Cricket

I am now officially half way through my experiment...No.250 is loading up now! Yay, only another 15 hours of this mind-numbing insomnia treatment. I cant even read anything as its too dark and I am sick of playing billiards and camperstrike.

So, I shall now rant about rubbish. Mr. Somnath Chatterjee, speaker of Lok Sabha, the highest parliament in the land has offered to discuss the non-selection of Mr. Sourav Ganguly in parliament.
With the WTO conference just completed in HK, surely India has more pressing issues than its cricket team. Does he realise the message he is sending to the world? He terms it a "great injustice"!! I shudder to think what he would term female foeticide,farmer suicides,child trafficking.

What a mockery of Indian democracy - a shambles.

The moot point here is not a single person who is agitated about the issue has ever played competitive international cricket or is a stakeholder in the teams cricket results. Simply put,neither the Indian government or Mr.Pawar or BCCI will lose their jobs if Ganguly is reinstated and India lose the test. The coach and captain are the only members whose reputation and future are at stake in this game. If Ganguly is to be reinstated( and discussing this in parliament can and should not have affect selection decisions) for the next two series ,makes no contribution (as he has been doing for the last year or so) and India lose there will an absolute outrage in India with calls for the captain to step down and the "firengi" coach to be sacked!
So, why should anyone without any technical expertise, cricketing competence or stake in the outcome of the result be allowed to have a say in the selection process??

What I would love to see is the outcome of parliamentary discussion. If this discussion has some effect, I can only hope that we can use it as a precedent for parliamentary debates leading to concrete action. What can MP's do? Lobby Pawar - what will Pawar do? Does anyone realise that the selection committee includes the coach and captain? If they were to rescind this decision they will engineer the most fractious and polarised dressing room in international cricket.

Lastly, what is their basis of reinstating Ganguly in the team? He is neither a good enough batsmen to fit into the middle order or young enough to be given a long trial period. Yes, I agree he should have been given the choice to step down or get a farewell match but Ganguly has never wanted to quit. He believes that he is good enough to be in the team but the selectors dont. End of story!

He has been dumped like any other player. What is wrong with that. Why wasn't this hue and cry when Dravid was dropped from the ODI side or Laxman dropped from the Test side. Give me one advantage of Ganguly over Laxman. Yuvraj is in better form than Ganguly. If he loses form and Ganguly scores in domestic matches I can't imagine Dravid or chappel ignoring him. But, he needs to prove his worth to the side.

As an aside, I am slowly developing a deep loathing for the Bengali cricket fan. It was embarrasing and disgusting to see an 80,000 large crowd boo off the Indian Cricket team captain. I think Eden Gardens must never be given a test match/ODI again to host. Either that or play the game with closed doors like they do in European football after crowd misbehaviour.
It has always been my dream to watch a Indo-Pak cricket match at Eden Gardens, but I shall never go to that stadium to watch cricket.

Ok, enough of a rant. Back to robotic activity.