Major Crisis Averted!

The great stadium grew quiet as the Great Batsman started his walk towards the wicket. To be sure there were a few greetings, a few ‘best of lucks’ as he walked down the steps of the pavilion, but not the standing ovation or even heavy applause which he was habituated to. He could also hear some subdued murmurs from the crowd and he could well imagine what those would be. ‘Should he be continuing at this stage?’, ‘Should he not make way for others who could serve the game better’? No doubt he himself had felt some qualms when he had decided to play this match, but all that was in the past now as he strode to the wicket. What should matter now was this innings, here and now! The seasoned warrior in him was ready to take a fresh guard.

But try as he would, he could not wipe out the memories of last two innings of his. Both those innings were deeply etched on his mind, a mind which had been hailed as the finest among his trade. It was said that every ball he had ever faced and every ball he had ever bowled had been recorded in his prodigious memory. But sometimes having a good memory can hurt; and no memory was as painful as those last two innings. 

 The first of those innings, he remembered, he had approached with a sinking feeling anyway. The opponent team was in top form. The opposing captain was a firebrand who made it a point to lead from the front and with an aggro which took one’s breath away. And true to his reputation, he had taken the ball in his own hand to try and settle the contest himself. The Great Batsman had taken guard, confident that he would be able to weather the storm like the numerous ones he had battled earlier. His team may not win the match, but he would surely find some way to keep himself afloat. Not for nothing he was also known as the Great Survivor. But he was in for a surprise this time. The first ball itself was a chest-on delivery, clearly accentuating the broad chest the opposing captain was famed for, and before the Great Batsman could figure that the full length delivery must be an in-swinging yorker, the ball had made a mess of his woodwork. A golden duck, the Great Batsman muttered as he made his lonely walk back to the hut. As luck would have it, none of his team-mates had also fared much better, he felt relieved. Individual misery, he had observed, may not do much for team-spirit but can surely be a little more acceptable when everybody was almost equally miserable.

He had approached the second of the two innings with a little more confidence. The pitch was different this time and he had had a good say in preparation of the wicket; the curator and the entire ground support staff were his men. But here too he had come a cropper. Although the opposing captain was not playing, he seemed to have tutored his team well. A sharp rising delivery aimed at his mid-riff and the Great Batsman had to take evasive action, lobbed a simple catch which was gobbled up by the forward short-leg. Two golden ducks in a row! The Great Batsman could see the writing on the wall; the scholarly editorials, the tongue-in-cheek spoofs and downright banal cartoons asking him to move on and make way for the youngsters.  

He needed to break the jinx and score some runs. It didn’t really matter what the match was. He decided to play safe and chose a local tournament where he had been an unquestioned champion some time ago before he had chosen to concentrate on higher levels of the game. So the game was set.

All these thoughts flashed through his mind as the Great Batsman took his guard. He knew that the opposing team had no great pace attack which had done him in in last two innings. Still he had prepared himself well, trying to leave nothing to chance. The bowler was an unknown quantity, supposed to be a leg-spinner. It was reported that he had been recently coached by a guru who was not really known to play cricket or have ever played cricket. For a mediocre attack, surprisingly the field set had been an aggressive one. “Are these guys really hoping to hustle me into being too defensive and make a mistake”? The Great one chuckled to himself. A slip, a gully, a silly-point and two short-legs. It was the two short-legs which alerted the Great Batsman. The leg-spinner must be planning to send down a googly and hope for a bat-pad. The Great Batsman smiled to himself. Little did the opposition know about his familiarity and familial connection with leg-spinners and googly bowlers. He was cool as the season with clear skies and ready to show his power. He was eager to face the bowler now.      

The stadium had gone all silent. “Right arm over” said the umpire and the Great Batsman watched  the flighted back-of-the-palm delivery directed slightly outside his off-stump float towards him. “Surely a googly”, thought the Great Batsman, “but will this turn on such a dead pitch?” He played for the googly anyway as any right thinking batsman would. The ball didn’t turn at all (so much for the unprofessional coaches) and found a thick outside edge but luckily for the Great Batsman the ball managed to squeeze through the slip and the gully to the third man boundary. It was a four for sure but hardly an authentic shot. Moral victory for the bowler but then, as Harsha Bhogle and Ravi Shastri are fond of saying, “No matter how they come, runs on board is all that matters.” The Great Batsman found no reason to disagree with that, not when he was at the scoring end anyway. There was jubilation in the pavilion. The jinx had been broken.

Major Crisis Averted successfully!

   

LazyBee aka Shirish Potnis

20^th June 2015

Of Red-Cards and Some Canoodles!

Of Red Cards and Some Canoodles!

And for another week-end, a few stray thoughts and a few general observations and a few points of view (some of it my own work and some as reported by media):

Like the biggest story this week has to be the way entire FIFA team was red-carded. VPs Richard Webb and Eugenio Figueredo and former VP Jack Warner along with a clutch of officials of associates and affiliates have received red-cards. Oh what a tangled Webb we weave when first we practise to deceive! The dollar figures being tossed about are really impressive and confirm that FIFA is indeed an MNC. The whole affair would perhaps make mafia bosses wonder if they were in the wrong business. Now that Chuck the Blazer has blazed a trail, there should be more skeletons tumbling out the closets. Little Jack Warner who was quietly relaxing in his corner in Trinidad & Tobago after demitting his FIFA office under a cloud, couldn’t  have guessed that his real nightmare is just about to begin, while Eugenio tries to figure out how pursuing one’s goals in life could land one in gaol. But to a lay person, it was surprising to see the blighter,who was perched right at the top, sap that very tree on which he was sitting and still get re-elected for the 5^th time.  The drama doesn’t end here. Watch this space as the game goes into penalty shoot-out. One only hopes that more past players like Michel Platini step up and put the house of the beautiful game in order. 

And while we were all busy watching the IPL drama unfold in India, England and New Zealand played out a most absorbing two-test series. A feisty Brendon McCallum and the team he is building  proved to be quite a handful for the Brits. It was a testimony to that fact that test matches could still be exciting to watch.  Ultimately a series drawn at 1-1 was the only fair outcome for the two well-matched adversaries, but it would have been great if the series had more matches. Maybe Pepsi should start sponsoring future England – NZ series. Yeh dil maange more!

Bruce Jenner, Olympic Decathlon Gold Medal winner at Montreal in 1976 and a World record holder in that event, decided he / she has had enough of being a male and changed over to a new avatar, Caitlyn. Reportedly there was an online petition asking she be stripped of her Gold, but thankfully good sense seems to have prevailed and she can now claim to be the only woman to have won the Gold at Olympics in a men’s event. (The other way, a man winning in women’s event, may have been achieved but is not likely to be confirmed for obvious reasons). One does not know if at 65, Ms Caitlyn Jenner wants to have a tilt at Gold in Women’s Olympic event, but if she does compete, we may have a record which will stand tall till the Mount Olympus itself finds a place on terrestrial maps. 

Speaking of Mounts, we saw a new mountain erupt on the Indian scene last week. Mount Maggi. Whether it is actually a mountain or just a molehill seen through a microscope, only time will be able to tell. For the time being, however, Nestle has to live with the red-card. Lead or any other harmful ingredients in any food product over the acceptable limits surely needs to be corrected. Organized food processing industry has to take the lead (no pun intended) in providing clean food products, and lack of controls in other inputs, fruits, vegetables, water or air cannot constitute a valid defence for the organized industry to disclaim its responsibility. In a bizarre twist in that can only be termed as “shooting the messenger”, the celebs who endorsed the product have been served a notice holding them responsible. One thing is certain, this has opened up a Pandora’s Box and you can expect many more products to come under the lens in near future.

My friend Guy Wise had this question : all of us have seen the sizzling  Madhu Sapre –Milind Soman ad for the Kamasutra male contraceptives, if it turns out that due to some malfunction, a couple were to conceive in spite of using the concerned product, who should be held responsible? We hear that both Madhu and Milind were trying to find out the modalities of applying for an anticipatory bail.

LazyBee aka Shirish Potnis

7^th June 2015