The point of contention: Number 3

Miracles do happen in cricket. But as fans it is so tough to be on the right side of a miracle. Sadly, Indian cricket fans have found themselves on the other side time and again in the last one year- once in South Africa, once in New Zealand and once in Australia, and now in Sri Lanka where the match had slipped right from the hands of Indian team. Bad luck boys. Bad luck

Forget the results, while they do matter, they are not everything, because in the last one year, Indian team has played some really good cricket with some great batting displays and bowling spells by GenX. We just lacked the killer punch more often than not but it is not something to worry about just yet. It will develop. Give the same bunch of players some time and it will.

But quietly, unnoticed by many, there is something else that is slipping away from Indian cricket fans. It is Pujara of course. Life doesn’t give you two Rahul Dravids in succession, but when it does, just don’t do what Indian cricket team management is doing right now. Pujara is The Wall of a new era. Be it the temperament, the solid technique or the saint-like calmness itself, he is what every Indian could only have ever dreamed of after Rahul Dravid announced his retirement.

Before the start of Sri Lanka tour, Virat Kholi justified his preference of Rohit Sharma over Pujara by stating that he needs someone who would counter attack and score freely at the top (as if we did not have Dhawan or Kholi himself for that matter and also as if every great test team had a counter attacking number 3 batsmen. Funny) and also that Rohit deserves a chance at number 3. Sure, we backed Dhoni for his choices, preference for his players, but Dhoni always came up with rationale reasoning over his decisions. Kholi’s argument though has no buyers.

While Kholi can back his instincts and give chances to players but the larger question remains is at what cost? Pujara for that matter did not perform so poorly that it would have warranted that he be dropped from the team. In the three test series against SA, Eng and Aus, Pujara averaged 70, 22 and 33.33 respectively, stacking up numbers that weren’t too bad. And in the same period Rohit has 11.25, 17.00 and 28.33 against SA, Eng and Aus. And while Pujara had 1 test hundred and 3 fifties, Rohit has 1 fifty in that period.

Number 3 position is about more than just scoring big hundreds here and there, it is about seeing off fiery spells from Steyn, swinging bullets from Starc or table top turners of a day 5 pitch. But if the number 3 fails in that phase, it exposes off the middle order a bit too soon to the wrath of oncoming fire from bowlers who are on top spells.

Rohit Sharma, the eternal talented star of Indian cricket, has some scintillating ODI knocks but he never displayed the solid technique that would have instilled a belief in the fans that he could see through spells from Steyn or Starc on tough days. On the other hand, Pujara had already proven himself in series against SA and also in Australia briefly where even though he didn’t score heavily he did all the hard work and saw off the tough opening phases but unfortunately got out to soft dismissals. There was no way he could have been dropped after a not-so-bad first three tests against Australia. But dropped he was on the first day Kholi took up full time captaincy.  

It is still very early into Kholi’s Test captaincy era, but we are already getting what the looks have promised: Arrogance and brashness. It is one thing to be aggressive but it is something else to expect every batsman of the team to be a replica of the captain, the aggression. What if Pujara isn’t aggressive? Does he have to be? To play in the Indian team? Was Dravid aggressive? Did Sourav Ganguly drop Rahul Dravid for a Yuvraj Singh? Nope. It’s still early to comment, but these are disturbing signs as far as captaincy is concerned.

It’s good that we lost the first test in such a shocking turnaround. It gave me the opportunity to pout and cry about Pujara, because if we had won, Kholi would probably have been right and me and legions of other cricket enthusiasts wrong if we brought up the Pujara topic. Kholi had already said that he would give an extended run to Rohit Sharma to prove himself at number 3, because he believes if Rohit gets going there is hardly anything that could stop him. But test cricket isn’t about that one knock on a flat track, it is about much more. 

Forget Rohit, it is not about Rohit. It is about Pujara. Does he deserve to sit out on the bench match after match? Was he that bad before he got dropped?
Look up the stats: He was not. 

  

  

Bahubali: The Beginning Movie Review

Bahubali: The Beginning is like a wave that does not rise high enough in its course but hits the shore with a powerful might, calling curtains on its short lived life with that deafening splash. The first half of Bahubali Part 1 is like that, it does not rise, forget curling and rising up, but yet in the second half strikes us with a force that makes us take notice of a path breaking Indian film from one of the modern masters of Indian film Industry, Mr. Rajamoulli. The movie, not only has some of the best ever CGI shots of an Indian film but also narrates a tale that is worth escaping into. Bahubali takes us quite convincingly into the world of kings, queens, ministers and traitors, and of course wars.

The two biggest surprises to me from the movie were MM Keeravani’s back ground score and Ramya Krishna’s screen presence. While MM keeravani’s score packed a punch and gave depth to most of the scenes in the movie, Ramya Krishna’s commanding role was gripping. Prabhas and Rana Daggubati have both done quite well, and in fact the acting in the film was top notch from all quarters, except of course from Tamannah who has established herself as someone who just cannot act. Period.

The sheer imagination and magnitude of Rajamoulli’s brilliance is at the fore by the end of this film. Notice the use of my words “by the end of this film”, because that is where the problem lies with this film because though it is a path breaking film, it misses meeting its true potential of being one of the finest ever Indian movies. And this primarily is because it suffers heavily from the over ambition of Rajamoulli. There is a fine line between ambition and over ambition that is drawn by pragmatism, and the director caught up in a world of his own creation is guilty of breaching that line.

The movie’s first half wasn’t that great and I am infuriated because had it not been for these three simple, totally avoidable “mistakes” in the first half, we could have had a near flawless masterpiece: Terrible CGI, weak screenplay, and unconvincing sequences.

1.       The unconvincing sequences: One of the foolish arguments that you hear here down south is that “if one can accept some Hollywood star hitting the crap out of 20 bad assess at once, why can’t one accept our heroes doing the same? If one can accept cars flying in all directions in fast and furious, then why can’t we accept our Sumos flying up in the air too?” And the answer is in the word “believable”. As an audience, we like watching unrealistic stuff (Like cars flying off and heroes kicking the hell out of others or even magic), and we like watching unrealistic stuff which are perceived, executed, shot and presented in the most believable of ways. And Bahubali part 1 in its first half doesn’t do that, the sequences stretch from being hilarious to outrageous because it was just not believably shot. For example, if you want a guy to jump from one hill to the another, why to make him look like he is just popping up like superman, instead of showing that guy approaching that jump at least with a run? Just one example to elaborate on my point. There were other sequences like that.

2.       Terrible CGI of first half: The limited resources who could handle CGI: In most of the Hollywood films, there are hundreds and hundreds of CGI artists who work on the innumerable scenes of a single film, who because of their strength of work force manage to maintain quality for every single scene. And an Indian film doesn’t have that strength. And when Rajamoulli showed some of the CGI of the movie in trailers, we were overwhelmed, but the truth is that those brilliant CGI were far and few and were sandwiched between the usual underwhelming Indian graphics. When I first watched Eega, I immediately became a huge fan of Rajamoulli, because in Eega, Rajamoulli was aware of his resources at hand and worked brilliantly to set frames of most scenes in such a way as to minimize the use of CGI, resulting in lesser work to do in terms of generating computer graphics which resulted in quality graphics. Compare that to Bahubali and you would be shocked to see that the same guy had a brain freeze here. For example, there was a shot in which a lady was speaking at the foothill of a waterfall and frame was set from way beneath her so as to show her and also the entire waterfalls behind her when she was delivering a dialogue. I mean why? Just why? That CGI behind her was terrible. Couldn’t the frame have been set higher and minimized the appearance of waterfall to just water cascading behind her? That would not have required any CG? So, basically there were a lot of scenes as such, which looked like they unnecessarily had to go through a very busy computer graphics department, with the end output being compromised CG quality, except for a few scenes of course (On an average it felt like there were 6 terrible CGI scenes out of every 10-with the other 4 being phenomenal).

3.       Clearly, the decision to make this into a two part film was taken citing financial reasons and it wasn’t in Rajamoulli’s initial plans, and one could forgive the loose screenplay as such, but it is no excuse to stretch a film for 160 minutes when it could well have been cut down to anything less than 130 minutes. Those 30 minutes, is the reason why it is generating the negative flak among the masses, because the first half almost felt “tiring” to watch after a certain point. The movie simply was not flowing there.

Saying all this, the movie moved onto a second half which was unlike anything I have ever seen in an Indian film before. The CGI in the second half was near perfect. The entire war sequence was of the highest standards. The story moved at a brisk pace, with some great acting, good background score and some breathtaking moments. And a special mention to art direction team which has imagined and executed the Mahishmati Kingdom aplomb. From the costumes to the sets to the CGI buildings of the empire, kudos!

In the end, it looked like there were a lot of people who gave some of their best work into this film and credit must be given to the director for bringing them together and getting the best out of his team, but sadly, I couldn’t help but wonder if Rajamoulli was both the Hero and Villain of Bahubali: The Beginning, who has both unnecessarily flawed it with over ambition and resurrected it with his natural brilliance. The movie, on the whole though, was pretty good. It was flawed but it was not bad on any scale. It was better than most Tollywood and Bollywood films, but it was only that we, as fans, expected so much of Rajamoulli.

Not to be cruel, in parts, Rajamoulli did deliver what he promised: An Epic.

Rating: 150/150 (Paisa Wasool entertainment)

A touchdown

Last week has seen the release of three reports in India- MDG (Millennium Development Goals) report, SECC 2011 (Socio Economic and Caste Census), and RSOC (Rapid Survey of Children).  The data contained in these reports are to an extent reassuring but to a greater extent disappointing. And it is disappointing only because numbers don’t lie.

MDG report 2015 shows that India has halved its incidence of extreme poverty from 49.4% in 1994 to 24.7% in 2011 (Limit of extreme poverty has been set for those living for less than 1.25$ a day). And as halving the extreme poverty by 2015 was one of the targets of Millennium development goal in 2000, we should be fairly satisfied with these numbers, as we have reached a goal.

However, in the same period, poverty reduction achieved by our poorer neighbors Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh is higher. I am not implying anything, but only stating what I have read in The Hindu. Not to compare apples and oranges, let us move on.

The MDG report also says that,

1.       India is on track to achieve its hunger targets as well

2.       But it is still home to

·         One quarter of world’s undernourished population

·         Over a third of world’s underweight children

·         Nearly a third of world’s food insecure people

When we go through the highlights of these reports, we realize how much of the real India is behind the veil of curtain drawn across by our ignorance and pride of a number that only shows our GDP growth because, recently, I came across facebook posts which were pitting our GDP growth against China’s GDP growth, that took pride in the prediction that ours would out do theirs in lesser than a decade. I am not being a spoilsport to the dance of Incredible India  (again, sorry for generalizing the general public) but am only asking a touchdown of our flight of pride, if we are aboard one, because some of these numbers should in fact make us crash that flight.

Coming back, there are positives in terms of the drop in infant mortality rate (No.of deaths per 1000 live births-88.2 deaths to 43.8 deaths) and maternal mortality rate (No.of deaths of mothers per lakh live births- 560 to 190) from 1990 to 2012. But the report says that the annual progress has been slow.

RSOC (Rapid survey on Children) by UNICEF, on the other hand, had data that was a touch more cheerful. The report shows that both child stunting levels and underweight children in India had fallen to a historic low but then almost all states have performed poorly in reducing the number of underweight adolescent girls. Gujarat, a perceived developed state, is the only state to perform worse than the national average in reducing the number of child stunting case and underweight children (An awkward sheepish moment for all the “Gujarat model” propagators may be?)

And coming to the last one, SECC 2011 (Socio Economic and Caste Census) released only this week, data for rural households revealed that

1.       In over 90% of households, the main earning member makes less than Rs. 10,000/- a month

2.       Over half the households are landless

3.       Over half the households rely on casual manual labour for the larger part of their income.

4.       Out of a total of 17.4 crore households, 1.8 lakhs households are engaged in degrading work for a livelihood (i.e manual scavenging). Saying that, it is a significant improvement from the 35 lakh such households back in 1961.  

These numbers are not something that are seriously looked upon as the foundation from where “real development in India” has to begin. Because these numbers are not too grim that they could set the alarm bells ringing or could start an up roar in the parliament (in fact, who would up roar? Each of those parties had formed governments in the past two decades and the data today is only a reflection of the policies of the different governments in different periods spread over the last two decades). But yet considering our population, the percentage would wind up to staggering numbers and that all of them live in a country that I too live in is disturbing. I cannot be proud of the high building rises of my cyber city or the investment rains of my state, or the growth of my country, until the rural society too sees some proportional development in tune with urban society.

There is no point in pointing fingers at any parties, or any individuals for the inadequate policies or policy implementation, because all that matters now is how all these data are taken by the present government. What matter is how do we go forward from here? How much of those numbers would reflect in the policies and reforms? It’s not just the politicians but also the bureaucrats, who are at the other end of implementation chain, who have to buckle up and be pro active in cutting down such numbers in data. A true leader does not only talk loudly, or act popularly, but someone who recognizes the ‘less fancier’ true base of a country and propels it forward. And can NaMo be that leader? Only time will tell.

Source: Data is from The Hindu
PS: THIS BLOG claims no credit for any images posted on this site unless otherwise noted. Images on this blog are copyright to its respectful owners. If there is an image appearing on this blog that belongs to you and do not wish for it appear on this site, please E-mail with a link to said image and it will be promptly removed.

A defeat, a reaction and a champion

Indians looked like they were more bothered with International Yoga Day than anything else on the morning of 21^st June, but in fact, lot of us were more anxious on how eleven of our boys would flex their muscles across on the eastern border of Bengal in the second odi. We comforted ourselves with the words “Come on! We couldn’t lose an ODI series to Bangladesh for God’s sake. Chill!” and went about our day’s activities. But 35 overs into 1^st innings, all of us knew.

Most of us, after the defeat, might have played it down with “Well, we played non stop from last 16 months” or “Yeah, it’s a sport! Happens” or “yeah whatever, I am not that much into cricket now”,  but the truth was that we all switched off our TV sets, did not carry on our duty of checking out on the world by logging into facebook, and crept under our bed sheets, snuggled close to ourselves, and cried (Over exaggeration obviously).

On the face of it, a night’s sleep would have sufficed for most of us ardent fans. And it was. True Indian cricket fans are already over the defeat. Time to move on. Bangladesh bowled and batted better than us and we simply met the inevitable result of defeat. What if it was to Bangladesh? They are a side that is improving and it would do cricket a world of good if the number of good competitive teams are increasing.

But what bothered true Indian cricket fans, was the reaction of media and their deep rooted tradition of quoting without context. The headlines “Dhoni offers to quit captaincy” lay bombarded in my newsfeed and notifications in my phone. To shed some light onto the context, what Dhoni exactly said was in response to the questions of two “journalists” who questioned him if he thought he was still the right man to lead Indian cricket team, and one of them went as far as to question Dhoni if he thought himself as the reason behind the mess that Indian cricket is in (wait, first of all, what mess?), and when you take the journalists words and the following reply from Dhoni into picture, you will understand that what Dhoni said was more of a hit back at critics (as rightly headlined by espncricinfo, the only sensible media house in the country that is worth following as far as cricket goes)

Dhoni’s reply:

"I am really enjoying my cricket, I know this question was coming. I know the media really loves me. Yes, if it is a justifiable thing that if you remove me and the Indian cricket will start doing really well, and if I am the reason for all the bad that is happening to Indian cricket, definitely I would love to step away and play as a player. Ultimately you want India to win. It doesn't matter who is the captain”

"I was never really in line to become a captain. It was a job or responsibility for me. I have taken that responsibility. If they want to take it away, I am happy to give it away”

Now for a second, think about the stupidity behind the scribes question and how Dhoni replied, and also about how foolishly Indian media quoted it out of context. #JustThingsIndianMediaDoes should be a trend every time they pull up such stuff, so that we as people could alienate our identity from theirs so that we Indian people itself are not scathingly looked at as immature as our media. Indian cricket fans are mature and composed enough to handle defeat to a former “minnow”, but certainly that’s not the picture that is being painted to the world.  

Dhoni was never as classy as a Dravid, as elegant and wristy as a Laxman, as talented as a Rohit, and as compact as a Sachin, but he has made it thus far with his awkward, unorthodox batting techniques. His value lies not just in the runs he contributed but the way he ran things in Indian cricket for the last 7 years without any scandalous episodes and controversies that were a routine to break out in the previous eras of captains. Being the captain of Indian cricket team is not just about the decisions taken on field but also about everything else outside, and Dhoni was a master at it. He cut down potential controversial questions with sarcastic comments filled with humor, gave lesser opportunities to be misquoted and defended and backed his players in front of press. The true value of Dhoni’s presence would be realized only when the sun would have set on his career.

I believe Dhoni’s skill set would someday be recognized as a case study to understand emotional intelligence with regard to leading a team, any team. When you see Dhoni leading a fielding side at a crunch situation with the batting team, say, require 20 runs in 18 balls on a flat wicket, it is not that he is not tensed, it is just that he has the immense EI ability to mask it, separate the emotions from his thinking capacities and then take decisions.

And the pinnacle of the achievement of his emotional intelligence skills can be traced to the recent success of Dhawan in the world cup. He backs and backs a player, drops them, gives them time and then picks them up, believes in them and they deliver. And this is possible only when a captain is able to understand his team emotionally, individually and work on it accordingly. It is no fluke that we have had tremendous success in ICC tournaments in the last few years because it was his ability to handle immensely talented players and make them perform at the highest level.

I may sound like a die hard MSD fan, but the truth is that, I absolutely am not. I am an admirer of Dhoni for his certain skill sets. I have been a neutral observer of Dhoni. My neutrality is true to the day and it was never affected by developments such as dropping of some of my favourite senior players like Yuvi, Sehwag or Zaheer, nor has it swung to the positive side with those big sixes that he hits.

There are allegations against him off the field. They might be true. They might not. I will never take controversial things on their face value as reported in media. Even if they are true, I will remember Dhoni for the man he was in front of the camera, on the field and off it, and in his own way he was the classiest, most compact and elegant player of them all.

PS: I am just sometimes sad that fewer people recognize him and give due credit for what he is, because I fear we are slipping into  a world of cynicism. If we look at things as simple as cricket that ought to be enjoyed, in such a pessimistic way, then well, Sachin save us :P

Jurassic World Movie Review

We all probably don’t remember Jurassic Park entirely, but we certainly do remember the rush of adrenaline when we first watched the film, may be? Well, at least I do. I, for one, used to imagine what it would have been like to have a functional Jurassic Park with all the attractions, had there been no slip up from John Hammond. Well yes it’s a fantasy, but it was something that I used to imagine when I was a kid!

And Bham! Jurassic world does exactly that! It shows my fantasy of how a functional Jurassic Park would look like. And it is here that I loved the movie most.

Erstwhile Jurassic Park, released in 1993, was not just a path breaking film in terms of CG and production scale, but it was the complete package of action, emotion and comedy that knocked everybody out when we first saw the film. And the latest Jurassic World had an onus of redoing those elements, and I think it is these expectations that weigh this movie down.

Don’t get me wrong, this movie is in no way a bad film. It’s a pretty good film, in terms of the action sequences, thrill factor, acting and also a bit of emotion. The biggest let down of the movie though, is simply, the most important ingredient of any film, its plot. It was way too predictive. It felt only like an extension to the trailer. While the trailer does well to prepare us to the idea of trainable raptors and the central plot line of a kick-ass hybrid dinosaur out of containment, the problem is that there isn’t anything else to the film.

Chris Pratt picks up from where he left off in Guardians of Galaxy. He was phenomenal, as usual. He kind of lifts this film with his screen presence, and the other actors did well too. As I am an Indian, I have to say that it was endearing to watch Irrfan Khan in such a big film, in a pretty significant role.   

But it has to be said that the direction and camera work in this film was neat, simple, perfect. Stephen Spielberg, director of Jurassic Park, who is on board as Executive producer for this film, has picked an ideal director, Colin Trevorrow,  to helm this project who was also a fan of the original, and it showed. There were a lot of references to the iconic scenes of the original and it gave the feels whenever they were touched upon.

I felt that this movie, with its lousy script could have gone a lot worse, had it not been for Colin. He worked brilliantly around the limited script resources. This movie, definitely, is not one for the critics. It’s for us, the casual movie buffs, fans of the original, and to those who want to get entertained. This movie is not disappointing. It just pales in comparison with the original but that shouldn’t bother. Jurassic Park was a wonder! And Jurassic World is a fine film!

BottomLine: Entertaining and definitely worth a watch.

Rating: 150/150

PS: There would be five grades in which I would rate movies from now. It actually stemmed from discussions with my own friends of whether a film is worth to buy a ticket for, and as we are students, we could probably use that money for better use :P

So, a) 300/150 (Two times! fix! Amazing! tongue emoticon )
b) 150/150 (Definitely worth a watch)
c) 80/150 (meh!)
d) 50/150 (You could probably wait for the DVD release)
e) I want a refund!

Can you come over to India, please?

To those of you who think who have never seen or heard about a “John Oliver”,

give me the opportunity to correct you, because most of us, Indians, have definitely come across this video of “Last Week Tonight” talking about Narendra Modi’s visit to US: (Those who get butt hurt easily, please don’t continue with this article, or this video, or LWT)

And if you had never really come across this video of John Oliver before, then my sincere apologies for stereotyping you! My bad!

If you look up John Oliver in Wikipedia, you will see that he is listed as a stand-up comedian, actor, writer, television host, voice actor, political satirist and a media critic! Phew! That’s a lot!

But what if I tell you that there is still one more description about him that is not listed there in wiki, that I and many of his admirers have come to associate him with?

A JOURNALIST!

Let me tell you, I have read a few of his interviews, where he has said that he is anything but a journalist, but as someone who follows his work, I know. You are lying there John! You are a freaking journalist! And a kickass one at that! I am like a fan boy of his show “Last Week Tonight” and if this article sounds like an excited 15 year old girl writing about twilight, well, damn you! I wasn’t going for that.

I am probably his biggest fan from the sub continent and I consume almost any 

video of LWT that I could lay my hands on because of the presence of three most binding elements he has going for himself in Last Week Tonight:

1.       Sarcasm

2.       Sarcasm

3.       Sarcasm

And add to it tons of research on a topic, presented with statistical analysis, quotes from the bureaucrats, politicians, public and also media and then followed by a tear down of those quotes in the most hilarious ways with analogies that would make you roll on the floor.

He essentially carries out his own form of journalism, of course duly supported by many people working for the show behind the scenes, with proper research but it is about the way he presents it! He does it in a way in which he almost doesn’t want you to take him or the show seriously, but packs a punch that will make you really take him seriously! Consider this video in fact that he had posted couple of weeks ago on the problems being faced by poultry farmers in the US:

Or those who are inclined towards football, this:

Or those who want to know about ‘Civil Forfeiture’, this:

Yes, most of his videos deal with American issues, but if you are a global citizen with no boundaries to tie down your mind, you may enjoy his show.

Also it’s not just about his 15-20 minute takes, it is even more so about his 3-4 minute takes, where you know he is only fooling around to crack you up, but yet, somewhere, in the beginning or the end in a ‘blink and you miss’ statement, he delivers the punch in them too.

Like this video on Climate change debate:

Or this video on US intervention in middle-east, wrapped thoroughly around Peru!:

Or this down-right hilarious one on Tony Abott!

Or this on UK Labour Party:

There’s just something about john oliver’s content delivery that you know has the perfect blend of humor and seriousness. Sometimes we want to take things easy, see it in a lighter way, and yet are concerned about it, and John Oliver is a true reflection of ourselves in that way.

I only wish he could do a season in India (he’ll probably have shoes thrown at him after one episode) but there are many of us who want to smear things down with some humor. So, John, can you come to India, please? 

PS: You can't miss this video of Stephen Hawking! 

Turbunator 2.0

With 101 test caps and 413 wickets, one would wonder how Harbhajan Singh missed out on the Indian team for three consecutive years especially considering how badly we fared up in the spin department during that time where we were outclassed by Lyon on Australian pitches, the English duo of Swann and Monty on Indian pitches and most embarrassingly by Moeen Ali in the English summer last year.  But Ashwin, Jadeja and Ojha, for their part, did not perform so poorly that it set the alarm bells ringing. Dhoni, as we have known him, doesn’t drop players once he gives them chance and to be fair, all of them kept improving with each outing. But have they improved enough?

How the tables have turned!

That was the question facing the new Dada on the block, Kholi. He has an aggressive personality and he wants match winners. And the first thing he does after getting full time captaincy is roping in a true established match winner of Indian Cricket- Bhajji.

Now, I am a quintessential sentimental Indian cricket fan who would love to see all the old boys back in the team, from the yuvrajs to the zaheers to the sehwags to the gambhirs and this development only fills my heart. But I had to ask myself, is it the best foot forward for Indian cricket? By taking a step backwards? I am pretty sure many fans like me wondered.

Harbhajan’s performance in the last two Ranji Seasons did not augur for consideration let alone selection. In 2013-14 season, he played 6 matches for 22 wickets and the 2014-15 season, 3 matches for 6 wickets, dishing out performances that wouldn’t force himself back into the Indian Test Team. Yet he makes a comeback into a Test squad solely on the form and rhythm displayed in a T20 league. And the third spinner in the squad Karn Sharma too was picked based on his T20 exploits. It’s definitely not a reassuring sign.

Having said that, I am still betting on Kholi and the selectors to have made the right decision. That is because cricket is more than just numbers. It’s about instinct after a certain level. Karn Sharma, though was beaten all over the park in his first test in Adelaide, is a good enough spinner to the eye, and he has to develop his trade on the move with the team due to the dearth of other quality leg spinners running in the circuit and also because of the time it would take for him to develop on “greener” Indian tracks (For reference to ‘greener’, read: http://www.espncricinfo.com/ranji-trophy-2014-15/content/story/813007.html ) , and as far as Bhajji is concerned, we all know that the veterans are always just one match away, and if a T20 league could supply enough of confidence to push Bhajji to that one match, it would do.

Bhajji's new spell

Bhajji not only got the numbers behind himself in IPL8 but also impressed everyone with his spells. He was accurate, spun the ball well with good flight and varying loops. One could see that everything was going well for Bhajji with the ball. Bhajji’s inclusion could also be justified on the lines that it is important for selectors, the media and also the fans, to not get carried away by all the talk about “future” as concentrating on the match and series at hand is the best way to go forward.

If Bhajji would get a look-in in the one-match test series remains to be seen, but if he does, we would all love to see the Turbunator back at his best, delivering match turning performances, because Indian Cricket needs him, an experienced quality spinner, more than ever. I and legions of fans like me, wish him the best!

PS: He is Dada's boy, a fighter! So even the harshest of his critics will soon be biting their tongue. XD