IPL-3 and me

This is third season of the latest revolution in Cricket, T-20 cricket. But even in its third season, IPL has not been able to create enough interest in Cricket's traditional fan base(I am counting myself as one amongst them).

Its really surprising but what interests me in IPL's 2010 season is its deferred live (By 5 mins) broadcast on Youtube and few more garbage from FakeIPLPlayer. FakeIPLPlayer has been the toast of second season. Though it has lost its shine over one year, people still anticipates lot of new names and so called insider information as they have never been exposed to something like that.

I dont feel attached to either Mumbai Indians or Kolkatta KnightRiders. IPL's every match is just like one of the thousand bollywood movies releasing every year, hardly one amongst them deserves time to watch. Last year also, they showed these matches in multiplexes, I question myself are these matches really worth of spending such money. Till now I treat this whole thing as "Nautanki" only, yet to figure out real mass in it.

One thing which bothers me a lot is players dedication towards these matches. It does hurt me but I have to start this scrutiny with my favourite, Sachin himself.

Sachin, he takes pride in playing for India and thats seen even from his helmet but what would be the case when he is playing for Mumbai Indians. Does he take same pride in playing for them?

Ok, let me consider them as employees of respective team owners but in that case also I am not able to correlate these guys to usual engineers who are slogging their asses for respective owners.

Other thing is, correlating these guys to so called club culture in Europe or Americas. But what everybody will see is these players hardly play for their countries. International Soccer matches or Basketball games are as rare as Halley's comet. In case of cricket, this is very different. Cricket enthusiasts would always want to see Inda-Pakistan game or Aus-Eng game. The history these games carry, the kind of rivalry on field is unmatchable in these club games.

Anyways new season of F1 holds lot of interest for me with Schumacher's return and lot of new rules. Will write about it soon.

Cool Runnings!!

Vancouver Winter Olympics ended yesterday with the fitting finale. Canadian Hockey fans wouldn't have expected anything better than this. This victory has immortalized their Demigod 'Sydney Crosby'. He handed over the most cherishable gold medal to Canadians.

Truly, Superstars rise to the occasion. Till that moment Sydney had nothing mentionable in the game. To say about the whole tournament, he had decider goal against Switzerland only. He was so average throughout but you just can't contain excellence. It has that knack for Big games.

For the first time I was following Winter Olympics. To start with Indian presence, we had three participants. Full stop. I cant give any more information about our performance.

I liked overall concept of Winter Olympics, but many of them would find place in X-games category rather than Olympic games category. I have to mention two sports, Skeleton and Luge. I just don't understand how can these two sports be considered as Olympic sports. They are too risky for participants and in fact one athlete from Georgia lost his life during Luge training run.

Apart from Ice Hockey, Curling and Bobsledding fetched my attention. They are kind of team sports and require full dedication from each member. Interest in Bobsledding directed me in watching this amazing movie 'Cool Runnings'. Part true and part fictional movie shows the adventures of 4 Jamaican guys in 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics. While watching Winter Olympics, my experiences were none the different. For a person from Tropical conditions, even watching winter sports would always remain one heck of an adventure.