one reason or the other and had to fight fires. And then, just a fraction of a second before I wanted to back up the wife’s computer, it crashed. And oh, it crashed big time. It could not read the registry or something and I had to burn a Windows XP CD with SP2 and 6 hours later (2.45am!), it was back online.

Anyway, all that is not what this post is for.

On Tuesday we went to see a Hindi movie since it was a ‘Terrific Tuesday’ where all movies were $5. And this is the first time I have gone there on a Tuesday and man, there were SO MANY people! The line to get the ticket was reasonable, but we went for dinner in the restaurant next to the theater, and when we came out from dinner, we saw that the line was going all the way out on the sidewalk! Amazing. I have not seen such rush on weekends and here we were on Tuesday looking at so many people willing to watch a movie at 8pm, wait in line for it starting at 7pm!

We saw Paheli. It was quite a nice movie. Amol Palekar has done a good job. There were three or four moments in the movie where I thought I had found a hole, but just one or two scenes after that, the hole would get plugged. Good, clean, entertaining movie.

Rani Mukherjee looks good in the movie. And not surprisingly, Shah Rukh Khan delivers. This is “his” character. He does it well.

The music is good, and the colors in the movie are quite bright and make it pleasing to the eye.

Tuesday worth driving 15 miles for.

CNN finally has something to report on the Bombay floods? How can such a huge thing in one of the biggest cities in the world not come on the US News radar???

The cat which got trapped on the second floor balcony gets 3 minutes of coverage the same evening, but such an event with huge economic impact hardly even gets mentioned.

One strong reason why I don’t like the mass media here in the US.

For those concerned, my family and friends all seem to be ok. All had their own experiences like sleeping in the office, spending hours in the car on the road, car floating and going away in the currents, etc. But thankfully, all are ok.

From the 2005 ESPY website:

They would form one unbeatable doubles team, not to mention the type of photo-ready uber-couple that would drive the paparazzi into convulsions.

Andy Roddick and Maria Sharapova, the crown prince and current “It Girl” of the tennis world, formed an inseparable tandem the night before the 13th annual ESPY Awards.



After the party, the two retired to the Tropicana Bar at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel and were still lounging together poolside into the wee hours of the morning.

This is disturbing in one way, and quite funny in another.

Dan Gillmor wrote about it and here is the main CNN article.

Looks like the military may be making up quotes. This cancer is spreading from top down and across. The future does not seem bright.

Saw 21 Grams on cable over the weekend. It is quite a sad, depressing movie, but I liked the movie in general. All the actors have done a great job and if I am not mistaken, there were some Oscar nominations/awards for this movie.

What I did not like is that scene after scene was being shown from a different time in the whole plot. There were almost no scenes back-to-back in chronological order, ascending or descending. It made it very hard to understand the relationships and the situation, but once you get it, it was quite alright.

Time well spent.

This is a slightly delayed post about the first test in the Ashes. Australia crushed England, much to my liking. I don’t like England and especially so because they have been hyped too much of late. I mean, they are a much improved team with a lot of promise, but I think they are overrated.

Anyway, McGrath’s spell on the first day basically decided the course of actions. Australia, with the mighty batting lineup, failed miserably and were all out for less than 200. But to come back and get the opposition almost all out is true grit. And McGrath delivered.

Then of course, in the second innings, the class of the Australian batting showed and in the second innings it was Warne’s turn (excuse the pun) to clean up.

It brings an interesting point - when India went to Australia last time around, they were able to take the attack to the Aussies and were fighting much harder than other teams have, in the recent past. Of course, I am not going to say much about England at this point because it is only Test 1 of 5. Will talk about it more, later.

Saw the movie Sarkar in the theater over the weekend. I liked it a lot. I know it is very Bombay-focussed and maybe that’s why I like it even more, but in general the whole movie was quite good.

Yes, it is sort of Godfather (not really, I would think), and sort of Bal Thackeray-ish but no matter what, Amitabh has turned in a good performance and more importantly, Abhishek turns in a rather good performance.

Abhishek has really come of age. I have been a supporter of his for some time now, but I think after Yuva he really announced his arrival. He has matured now and besides the serious, action-oriented films like Yuva, Dhoom, Dus and Sarkar, he can also do some comedy like Bunty Aur Babli.

Good stuff.

–

Update: I forgot to mention that in this movie, the background soundtrack is fantastic. More than the acting or the situations, it is the music that keeps you interested. It is the music that creates the effects and enhances the acting.

Just as I had feared, Kimi started on pole, and was leading big time after the first round of pit stops and then the McLaren reliability (actually, lack thereof) kicked in and he just stopped. Apparently it was a transmission failure. He was in no way troubled by the competition, cruising along to his well-deserved win, when all of a sudden it ended.

Now the difference between #1 and #2 is 36 points. I think Alonso can start making plans for his offseason celebrations of a world championship.

Side notes for the race: Good blocking my Michael Schumacher against Fisichella. FISICHELLA?? Are you kidding me? Times have certainly changed. And sadly, Schuey was passed. He held off till the last lap and then had to give up position.

And of course, the story of the race was perhaps Montoya climbing from last place to second. Good job.

Of discontinuing this blog.

But in a matter of seconds, I decided against it.

Just thought I’d put it down.

Kimi’s had a good run of late and if not for his engine failures for the past 2 races, he would have probably ended up being #1 in both of them.

This time he did not have an engine failure and has qualified on pole.

But the scary thought is that what if there is a failure during the race???

Wow. What’s next? An Arjun Ramphal ‘Ken’?

Maybe homeindia.com should start stocking these Barbies now, what with their strong Bollywood focus.

Some recent media clippings for homeindia and their Bollywood story:

1. NDTV
2. Mid-Day
3. Indian Express