Cricket T20: Yuvraj Singh Plays For India Tomorrow Against New Zealand!

The high moment every cricket lover has been waiting for is tomorrow evening 8pm by Indian standard time when the first of the two Twenty20 cricket matches between India and New Zealand will be played in Visakhapatanam, India. The highlight is Yuvraj Singh playing in it after fighting bravely and coming out successfully of a rare germ cell cancer. He played his last international cricket match more than a year back.

Of all his fans the world over one American who is pleasantly surprised by the brave heart’s speedy recovery will also be eagerly waiting to see him back in his game. He is not a cricket fan and he understands less of the rules of the game, but he would be delighted as well. He is an oncologist from Boston, Dr. Lawrence H Einhorn, who treated Yuvraj and signed the cricket superstar’s discharge certificate at the Indiana University’s Simon Cancer Center in March this year. Dr. Einhorn is set to witness Yuvraj’s ‘chemotherapy to competitive cricket’ journey as another success story after he treated cycling legend Lance Armstrong successfully at the same hospital.

Indian skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni has requested media not to hype Yuvraj Singh’s comeback and apply pressure on him. Rightly so, while all of his fans should rejoice at their hero’s comeback they should desist from howling for him to perform right away.

Along with Yuvraj, Harbhajan Singh who co-starred the former in India’s World Cup triumph in 2011 and T20 World Cup victory in 2007 is also making a comeback dropped after the disastrous tours of England and Australia. For New Zealand injured Daniel Vettori and Jacob Oram are coming back to strengthen the team. These two T20 matches on September 8 and 11 are going to be dress rehearsals for both the teams for the ICC World Cup T20-2012 starting in Sri Lanka from September 18 and the warm-up games beginning from September 13. The tournament will have 27 matches in all with 12 teams participating and the super eight matches starts from 27^thSeptember. The Final will be played on October 7 in Colombo.

For the moment let us wish all well for Yuvraj Singh.

Degenerative Politics: The Divisive Greed!

A society divided on caste lines…further segmented by the reservation policy. The society’s divided mindset of looking at some people as ‘untouchables’ has been maintained with utmost care throughout the history of ‘independent’ India. The elected representatives thrive on such divisions and go on creating divided vote banks to rule ‘one’ country. Corruption based on divisive greed for money first and then power encompasses the ‘one’ and divided country fully. The vicious circle sets in leading to erosion of values, cheapness of lives and culture, increase in mindless violence and…degeneration. A few ominous indicators are crying out to be linked to this process of degeneration.

• The monsoon session of the Indian Parliament ends tomorrow without any work done or executed or completed. It is stalled for the 12^th day in succession today. No doubt, serious issues are involved, but no party wants the solutions and no debates allowed. Obviously the divisive greed cannot have any solution. To cap it all two ‘respectable’ members of the upper house had a fist fight for the first time in Parliamentary history and in full view of the nation. Fighting for one more division within all the divisions. And fighting for one more elected opportunity to reap in the windfall.

•  The political party that commits itself to fight corruption tooth and nail sends its elected representatives in a state it rules on picnics abroad in the name of official ‘study tour’. While the poor farmers there are dying due to drought conditions. Media exposes one such waste of public money and one more gets discovered in the same state. The vested interests in power admit their helplessness to change the pattern.

• Thirty eight poor workers die in a blazing firecracker factory fire yesterday. Why? Because the owners violated the safety standards and rules. To be precise, the degenerative system based on divisive greed allowed them to violate.

• Anna Hazare tried to fight the degeneration, but his members could not resist the temptation of divisive greed. His team no longer exists and the erstwhile members are divided among themselves.

• Baba Ramdev too joins in to fight the system and finally partners the elected representatives only. The Baba naturally wants to justify his immense riches with political clout based on divisive greed.

• Brutal facts on crimes against women and babies, carnivorous eve teasing, perversions, sadism, horrific murders and so on are everyday incidents nowadays. Yesterday, in a reputed educational institution of the country a horrible ragging incident was reported with the videos going viral. Maybe a new generation is being nurtured and maintained to fit the elected representatives greed by greed, perversion by perversion to finally complete the process of degeneration in near future.

How to stop it? But who will think of stopping it? How many of us are not already taken in by the vicious circle? We must first allow selfless debates within us and between us and then only can think of a way out.

Test Cricket: India Beat New Zealand To Win Test Series 2-0!

India made the highest successful chase of 262 runs in Bangalore yesterday to beat New Zealand by five wickets on the fourth day of the second and last cricket Test match. As anticipated eagerly the match was a tight and swinging encounter with both the teams fighting very hard till the end. India won the two-Test Series 2-0 and this makes it the third win in successive Test series against New Zealand played both at home and in New Zealand.

From a third day lead of 244 runs with the last pair standing New Zealand added 16 more runs to give India a target of 261 to win with almost two days remaining. It was unfortunate that JS Patel who shaped up well to add quite a few more runs by striking the ball lustily was given out by the umpire that turned out to be a wrong decision. Only yesterday a very high standard of umpiring was highlighted as one more positive aspect of this wonderful Test.

Indian openers Gambhir (34) and Sehwag (38) blasted away to 77 runs in just 12 overs looking to be in a mood for some match practice for the forthcoming one-day international series against New Zealand and later the ICC World Cup Twenty20-2012. Wayward and inconsistent bowling by the Kiwi pacers egged them on. Though they gave the right momentum for a successful chase they could not convert their knocks into big ones and fell in quick succession to rash shots. As Pujara and Tendulkar fiddled nervously with the ball New Zealand seemed to have come back into contention. After the duo added 69 runs India looked to be in command at 147/2 when rains interrupted and tea was taken.

Pujara fell for a well made 48; Southee bowled Tendulkar (27) again through the gate and Suresh Raina earned the distinction of making the sixth duck in Test cricket. Reduced to 165/5 the match was again in balance and New Zealand needed just one more wicket to expose the Indian tail and make way for a tremendous hard-fought victory. But as usual, the ever dependent top class Virat Kohli and skipper consistent Dhoni started playing admirably to take the score to 262/5 to craft a memorable triumph and a series win. Kohli (51) played his fifth successive Test innings of fifty or more runs against any country and Dhoni (48) achieved his fourth successive Test innings of 45 or more runs against New Zealand. The unbroken match winning partnership of 96 between Kohli and Dhoni was the third highest for India in the fourth innings.The Final Scorecard:

Virat Kohli was rightfully awarded the man of the match while R Ashwin won the man of the series award. Now make way for the limited over encounters!