Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Similarity of 3 IPLs and 3 t-20 world championship !!!

May 18, 2010, 1.10 PM -


I am writing this blog after witnessing 2.5 months of extreme 20-20 cricket,
Thanks to IPL and Lalit Modi entire India was perplexed with watching cricket during prime time and witnessing heroics of super cricketers from all across the world on a daily basis. Every day is a new challenge for IPL teams and yesterday's performance never matters , You are only as good as your today's performance. IPL has attracted cricketers from all across the world and is being touted as the best alternative of spreading cricket in more countries,  IPL attracts everything , starting from the bidding process in which Pakistani players where not included till the point when IMG-IPL deal was under the question. IPL has become like surrogated baby for media people where in they have forgotten their real baby - that is spreading the news.


Well , here my intention is to just analyse IPL and world cups and I will just concentrate on that instead of dwelling into the politicization of IPL.


If we sit and analyse we get to know some of the most interesting trends common in these two super tournaments, lets have a look -


1. Only two teams so far have qualified for finals of both tournament - Pakistan for t20 and CSK for IPL.


2. The team which won Inaugural IPL & ICC t20 world cup were not able to advance to semis in next two edition, India in world cup and Rajsthan Royals in IPL


3. Mumbai Indians and Australia show similar resurgence- crashing out two times and finally entering into tournament finals to eventually crash out, remember both were favorite to win but they did one final blunder in finals. Like Australia , Mumbai Indians won most of their matches in first round.


4. If we look closely at England and CSK's final win , Man of the final were their one down batsman - Pietersen and Suresh Raina, who managed to attack & change the stat in favor of their team.More or less both the teams depended heavily on 1 down batsman to score runs.


5. CSK and England both got a new opening batsman in Craig Kieswetter and Murali Vijay, Both were just a big factor in winning the match.


6. Srilanka and Royal Challenger Bangalore are the only team to reach final once and then entering semis next year to crash out again.




More to be added if similar trends found !!





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Tuesday, May 11, 2010

The desired but unwanted politics of games !!

The best of sports team require constant motivation and dedication to excel all round the year, Sports is very demanding and its totally unlike a regular job , 
One's motivation and learnings always have to be honed and respected. Only few sports team in the world so far have been able to maintain a clean history of  being champions on a regular basis. I would like to mention names of Brazil in football, Australia in Cricket, NBA in basketball , China in Badminton & Judos , US in athletics and field events while Japan in TT . 
Interesting thing is what it takes to be a champion ? from where One can produce a bunch of players who are always willing to put everything else asides just for their country, players who sacrifice their life just to achieve perfection for one or two events and why sports in no corporate ?
Life style of a sports person is always different from normal people , he sleeps early and gets up when entire world is sleeping with their blankets on. His passion and commitment for the game  is something that differentiates him from the rest. 
Analyzing top sports person from different sports probably tells why they are different, the hard work that they put and quantifying those hours is the real deal , class training and quality supervision is something that tells a story in itself. Proper infrastructure and backing motivates a person to excel in the field that he operates, may be financial security would be one of the concern of players all over the world.May be that would be the reason we have witnessed excellence of Indian cricket team in last ten years while other games have witnessed the worst and went on a downward sprinkle.


This may be one of reason why we have not seen many sports persons from third world countries,  also one can explain how countries like US and China easily sweep dozens of medals in any Olympics games.
In no way these trends can tell us that humans from US and China are stronger than humans from Cuba or Nepal. The difference in planning and political support for any games can change the scenario of games in a particular country.Need for hour is to take these games seriously and start planning according to it. Sport is one of the biggest way of achieving universal brotherhood and it should be taken by people seriously. It doesn't take a fan of EPL to be there in England all season , from my experience I have seen crazy supporters of Chelsea in Bengal, Goa and neigbouring countries of India. World Cup football is passionately followed all over Asia though we have hardly one or two representing entire Asia. Australia's excellence in cricket is deeply respected and feared in India, We just pray for India to win against Australia. Indian followers pray before the match because they are always doubtful of India's dominance over them.


There is a need for privatization of sports to witness more talents opting for the golden pie, sports can never be run by bureaucracy, It has to stay independent of governmental control . Though government can promote these games on its own and it should try to build some infrastructure around it to excite more number of takers. India has tried to do to many things with the way sports in run in this country. We have seen terrible situation of players in SAI Hostel , time has come now for Govt. of India to think and take radical decision in this context. For too long Indians have been deprived of proper sports entertainment sans cricket.


India needs more of universal games like Football, Athletics, basketball, Golf, Rugby etc, . For too long we have closed our eyes and satisfied ourselves by just viewing cricKet. Its high time we open ourselves more to other games also . 


Most importantly I won't mind my son playing football for some high division league in Brazil.