With a Pinch of Salt

How will we remember this World Cup? We are through with the league stage. Entering now in the business end of the tournament. Fate of 8 teams has been decided, and by the next fortnight, rest shall follow suit. One will emerge as a champion. Rest will ponder on intangibles of the game. Some spells shall change the course of the match, some knocks will define careers, a few will call curtains on their glorious journey over the last two decades. Every four years, the cricket world cup becomes a spectacle for millions, raises hopes for a nation, brings people together and leaves with memories for ages. Memories, I believe, whether pleasant or unpleasant ones have always inspired individuals and teams. And no wonder, each edition of a World Cup comes back with inspired cricketers, some who try to emulate success and some who try to turn new corners in the books of history. Each of the previous editions lived up to the expectation. Countless heroics have come together t...

Till 2nd April 2011 this year, Gautam Gambhir was the most loved son of India. In fact there were a million sad faces across the nation when he missed out on a well deserving century in a world cup final. The news papers next day were all praises about Gambhir being the big match player, had put up a price for his wicket, and not to forget that dive he made to save himself off  another run out, which has not quite been a feature in Gambhir's running between the wickets. What he didn't know was that the injury he would sustain, and which he would ignore to bat again and help his country win the world cup, would come to haunt him the next month. And not only has that caused him to miss the ALL SO VERY IMPORTANT tour of West Indies, it has also raised questions about the man's integrity and commitment to play for the country. Lets' get the facts straight here. We won't have to surrender our World Cup trophy if we lose to West Indies. Secondly, there is no harm restin...

Till about two days back, I had been quite ignorant about what was going around in my city or lets say in broader terms, in my country. The world cup fever was not over yet and that meant turning straight into the sports section of the newspapers. Maybe because I had got it settled in me that in another four years to come, there would be innumerable headlines about the scams. With 2nd generation scams (2G) a story of the past now, we will move onto the new generation of scams (3G maybe), see our "common wealth" going into the hands of the not so 'common' people of the nation and so on and so forth. But the fact that I was still hooked onto the world cup was that in my 23 years of being present on this planet, I felt being the part of a nation's success for the first time. In the due course, what I missed out completely was, that amongst the last few Gandhians left in our 1.2 billion population country, one man had taken a pledge to fast unto death if the Lokpal ...

Kevin Peterson, while making his bold statement about the Indian southpaw, more than 2 years back, would never have imagined that he'll have to swallow his words with a bitter pill. Neither would have this thought crossed his mind that the man he was talking about would be walking away with the most coveted trophy a player can achieve in the game of cricket, The Player of the Tournament in a World Cup. Add to it the World Cup trophy and KP might just be right in finding a place to bury his head and save himself from the brickbats of a fanatic nation called India. Its not for the first time that Yuvraj has answered the call of the hour in his 11 year old long career. The last time the Englishmen got the drubbing was when six of their fielders were searching for the white leather in all parts of the ground and Stuart Broad was happy that finally his name is going to be etched in the history of the game forever, along with the other unfortunate souls who were dispatched for six sixe...