CRICKET WITHOUT PURPOSE

The 1st Test Match of the Allianz Pakistan vs India series 2006 would forever stand among the best examples of Cricket played without any purpose because any play which happened on the last two days achieved nothing but records, that too only for individual players, not either of the two teams.

Bad weather dominated the last 3 days of this Test Match, but how??
Well it proved most severe for the pitch (but It’s hard to believe weather was the sole contributor to have made the pitch so very pathetic) and somehow made it totally dead, where a batsman can only get out if he makes a mistake. There is not going to be any remarkably good or outstanding or swinging deliveries, bowlers must wait for the batsman to gift-wrap his wicket which the Pakistani batsmen did at least thrice as compared to only twice by the Indians and that too by the same batsman, no water cooler for guessing the batsman as Sehwag, because Dravid just isn’t prone to such mistakes once he gets "set". However the first mistake proved just too “difficult” a chance for Shoaib Malik, he ran in and very conveniently dropped the significant gift sent flying to him without any love from Sehwag. Why significant? Simply because it brought about the 2nd fastest double hundred by a player in a Test Match!

A little on VIRENDER SEHWAG here. He’s among those few players whose batting style is a bit of an enigma to me. Technically he’s not at all a correct batsman because a batsman should have at least some visible footwork, so what does Sehwag have there? Almost zero footwork! Then what makes him such an incredible entertainer? Probably his brilliant eye-sight, an even better hand-eye coordination and a high bat-lift. His strokes are heavenly, he never bores and on his day he can be a total nightmare for the bowlers. Talking of his day, this is now really clear that whenever he plays against Pakistan, almost every day is his day, every match his match! 2004 series - he scored that record-breaking 309 in Multan, last series - another two centuries and the 1st match of 2006 series and there he is already with a double hundred!

Sehwag’s second and the ultimately lethal mistake came on the 5th and final day when he sliced a Rana Naved delivery straight to Kamran Akmal, who honouring his reputation, didn’t drop or miss the chance, thus crushed Sehwag’s innings at 254 and Dravid’s wish of achieving the milestone of highest opening partnership. It seemed kind of a forced wicket for everyone on the field, as after a whole day dominated by bad light, the day’s game took off sometime late noon, especially on the batsmen’s, particularly Dravid’s requesting the Umpires to give it a chance (of course so we can achieve something for ourselves). This “speedy” start resulted in an equally speedy return of Sehwag (on which “obviously” Dravid looked to be suffering more than the victim himself). Laxman made an entry, but didn’t even get an opportunity to open his 2006 account against Pakistan before Dravid expectedly started “sensing” bad light and thus this Test Match mercifully came to a welcome end – A Draw!

Earlier Pakistan’s innings was livelier as batsmen got out and batsmen came in, 8 helmets, 5 great moods, one half century and four individual centuries among which two deserve special mention. First – Younis Khan’s brilliant and tragically terminated 199, which, ironically so, would be remembered for totally the wrong reason, as he became the first batsman to get out on 199. second – Kamran Akmal’s rock n roll 100 off 81 balls, the fastest 100 by a wicketkeeper in a test match.

Hopefully the pitch for the Faisalabad Test would come out better than this, though I have no high hopes, a good result oriented pitch, till now, looks most probable only for the last Test Match in Karachi.

THE MYTH OF GANDHI


When he returned to India he did so to restore the traditionalism and social conservatism of status quo. He rejected British plans to distribute power evenly amongst all parties and interests, b/c it would severely undermine the Congress and it’s leading upper-caste Hindu interests. He also formulated a plan to ensure no power sharing deal with the Muslims and he broke the threat of a lower-caste Hindu and Muslim alliance by reinventing a religiously inspired revolution against the British. He claimed to ignore the lines of caste by verbally restoring the dignity to the lower-caste Hindus or Harijans as he called them, and calling them to unite with all Indians to fight for their Independence, through satyagraha, however he never forgot to spell out that their place belonged as servants to the Brahmins.

On numerous occasions he said that the peasant must serve his master at all costs, even if he “suffers in his person” and this usually meant exploitative labour rates. He prohibited inter-dining and inter-marriage across castes.

Now the writer starts quoting a Dr. Ambedkar, a popular and long-term champion of lower-caste Hindu rights who is also the principal author of the Indian constitution. Mushc to his distaste, Gnadhi continued to control the lower-caste into overriding any “realpolitik” plans to attain rights for themselves in the new independent India. Gandhi instead, marched them to salt fields, made facades of ashrams for them, coerced the British into imprisoning him and gained mass sympathies in the process.

Winston Churchill refused to give into Gandhi’s hunger strikes, and would rather that Gandhi starve to death but his associates feared that b/c he has asserted himself as India’s spiritual leader, his death would turn him into a martyr.


True to Dr. Ambedkar’s prediction, Gandhi’s over-flaunted “spiritual emancipation” of the lower-caste Hindus did not secure them a better future and even today, they reportedly stand as the most marginalized lot of India, a notch below the Muslims.
Having shattered any possibility of a collective vote bank of Muslims and lower-caste Hindus, Gandhi now shifted his focus to manufacturing an illusion of poverty. He successfully bought the Congress party a golden choice to back away from any power-sharing deal with the Muslims, rejecting the Lucknow Pact which secular politicians like Jinnah and Gokhale worked hard on to secure the co-existence of Hindu and Muslim communities.

When Gandhi split the movement with his clever plan of rallying majority into a religious fervour for independence, politicians like Mohammad Ali Jinnah, previously side-lined and shunned, realized that the only way they will not find themselves in the same trap shared by the lower-caste Hindus is by demanding as separate state. Used as a “bargaining chip”, historians such as Ayesha Jalal say that Jinnah till the very end tried to give the Indian Muslims the best constitutional protection they could get, but at the end, for Gandhi..it had to be all or nothing!

Under no circumstances was the Congress party negotiating, after all they didn’t see any need to, because the Birtish were hastily retreating and the Congress were turning out to be the one with the bigger pie and the more visible forces.

Seeing that the blame would fall on him for being unable to keep the country united, Gandhi made alliances with Islamic religious leadership, distracting Indian Muslims from interest based politics into a religious euphoria. This only widened the rift between the Hindus and Muslims. Most interestingly, his own orientation remained completely Hindu centric throught – “I am Hindu and therefore a true Indian”, he himself declared!

Jinnah was willing to go as far as accepting the Cabinet Mission plan 1946, favouring united India rather than partition. Pakistan came to be because Gandhi and the Congress party found it unacceptable for Muslims to have full autonomy in the majority provinces. Now this new perspective of the Partition of India is shared by at least two other comprehensive books :
1-) Gandhi: Behind the Mask of Divinity (2001)
2-) Ungandhian Gandhi (2004)

I think this perspective is not so new anymore, the only place where it’s new is in psyche of non-serious activists who would rather believe in the myth of Gandhi than read what he wrote and did. Will this myth persist or will a more honest understanding finally emerge that will give a fair perspective on the man held by millions as the very icon of non-violence and pluralism that Gandhi’s own actions negated?

Next tiem i get on i shall complete this with Jinnah's role in the Partition or what i have come to think of as the facts of it.

THE MYTH OF GANDHI

Again this is a book under review, just finished double-verifying it’s text and believe me it made really fascinating reading. Incidentally the partition history I got to read in school gave me a very little idea of what kind of a person Gandhi was, I only remember that he got “negatively” portrayed whenever mentioned. But fortunately I had a few other sources from which all the text-book material got instantly verified, at least I could believe almost blindly in the first and the best one b/c that source was none other than my late grandfather (may he rest in peace-ameen). The things he told me about the sub-continent partition, never ever gave me anything, any quotes which even remotely made out Gandhi to have been a paragon at any instant in his life.

My secondary (and now a verified) source is this book, title is Gandhi and the Partition of India: A New Perspective, an excellent book if you want facts, have had it now for 7 yrs!! But only 2yrs after reading it I started using internet, consequently making “new friends”, fortunately quite a few of them are from India, only two of them from Gujrat though, one I consider extinct altogether in the internet world (at least in mine). Now that person became my first Indian source and sadly opposed all the opinions I had on Gandhi, it was really amazing what totally new and different angles she gave to “Mahatma” Gandhi’s personality, a divinely spiritual person who believed and struggled to keep India “united”! and of course she had her own negative opinions on Jinnah which left me speechlessly thinking if it’s another person she mistakenly thinks to be Jinnah :O, needless to say after such an experience I have till now refrained from broaching this subject with any other Indian lest they take me for a victim of some large-scale govt.propaganda. but recently I read a book which is full of partition personalities’ quotes and a little about their views, it only confirmed my views on Gandhi and the satisfying thing is, it’s compiled from reliable sources and by an Indian national so finally I am going to review my secondary authentic source.

Beginning with something I saw on BBC quite recently. In Gandhi’s hometown, Gujarat, three years after the religious violence, the Muslim community is still wasting away for justice and freedom from fear of Hindu retaliation. The incident that left 110,000 Muslims homeless and killed over 2000, according to the Human Rights Watch still have their violators roaming free. The BBC has also reported that mass graves were dug out to hide evidence of the depravity. Women and children, psychologists say, are unable to get over the trauma and violence they witnessed.

Despite this, the Dalits and other untouchables in Gujrat are “far worse than Muslims.” About eight decades back, it was this alliance of common interest between the Muslims and the untouchables that frightened Gandhi, fictiously known as Mahatma, into a series of political moves to protect not only his adherence to orthodox Hinduism, but also the Congress party’s capitalist interests. If the writer is to be believed, the alliance of the lower caste Hindus and Muslims (who were themselves converts from lower-caste Hindus, escaping the drudgery and humiliation of class), formed a majority of the Indian vote bank.

The British planned to leave the colonies and intended to implant the traditions of democracy in the Indian politics before they did. Recklessly abandoning his spiritual face to the world, Gandhi articulated his worst fears in reaction to the safeguards granted to Muslims and the untouchables granted by the British Communal Award of 1931, “the untouchable hooligans would make alliance with the Muslim hooligans and kill upper-caste Hindus.”

According to the writer, as a failed lawyer in South Africa, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi had fought tooth and nail against perceived discrimination against Indians, but not as popularly believed, in the interest of equality. It was for the more privileged treatment of Indians in South Africa as compared to black Africans. He fought to separate and segregate the Indians from the subhuman “savage kafirs” who were not “equal to the Indians”. It is because of this fact, also outlined in his volumes of “Collected Works” and his own personal diaries that prompted countless South Africans to protest his statue in Johannesburg in 2002.

To be continued

SOME POSITIVE CHANGES REQUIRED - II


Now if Pakistan cricket team hopes to reach the top, each player in the team has to earn his keep. The players must be selected purely on form and when they know that their place in the team depends only on their performance, each individual will be compelled to give his best. A player has to earn his keep – he has got to deliver to retain his place in the side. No place for batsmen who are not at all hungry for runs or for bowlers who are not hungry for wickets. We already have one shinning++ “historic case” in point in Pakistan of a quality bowler being dropped but who consequently made his way back into the team by “bowling his heart out” or so it seems till now at least, it is like you had to fix the twisted screw, got to work on it and that has done the job (we only have to hope it’s permanent). For two consecutive, Pakistan dropped Shoaib Akhtar and he has come back with a tremendous ability to “get wickets”. Seems a much better bowler than before , moreover seems to have transformed himself into a team player.

Younis khan took some valuable advice from Rahul Dravid, technically the most correct batsman in the world. That advice turned around Khan’s lousy career and for two consecutive series he was our star performer, though he is reverting back to his old ways now. He should have been the one to be put on notice for the Indian tour.

A major fault line with our batsmen (especially our’s yea) is that they tend to throw away their wickets which shouldn’t be allowed to happy x-( Batsman is there to guard his wicket and a bowler has to earn it the hard way but you learn something new everyday! And so it is for the Pakistan team! This tendency of throwing away wickets would cease when bastmen will realize that their Test place could be in jeopardy. Most of the batsmen nowadays need this disciplining. Shahid Afridi would probably be the only exception to this rule as he knows only one way of batting.

Anyway that seems to be all the work that needs to be done to attain more discipline, the first Test starts today and it's 6.50 AM and i think either this blog log is sleeping or my cable net is b/c i still can't see soemthing i have posted before starting this..how slow can it get : hopefully this one appears on before the match starts today!

SOME POSITIVE CHANGES REQUIRED


The national cricket team has done extremely well to clinch the recently concluded Test and ODI series against England. The players really fell into a cohesive force or you can say unit and almost everybody played his part. When one particular bowler was not getting the wickets, the others chipped in to make their contribution and this sure is a sign of a team on the roll++!

With three consecutive successful series, the morale of the team is very high and there seems to be no reason why the team should not perform better in the coming series. The Indians must brace for a hard tour when they take on Pakistan on our soil in a few days.
While such a lot of praise is being heaped on the team, one must also really dwell on Inzi’s blunders in this recently concluded series. In the crucial 4th ODI at Pindi, the home team was precariously placed at 209/9 when the last man, Sami, came out to bat, Inzamam at that time was at 80. On the very first ball of the 48th over, the big burly captain took a single and exposed Sami who was dismissed on the next ball. The decision to take that single seems, even now, almost mind-boggling. Even a layman knows that the better batsman protects the tail from being exposed and that a single is taken either on the last or 2nd last ball of the over so that the better batsman retains the strike.

Now in this case it was exactly the reverse. The main and team’s best batsman had the strike, he took a meaningless single, exposed the tail and brought about a premature closure of the innings. Consequently the home team got bundled out for 210 which normally is a very sorry total to defend and did not even last out the 50 overs. As such we were short by precious 16 balls and missed out on a chance of adding another 30 runs. This blunder nearly cost Pakistan the match and England came twithin hitting distance of victory while chasing this sorry target. Had Pakistan lost the match, Inzi would have been swore at by all and sundry. Such elementary mistakes should be avoided++ and the Pakistan captain must go over the basics once again and keep his thinking cap (yea he really has it!) on at all times during the game.
In the 2nd innings of the Faisalabad test, the same blunder was made. The home team has lost 6 wickets for 183 and those were very very tense moments of the match. The captain was at the crease and he left the tail to fend for itself. Consequently Rana Naved fell for one, Shoaib (showboat no more??) for fourteen, and Sami for five. It was Inzi’s own good form that enabled him to reach that century and keep off the danger. Things cannot and should not be allowed to drift like this. There should be proper thinking and planning if the team is to be successful in the long run.

The fact that Pakistan won the series in spite of Daryl Hair was a major achievement. Hair’s umpiring was so biased that it probably would not have been conceived even by an Indian umpire in the by-gone days. He bullied Salman Butt about running on the pitch and after one such episode a petrified Salman fell LBW. Hair wanted the Pakistani batsmen to start running from the sides of the pitch and this was totally absurd.

Then he warned Danish Kaneria twice about running onto the pitch and a third warning would have disqualified the bowler from bowling any further in the innings (convenient++ huh?). all the bowlers in the world run onto the pitch in their follow-thru and what Hair was trying to do was completely unacceptable. In addition, 80% of the wrong decisions given by him were against Pakistan.The PCB should move on this issue and convey to the ICC that Hair is unacceptable as an umpire in any of the matches which involve Pakistan. The need for urgent action was all the more after the England series, as Pakistan have to play India this month and England in the coming summer. By doing so, PCB would have emulated what Srilanka and India have already done. The cricket boards of both the countries have blocked the entry of umpires biased against them from matches involving their teams by conveying to the ICC the names of those umpires not acceptable to them. Needless to mention Hair has already been selected to conduct the first Test of the Pak vs Ind series, all due PCB’s inability to think on it’s back let alone on it’s feet!

This is only part-1 of the changes that are required ,that is not given due thought would prove lethal in the upcoming series...part 2 i hope to put down before the series starts, have got two completely college-free days :D

INTERESTING NEUROCHEMICALS!

App ki kashish! sarfarosh hai,

App ka nasha! yun madhosh hai,

Kia kahein tum se jaan-e-jaan,

Gum hua hosh hai~~~

Those are the theme lyrics best suited for what i am going to type below, makes a pleasant start at least..

For long we have been reading and hearing love stories and folk tales such as Heer Ranjha, Sassi Punnu and Sohni Mahival. All these characters we know reached the highest level of romanticism and sacrificed their lives in the name of love.

Poets and songwriters often say that love drives you crazy but you’ll be so pleased to know that now neuroscientists agree with this notion too. They have unveiled this fact that falling in love in some ways is an unclassified (as yet) form of severe pathology. Rather than calling it a mental disorder, they have given it a more precise term – the obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). Neuroscientists have pointed out that the changes that occur in the brain when one is in love are similar to those resulting from drug addiction!

Now the question that crops up is: what is the OCD and how is it linked with the state of being in love?

The OCD actually is an anxiety disorder. Main feature is the recurrent thoughts that compel the patient to carry out certain tasks, which is also the chief characteristic of experiencing intense love. In the OCD, the afflicted person seeks refuge from anxiety by doing the same act repeatedly whereas the person in love gets immense pleasure in fantasizing and thinking again and again and again about his beloved.

Let us take some hypothetical examples haan! Jehangir gets diagnosed as an OCD patient and he is obsessed with cleanliness. All the time he keeps on thinking about germs and probabilities of being affected by them, which makes him spend long++ hrs in bathroom, washing his hands and clothes. Similarly, Zeeshan is another person, madly in love with Nousheen. Her charm constantly occupies his mind and compels him to wish to see her or be with her all the time. Now all this can give us this idea that in the OCD and when you are in love, the brain gets stuck on some particular thought.

Now let me tell you some background facts I came across regarding this matter :D
It began in 1990, when Donatella Marazziti, a psychiatrist at the University of Pisa in Italy started seeking biochemical explanations for the OCD. She amazed everyone by one interesting discovery. She found an astounding similarity b/w the people with the OCD and the love-struck ones. Most interestingly both of these groups knew that their thoughts were irrational, yet were unable to control them. While studying the OCD, Donatella Marazziti discovered the levels of serotonin are particularly low in the people having this disorder. She then tested the level of serotonin in the brains of love-struck people and found out that the level was also reduced to the same figure as in OCD (about 40% less than the normal).

In another study carried out by two neurologists, Andrea Bartlets and Semir Zeki of the university of London, was aimed at locating the areas of the brain that get activated by romance. The areas triggered by love turned out to be different from the areas aroused by other emotions such as fear or anger! Love stimulates those areas of brain, which generate feeling of elation; many drugs such as cocaine to induce euphoria also stimulate these areas. In other words, love uses the neural mechanisms that are activated during the process of addiction.

Now one may ask that if love makes the person so much addicted to some person then why do we get to hear about break-ups and divorces?? In fact majority of love marriages do not last. They start fighting after a while and complain that their spouses have changed after marriage. Whatever the circumstantial causes, neuroscientists describe that neurotransmitters play an important role in causing such behaviour. The initial phase of falling in love involves the increased secretion of b-Phenyl ethylamine (PEA- or the love chemical), which creates a euphoric high and distorts comprehension, meaning that it restraints the person from seeing the shortcomings of his/her mate. That is why it is often said, love is blind. :P

Now the feelings caused by PEA are very short-lived and when they subside, the patient comes to his/her senses and begins to see his/her loved one in totality. If they are truly a mismatch (victims of neurochemicals), a break-up is likely. On the other hand if they are genuinely compatible, the increased secretion of hormone oxytocin, which is said to sustain love, nourishes their relationship!Hmm so with all these discoveries about the brain, it is clear that all emotions like love, hate or anger are the result of changing levels of neurotransmitters (chemicals in the brain).

ACID TEST

This post also concerns one of the two things that is on my mind right now. Another hint, it’s also to do with the very “damn” I have just highlighted in my previous post so the preliminary greetings are still the same..Happy reading!

Here only one person or personality or dignitary (or whatever) is under discussion! None other than Prime Minister Shoukat Aziz. What prompted me to put down such a thing is a 47yr old test match I had the good fortune of viewing on Ten Sports recently. As to How and why I’ll just explain in a min. In the life of a high profile player, sooner or later comes a time when he is compelled by circumstances to enter the arena of events for a particular Acid Test.
With due recognition to his expertise in finance, banking and monetary management, our PM is in for a nasty++ Acid Test and he has unknowingly asked for it too. He never had direct or indirect experience of politics, but still he willingly agreed to getting elected to the National Assembly. Seats were vacated for him. He was eventually elected from the constituencies, one of which in Sindh he had never even seen before! Thus such formalities that truly belong to a democratic setup were completed.

Mr. Shoukat Aziz thus became our elected PM! That makes him the Chief Executive of the country. He is the one who ought to be doing all the talking on Kalabagh Dam(n), but instead Gen. Pervez Musharraf does all the controversial talking on it. As if the devastated multitudes in the Northern part of this country have been rehabilitated, the President wants to give a “damn” to the thirsty masses of Pakistan, hah! He now finds himself at loggerheads with the people who have strong reservations against the Dam(n). now had he been in military outfit alone, he wouldn’t even have sought approval from the people for the construction of this dam(n), but now that he wears a sherwani as well, calls himself the architect of democratic norms in Pakistan, it has become necessary for him to seek people’s approval for the pending construction.

It is an interesting kind of dilemma for both the Prez and PM. It is obligatory for a General to salute the PM. Similarly a PM, as per protocol is required to salute the President of the country! As a General, Gen. Musharraf is subordinate to Prime Minister Shoukat Aziz. As President, Gen. Musharraf is his “Boss” who can instantly send him back home without shedding any fat tears. Now what else can be a more confusing and puzzling Acid Test for our PM..has he ever ever played Cricket???

This brings us to the match I saw last week! You know Acid Test is very similar to a freak test match. For Acid Test one is not required to have played Test cricket. If you have played 2nd-grade or 3rd-grade cricket, even then someday you might have to go thru this grueling Acid Test. At times it so happens that without playing any sensible game in life, you are subjected to the ultimate Acid Test and it almost always turns out to be sharp. So back to the Test match – Country: Westindies. Venue: Knesington Oval, Barbados. Occasion: First Test b/w Pak and WI and the date is 17-23, Jan,1958.

Now I’ll take you through it: Windies have put up a massive score of 579 runs in the first innings, Pakistan collapses and falls victim to the fiery pace of Gilchrist for mere 106 runs in the first innings. Force to follow on, Pakistan requires 476 runs to avoid an inning’s defeat. Imtiaz Ahmed and Hanif Mohammed open the innings with their backs to the ball.Imtiaz tears apart the fiery Gilchrist, the then fastest bowler in the world, and puts on 152 runs with Hanif Mohammed for the first wicket and scores a superb 91 runs before departing. Then begins the Acid Test for a 21yr old Hanif Mohammed.

He keeps his cool and doesn’t seem intimidated. He concentrates very hard, goes on playing and playing, frustrates the invincible Windies bowling attack. In compiling his mammoth score, he keeps moving from one milestone to another and it is the sixth and the LAST day! Hanif has been batting for over three days! And the test match is heading for a certain draw. Towards the end, exhausted Hanif stumbles in his concentration and is caught by the wickt-keeper Alexander, bowled Atkinson for 337 runs. Skipper A.H Kardar declares the innings at 657 for 8 wickets and the Match is drawn.

A very few batsmen lately, have scored more runs in a test innings; but Hanif’s two world records seem impregnable to say the least least :d Except for a couple of hrs he spent in the pavilion when he got out for 17 in the 1st innings, Hanif remained on the field for 6 days(!!!!), fielding for 3 days and batting for 3 days! His marathon innings of 337 lasted for more than 16 and 3 quarters of an hr! Thus Hanif emerged a legend in his life-time from the Acid Test. Though PM Aziz has not played Test cricket, still he seems due for this Test. Let’s see..he has advantage of the home ground. The pitch has been prepared to his liking, in fact it is tailor-made. In the first few overs, the ball is expected to swing noth ways. Watch out for out-swingers, you might be caught in the gully! Beware of the fast bowlers b/c they might unexpectedly unleash a volley of bouncers. Therefore you must put on a solid helmet before entering for this Acid Test. No harm if you duck and let the bouncers go to the keeper. Let the talking on the Dam come from him as after all he is the elected Prime Minister of Pakistan.