Showing posts with label India. Show all posts
Showing posts with label India. Show all posts

03 January, 2011

Graeme Smith Reveals Retirement Plans

Graeme Smith, at a press conference after the first day of the deciding Test match between India and South Africa, has announced that he will be retiring. There was a twist though in store for everyone. As we all know some players have in the past retired from one form of the game or other as they wanted to devote more time and effort to their preferred format be it ODIs, Test matches or more recently T20 cricket. Smith though went one step ahead when he announced, "Well ya, I have decided to quit from all matches which will feature Zaheer Khan in the opposing team. Ya, this will help me focus on bowlers who I am more comfortable against" after having being dismissed by Zaheer for the 11th time in his career.

Saurav Ganguly when told about this development gave his customary look of disbelief by batting his eyelids at the rate of three times per second. "If I had retired from matches played in Australia, South Africa, New Zealand and West Indies, my average would have been much higher. This is not right. Soon you might have people retiring from short pitched bowling" he said, suggesting that he might have considered various kinds of retirement plans to suit his batting average.

15 November, 2010

Lipstick on a Pig

For those of you who aren't familiar with this phrase, 'lipstick on a pig' is a "rhetorical expression, used to convey the message that making superficial or cosmetic changes is a futile attempt to disguise the true nature of a product" (courtesy Wikipedia). The comparison I want to make is to the recent Commonwealth Games which in the end turned out to be a success although it was anything but a reflection of the state of Indian sport (cricket is of course excluded). I have reservations using adjectives such as resounding, amazing or similar synonyms before the word success. I have my reasons.