* "Much ado about" : THE Ongoing One-Day international cricket match series in India, between England & India.
* Series status : India 2 : England 0
• 1st ODI : Margin of defeat > 100+ runs
• 2nd.ODI : Margin of defeat > 8 wickets
* Personal Commentary :
"Now, whatever happened to the Brits? Where are the champion warriors that mauled an exhausted, injured, depleted to effectively an India - B side to a 4-0 white-washed subjugation in Hyde Park?"
A starting sentence like this aimed at the English side or rather the cricket they play on field, (which is actually a rub-it-in query, soaked in sarcasm, dripping wet in caustic vengeance), should demote me from a cricket-lover to a blind, loud, aggressive, illogical fanatic. Fanatics hardly bother about promotions & demotions of their support-profile status. And history does give me a fair right to do so if I remember what was being written in the sports pages of Indian newspapers and British tabloids when the 4-0 mauling was being white-washed.
As an Indian cricket - lover who supports his national team, I'm here for some boisterous celebration of India's victories and not to sledge England on every defeat. I acknowledge their goods and appreciating their cricket with due respect.
But I should gun for the 'Connoisseur Coterie' -- the cynics who wrote off the world champions as an overhyped, spoilt, unprofessional, cash-hungry, over-paid bunch of players who needed a good spanking, particularly writing off "Brand Dhoni" to an eternal exile in oblivion? This bunch of cricket appreciative analysts should be spanked and debarred from public expression. Perhaps cash payments for appearing in the A-V media should be stopped.
Denouncing T-20 cricket as the guide to Armageddon of Indian Cricket at the drop of a hat or a poor performance of a player is their forte. Going for the throats of national players who play in IPL is their philosophy. They are ever-ready to demean lavishly every act of glory Team India has performed. They see cheating and swept-under-the-carpet conspiracies everywhere which supposedly provide millions of ill-gotten cash to defaulted cricketers. They readily diagnose out-of-form cricketers as money making betrayers, villains who are here to get rich and not to play for the country.
It seems these pathetic paranoids have surrendered a Virtue to a lust for instant gratification, of the T-20 kind. The Virtue of Patience, an integral part of the king of games, or the game of kings. They want Persistent Instant Success. It stinks of a 'colonised Indian mentality'
which should have been extinct by now.
A note of advice for these Pundits with an eternal frown : Cricket is not baseball or American football. While I empathise with modern jet-speedos trying to catch up with the rushing hours of a day where Speed is the mantra, you should first learn about a word called RESPECT before proceeding to comment on 3rd millenium cricket & cricketers.
Precisely speaking, : SHUT UP. FOR GOOD.
Sent from my BlackBerry®Smartphone ------------------------------------------------------
Dr.Anirban Chaudhuri, MBBS
Consultant Physician,
Mumbai, India. ------------------------------------------------------
"It is important to just listen for a while instead of speaking." -- My teacher ------------------------------------------------------
Wow we are waiting to watch next series. Great cricket is most favourite game.
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