And the blue eleven make fools of themselves yet again. Whoever went around saying things like we do well on our own doctored pitches and Sachin is back with a bang. Well maybe he was back with a bang, now he's out with it too. And there seems to be some 1 second delay between my typing something and it appearing on the screen. Need more coffee, I think.
So back to the rather dismal post-diwali damp squibness of the team despite some royal advertising by Pepsi and Nike. Which brings us to Sourav I-like-taking-my-shirt-off Ganguly in some pathetic Pepsi ad. What were they thinking?
Ranting and raving about how badly the team performs makes as much sense as banging the proverbial head against the proverbial wall. Just stopped the virus scan. Delay now reduced to negligible amounts. So instead we take a nice trip (more later on the "trip") into the history of sport with special reference to our motherland - England. Well the British Isles, broadly speaking, from whence the weirdest yet surprisingly popular sports have emerged - Golf, cricket and perhaps fox-hunting and hare-coursing.
What kind of jobless civilization decides to let all active sports go and invent games that could be "played" outdoors but with just about as much energy expenditure as say scrabble or Scotland Yard. Incidentally play Scotland Yard with new and improved rules, almost like Calvinball, it's a treat.
Golf - according to Robin Williams was invented by a drunk Scotsman who after a few shots of the ol' malt decided the following -
Mad Drunk Scotsman : I got an idea, I'm going to take a ball and knock it into a gopher hole with a stick.
Innocent Bystander : Like Pool?
MDS : @$#! Pool not like pool. I'm not going to use a straight stick, I'm going to use a little f@#$%d up stick.
IB : So like Croquet?
MDS : @#$! Croquet. Not like croquet. I'm going to put the gopher hole like yards and yards away. and put shit in the middle like trees and sand and a lake. So you'll keep hitting the ball with a tyre iron and every time you miss you'll feel like you're having a stroke... @#$! that's what we'll call it - we'll call it a stroke, 'cos every time you miss the ball you're going to die! And then... this is brilliant, I'll put some level and and a little flag near the hole, to give you hope. But I'll put a pool on one side and some sand on the other to @#$! with your ball. And you'll be stroking away thinking you're going to die...
IB : So you do this just once, right?
MDS : No, eighteen times...
And now that you've read all of this you can go here and take a look at the video.
My apologies.
Cricket is a very similar story. It's bad enough to have enough time and energy to want to hit a ball with a weapon of some kind, but these guys go all the way... the whole nine yards to come up with the weirdest set of rules.
The ball must be thrown with the arm above the level of the shoulder and the elbow extended at the point of release. Whatever happens before is fine. Paul Adams, way to go and that new Sri Lankan fellow, who's name escapes me.
Then you need to knock one of six sticks down. Or catch the ball or some such. Why is it so damn complex? Take this set of simple rules - Here's a ball, you can't touch it with your hands, or go out side the big white rectangle that we've drawn. Kick, head or chest it into that net on the far side and try not to kill anyone along the way. And you can only head the ball not your opponents.
Isn't that so much simpler. Or take this one. See that guy walking into our court muttering something? we have to grab him and hold him down or make sure he stops muttering. And if he grabs you, you're back on the bench.
Even chess and dungeons and dragons have a simpler rule book than cricket. Yet there are millions (thankfully restricted to the commonwealth and South Africa) who know all the rules and will come up with newer ideas to make things miserable for all concerned... and me.
Why me? Because you can't go around saying things like I'm not watching the match or I honestly don't care or Let them all go to hell without a significant proportion of the blue billion wanting to lynch you.
All that apart, here's on the word "trip"
A: Listened to that band da, the something quartet - ok it is.
B: Did you hear that one song, trippy it is.
A: It's ok nothing to go all crazy about. Supreme Beings is Trippy though.
C: Have you heard Hey by the Pixies? Trippy da, full addicting only that song is.
A: Yeah I downloaded it but I don't think it's all there.
D: I'm damn scared of this trippy word when you @#$!ers are around and drop it all the time...
That's all folks...
