ChinmayC Blog

For the second time in a row India captain Virat Kohli lost the toss, this time to New Zealand captain Kane Williamson and the latter unhesitatingly decided bowl first. In Dubai, the venue of this crucial encounter, in all the six matches played so far the chasing teams have won all the time. If that was not enough Kohli took Ishan Kishan in place of a supposedly injured Suryakumar Yadav and allowed him to open which was somewhat justified as left-right combination. But the biggest shocker came when Rohit Sharma, one of the most successful openers for India in all the formats of cricket, did not come in to open. As I mentioned in an earlier post the dropping of a sound opener Shikhar Dhawan who performed very well in the IPL-2021 was a huge mistake and his absence is now felt at every moment apart from disturbing the right-left combination. Then, the non-bowling, the supposedly non-fit Hardik Pandya still remained in the team. The team lost its balance completely and that effectively e...

The latest Hindi movie to premier on Amazon Prime Video, on 29 th October 2021 to be exact, is titled Dybbuk directed by Jay K who also directed the original Malayalam movie Ezra (2017) and started shooting this Hindi remake in 2019 and due to the pandemic could not plan a theatrical release, selling the rights to Amazon and premiered as an Amazon Original Movie. It is a horror movie with some elements of suspense and an interesting plot. Perhaps for photographic reasons the shooting was done in Mauritius apart from a little scene in Mumbai. The leads are Emraan Hashmi and Nikita Dutta. The film has all the elements of a horror flick like an overly loud background score, jump-cut scares, moving figures behind your back, an ugly face in the mirror or in the almirah and quite a few scary scenes that turn to be humorous inadvertently. However, the movie a bit better fare than the traditional Ramsay Brothers type or the Vikram Bhatt kind of horror thanks to its interesting plot involvin...

Pakistan have almost sealed their berth in the semi-finals as probably the top team in Group-2 winning three out of three matches and notching up 6 points so far. What is more significant is the fact that Pakistan have crossed the main hurdles by defeating the toughest opponents in the group, namely India, New Zealand and Afghanistan. Now they have only two teams to overcome, considered to be weaker rivals. Of course, Namibia, creating another historic chapter by winning their first ever Super-stage match against Scotland, and Scotland are not pushovers. However, considering the roaring form Pakistan are in now winning against those two teams is not likely to be very tough, and in that scenario they will have 10 points—the maximum any team can manage in the group. The Pakistan team has arguably the best bowling attack of the tournament—combining pace and spin—and a very balanced team with someone up or down the line to finish the game. Captain Babar and wicket-keeper batsman Rizwan hav...

It is very unfortunate that the enlivening ICC Men’s T20 World Cup-2021 should get affected by a largely unnecessary controversy. Did any team ever in international tournaments object to singing their national anthem or any team object to their rivals singing their national anthems? Definitely not, it’s being a celebrated customs in almost all such tournaments across various fields of sports. Therefore, the ‘personal choice’ syndrome never comes up here. Then, why this syndrome has to come up in ‘taking the knee’ for a most noble cause? In our school days our teachers ordered us to kneel down on innumerable occasions, obviously to correct our faults, which is why we are better human beings today. Did we even think of exercising our democratic choice on those occasions? The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, started in 2013 ‘as a decentralized political and social movement protesting against incidents of police brutality and all racially motivated violence against black people’ the worl...

A determined and aggressive Pakistan registered their first ever win against India in the ICC one-day and T20 World Cups after 12 losses suffered in consecutive tournaments. The first match Super-12 in Group-2 that promised to be a super Sunday thriller turned out to be a one-sided dampener with a listless Indian attack on the field as Pakistan beat India by 10 wickets. They overhauled India’s rather tricky target of 152 quite easily with all wickets standing and more than two overs remaining. However, the story of the encounter did have a very different beginning to which India could not reciprocate in the most fitting way.   In the midst of the syndrome of ‘chasing is the key for victory’ India captain Virat Kohli lost the toss to Pakistan captain Babar Azam and was put into bat as expected. Then the drama just began on the field: the fury of young leftie fast bowler Shaheen Afridi devouring Rohit Sharma in his first over and KL Rahul in his second over; the Indian captain mixi...

The ICC Men’s T20 World Cup-2021 started in Oman and UAE with an upset in Group-B qualifiers when Scotland delivered a shock defeat to Bangladesh on 17 th October and the qualifier stage concluded on 22 nd October with another history-making upset as Namibia edged out the test-playing nation Ireland and entered the Super-12 stage for the first time. So, we have now qualifiers: from Group-A—the topper Sri Lanka enters the Group-1 and runners-up Namibia in Group-2 of the Super-12 while the Group-B topper Scotland enters Group-2 and the runners-up Bangladesh in Group-1 of the Super-12 stage. The six teams in each group will play matches between themselves on a round-robin basis and the two top teams of each group will sail into the semi-finals. The highly competitive and tough rivalries of the Super-12 stage starts today with Australia  meeting South Africa in the first match in Abu Dhabi and England facing defending champions the West Indies in the second match in Dubai. Notwithst...

One more biopic on the life of the Indian revolutionary freedom fighter Shaheed Udham Singh, Sardar Udham , which differs refreshingly from the other biopics, perhaps three movies already made over the decades, in terms of narration and storytelling. The film is directed by Shoojit Sircar (or Sarkar), an Indian filmmaker very well known for several movies, particularly the lovely and critically acclaimed Vicky Donor (2012), Piku (2015) and Pink (2016).  The film was slated for theatrical release on the day of Gandhi Jayanti, October 2, 2020, but had to be postponed indefinitely due to the raging COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, Amazon bought the distribution rights and premiered it on Prime Video on 16 th October, 2021. Over the last few days the movie has earned tremendous appreciation from the viewers, and of course mixed reviews. The fact of the audience lapping up the movie is a very healthy trend, because it is made without the present-day loud patriotism with dramatized high-so...

The calls started coming since more than year before my superannuation offering me part-time employment with a monthly salary. I was, naturally, elated getting job offers even before my retirement. The executives always told me I’d have to attend office only 3-4 days a week for only 4-5 hours a day in a managerial capacity, and my job would be to manage a team of young guys. It sounded good, but I told them that with my present employment I cannot have another job or income and so they’ll have to contact me after my retirement. As the month of superannuation neared the calls multiplied including calls from different other companies. I was a little surprised that most of the times the calls were from private life insurance companies—the Kotak Life Insurance (KLI) being the most consistent one. This fact put me a bit off, because I’d been having some kind of loathing all my life for life insurance companies from which you stand to benefit only after you die. However, that was not the cas...

The only political party that is always having the last laughs on the pathetically prolonged Congress dilemma and its manifestations is obviously the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and is greatly advantaged to stage a hat-trick of victory in the 2024 General Elections, even though the biggest national democratic exercise is more than two and half years away. The oldest political party of India, the Indian National Congress (INC or simply Congress), has been suffering consecutive routs in both the General Elections since 2014 and in most of the Assembly Elections in recent times, leading everyone to believe that the only second pan-India party, apart from the BJP since 2014, is caught in the throes of an irreversible decline and fall. It still remains a party bound irrevocably to the Gandhi family, despite the repeated failures of the leadership and internal conflicts led by several veteran Congress leaders called the G-23 demanding a change in leadership and holding organizational...

The much-delayed ICC (International Cricket Council) Men’s T20 World Cup-2021, originally scheduled in Australia from 18 th October to 15 th November 2020 was cancelled due to the COVID-19 situation worldwide and shifted to India replacing the to-be-held Champions Trophy in 2021 and was again shifted to Oman and United Arab Emirates (UAE) in view of the worsening pandemic situation in India, finally began on 17 th October 2021. This is only the official beginning, because for the first five days till 22 nd October the fixtures only figure teams to qualify for the Super-12 that begins from 23 rd October. The ICC has also earlier decided to merge the Champions Trophy (last played in 2018) with the T20 World Cup and this means that there will be a back-to-back T20 World Cups this year and in 2022 also. India play their first match of the tournament against the archrivals Pakistan on 24 th October, 2021, amid some dissenting voices concerning Pakistan’s continuing terror attacks in Ind...