Those were the days when the whole of India was excited about cricket and why not? India had just won the World Cup and had created a whole generation of cricket followers like me who would do anything to watch Indian stars play. Kapil, Gavaskar, Vengsarkar, Madanlal and Binny were our stars. My idol then was Roger Binny, who despite being a star of India's '83 World Cup win, was a perpetual under-performer. But as a Karnataka cricketer, he always used to be a source of pride for us.
But the most striking feature of India's cricket following in those days was the live telecast of matches on national television at the cost of every other program on Doordarshan (not that there were too many good programmes produced by Doordarshan in those days). Cricket legends (mostly discarded) of yester-years like ML Jaisimha, Dilip Doshi, Venkataraghavan and Farooq Engineer used to drawl along on inconsequential happenings (mostly irrelevant to the match) in the guise of expert comments on Doordarshan cricket telecast. Ferven De Vetre, Anupam Gulati and Dr. Narottam Puri were equally adept at boring the listeners to ennui if not death. Lot of these first generation commentators didn't exactly understand the difference between a radio running commentary and television commentary. Television commentary in those days was nothing more than the verbalization of what everyone could see on the screen.
All that changed with the advent of Satellite television and Star sports. A host of intelligent and articulate former cricketers donned the cap of commentators. Harsha Bhogle, Gavaskar and Ravi Shastri happened to Indian commentary at the same time as Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid and Saurav Ganguly happened to Indian cricket. Commentary became more anlytical and insightful in nature, what with the most successful cricketers of Indian cricket growth sharing their experiences and compelling thoughts on players, match conditions, opposition teams and the general direction of cricket. These commentators in a way contributed to the overall popularity of cricket in India.
Pan to Circa 2010 - IPL3 Tamasha: Commentary today has turned into a perfect art of advertising. Commentators today are more than willing to adlib and babble the well-rehearsed ad phrases tutored by their paymasters. Gone are the days when even talking accidentally about a brand used to be considered unethical. It is a tragedy today that even the great Sunil Gavaskar doesn't mind churning out the names of the big brands at the drop of a hat...or is it the drop of a ball. Sample these:
Citi Moment of success: Every wicket is invariably followed by this phrase
Karbon Kamal Catch: There are as many catches taken as they are dropped in every match. Karbonn has those many opportunities to get commentators to spell out the brandname. This is repeated even when the ball harmlessly flies from the bat.
DLF Maximum: Every six and every missed six invokes this from commentators.
MRF Blimp: We all know that MRF is the leading tyre manufacturer in India and it runs a pace foundation that has been producing eccentrics like Sreesanth for the last 20 years. But why is MRF floating in the air in a bloated balloon when its products are designed for the ground.
Maxx Mobile strategic TimeOut - Maxx has an opportunity to be projected on the giant screen for at least 5 minutes in every match apart from the innumerable number of references to this timeout by the commentators in the guise of advising the already overburdened contingent of team coaches on the future strategy.
Ad-between-balls: Ads in between balls within an over to maximise profits for advertisers and IPL. Commentators again are more than willing to talk about the brand this nuisance represents during the match.
IPL painting: Even a painting created by a non-descript Bengali on the IPL cricket makes its appearance twice during every match and there is a prompt commentary support by our eminent panel.
Modi the He-Man: If this was not enough, the biggest brand endorsement of them all -- Lalit Modi gets mandatory coverage by the god-knows-how-many cameras positioned all around the ground and commentators make it a point to tell us who he is.
The deterioration is so complete that the hapless viewers are fed this commercial propaganda without their knowledge. Isn't this worse than subliminal advertising?
Jai IPL!
Friday, April 16, 2010
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Dravid Finally Speaks, And How!
This is a piece I had written just after Royal Challengers' (RCB) first win in IPL2 in South Africa. This piece is as relevant today as it was then and I am putting it up on the blog on the second day of the third test between India-SL (Dec 3, 2009). Dravid has already scored 2 hundreds in the first two test matches of this series and is all set for the 3rd one in a short while from now. Dravid's fearless batting which started during last year's NZ series, has been going on unhindered till date. And so is his agression. After scoring a hundred at Ahmedabad, he made some un-Dravid-like celebrations, signalling that he enjoyed every bit of his cricket today. So what if he is not part of the ODI team. He will remain a winner in the real 'Test' always.
It is not common to see Dravid receiving Man of the match awards. In his entire oDI and test career, he must've received about 20 MoM titles. Dravid is not a guy who lets his emotion rule even under tremendous pressure. He offers a dead bat for all those probing questions, be it from the bowlers or the cricket journalists.
But that Saturday evening was unusual. There was a sense of accomplishment in the eyes of Dravid and he was not hiding it, as he normally does. When asked what he was trying to say when he pointed the bat at the dressing room on completing that fifty in CapeTown against Rajasthan Royals, he said that he wasn't proving anything to anyone, but was just acknowledging the applause of his room mates. But anyone who watched the match that day don't believe that it was done without intention.
Dravid has been under fire for not taking Royal Challengers to the top half of the IPL draw in 2008. He was ridiculed, reprimanded and even publicly humiliated by the RCB owners, journalists and viewing public in general for leading a test side. The standing joke doing rounds in the first IPL edition was that when Vijay Mallya, the owner of RCB, gave the responsibility to Dravid to buy the 'Best' team no matter what it costs; Dravid is believed to have heard it as 'Test' team. How else could one explain a T20 team that contained the likes of Chanderpaul, Kallis, Jaffer, Kumble and himself--all accomplished test players. Despite Dravid's best efforts to be the pillar of batting for his side, by scoring the highest runs for RCB in 2008 that included a quickfire 75 with a strike rate of 208.8, he was largely considered an utter failure in leading a team that contained loads of experience and little direction.
While receiving the MoM award at Cape Town, Dravid opened up and was quite vocal about his batting performance. This was a different Dravid for sure. He didn't mince words when he said that these are the conditions that bring out the best in him and he said it was when the ball is doing something that boys like him have an opportunity to do well. And he had done exactly that. When everyone was trying to hit their way out of the difficult batting conditions, it was Dravid alone who stuck to the task and made his knock count in difficult conditions. It was not as if he was getting bogged down and hitting to the fielders all the time. He was free-flowing and quite determined in his rapid 66. The fact that his individual score was 8 runs more than the combined total of Rajasthan Royals, spoke volumes about his impeccable knock. In his response to Shastri's questions during the MoM award, he was as free flowing in talking as he was in his batting.
Those of us who are following him very closely over the years know that this was not the usual Dravid, who couldn't express his true feelings in public. The fact that he hasn't come out in public on his decision to quit captaincy at the peak of his career is still a mystery. His free talk at the presentation indicated only one thing. That Dravid today is enjoying his batting and is not bothered about criticism anymore. Glimpses of his changed frame of mind was visible in New Zealand when he criticised Sehwag and Laxman (more the former than the latter) when they said that they fell while playing their natural game in the second test where it was necessary to stay put and bide time to save the match. Dravid battled for more than 4 hours in the second innings and in the company of Gambhir (who is touted as the next Wall of India). He said forcefully that there was nothing like a natural game in test cricket and a true cricketer has to play according to the situation. That was a great lesson for the slam bang gang of today who feel there is no cricket beyond the hit-and-run variety. Dravid's experience finally made him talk.
It surely shows that Dravid is enjoying his cricket these days. He has no fear or favor and is also ready to speak his mind now. He is well on his way to becoming the leading run-getter of IPL2 and his agressive play and sound technique is making the so-called more accomplished T20 experts squirm in their seats. Let's hope runs and words flow freely from this legend and be a great education for the younger lot this season!
It is not common to see Dravid receiving Man of the match awards. In his entire oDI and test career, he must've received about 20 MoM titles. Dravid is not a guy who lets his emotion rule even under tremendous pressure. He offers a dead bat for all those probing questions, be it from the bowlers or the cricket journalists.
But that Saturday evening was unusual. There was a sense of accomplishment in the eyes of Dravid and he was not hiding it, as he normally does. When asked what he was trying to say when he pointed the bat at the dressing room on completing that fifty in CapeTown against Rajasthan Royals, he said that he wasn't proving anything to anyone, but was just acknowledging the applause of his room mates. But anyone who watched the match that day don't believe that it was done without intention.
Dravid has been under fire for not taking Royal Challengers to the top half of the IPL draw in 2008. He was ridiculed, reprimanded and even publicly humiliated by the RCB owners, journalists and viewing public in general for leading a test side. The standing joke doing rounds in the first IPL edition was that when Vijay Mallya, the owner of RCB, gave the responsibility to Dravid to buy the 'Best' team no matter what it costs; Dravid is believed to have heard it as 'Test' team. How else could one explain a T20 team that contained the likes of Chanderpaul, Kallis, Jaffer, Kumble and himself--all accomplished test players. Despite Dravid's best efforts to be the pillar of batting for his side, by scoring the highest runs for RCB in 2008 that included a quickfire 75 with a strike rate of 208.8, he was largely considered an utter failure in leading a team that contained loads of experience and little direction.
While receiving the MoM award at Cape Town, Dravid opened up and was quite vocal about his batting performance. This was a different Dravid for sure. He didn't mince words when he said that these are the conditions that bring out the best in him and he said it was when the ball is doing something that boys like him have an opportunity to do well. And he had done exactly that. When everyone was trying to hit their way out of the difficult batting conditions, it was Dravid alone who stuck to the task and made his knock count in difficult conditions. It was not as if he was getting bogged down and hitting to the fielders all the time. He was free-flowing and quite determined in his rapid 66. The fact that his individual score was 8 runs more than the combined total of Rajasthan Royals, spoke volumes about his impeccable knock. In his response to Shastri's questions during the MoM award, he was as free flowing in talking as he was in his batting.
Those of us who are following him very closely over the years know that this was not the usual Dravid, who couldn't express his true feelings in public. The fact that he hasn't come out in public on his decision to quit captaincy at the peak of his career is still a mystery. His free talk at the presentation indicated only one thing. That Dravid today is enjoying his batting and is not bothered about criticism anymore. Glimpses of his changed frame of mind was visible in New Zealand when he criticised Sehwag and Laxman (more the former than the latter) when they said that they fell while playing their natural game in the second test where it was necessary to stay put and bide time to save the match. Dravid battled for more than 4 hours in the second innings and in the company of Gambhir (who is touted as the next Wall of India). He said forcefully that there was nothing like a natural game in test cricket and a true cricketer has to play according to the situation. That was a great lesson for the slam bang gang of today who feel there is no cricket beyond the hit-and-run variety. Dravid's experience finally made him talk.
It surely shows that Dravid is enjoying his cricket these days. He has no fear or favor and is also ready to speak his mind now. He is well on his way to becoming the leading run-getter of IPL2 and his agressive play and sound technique is making the so-called more accomplished T20 experts squirm in their seats. Let's hope runs and words flow freely from this legend and be a great education for the younger lot this season!
Monday, November 9, 2009
Of Clouds, SOA and 2.0!
Recession has hit everyone in every possible way. Surviving downturn is only possible for those who are strong in their fundamentals. Salt March media obviously knows its basics well. It successfully organized and executed its 2-day business technology summit on Nov 3 and 4 2009 with clinical efficiency and delivered value for the huge 1400+ audience. Companies don't sponsor their employees for conferences these days as it simply doesn't make business sense to them. But, BT Summit was different. Through some innovative marketing (offering discounted prices - Rs. 500 for 2 days is a steal) and intelligent followups, they ensured that a number of technology and business enthusiasts could take part in this event.
However, low conference fees didn't mean poor speakers and inadequate facilities. The conference was held at the seat of scientific learning in India--IISc. The speakers were experts on the topics they were talking about. And the marketing pitch was conspicuously missing in their presentations. What a whiff of fresh air!
Held at the JN Tata Auditorium, the 1400+ particpants savored every moment of this business-technology extravaganza. How appropriate it was for Howard Charney, a member of the Cisco's President's office to talk about the future of smart services as the opening day keynote address. Howard's multi-media presentation drove home the point of how the future would see machine-to-machine communications as well as many-to-many communications. His representation on grid computing and a demonstration of how hologram communication would work in reality were eye openers for the audience.
The second keynote address by Ramkumar Kothandaraman from Microsoft brought us right into the most talked about subject in the conference--Cloud computing. His presentation initiated the audience to Cloud computing, SaaS and utility computing and helped participants get a first hand view of what to expect in the next 2 days.
After the keynote, I got into hall C for a talk on 'making SOA while the economy whines'. Yogesh Devi of Perot Systems made some very pertinent points of how to approach SOA in the economic downturn with a good analogy of 'making hay while the sun shines'. He gave a good introduction to SOA and also explained how to balance the spectrum of JBOWS (Just a bunch of web services) and the technology overload. Eben Hewitt's talk on succeeding with SOA in Hall A gave a 3-stage plan for SOA design involving services, infrastructure and governance. The best presentation of the first half of the day came from Anand Ramakrishnan, GM-cloud computing at Wipro. He took us through a detailed 5-D formula for implementing cloud--Discover, Define, Design, Decide and Deliver--and beautifully explained the Do's and Don'ts of cloud computing.
The afternoon saw a high decibel and highly entertaining keynote address by Som Sarma, the IT Services Head at 3-I Infotech. The most telling part of his presentation was about how companies need to tolerate failures of its employees in order to encourage innovation. The software+services presentation by Sachin V Rathi of Microsoft was another highlight of the first day afternoon. The talk was centred around the accummulation of infarstructure and software services in clouds that can offer scalable, reusable and highly available computing for the enterprises.
The second day had some very interesting presentations. The concept of Web 2.0 and collaboration and its utility for a corporation was explained with examples by Jagadish Vasishta. The next presentation on information overload by Tobias Rueckert was entertaining as well as enlightening. Did you know that you lose almost one whole day of productivity per week, just by checking emails once every 5 minutes?
The afternoon saw the highly relaxed Vivek Khurana giving a clutter-free presentation on enterprise dashboards to a full-house gathering at Hall B. He made very interesting points about what constitutes an enterprise dashboard and the future trends in this arena--like the animated charts, streaming dashboards, collaborative visualization and expressions. This was followed by Udayan Banerjee's practical experience in implementing Enterprise 2.0 at NIIT. He explained the essentials of Web 2.0 as put forward by Harvard McAfee through SLATES and what choices NIIT made in this direction. Later, Alen Pelz-Sharpe's presentation on CMIS was an eye-opener. He also touched upon a number of new standards other than CMIS in ECM (Enterprise content management) that would rule the technology landscape in the near future.
Overall the conference was a knowledge enhancing experience. The speakers were present for their talks without miss and on time.
The conference also had its fair share of negatives. The JN Tata Auditorium gives the occupants a suffocating feeling, maybe due to its inadequate AC and inappropriate exhaust. The halls, other than the main hall, cannot accommodate >100 people, which is a pity for a conference of this size. The participants were literally seen jostling for space during every interchange. And the food was far from satisfactory--a bland fare, that couldn't stimulate the taste buds as much as the talks could stimulate the minds in the conference.
The conference was a big learning experience for me and I could hear, learn and understand the concepts of cloud computing, SOA, Software as a service, utlity computing, collaborating, enterprise 2.0. web 2.0, business intelligence, ECM, CMIS...... phew....thatz a lot of learning in 2 days!!!
However, low conference fees didn't mean poor speakers and inadequate facilities. The conference was held at the seat of scientific learning in India--IISc. The speakers were experts on the topics they were talking about. And the marketing pitch was conspicuously missing in their presentations. What a whiff of fresh air!
Held at the JN Tata Auditorium, the 1400+ particpants savored every moment of this business-technology extravaganza. How appropriate it was for Howard Charney, a member of the Cisco's President's office to talk about the future of smart services as the opening day keynote address. Howard's multi-media presentation drove home the point of how the future would see machine-to-machine communications as well as many-to-many communications. His representation on grid computing and a demonstration of how hologram communication would work in reality were eye openers for the audience.
The second keynote address by Ramkumar Kothandaraman from Microsoft brought us right into the most talked about subject in the conference--Cloud computing. His presentation initiated the audience to Cloud computing, SaaS and utility computing and helped participants get a first hand view of what to expect in the next 2 days.
After the keynote, I got into hall C for a talk on 'making SOA while the economy whines'. Yogesh Devi of Perot Systems made some very pertinent points of how to approach SOA in the economic downturn with a good analogy of 'making hay while the sun shines'. He gave a good introduction to SOA and also explained how to balance the spectrum of JBOWS (Just a bunch of web services) and the technology overload. Eben Hewitt's talk on succeeding with SOA in Hall A gave a 3-stage plan for SOA design involving services, infrastructure and governance. The best presentation of the first half of the day came from Anand Ramakrishnan, GM-cloud computing at Wipro. He took us through a detailed 5-D formula for implementing cloud--Discover, Define, Design, Decide and Deliver--and beautifully explained the Do's and Don'ts of cloud computing.
The afternoon saw a high decibel and highly entertaining keynote address by Som Sarma, the IT Services Head at 3-I Infotech. The most telling part of his presentation was about how companies need to tolerate failures of its employees in order to encourage innovation. The software+services presentation by Sachin V Rathi of Microsoft was another highlight of the first day afternoon. The talk was centred around the accummulation of infarstructure and software services in clouds that can offer scalable, reusable and highly available computing for the enterprises.
The second day had some very interesting presentations. The concept of Web 2.0 and collaboration and its utility for a corporation was explained with examples by Jagadish Vasishta. The next presentation on information overload by Tobias Rueckert was entertaining as well as enlightening. Did you know that you lose almost one whole day of productivity per week, just by checking emails once every 5 minutes?
The afternoon saw the highly relaxed Vivek Khurana giving a clutter-free presentation on enterprise dashboards to a full-house gathering at Hall B. He made very interesting points about what constitutes an enterprise dashboard and the future trends in this arena--like the animated charts, streaming dashboards, collaborative visualization and expressions. This was followed by Udayan Banerjee's practical experience in implementing Enterprise 2.0 at NIIT. He explained the essentials of Web 2.0 as put forward by Harvard McAfee through SLATES and what choices NIIT made in this direction. Later, Alen Pelz-Sharpe's presentation on CMIS was an eye-opener. He also touched upon a number of new standards other than CMIS in ECM (Enterprise content management) that would rule the technology landscape in the near future.
Overall the conference was a knowledge enhancing experience. The speakers were present for their talks without miss and on time.
The conference also had its fair share of negatives. The JN Tata Auditorium gives the occupants a suffocating feeling, maybe due to its inadequate AC and inappropriate exhaust. The halls, other than the main hall, cannot accommodate >100 people, which is a pity for a conference of this size. The participants were literally seen jostling for space during every interchange. And the food was far from satisfactory--a bland fare, that couldn't stimulate the taste buds as much as the talks could stimulate the minds in the conference.
The conference was a big learning experience for me and I could hear, learn and understand the concepts of cloud computing, SOA, Software as a service, utlity computing, collaborating, enterprise 2.0. web 2.0, business intelligence, ECM, CMIS...... phew....thatz a lot of learning in 2 days!!!
Friday, November 6, 2009
Is Sachin Great?
I must confess. I started researching for this blog with a clear bias against Tendulkar. My observation as a cricket buff for the last 20 years has made me believe that Tendulkar somehow plays more for his own records than for his team. Sachin has proved such allegations wrong at various points in his cricketing career. Still, it is but natural for cricket fans like me to feel that Tendulkar somehow falls short of 'greatness' by losing breath just before the finishing line. This discussion has gained currency yet again as Tendulkar got out for 175 yesterday, with India just needing 19 runs to win against Australia. India lost this match.
My feeling has always been that Tendulkar is a master batsman when India bats first, but has always been unsuccessful in winning matches for India while chasing. The true character of a great batsman can be gauged by how often he crosses the finishing line while chasing, when the pressure is at its peak.
In order to check if my feeling of bias towards Tendulkar was not just a negative perception, I checked the cricinfo Website for Sachin's batting records. On the site I found a list of Tendulkar's career high scores. It was truly amazing to see 45 100s and 91 50s from the master blaster. I decided to concentrate only on the 100s Tendulkar had scored, that too, while batting second. As expected, Tendulkar had scored lesser number of hundreds while chasing (17) than while batting first (28). I also wanted to exclude those centuries he had scored against weaker teams like Kenya and Zimbabwe, while batting second. That brought down the number of hundreds to 11 batting second. Out of these I could see a clear distinction between his small hundreds (100-140)and big hundreds (140-190). Almost 90% of his 11 centuries in the 100-140 range were wins for India. On the other hand almost 90% of all hundreds in 140-190 range were losses.
I also observed another piece of statistics. Out of all the high scores in a losing cause, Tendulkar figured prominently. Out of 69 such instances of high scores by various batsmen in the world in a losing cause, Tendulkar's name figures 7 times. The contrast is glaring when you compare this with his other contemporaries like Ponting, Jayasuriya and Dravid, all of whom have one such occurence each in that list. Brian Lara doesn't even figure in the 'highest scores in a losing cause' list. Chris Gayle, with his one-man heroics for WI is a close second with 6 such high scores in a losing cause.
Of course you might argue that Tendulkar has played more matches and has more centuries and therefore has more such instances of failure. That could be partially true. But when a batsman of the calibre of Tendulkar is unable to win matches after scoring 140+ in so many cases, it probably indicates that he hasn't been able to reach the hall of greatness. You could also say that Tendulkar's team-mates have always let him down, making him carry all the burden till the end. Well, that is what great players are expected to do, right?
Does it mean Tendulkar plays more for his own records than for his team? Maybe not. But the records prove otherwise.
My feeling has always been that Tendulkar is a master batsman when India bats first, but has always been unsuccessful in winning matches for India while chasing. The true character of a great batsman can be gauged by how often he crosses the finishing line while chasing, when the pressure is at its peak.
In order to check if my feeling of bias towards Tendulkar was not just a negative perception, I checked the cricinfo Website for Sachin's batting records. On the site I found a list of Tendulkar's career high scores. It was truly amazing to see 45 100s and 91 50s from the master blaster. I decided to concentrate only on the 100s Tendulkar had scored, that too, while batting second. As expected, Tendulkar had scored lesser number of hundreds while chasing (17) than while batting first (28). I also wanted to exclude those centuries he had scored against weaker teams like Kenya and Zimbabwe, while batting second. That brought down the number of hundreds to 11 batting second. Out of these I could see a clear distinction between his small hundreds (100-140)and big hundreds (140-190). Almost 90% of his 11 centuries in the 100-140 range were wins for India. On the other hand almost 90% of all hundreds in 140-190 range were losses.
I also observed another piece of statistics. Out of all the high scores in a losing cause, Tendulkar figured prominently. Out of 69 such instances of high scores by various batsmen in the world in a losing cause, Tendulkar's name figures 7 times. The contrast is glaring when you compare this with his other contemporaries like Ponting, Jayasuriya and Dravid, all of whom have one such occurence each in that list. Brian Lara doesn't even figure in the 'highest scores in a losing cause' list. Chris Gayle, with his one-man heroics for WI is a close second with 6 such high scores in a losing cause.
Of course you might argue that Tendulkar has played more matches and has more centuries and therefore has more such instances of failure. That could be partially true. But when a batsman of the calibre of Tendulkar is unable to win matches after scoring 140+ in so many cases, it probably indicates that he hasn't been able to reach the hall of greatness. You could also say that Tendulkar's team-mates have always let him down, making him carry all the burden till the end. Well, that is what great players are expected to do, right?
Does it mean Tendulkar plays more for his own records than for his team? Maybe not. But the records prove otherwise.
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