Category Archives: 25 things (or less)

5 great Indian cricketers of the past decade…

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1. Anil Kumble
Why: Because you cannot take winning at home for granted.
Kumble’s greatest curse was that we took him for granted. Always. India wins at home. We have spinning tracks. We will win no matter who comes and who plays. It’s not as easy as that. We still have to go and take 20 wickets every match. If you sit and count the number of Test matches each player has won for his country, then Kumble would have a lion’s share. A victory is a victory no matter where it comes from. And for the record, before he retired, he improved his performance on foreign soil too. Then there’s also his record 10-wicket haul in an innings.

2. Rahul Dravid
Why: Because he was always there in India’s most critical moments.
Kolkata 2001. Leeds 2002. Adelaide 2003. Rawalpindi 2004. Kingston 2006. Perth 2008.
Some of India’s finest victories and Dravid made his contribution in all of them. Ask anyone to make a list of their greatest victories and chances are Dravid will feature heavily in most of them. To keep veering your team to historic wins is a sign of true greatness.

3. Sourav Ganguly
Why: Because he changed the way India played.
Aggression. Professionalism. Self-belief. Faith. These are not just words. They have the power to turn ordinary teams into great ones. And this came just on the heels of the match-fixing scandal and the mediocrity that the Indian team was wallowing in. Had Ganguly not let his guard down and relaxed during the latter part of his tenure, he would have played many more matches and plotted many more victories.

4. Virendra Sehwag
Why: Because he changed the way the game is played.
How many Test cricket openers play as if they are in an ODI match? Sehwag has a phenomenal strike rate of 80%. To put that in perspective, big hitter Test openers Chris Gayle and Mathew Hayden both stand at around 60%. (Kapil Dev and Adam Gilchrist usually used to come down the order.)  I remember in school it used to be a rare sight when India’s Test run rate would cross 3 runs per over. Recently, we almost touched 6 on the opening day. Sehwag has single-handedly changed the way India plays Test matches. He can still be the first man to hit 3 Test Triples. And for the record, he rocks in ODIs and T20s too.

5. Mahendra Singh Dhoni
Why: Victory. Victory. Victory.
A T20 World Cup. More than half a dozen bilateral ODI series victories. A world record of being undefeated in his first 10 Tests. World No. 1 in Tests. World No. 1 in ODIs. Dhoni has already boldy gone where no India captain has gone before and he’s just started. For detractors who say a captain is only as good as his team, the nucleus of the team was playing cricket for 5-10 years even before Dhoni made his debut. What changed now? The answer is Dhoni. Victories beat records any day and Dhoni so far has proved to be a Victory Magnet. A point also missed is that he has also been the No. 1 ODI batsman for a record number of weeks now.

© Sunil Rajguru

6 noisy and Indian things I simply don’t understand…

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• Putting up a pandal with a million-watt speaker all day and night at any time of the year for any religious festival and for any kind of celebration bang in the middle of a dense residential area.

• Millions of cars honking billions of times a day for no rhyme or reason on congested dusty roads.

• People disturbing everyone around them by shouting on the mobile or landline as if the person they are talking to is a million miles way.

• Putting a car stereo on full blast… if I can hear it so clearly, then is the person inside deaf by now?

• Shouting, screaming and laughing loudly at fine dining restaurants and creating an even bigger nuisance if drunk.

• Whither silencers? All Indian vehicles should be called noisemakers, especially autos, trucks and bikes.

I guess for a country which doesn’t bother much about water and air pollution, expecting any kind of sensitivity on the issue of Noise Pollution is impossible…

© Sunil Rajguru

2009. Unconventional action: Instant Reaction.

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• Admit to an affair and destroy a Respected Sports Icon.

• Log on to Twitter and launch a revolution.

• Sneeze and scare your entire neighbourhood.

• Smash a few atoms and scare the entire world.

• Give a fancy speech and get a Nobel Prize.

• Threaten nuclear anarchy and get a few billion dollars.

• Go on a fast and single-handedly create a State.

• Show a sleazy tape and a sack a Governor.

• Throw a shoe and retire a Minister.

© Sunil Rajguru

7 reasons why Social Networking is the “Thing of the Year”

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1. Facebook crosses 350 million.
That’s more accounts than email market leader Yahoo. If Facebook was a separate country, then we’d all live in virtual utopia full of lovey dovey friends and groups, no enemies, virtual gifts, quizzes that predict the future, virtual farms, water worlds, nice Tarot sessions and fortune cookies… And yeah, in numbers, that’s next only to the population of China and India.

2. US actor Ashton Kutcher gets 4 million “Followers” on Twitter.
How many did Jesus Christ have in his lifetime? What was the population of the kingdom at that time anyway? Will Kutcher state in a Lennonisque fashion: “I am more popular than…”?

3. The Most Powerful Man in the World is on LinkedIn.
And Twitter (Trailing Kutcher with close to 3 million Followers). And Facebook. (A cool 7 million supporters).
Is that why he beat Senator McCain? Great power in the online world as a launching pad? (Even if Obama doesn’t actually post the updates himself, it’s still a Huge Leap Forward for Cybermankind)

4. The high and mighty are all getting Socially Networked.
Raymond T. Odierno, the Commanding General, Multi-National Force—Iraq is on Facebook! And he’s joined by Pakistan’s former General Pervez Musharraf! Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is on Twitter? Need I say more? I could go on and on… but you get the general picture!

5. Controversies! Controversies! Controversies!
When anything enters into multiple controversies, then you know it’s time has come.
Republican Joe Wilson raised his finger to Obama and said, “You lie!” and before he knew it, a storm was unleashed on Twitter. The Internet assures an immediate and widespread backlash nowadays. (Incidentally, Wilson is also on Twitter!)
Religious leaders slammed Facebook and there was a surfeit of crimes related to these networking sites
In humble India too, where the Internet penetration is so low, there was the Shashi Tharoor Twittergate controversy, where the minister almost lost his job and the hilarious trending topic #chetanblocks related to writer Chetan Bhagat blocking a Follower.

6. Reel life and fiction.
A Twitter mention in the climax of the latest Robert Langdon adventure? Facebook in a Bollywood movie? Social Networking gained a lot of traction in 2009 and it is inspiring a lot of fiction for 2010 and beyond. Look out for Kevin Spacey produced The Social Network about the founding of Facebook. (Directed by none other than David Fincher)

7. The Uber Cyber Ego.
The new age Ego Search was the Google Search. But now here’s something even better…
How are you feeling? What are you eating? Do you have a headache? Are you stuck in a traffic jam?
Is anyone interested? Well even if they are not, then you can make sure a few thousand people at least know about it. If you’re a celebrity, make that millions—all without a newspaper, TV channel or a personal website. A handful of social networking accounts will do the trick.

© Sunil Rajguru

6 things washed in my washing machine…

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…apart from clothes, that is…

1. USB Drive: Came out sparkling clean. Still working perfectly.

2. Son’s Watch: Fell to pieces. Watch repairer fixed it. Looks brand new. Still ticking away.

3. Umpteen Currency Notes: They look a little bleached, but shopkeepers accept them anyway.

4. Chocolate Eclairs: Came out intact. On opening the wrapper, the éclair looked OK too. But why take a chance? Straight to the dustbin.

5. Paper: Grade Two Disaster. Goes to pieces. Sticks to the clothes. Difficult to get off.

6. Coins: Grade One Disaster. Machine Stopper. Got stuck somewhere and brought the machine to a standstill. Serviceman’s comment: Why do you waste Rs 350 service charge on a one-rupee coin? Point taken. Coin looks somewhat like another coin that I had kept over a railway track and let a train run over it.

Moral of the story: Check your pockets thoroughly before you put your clothes in the machine.

© Sunil Rajguru

If the Americans had ruled us till 1947 instead of the British…

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…India would have a Presidential form of government. No instability, coalitions and partners fighting with their demands. Same at the state level with their powerful Governors.

…we would have been called the USI or United States of India.

…our national game would have been baseball… Think how much time we would have saved not playing all those 5-day matches along with the loss of productivity of the whole nation following them.

…we would have started IT services in the seventies, software development in the 80s and by now we would have overtaken Silicon Valley. Microsoft India would be bigger than Microsoft US and Bill Gates would have become an honorary Indian citizen.

…we would been a Capitalistic Democratic Republic and in the throes of a Great Depression along with the US, our GDP would have seen negative growth.

…the Left parties wouldn’t have existed.

… the PIO (Person of Indian Origin) would be the biggest minority group in the US and a PIO would have become Prez long before Obama.

…the Rajya Sabha would be called the Indian Senate and be actually powerful and relevant.

…we would have been a nation of coffee drinkers. Since coffee is a bigger stimulant than tea, would we all have been more alert and productive?

…Britain would have been just another island for us.

…we would all have been driving to the right.

…it would have been Maruti Ford and it would have come maybe a decade earlier.

…since India would have been an ally of the US, Pak and Russia would have joined hands.

…US would force China and India to have strong ties and signed a UCIFTA (US China India Free Trade Agreement).

…we would be more worried about Taiwan than Tibet.

…The Khidki Operating System would have been developed in Bangalore and be a best seller in the country.

…Shashi Tharoor would have been the UN Secretary General now and India would have got a permanent seat in the Security Council.

…New Delhi would have been struggling to host the 2012 Olympics right now and not the 2010 Commonwealth Games.

…there would be no cricket in India! Can you even begin to comprehend that!

…Slumdog Millionaire would have been directed by Steven Spielberg and be full of Indian Americans and special effects.

…Green and Gay would have been both very in.

…our parents’ generation would have all participated in a Woodstock-type festival.

…Obama would have tripled aid to India in his latest bill.

…George W Bush would have got the Bharat Ratna this year.

…we would have had two time zones.

…there would be no babugiri and sahab syndromes and peons and we would all be doing all our work by ourselves.

© Sunil Rajguru