Poor me and T20

I know that’s a strange title for a post but you would realize very soon why (hopefully) :)

My last post got 7 comments – that’s kind of a record… instead of feeling elated I felt like a “bottom 10 percentile guy being told why he is the top 10 percentile guy and why he could be the next CEO of the company - all this when he puts in his papers”…
Poor me? What the heck! I was afraid of this kind of reaction and made an attempt to dissuade the same in my post but people are people… people are good at “selective reading”… I am not least pleased for being labeled “poor me” especially because I never meant it that way! (Munjay, I am not taking off on you… though you commented “poor me” explicitly, others were saying the same implicitly).
Ah, the only good part being I realized that more people read my blog than I thought!

Anyways, I have decided to change my tracks again and comment on the current affairs… T20 is the hottest thing around and this might sound like a “run of the mill” attempt but let me give it a try. Am sure you would like it… Here I go…

I see lot of similarity between Russians and Indians as far respecting our past is concerned…

The first thing Russians did when communism was brought down was to bring down Lenin’s statue… and throw Gorbachev into oblivion… and give the power in the hands of a drunkard (Yeltsin)… Stalin and Khrushchev I can understand but why Lenin? Wasn’t he the guy who booted the Czar away? Why Gorbachev? Wasn’t he the guy who actually made all this possible – starting with glasnost and perestroika… it was all so euphoric – giving the power in the hands of the great messiah of democracy (how does it matter if he cant even walk straight because of his vodka laced breakfast, lunch and dinner)…

What happened? Russia saw very high level of inflation, hunger, unemployment, corruption and what not… There was a shortage of food – not that communists were hiding this problem from the world earlier - because there were no people to till the land – it’s all mechanized out there but you need people to run the machines… communists had this mandatory stuff of students being sent to farms in their summer vacation and stuff like that… may be it was “cruel” but it worked – it kept people well fed… but well, it’s a ‘democracy’ now – let people decide what they want to do – even if it means they want to die of hunger!
From being a super power, Russia is part of BRIC – Brazil, Russia, India and China – the upcoming economic powers of the world – in essence, more or less a third world country… Long live democracy!!

I am no great supporter of communism (neither in a political nor in an economic sense - looking at our own left parties makes me feel that they walk backwards!) but hey, why is capitalism better? It has its own evils… I guess capitalism is “better” because communism is a spent force today and capitalism is still thriving…

Anyways, let me not digress from the key topic – the problem I see with Russians is that they do not know how to respect their past – at least the parts which are better ones. They bashed all and sundry including Lenin and Gorbachev. They could not figure out bad from good. They went for the package. They felt democracy was good even if it was a Yeltsin inside and coomunism was bad even if it was a Gorbachev inside. The results are there for everyone to see...

So, why do I think Indians are similar?
Look at the way we are treating the “big three” after the T20 world cup win and the T20 win against Australia last week. Suddenly, these 3 guys are pariahs… they are the reason for all the evils in the Indian cricket… Everyone including media is talking about the energy, running between the wickets, fielding etc in T20… And how that is because of the absence of the “big three”!
Come on guys, Sachin is your most consistent performer in one-dayers in the last 2 series (England & Australia)… Am not sure what would have been the results if Sachin and Ganguly were not batting at the top… Rahul is a different story – he does not want the pressures of being the captain, he does not want the pressure of batting (check his latest scores) and he does not want the pressure of fielding (check the catches dropped recently) – for me, he is a mental case and should rather be in an asylum than ‘sportingly’ ferrying water for the team…

Coming back to the main topic (I have this knack of getting digressed, don’t I?), what people don’t seem to have understood is that T20 is tailor made for Indians – Indians are weak genetically (I mean relatively weak – food habits, life style, lack of red meat, lack of exercise – all this for generations; and please, don’t start calling me a racist just because I called Indians “weak” – labeling others as racists seems to be another “in thing” these days!)... the maximum they can sustain their energy is for 20 overs… I have seen Gambhir twice and Sehwag once batting for more than 10 overs – excellent running between wickets et all – but at the end of 10 overs their tongues were hanging 3 feet down in the want of oxygen and water… there is no way Gambhir can do this in a 50-over match… and Sehwag we all know…
The boundaries are shorter which means the fielders don’t need to run around much… It also means Yuvraj can hit all those sixers (no offence meant… Yuvi is one of the best hitters around!)… All in all, the game is just suitable for us Indians – and we will remain a major power in this game for some time to come…
In all this, we have just forgotten what the “big three” have done for the Indian team over the years and suddenly they are unwanted ones, the villains… please! Leave them alone – well, at least the “big two”… you want to take on Rahul? Please be my guest! In fact, I strongly feel Sachin can do a good job in T20 and agree with Gilchrist’s statement that T20 can elongate careers, being a shorter version… Gilly for one would definitely like to believe that at the ripe age of 35 :)

And now for this week’s poll –
(oh my gosh! scroll down!!)

Moon Landing – What a baloney!

When I saw the moon landing clip for the first time in my life (which was definitely after 1983 because that’s when the TV first arrived in my small town), the first thing I noticed was the American flag fluttering in the wind… The intelligent kid I was I knew that there was no air and hence no wind on moon… Though the intelligent kid I was I did not dare raise this issue to anyone because I thought I would be laughed at… apart from being intelligent, I was sensitive too and could not afford someone laughing at me… I let it go… of course we (i.e. humans) had landed on moon… how could someone doubt that?
Anyway, the small iota of doubt did make it’s home in the backroom of my mind…

Access to literature was limited (or may be it was lack of my awareness) and as a kid I never got to read all the material raising doubts about moon landing… I did once read somewhere a Hindu Sadhu claiming that the Moon is beyond the reach of humans and Americans must have landed on a piece of rock somewhere close to the Earth… Me being a non-religious type just read it, shrugged and forgot about it…

Anyway, the moon landings were supposed to have happened more than 35 years back and whatever amount of controversy might have been there with the whole thing... you don’t sit and ponder about it after 35 years… definitely not if you are not part of the generation that was part of the whole excitement – most of the ‘landings’ happened well before I was born…

The reason the whole thing came back like a déjà vu is because couple of things happened recently – first, the person whom I consider the best President (so far) of the United States – a person named George W Bush – announced that we (i.e. human beings) are going back to the Moon by 2020 and second, more at a personal level, an enlightening visit to the NASA facility at Cape Canaveral…

Consider the following –
1. Russians were the first to send a satellite in the space
2. Russians were the first to send a living creature in space (the poor dog died)
3. Russians were the first to send a human in the space (the bloke did manage to come back)
4. Russians were the first to send a probe to the Moon
5. Russians were the first to send a human to the Moon
6. Russians were the first to build the space station
The list goes on…

Oops, point number 5 is not correct… Russians were NOT the first to go to the Moon… in fact, they never went to the Moon… Americans beat them at it – in fact, Americans managed to send 14 men over a period of 3-4 years while Russians sent none – never ever!
So, folks, Americans were behind the Russians all along as far as space race is concerned but for one thing – Moon landing! I can't believe that most of the world genuinely believes that Americans did land on the Moon… Russians never loudly protested – may be they did but it did not reach the ears of the capitalistic world…

If you consider the timing… cold war, Russian consistently beating Americans at the biggest show off, a dashing and dynamic President, a dashing and dynamic President making promise to go to Moon, a dashing and dynamic President making promise to go to the Moon and then dying, cold war still hot… What would you do if you were caught in this situation? If you can’t go to the Moon, the least you would do is get a bunch of Hollywood directors and make a movie!!
Well, that’s the feeling I got when I visited NASA at Cape Canaveral earlier this year… well, NASA is not all about Moon but there is so much focus on telling the Moon tale and there is so much focus on trying to convince that the Moon landings indeed took place that even a believer would start doubting…
And when they tell you the whole story – Kennedy announcement, misfired rockets, people dying in Apollo explosions, landings and missed landings of Apollo 13 – it starts sounding like a Hollywood thriller… it just sounds like a Hollywood thriller!!!

The funniest explanation I read of the fluttering flag was in “Who built the Moon?”. It goes like this – Armstrong had to swivel the flag post on the Moon surface to fix it… the swivel caused the fluttering of the flag and since there is no air on the Moon, there was nothing to dampen the flutter and hence the flag fluttered for a very long time… Too bad Armtrong did not carry a hammer - it would have saved NASA from a big controversy... And what if the surface they landed on was not soft enough for the flag post to be swivelled in???
Anyways, I think the swivel theory is "brilliant" – I wonder why NASA has been more or less silent on this issue and did not use the swivel theory…

The icing on the cake is thanks to the "brilliant" Bush (BB). BB announced that they are going back to the Moon and beyond (well, you need something big and exciting to take the spotlight away from Iraq debacle) – back to the Moon by, er!, 2020… well, er, why does it take 50 years (yes, 50 years – 1970 to 2020) to go back to the Moon??? And mind it, they would start with unmanned missions first – basically going through the whole cycle again…
NASA is so brilliant – they sent people to the Moon 35 years back but still keep killing their own people trying to send them to the lower space!

Ladies and Gentlemen: Moon landing – what a baloney… a big, large piece of stinking crap…

Now, it’s time for the poll –