Ripples on the brain

After the triumph at Wimbledon last year, we all wondered where Federer will be at this year’s Wimbledon. We thought he might be fighting to get on par with Pete Sampras or probably to even dethrone him considering Federer’s clay court game had also been improving and this year he was due for a French title. And to watch Federer yesterday was just pathetic.

Not that he was playing poorly, but it was just amazing to watch how much effort he had to put to get a single point. Like for one of his serves, he just changed his plan the last minute and served it short and high so that he could volley. When Nadal was serving, he started moving around like how batsmen do in the last few overs in a cricket match. I didn’t like Nadal’s game, but I think the way he kept running and returning whatever was thrown at him was super human. He just seemed to defy the uncertainty principle with his power and precision. Now that Nadal has barged into “Federer’s part” of the season, it remains to be seen how the year progresses. Normally Nadal’s game plateaus post-Wimbledon, but this year may be different.

Though the general opinion is otherwise, I somehow like a sport being dominated by a single person - an icon. I cannot prove it through data, but I feel the attention to a sport increases whenever an icon dominates it. Schumacher readily comes to mind. Even in tennis, nobody remembers the period when these non-icons win Grand Slam tournaments. It might be probably because hero worship in ingrained my psyche.

Yaay!!! We won, we won…Wish I were India at this time joining the celebrations all around

A post that waited as a draft for quite sometime now. ..

If an Indian cricketer with some stature were to retire, what would his retirement speech consist of? Or specifically how would he want himself to be remembered as? The answer will definitely feature “playing for the country” somewhere. Read how Lara wants to be remembered as:

“I want to be remembered as a batsman who provided entertainment to the fans and in adversity tried my best to perform…”

The one innings that I remember of Lara was during a test match when West Indies toured Down Under. If my memory serves me right, that was the last test in the series and West Indies had performed abysmally in the earlier matches. When Lara walked in, McGrath was at his best, having already captured an early wicket or two. That’s when he did something, that I thought was very ingenious. To counter the outswing of McGrath, he moved his back foot outside the off-stump just before the bowler delivered the ball. By this he ensured that he didn’t have to play any ball that goes on his off-side. He played only the balls that came to his body. Balls directed at the middle and leg stump were at his legs and so he could despatch them to fence very easily. The commentators at that time, mentioned that this was a very defensive move and he could never score. Lara not only countered McGrath, but scored a century in that match.

I loved Lara for the beauty and elegance of his game. Ofcourse, he was highly inconsistent and probably arrogant with his board (especially in the company of Carl Hooper) and his players. But that didn’t matter to me as I didn’t have the burden of wanting West Indies to win. David Boon or someone, in his autobiography, mentioned that three best batsmen, at the time of his retirement, were Sachin Tendulkar, Steve Waugh and Brian Lara. But I think, he also said that Sachin stood out among the three as he could score at will irrespective of the nature of the bowling. I personally think that complement should go to Lara more than Sachin. Even in Test Cricket, Lara would suddenly hit consecutive boundaries even of excellent balls.

I haven’t seen a lot innings of Lara, but hope to catch up with some of them sometime.

This post is quite late, but is still relevant I think. Find below excerpts from Kris Srikanth’s pre-match analysis of the “quarterfinal” match between England and South Africa:

Both sides (England and South Africa) are beset with similar problems. The openers have failed to get going and the skippers are not among the runs. Sides generally lift themselves when the men at the helm strike and sadly that has not been the case with Graeme Smith and Michael Vaughan. Australia run away from the rest of the sides because nine times out of ten their openers give the innings the impetus and sadly England and South Africa have been found wanting in this regard.

South African captain Smith is not among runs in the series! Also, South African openers didn’t give impetus to their innings in the World cup! Clearly, the pressure to write some crap daily shows . Check your stats please.

…not having been a part of the playing eleven in any of the matches during the world cup is that you can feature in advertisements now. Good for Irfan Pathan! But I don’t know how the advertising folks make such assumptions.