God is Retiring !!!

Yes,that's true ..The God of Cricket ,Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar is retiring in couple of weeks .Absolutely adore that last picture !!!Right from his childhood as the picture indicates above ,even then his batting stance was spot on.

Cricket to millions of Indians is about one man named Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar. Right now the world is the middle of celebrating his retirement after 24 yrs of cricketing brilliance by SRT.It just speaks about his endurance,his will power and above all his sheer passion to play cricket for India.Truly amazing.

It has been an incredible journey for Sachin and India , a trip that figures alone cannot define,although it would be hard to imagine anybody getting 100 international hundreds,playing 200 test matches or scoring 18000 plus test runs !!!

God given talents apart his sheer dedication and ability to work out the pitch and bowlers real real quickly. "Sheer passion" as one of my friends used to say was inbuilt in sachin right from the time we all saw him playing .It takes me to the memory lane- getting bloodied by waqar as a 16 yr old ,smashing abdul qadir in the same debut  series,that wonderful century in perth ,1992 world cup match against Pak..the ball which got aamer sohail ,sheer exuberance in bowling the final over against Donald and macmillan in the 1993 hero honda final ,the desert storm in 1998 ,2003 WC innings featuring the upper cut six  against shoaib,waqar & wasim ,241 in Sydney in 2007,the winning second innings century in chennai against england in 2008,the one day double hundred against SA  and lots more ; lots. Truly amazing that one person has given so much majestic moments in cricket for Indians.

That coveted #4 position in Indian Test  batting  line would be tough to fill by anyone once sachin goes ,be it kohli ,Rohit ,Rahane or whoever gets to bat in that position this December in south Africa against probably the best pace attack in the world .Who would be that unlucky guy ???Anyway that's another discussion ...

There are many times we literally prayed for sachin to stay in the crease especially in the 1990's when he was the one man batting army. As we look down into the great man's retirement after his 200th Test in a few weeks time,it seems that one constant factor is our life will be gone after November ,i.e watching sachin  playing that awesome straight drive or that paddle sweep or the perfect cover drive or even the mandatory semi sit-ups while  taking guard to the first delivery

Salaam Sachin & Kudos to the greatest ever !!!

Cheers

-Hari ...

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Remembering Manjith !!!

It was September 4th,2009 11.30 in the night.It was raining heavily and i was in a very psoitive mood enjoying the onam weekend with my family .Then i thought let me look into my hotmail which i hadnt looked in a long time.To my horror and schock there was a email from prem indicating the death of manjith.All of a sudden i thought ,is this some kind of joke ?Or is prem is indicating about any other person named manjith.Then i realised that it was our own Manjith,the leanest and youngest of our mallu gang of our batch in our college.My mind and body froze up for several moments looking into the rain and thinking of Manjith a.k.a Jeetu!!!

Jeetu...i have never addressed Manjith with that name in person be it in college or the years after that.But when ever i spoke to some one especially dinesh(his cousin)i used to adress him with that,i dont know why ?

The first thing that comes to my mind is the first year hostel life ,especially in the morning when the van used to come to pick us up,manjith would be just waking up.All of a sudden he would go to the terrace, open the tap and get his "punk" hair straightened and the dress up.On talking to dinesh last week ,he told me that Jeetu had still the same exhuberence about his hair and hair style saying to his cousins"What a silky hair i have ".

I cant still beleive that he has gone to the heavens,his face and mannerism is still vivid in my mind even though i hadn't met him for almost 6yrs.He was frank,naughty,has his views on everything and liked my one and all.Every one enjoyed his company and friendship.There are so many incidents and faces flashing across my mind now.

I am lost for words,really wanted to write a lot out of frusturation...why has been he taken away at this age ?I dont understand...its such a pity

Jeetu,I know you are looking upon us from the heavens ... we will remember you for the rest of our lives !!!

Love & Peace

HD

Captain Cool !!!

Who else but Mahi a.k.a. Dhoni



Its very rare to see Dhoni getting poker faced or abusing any of his fellow players and loosing his cool.In the last 2 years in which he has been captain,he has encouraged players like Gambhir ,Yuvraj and Ishant to name a few to reach personal career highs without interfering too much whilethey are in the field.We rarely see dhoni advising his bowlers be it the first ball of the match or the last ball of the match.Its quite amazing from the days of ganguly and sachin when the captain used to stand at midon and be behibd the bowlers.Comparing to the previous captains of india from the gavaskar era ,i think azhar and ganguly were the most sucessful captains,but azhars victory were mostly in homecondtions with laid out dust bowls to help kumble and co.Azhar was laid back and rarely enforced his decisions to the bowlers except in some instances.Sachin and kapil did rare justice to their captaincy compared to their individual performances.Common perseption was that they expected the other 10 players in the field to perform just like them.Although kapil was the captain of our worldcup winning team in 1983,there has been many instances where he had absolutely no clue,first instance comes to my mind in the 1987 series against pakistan the 2nd one day when salim malik was going bongers against the indian bowling and repeatedly pepperd the square leg and point boundaries and pakistan won from a situation needing around 80 in 8overs.The second instance was when Graham gooch swept his way to a hunderd in the worldcup semi's in 1987.

Gavaskar was pretty mucha a defensive captain and very vocal.Some of the incidents that he was part of like the walkout with chauhan in the 1980 Aussie series would have been a life ban if it had occured in the modern time.Ganguly is the only one who comes close to Dhoni in terms of vocitories in the one day ,but major titles have eluded him.Coming back to body language and coolness dhoni is way ahead of his predecessors.

More to come....Watch this space !!!