ICC Awards

It was a rather special evening in Mumbai.

The Cricketing City today hosted Hundai ICC Awards 2006, an event coloured in the colours of Cricket and Bollywood. (And an event which will make the last pages of tomorrow’s newspapers into ‘pg. 3’)

While Australia won five of the eight awards, India got none. The only thing to cheer for the Indian camp, apart from the beautiful arrangements, was declaration of Indian skipper Rahul Dravid as the Captain of All-Star Test XI of the year and inclusion of Irfan Pathan and Yuvraj Singh in All-Star ODI XI of the year.

The players who were winners at the awards, also known as Cricket Oscars, this year are:

Rickey Ponting, Australia: Player of The Year (Sir Garfield Sobers Trophy) and Best Test Player of the Year

This Aussie Captain is thrilled to receive both of these awards and also credited his fellow team-mates.
Ponting was presented the ICC Player of the Year award by Indian Meastro- Sachin Tendulkar.


Mahela Jayawardhane, Sri Lanka: The Captain of The Year

The 29 year old received his Trophy from legendary Imran Khan, former Pakistan Captain. Interestingly Mhela has just celebrated his marriage anniversary and walked in to the venue with his wife, Christina. And had this nice surprise waiting for him!

Michael Hussey, Australia: Best One-day Player of The year

Well records are enough to show how impressive he has been over the last year.

Karen Rolton, Australia: Women’s Player of The Year

Karen, Captain of Australian Women’s Cricket Team, went ahead of India’s Anjum Chopra and England’s Katherine Brunt to become the first to receive the first Women’s Player of The Year award. The addition of this new Award is a greatly appreciated move by ICC.

Ian Bell (England): Emerging player of the year:

Simon Taufel (Australia): Umpire of the year

Spirit of the Cricket Award: England


All-Star ODI XI of the year
Adam Gilchrist (wk), MS Ohoni, Ricky Panting, Mahela Jayawardene (captain), Yuvraj Singh, Michael Hussey, Andrew Flintoff, Irfan
Pathan, Brett Lee, Shane Bond, Muttiah Muralitharan.
12th man:
Andrew Symmonds.

All-Star Test XI of the year
Matthew Hayden, Michael Hussey, Ricky Panting, Rahul Oravid (Captain), Mohd Yousuf, Kumar Sangakkara, Andrew Flintoff, Shane Warne, Makhaya Ntini, Muttiah Muralitharan, Glenn McGrath.
12th man: Brett Lee.

photo curtesy: Crickinfo.com

New "TATA" Height

On the eve of Diwali, the TATA Steal announced the largest ever Indian takeover of a Foreign Company….and today came the news that the joint venture is about to bid for Brazil’s biggest Steal Firm CSN- Companhia Siderurgica nacional. Tata took over UK’s seven years old firm ‘Corus’ ranked ninth in the world.

Tata took over UK’s seven years old firm Corus, an Anglo-Dutch firm ranked ninth in the world. This has been a remarkable achievement for the celebrated Indian Firm who has played a part in the Country’s development. Let’s hope this recent take-over brings out another boom in Indian industry.

Sensex on another high

The BSE ‘Sensex’, finally reached to the much awaited peak for the last few weeks, it crossed the 13,000 mark. As the index went up 117 points to close at 13024 a wave of happiness spread among at the Dalal Street and the Investors and Traders worldwide leaped up with joy.

There has been a debate over whether the Share index is a real reflection of the country’s progress and whether it represents the commonest of the common. However, without doubt this is a remarkable achievement as far as the Indian Share Markets are concerned.

Finally the justice for Priyadarshini Mattoo

The Delhi High Court today gave Death Sentence to Santosh Singh who allegedly raped and killed 23 years old law student Priyadarshini Mattoo.
The justice came after 11 years, but It Came, finally, giving at least some relief to the Matto Family and a ray of hope to the families of victims in two other high-profile cases- Jessica Lal and Nitish Katara Murder Cases.

The Judges, while reading the Statement, observed the circumstance as rarest of the rare. However this has triggered the age long discussion over Death Penalty for Rapists again. Singh, a son of an IPS officer and a lawyer by himself brutally killed the victim. In my opinion, he deserves the biggest punishment.

However, I believe that killing a criminal is not the Answer. There is only one solution, which is a rather hard to implement, kill the criminal mentality and not the criminal. To develop a society with lesser no of crimes we need to work very hard. Till then, there appears to be only one punishment for a crime as wild as this one.

Is Roger's Dominance making Tennis boring? NO. Not at All.

In the life of every game there comes a time when someone or the other dominates the game.
and in the life of every Great Player there comes a time when he/she dominates the scenareo. (Golf and Tiger Woods, F1 and Schumacher, Cycling and Armstrong, Cricket and Australia, so on..)
and then Even a small loss by such kings of their time counts as much as a big victory.

This is Roger's turn. We should enjoy it and not get bored, well, It's not at all boring.

And by the way, Ther is nothing wrong if Roger dominates the game."Roger dominates" doesn't mean other players are not good enough.
It's just the class of this man that makes us forget about most of the others, including even Players of Caliber like Nadal or Roddic or Safin.

Tennis was always exciting and Roger has in fact made it more exciting.
He emerges as a great challange to every other player and they try to put their best efforts in.
So Roger has to win every match, every set, every game, every point on his own.

If not with the opponents, he is competing with himself, doing things he always dreamt of but couldn't do till now.

Although he has achieved so much, so much is to be achieved. He will have to continue fighting till there are players left on the face of the Earth... And I guess this struggle isn't less exciting!

Home win for Roger

A win in the Final, The Records, The Trophy, The Smile, The Emotions …

Roger Federer has done it again. Yet this one was a special one, a really really special one as it took seven attempts.
This time he has won at Basel a place where he once worked as a Ball-boy, a place where he dreamt to play one day, a place where he was born and brought up.

He won the Swiss Indoors, his fourth title in a row and eleventh of the year, beating the Chilean Fernando Gonzalez 6-36-2 7-6(3).

This is now becoming very customary that with every win he is setting new records.

With a win in Basel, Roger quenched his 44th ATP Title. And improved his winning record to 87-5
He has also become the first player in Open era to win 10 titles for three consecutive years.
Today, he celebrated his 100th day as World No.1
He also completed his 143rd week as World No. 1. (Only Ivan Lendle (157) and Jimmy Conners (160) are ahead of him)

A 2nd innings

He has retired from the driver’s seat but hasn’t left The Team. So in the near future, we will be able to find him on the Track again in those fiery red colours.

Michael Schumacher is all set to be a ‘super assistant’ to Jean Todt, the new Chief Executive of Team Ferrari.

However he is also searching ‘a new pace of life’ away from F1, as he described it at Ferrari World Finals- the traditional season closer of the racing team at Monza.

A Review of The Movie 'Iqbal'

This is a Post from my old blog, posted in June, 2006

Ashayein khili audience ki

Nagesh Kukunur is nursing a dream, but this time he isn’t acting in it.

Mukta Arts is selling the dream but this time, Showman Subhash Ghai is not into all glittery mahals or larger than life heroes.

‘Iqbal’ is something real- a story of a teenage boy, a journey of his dream, a dream that many thousand Indians nurture in their hearts- to play cricket for India.

So the story is of Iqbal Khan, 18 ( Shreyas Talpade ) who loves Cricket and dreams to earn a national cap. But the obstacles start from right within. Iqbal is deaf and mute. His father ( Yateen Karyekar ), a simple farmer from the remote village kolipad, is however not happy with his son’s passion and wants him to follow his footsteps. But his mother ( Pratiksha Lonkar ) and sister Khatija ( Shweta Prasad ), a schoolgirl, love the game equally and fully support him. Khatija is a great source of inspiration and a channel of communication with others for Iqbal. She makes him join a local Cricket academy run by a veteran coach ( Girish Karnad ). Here Iqbal fine-tunes his bowling skills but suddenly finds himself ruled out of the academy after a stiff with a batsman, of course, the politics.

All his dreams, all hopes seem to vanish away but then he accidentally comes to know that Mohit (Nasiruddin Shah) a village drunkard and an ex-cricketer could help him.

Thus the drama begins. Iqbal has to do many tasks to catch his dream- first, to make Mohit leave drinking, then train hard, run away from home to play in Ranji without even club experience, convince his father, overcome the selection politics and finally get a place in Team India.

So, it’s all about Iqbal’s battle against these challenges with the support of his loving mother, confident sister and friend, philosopher and guide- Mohit. But even more it’s a cricketer in making, a superstar on board. Still, it doesn’t even once get melodramatic although it has every chance to be a masala movie.

Kukunur made protagonist is deaf and mute but not weak. He not only makes Mohit his ‘Guruji’ (Teacher) but also tests him before taking coaching from him before taking coaching from him. This is where “Iqbal” scores over movies like ‘Black’. Similarly, unlike many other movies, Cricket emerges as a distinct character of Iqbal. The focus is on Iqbal’s journey and not on Cricket as a whole. Still what it tells is a story of Cricket- Surely, a rare occasion.

There are several light hearted and cheerful moments like Buffaloes named after Bowlers, Iqbal’s efforts to hide from his father his love for the game and ‘Secret’ Training, Mohit’s Encounters with Khatija and her Mother, and many more… What marks above them all is Mohit’s Mantra- “Heart Thinks like Head”

The Music by Saleem- Suleiman and Sukhvindar Singh, Particulary the Themes of “Ashayen” and “Jeetenge Jeetenge” take the Story to New Heights.

However, at the Climax, the match fails to generate euphoria like that in “Lagaan”. ‘Iqbal’also appears to slow down at times,But overall, it’s a job well done by the Editor Sanjeev Dutta.

The Silhouettes of Iqbal running around the fields, the village environment and the Match ambience reveal the brilliance of Sudeep Chatterjee’s Photography.

On acting front, Shreyas talpade steals the show right from the beginning and makes us identify with him as 18 years old Iqbal. He is well supported by the maestro- Nasiruddin Shah; Nasir’s Mohit is unarguably the best Coach to have. The duo is simply great to watch. While Shweta Prasad, Pratiksha Lonkar and Yateen Karyekar do a remarkable job, Girish Karnad leaves a wonderful impact as a villionous Coach- a symbol of Curruption in Cricket.

Last but not the least, ‘Iqbal’ once again proves Nagesh Kukunur’s excellent skills as a story-teller. This time Nagesh is a much more matured director who succeeds to keep the ‘Ashayein’ (Faith) of the audiences alive.

Imrana’s Struggle for Real Justice

On Oct 18, the Muzzafarnagar District Court passed a decision which is seen as a new ray of hope for women suppressed under the burden of Conservative Society. The Court sentenced Ali Mohammed,69, ten years of imprisonment for raping his daughter-in-law, Imrana,28.

Ali Mohmmed raped his daughter-in-law Imrana, mother of five children, on June 6, 2005. Before going to court, she took the complaint to the Panchayat and local religious heads had asked her to marry her father-in-law and treat her husband, Nur Ilahi, as he her ‘son’ (?)

When the case was finally registered by the police, several social activists including sections of Muslim Community and common people came to her support.

The Court has leaved it up Imrana, saying that there isn’t any condition under which her matrimony could be questioned. This act has laid down clear indications that The Court of Law is superior over any other court in this country. The Case is now a new ray of hope for several suppressed women in the country. At least I hope so.

Imrana, a mother of five says her priorities are with her children and she will abide by the law. She is now living at her parent’s home.

The struggle is not over yet.

Good-bye to the Festival of Lights...

So the Diwali ended today...

but the light it has spread may never end....

What happened to the Blogger????

This is becoming something usual with Blogger now, sudden failure and repairs.

I came in to write on "Monday" and now, it's Tuesday... for past three hours, I'm dealing with log-in and other problems....too hectic!!!! I'm too tired to write anything today...