A load of crap from an idle brainPersonal, Movies, Music, IT, India, Singapore, Politics, Fun

The Twenty20 Champions League cricket tournament starts off at Bangalore today with a clash between the Royal Challengers Bangalore (India) and Cape Cobras (South Africa) at 2000 IST.

I dont think i need to mention where my loyalties lie.  Go Deccan Chargers Go.

The trophy that the below mentioned teams are playing for; along with the prize money of US$ 2.5 million.

The teams are:

India -  Deccan Chargers, Royal Challengers Bangalore, Delhi Daredevils
Australia – New South Wales Blues, VB Victorian Bushrangers
South Africa – Cape Cobras, Diamond Eagles
New Zealand – Otago Volts
Sri Lanka – Wayamba
west Indies – Trinidad & Tobago
England – Sussex, Somerset County Cricket Club.

For comprehensive information about the tournament, go to their official website at clt20.com

All above pictures source: clt20

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Some great news all round. India has taken a series winning 3-0 lead against the Sri Lankans in the 5 match one day series.  Meanwhile, South Africa  humiliated Australia by winning both the one day and test series.  To rub  salt into the wounds, New Zealand forced a win in the first one dayer against Australia on the last ball of the match.

Brad Haddin lived upto his captain’s reputation as a cheater by dislodging the bails with his gloves instead of the ball and had the gall to question Daniel Vettori when his actions were questioned.  Pricky Ricky Ponting followed suit in defending his co-cheatmate.  I was waiting to hear a classic in the lines of

If you are questioning my integrity, then probably you shouldn’t be sitting here.

but, unfortunately no such pearls of wisdom sprouted from Ricky’s mouth this time.  In other news, Ricky Ponting has been asked to rest. Heh.  Great news.  If Australia are really serious about mounting any challenge to South Africa or India, they seriously need to get rid of Ricky as captain.  He’s still a good batsman and commands a place in the team purely on his batting and fielding.  But when it comes to captaincy, he often looks lost when the chips are down.

Roger Federer lost in the finals of the Australian Open and that’s something iam unable to come to terms with.  Rafael Nadal seems to be his achilles heel. Nadal has quickly moved from being a good player on clay to grasscourts too.  So, Federer has lost his monopoly in Wimbledon now having lost to Nadal last year.  Am sure Federer will make a comeback and break Sampras’ record of 14 grand slams, but the delay is the killer.

Watched Vicky Cristina Barcelona last weekend.  Scarlett Johansson is yummy and so is Penelope Cruz.  I still cant get over the evil role of Javier Bardem in No country for old men and had a tough time thinking about him as a casanova in this movie.

Meanwhile, i will have some great 2 weeks starting this sunday.  Biwi ji will join me here in Singapore

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Am sure, you would have received chain mails which propagate myths about the Indian civilization, the number of doctors and scientists working in USA and NASA etc.   Outlook magazine has gone around asking people with authority and knowledge on the subject and debunks almost all the myths that get propagated around by some stupid NRI sitting in some corner of the world.

Claim: India never invaded any country in her last 10,000 years of history.

Fact: This is not fully true, as the Cholas conquered Sri Lanka and took its ruler prisoner. In AD 1025 the Chola navy of Rajendrachola I (r.1012-1044) conquered Sri Vijaya in the Malayan archipelago.

-Pius Malekandathil, maritime history specialist at JNU, Delhi

Claim: Taj Mahal predates Shah Jahan’s era, and was a temple dedicated to Shiva, worshipped by Rajputs.

Fact: The Taj was built by Shah Jahan. Every single brick and stone purchased has been documented in the Taj Mahal archives. so is the land deed. Travellers from different periods also saw it being constructed.

- Mushirul Hasan, Vice-Chancellor, Jamia Milia Islamia

Claim: Times Group is owned by Bennett & Coleman. ‘World Christian Council’ does 8- per cent of the funding, and an Englishman and an Italian equally share the balance 20 per cent.

Fact: Bennett, Coleman & Co Ltd (BCCL) is largely owned by the Jain family and some subsidiaries, such as ENIL are listed. All details of the holding company, BCCL, are available in ENIL’s prospectus at the time of listing.

- Vanita Kohli-Khandekar, author of The Indian Media Business

Claim: The art of navigation was born in the river Sindh 5,000 years ago. The very word ‘navigation’ is derived from the Sanskrit word ‘navgatih’.

Fact: It is absurd. All river-valley civilisations like the ancient Egyptians, the Mesopotamians and the Chinese resorted to riverine navigation and coastal navigation. The English word ‘navigation’ is derived not from Sanskrit ‘navgatih’, but from two Latin words navis (ship) and agere (to drive). It is from them that English and Latin family languages, like Portuguese, got the word.

- Pius Malekandathil, maritime history specialist at JNU, Delhi

With Independence Day round the corner, get ready to receive more such bullshit in your mailbox.  To read more about all the myths, click here and here.

Now, am waiting for some member of the chaddi gang to call me a commie

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Awesome rebuttal by Vir Sanghvi of Hindustan Times on the Thackeray clan’s tirade against non locals in Bombay and wanting to rename all the establishments from Bombay to Mumbai.

Why then is Bal Thackeray doing this? In 1980, when he first pushed to change the name of the city, he was able to joke about it. At the time I was editor of Bombay magazine and publicly opposed to the proposal. “Don’t worry,” he told me, “you won’t have to change the name of your magazine to Mumbai.” Over a decade later, when the Centre finally dropped its opposition to the change and Bombay became Mumbai, he was still quite happy to allow the Bombay Stock Exchange and the rest to continue using ‘Bombay’. His own grandson went to Bombay Scottish School.

On the other hand, the Lankans don’t get hysterical about the use of the term Ceylon tea. The Iranians do not demand that every Persian cat be renamed an Iranian kitten. The historical contexts are all unchanged: it’s still Persian art or a Persian rug.

But the Thackerays don’t understand history — or consistency for that matter. As my colleague Sujata Anandan wrote perceptively in the HT’s Bombay edition on Wednesday, this new-found zeal sits uneasily with Bal Thackeray’s own record: if he’s so keen on Marathi usage, then he should use his real name. It’s Thakre not Thackeray, in the manner of William Makepeace Thackeray, the author of Vanity Fair. Not only does Thackeray use the anglicised spelling, he even pronounces it like the English author, who, as far as I know, was not a Marathi manoos.

Worse still, I don’t think that either Bal or Mini-me really care about the issue anyway. They just need a cause that sounds emotive and chauvinistic enough to motivate the goondas in their cadres. Thackeray is now old enough to recognise that this kind of platform is not sufficient to hold a party together in the long run. But faced with the threat from Raj, he’s had to go back to the primitive chauvinism of the Sena’s early years.

It would be a tragedy if the people or the politicians of the city of Bombay allowed this rivalry between uncle and nephew to change the traditions and heritage of this great metropolis. The only way to handle the Thackeray campaign is to hold firm and to tell the old boy to sort out his family disputes in the privacy of his own home.

We are certainly not changing any more names only because he can’t handle his nephew.

Read the full article here.

First read this article on Indiauncut

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The controversies never seem to end Am betting for more action off the field during this tri-nation tournament.

Australian fans showed no let up in their hostility towards Muttiah Muralitharan and a group of fans threw an egg on the Sri Lankan spin wizard’s face in Hobart.

“An egg was thrown at Muralitharan and it struck him”, a top Sri Lankan official said in Colombo adding, the authorities were looking into the incident that happened last night. The Sri Lankans are in Australia to play a tri-nation ODI series which also involves India.

The Island Newspaper reported that Sri Lankan cricketers, including Muralitharan, were jeered and attacked by some local residents in Hobart when they were returning to their hotel after dinner last night.

“The Sri Lanka team management had then taken action to safely guide the players back to their hotel and the police arrived at the scene,” the Newspaper said.

Full article here.

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