"No Saying Is Worth Quoting" - a wise man

Have you ever read a political cartoon and both nodded your head at the sagacity of the point conveyed and laughed so hard your juice/milk/beer (depending on how early you start on the juice) comes spurting out of your nose?

Now that you have that lovely vision playing havoc with your neurons, acquaint yourself if you will with Doonesbury. If you have followed this strip (or start following it now), you know exactly what my viewpoint is on multiple topics. The Iraq war - against it. The Bush administration - bleeding the country, if not the world dry. Abortion - it's a woman's right (pun not intended). Stem cell research - stop the damn Christian conservative posturing and let research that can save lives continue within boundaries. Taxes - if the country can't afford to give money back, then tax people more. Budget deficit - a great way to make sure that the next generation will pay for the greed of the rich. How much money do they want to take with them to their grave anyway?? The Christian right - fundamentalists, and therefore hated as much as fundamentalists of any religion, be it Islam, Christianity or Hinduism.

Doonesbury rocks!

This used to be my favorite procrastination tactic when I was doing my Master's degree. I could force myself to stay indoors to work on my thesis, but I couldn't force myself not to play the game. And now it's gone.. sob.. I spent hours trying to make sure the cow's rear hoof hit the bullseye. For those of you wondering what I'm blabbering about, check out this screenshot:
Picture 1

Might look deceptively simple, but you have no idea about the high when you finally get a few flings on target in a row. Especially when you had a deadline looming the next day!

And now it's gone... Last known locations -
http://www.mediafarm.no/forsoksgard/kukaster.asp
http://www.flingthecow.com

$100 reward offered for anyone who can provide valid leads to a working fling-the-cow site.

For the non-cricket-savvy, you might want to refer to this link as you go along to make more sense of the post. Disclaimer - you will get 4-5 popups. Here's an alternative site that you might prefer if you are American. I'd suggest you search and read through the section that goes "Very Big Considerations " before anything else - this distills the basic difference between cricket and baseball - everything else is details.

Cricket's powers that be are missing out on the significant potential of getting the game into the most obvious of places for 20/20 (ed - be forewarned, the link is typical whiny BBC) - the US. Before everyone and their uncle jumps on me for wanting to market a format purely to sell it in a particular country, hear me out.

The reason why there is so much competition for sports in the US is because of the incredible amount of money to be made. Ticket sales, concession stands, and, of course, sponsors. This is why the ICC keeps making attempts - however inane - to introduce cricket to the general American public. The problem is that so far, no American I know worth his/her salt could possibly sit through an entire One Day game. The closest I got was when I had a friend sit through one inning of an ODI. He was amazed when I told him that there was another session of equal length, and called it a day and got out when he could. He was even more amazed when I told him the next day that there is a concept of a 5 day game as well. Which could end in draw!

So, getting back to my original point, 20/20 is perfect for the American audience. The game would last around as long as one of the major American sports (Football, Baseball, Basketball, Hockey), and would contain a lot of big hitting. While no one will be able to sway the die-hard baseball enthusiasts, there would be a good section of people who would find it more entertaining than the once-in-15-ball hits that you get in baseball. Especially if someone like ESPN decides to telecast it/show the sport on SportsCenter. The over concept is a broadcaster's dream - which other sport has an inbuilt ability in it's rules to cut to advertisements after every 10 minutes or so?! The only thing that would have to be worked out would be the timing of the season. Would you want to go head-to-head against baseball, and risk the comparisons (could be good or bad), or go up against basketball/hockey - the weaker of the major american sports - and risk getting crowded out? Or potentially have games during football season, when you can squeeze in games during the week, and thus provide the sports-mad public something to watch while they chew over their fantasy stats for the previous weeks football game.

In terms of players and autonomy, thre are a couple of options.
Option 1 - don't try to merge the 20/20 season in the US with the international cricket calendar. Hand over the reins to an American sports marketing organization, and let them run the show with minimal interference from the ICC. You can allow the American League (oops.. baseball analogy) to have their own "World Championship" and be happy as a stand-alone entity. Just get a (sizeable) percentage of the revenue and be happy that it is fuelling growth over the rest of the world.
Option 2 - Structure the international cricket calendar so that there is a certain set of months where there is no international cricket and so cricketers are free to be drafted by clubs in the US (this could initially be from the Senior/A/B teams of each country). This would provide the nascent organization with players of high enough quality that the games would be interesting.

Well, I'd been wanting to find an avenue to express myself for a while now. After all, my political, social and cultural views needed to be shared with everybody - they were way too important to share them with just my friends. Also, I realized that as you get older, your avenues to write for the sake of writing keep reducing. You get so caught up in work that you don't take the time to let your juices flow.

And then a couple of life-altering events happened within the span of a few hours. My friend Ramki created a blog (surprising me with his ability to come up with a creative name - Raamblings) and insinuated, in his own crude way :) that I had put on significant weight since he saw me last! I'll admit to having put on some weight, but going from 5'7", 145 lbs to 5'7" 149 does not exactly qualify for a trip to the obesity clinic. Grr... Something had to be done to counter the vile propaganda that this troubled child of the City was spreading.

Then I read this article by a guy called Prem Panicker - a dude who writes about cricket, and had just created a blog of his own (about 20/20 cricket, if you must know). Since it was around 3:00am and this article was about something I could have no possible control over, I had to sit and pound out a response for around half an hour. And that's when it hit me - the cyberworld needed me to post my opinions, no matter how one-sided, in order to restore balance. And hence this blog.