IPL10 - A futuristic look at IPL

Posted by Anantha | Posted in , , , , | Posted on Monday, April 27, 2009

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Disclaimer: This is a hypothetical and futuristic take on IPL

This is the year 2017. 10th season of IPL is about to kick off in few days in Las Vegas. Here is an account of IPL, the way it has grown and changed in the last 10 years since it started in 2008.

  • The IPL which started as a league of 20-20 game back in 2008 is now reduced to 10-10 overs, making it the shortest form of Cricket. The reason being cricket enthusiasts started to lose interest in 20-20 after few years of IPL. People demanded more excitement as they considered 20-20 was pretty slow game (!)
  • There are 15 teams now participating in this IPL-10. Shimla Apples is the newest team playing its first IPL. Preity Zinta who was once a co-owner of Punjab Kings XI, is the sole owner of this team. She ventured into owning a team of her own after an alleged spilt-up with her long time beau Ness Wadia. The pair has finally split after multiple reconciliation efforts by their family and friends. She says now she will be able to concentrate fully on IPL as she has taken a sabbatical from her acting career. Well, we all know that she hardly had any roles in her kitty, since the first season of IPL ;) Yadavs of Patna is another relatively new team with Lalu Yadav's son Tejaswi Prasad Yadav captaining the side. The team is owned by none other than Rabri Devi. This team is a good contender for the IPL trophy this time.
  • This season of IPL has most number of baseball players (on an average, every team has 2) than any other IPL seasons in the past. Most of the team owners and coaches felt it was a strategic necessity to buy baseball players for the team as there are records that 220 (in 10 overs) is also not a safe total to defend these days. For this reason, team went on a buying spree across the world. Most baseball players were bought from teams in US. This is when BCCI showed interest in conducting IPL-10 in Las Vegas. BCCI says it is also an effort to popularize cricket in US. The newly set up Cricket Board of USA has managed to set up a new plush indoor stadium for IPL-10.
  • The cricket pitch is prepared of synthetic material unlike the hard soil pitches of the outdoor stadiums. This kind of pitch is supposed to bring ball straight on to the bat without any scope for spin, swing, and enabling batsmen to just cudgel the ball. The ball is also a made with a mix of leather and special rubber, making it much lighter and is supposed to cover long distances when hit by batsmen.
  • Ever since IPL-7, ICC has permitted the use of double sided bats made of special fiber instead of wooden bats used in other conventional formats of the game. These double sided bats help the batsmen to hit the ball farther without much effort. These bats look very much similar to baseball bats, which also helps the baseball players in the team. The word club is being used synonymous to bats these days.
  • New set of rules say every team could only play 4 Indian players and the rest have to be foreign players. This is an encouraging move as it gives the team the best of talents across the globe.
  • This is the 3rd successful year of the new chairman Another Bindralmiashah, after there were allegations on Lalit Modi of dwindling the money of BCCI during his long tenure as IPL chairman.
  • 18 year old Arjun Sachin Tendulkar is the new sensation of IPL-10. There were rumors that his father, legendary Sachin Tendulkar did not want his son to start his career with T10, instead he wanted his son to start with the traditional format like ODIs. Arjun Sachin Tendulkar is the costliest buy out by any team in the history of IPL. Rumour mills say Mumbai team quoted him close to 500 million USD for a contract of 3 years.
  • IPL-10 is also going to be the last IPL of arguably the God of IPL, Yusuf Pathan. He has decided to retire from cricket after this season. When asked about his next plans, he says he is already in talks with few of the team owners to join them as batting coach. Yusuf is the only batsman in the history of IPL to have an overall strike rate of over 250!!
  • There is also a new variable being added to the statistics of batsmen. Along with number of matches played, run aggregated and strike rate etc, this new variable is gonna be number of sixes hit by the batsman. A similar element will be included for bowlers, for the number of sixes conceded.
  • Cutting edge technology always has been part of cricket.
  1. The new technology enables to sniff and tap the thoughts of the brains of bowlers, batsman and fielders which is available for the analysis when the match is in progress. But grey heads have revolted against adapting this technology as this information could be used by the opponent coaches to guide their players on field.. But there is also an argument that it is fair as the info is open for all to use and make plans and counter plans.
  2. Umpires no longer stand in the field. In an effort to nullify human errors, all the umpiring decisions are taken by the third (but the only!) umpire.
  • There are also rumors that there are gonna be no bowlers in any team from next IPL. Due to this bowlers' future is in doldrums. Instead of bowlers, there are gonna be bowling machines used. Automotive giants of Japan and S Korea seem to have prepared the prototypes of bowling machines which can generate a maximum speed of 200 mph. Whether there has to be a regulation on this speed of bowling as it requires super human batsmen to judge the balls thrown at these extreme speeds is yet to be decided by ICC. The legends of the game like Sunila Gavaskar, Steve Waugh and likes who have always expressed their dismay against commercialization of cricket now have openly lashed out at robotizing cricket also.
  • Bryan McFixer is returning to T10 format after clearing the charges of match fixing in IPL season 9. He had played four continuous dot balls in the semi finals of IPL-9.
  • Television broadcast rights have been bought by Zoom channel this year in India.
  • There are close to 250 official commercial sponsors overall for this year’s IPL.
  • The popularity of T10 has affected the snail paced ODIs let alone Tests. There are only 5 test playing nations remaining now. Kenya being the last and latest team to get the nod from ICC as test playing nation. Rest of the teams are England, Australia, West Indies and Sri Lanka. India stopped playing tests 3 years back, as BCCI decided it was not a lucrative business.
  • According to the latest rule, if a batsman fails to score in the required run rate, he could be called off by the batting side captain. A batsman of choice (any player from the squad who has not played yet in that innings) could replace him. Mostly like a substitute in a football match.
  • At last how on earth can there not be anything special about cheerleaders when IPL is being held in LV? This time many of the teams have hired strippers from various Clip joints of LV. Various Women's rights activists in India and as well as in US have protested this nanga naach in the name of Cricketainment. But chairman of IPL, has announced a part of the profit of IPL is gonna be donated for the welfare of Commercial sex workers in India. This has pacified many of the activists in India.
  • BCCI is also thinking of introducing 5-5 overs match before cricket enthusiasts turn their faces away from T10. Would they name it F5? And will it remain a mass hysteria like F1 for decades? Only time has the answers in its belly...

Husbands and Wives play Dil Kabaddi

Posted by Anantha | Posted in , , , , , , , | Posted on Thursday, April 23, 2009

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Saw Dil KabaDDi few days back; thoroughly enjoyed it. I thought it was the best 'Romantic Adult Comedy' I have seen in Hindi. I found the screenplay fresh, neat narration, excellent pool of talented actors and hilarious dialogues, only to realize later when Saravanan pointed out that Dil KabaDDi is blatantly ripped off from Woody Allen’s Husbands and Wives. I watched Husbands and Wives the very next day. I was shocked. Dil KabaDDi is almost a Hindi translation of HAW. Dialogue writer of DK has shown his credibility in English to Hindi translation. Or did he just get the Hindi subtitles of HAW and provided a printout of the same to the actors while acting/rehearsing? One could notice the finger count of differences between the two movies.

Having said that I would also like to say it is a very rare thing to happen for a ripped-off movie to come out more enjoyable than the original! DK is one such movie!!

Husbands and Wives
Dir: Woody Allen
Cast: Woody Allen, Mia Farrow, Sydney Pollack and Judy Davis

This is the first Woody Allen movie I have seen. After reading/hearing a lot about him, I witnessed his style of film making in HAW. In the beginning of the movie, many of the scenes are long shots, actors speaking to each other for long without breaking, cinematographer moving along with the characters; My eyes usually take time to get adjusted to the camera, when it is moving between the characters, dodging the shoulders and heads of actors (if they are also moving along the camera), maneuvering not to hit the static objects in the scene. But at the same time it gives an impression to the audience as if they are dropped right in between the characters, which is very nice.

It revolves around 2 couples, Gabe, Judie and Jack, Sally. The story revolves around infidelity, adultery and about their unsure decisions they take in life, letting them split, re-unite, live apart, find another companion etc. Though it is being categorized as a comedy movie, I hardly smiled at any of the (if any) jokes in the movie. May be I am not of the types who laughs for Woody Allen type of jokes.

I also felt, all the lead actors were too old to deal with these marital problems; well that’s purely my personal opinion.


Dil Kabaddi
Dir: Anil Senior
Cast: Irrfan Khan, Soha Ali Khan, Konkona Sen Sharma and Rahul Bose

Dil Kabaddi opens with one of my favorite scenes in the movie. Irrfan starts with a monologue on love. Speaking about to what extent people go crazy for love, he continues, "boss, bees saal tak ek hi building ko banwaana koi mazaak kaam nahin hain, woh bhi ek hi color main.. banaane ke liye patience chaahiye. Shah Jahan bawra nahin ho gaya tha buddy.. marble pe marble kharch kar daala, kaay ke liye..? true love, sachcha pyaar.. ruh se ruh ka milan... wahh.. but then... times changed... ". Irrfan’s voice gets sidelined in the noise of ringing phones.. sound of horn, vehicular movement, traffic chaos.

Samit played by Irrfan is an on-the-edge-eccentric kind of guy, who thinks it is style to wear sun glasses while driving the car in the night. Who wears silver grayish tie for a bright pink+blue striped formal shirts, has a penchant for kinky sex, also thinks his body-brain balance is screwed up because he is sex starved. Check out another gem of a dialogue by Samit, "bed room ke under kya hota hain usse romance ka kya lena dena... woh bhi husband and wife ke beech main….. husbands and wives are beyond romance”. Well, that's Samit for you :) Add to this, the unique dialogue delivery style, his mumbles, deliberate repetition of words, that makes Irrfan Khan THE BEST guy to play the role of Samit.

Soha Ali Khan is surprisingly refreshing in the role of Mita (Irrfan’s wife). Though Irrfan and Soha look very odd as a pair, but that is the exact requirement of the script to have a couple who are not so alike, who make an odd pair. The other couple, played by Konkona and Rahul Bose suit the role of Rishi and Simi at their best. Payal Rohatgi has overplayed the role as a dumb bimbette. Though Rahul Khanna has nothing much to do, has done justice to the role.

Even after copying scene to scene from HAW, the director of DK, Anil Senior deserves a mention for the portrayal of subtle man-woman relationships (in the very few original scenes of the movie). In both the movies, a narrator guy keeps questioning / prodding the characters to speak out to the camera. No better way to spill out the insecurities, idiosyncrasies and confusions about the relationships of the characters than this. I enjoyed it.

Though portraying all the men as creatures who think between their legs is questionable, I would recommend this movie to all the people who love laughing on this vice of men.

Adventure sports is not all that fun

Posted by Anantha | Posted in | Posted on Monday, April 13, 2009

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My friend and ex-teammate Satish called me up on SAT night around 8:30 and asked me to switch to TV9. News reader was reading out the tragic incident of Bhargava, who had met with an unfortunate death trying reverse Bungee jump near Bannerghatta National Park. For me name of the adventure club was as shocking as the incident itself. The flash news read, the Bungee jump was jointly organised by CARE* and Head Rush adventure sports club. Satish on the other end said, 'remember the name CARE?', I uttered in shock, 'Ohh shit..'.

I think it was nearly an year ago, Satish and me with few other friends had tried parasailing near Kolar, which was organised by the same organization, CARE. I remember it was an open field [I think it was a big lake before] where the event was organised. There was absolutely no ambulance organised by CARE, nor did they have any first-aid kits!! I don't even think they had valid license to conduct such an adventure sporting event that day also. More shockingly before the flight, each one of us signed a printed copy which stated**, 'I _____, hereby declare that I am fully aware of the risks and injuries caused by this adventure sports. Organisers are not responsible for any kind of injuries or mishap'!!!!!

We were given a demo by one of the professionals there and we blindly had signed that copy. How foolish were we to sign that! All of us had risked our lives for few minutes of adrenalin rush. Though nothing went wrong that day, but any thing could have happened.... 

No doubt these kind of organizers should be severely punished, I also insist Govt to conduct an investigation to verify the valid license of all the so called adventure clubs all over the state. I also would like plea to all the adventure enthusiasts out there not to try these adventure sports without adequate safety measures.

* careindia.in is shutdown. Expected eh..
** It is not the exact text, but that was the intended message

Revised blogroll

Posted by Anantha | Posted on Thursday, April 09, 2009

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As you guys might have observed by this time, I revised the Blogroll for my blog. It is like cleaning the desktop, lot of old and unused things had piled up. Cleansed up all such links and now I have categorized the blogroll as the blogs I often visit and comment, photo blogs, few very very interesting Kannada sites and also few sites about Movies.

Hope you guys like it..

My graphiti

Posted by Anantha | Posted in , | Posted on Saturday, April 04, 2009

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There are some of the things that are best represented in graphs than in words

funny pictures



funny pictures



funny pictures



funny pictures




funny pictures

PS: These graphs are heuristic, based on my current take on the world