Spot the fix contest

When cricket first started in the earlier part of the 1900s in England, it was one of the sports played with the sole intention of entertaining the royal family and especially the queen. I was listening to one of the talks by Harsha Bhogle where he mentioned that one such test match lasted for 14 days which ultimately ended in a draw. The only reason the match was stopped was because one of the teams had to board a ship back to their country and they couldn't afford to miss it as the next ship was almost a month later. The captain of this team was also heard saying that if they had got just 1 more day, they could have won the match.

Even though the 5 day test matches tested the players, the crowds needed something that was more entertaining and this gave birth to the ODIs which were initially played with 60 overs a side. When the world was trying to figure out a solution to the Y2K problem, some people saw a solution to their financial woes and to make some money through cricket. The cricketing fraternity was introduced to the term match fixing when one of the most respected cricketers of that time, Hansie Cronje confessed to succumbing to it. This incident not only exposed the true colors of some of our idols at that time, but also set the cat among the pigeons. I was impressed with the way the movie "99" was shot and it touches on topic mentioned.

With more and more people getting interested in spicy steamed up quickies, the pleasure of ODIs started to fade away and this gave birth to a high on energy and orgasmic format called as T20s. Lalit Modi and his merry men saw a way to combine this and Bollywood in order to make it even more glamorous and named it the IPL. After all, in India its only sex and SRK that sell (I feel that SRK here doesn't refer to Shiv Raj Kumar. Just cant imagine him on the street corners waiting to be picked up even though I can easily imagine the KKKKhan. I'm sure to have plucked some nerves here :P).  

Coming back to 2010, the world was exposed to the little known brother of match fixing i.e spot fixing. People figured out that match fixing not only leaves a lot of loose ends but also makes it look obvious. I recently read that the finals of the IPL this year too was fixed and the bookies stopped accepting bets for a Chennai win even when they were 4 wickets down before the 10th over with hardly a decent score on board. Sending Pollard down the order too makes  one speculate if it was true. I have been following the success of the rejuvenated England cricket team and this team looks like their best in a long time. Lord's has been a Mecca for cricket and it threatened to mask the purple patch of the England team towards the end of the summer. To be frank, even though Pakistan has produced some legends over the years, I have never been a fan of their team. The incessant appealing, numerous doping and match fixing controversies, the internal politics, the inability of the former cricketers turned commentators' to impress a point sitting in the commentary box and the blinding green color are some of the factors that have made me detest their cricketing spirit. Till recently, I had started to admire Mohammad Aamir's bowling and I really believed that a youngster of that age could really take Pakistan cricket to the next level. 

Even though I believe that the recent spot fixing scandal involving the Lord's test was just the tip of the ice berg and that it is wrong to assume that only Pakistan cricketers are corrupt, the fact is that they were caught red handed. The excuses used by them to get out of this mess will make even a kid who finds armpit farts funny to laugh at them. 

" I had kept the money to shop for my sister's wedding". 

"This is a set up". 

"The Indian bookies are to be blamed for this".

It really amuses me to see that they took almost 3 days to cook up such dumb excuses. If at all you wanted money to shop, why would you do it in the middle of a test match and why wouldn't you use something called as the ATM? How can you call it a set up when there is enough proof shown in the videos regarding every step leading to the fix? I have to commend Asif here as he made the no ball look like a genuine mistake and Aamir on the other hand showed his inexperience by bowling a foot long no ball. Guess the kid was too nervous about doing it or just wanted to be on a safer side. Asif not only looks like a seasoned fixing campaigner but looks like a man confident about getting away with it. I wouldn't deny that Indian bookies probably had a hand in all of this but its the bookie's job to feed you shit and it all depends whether you throw it out, or eat it, or put a cream topping on it and lick the plate inside out just the Pakistan trio did.

Just like Bob Woolmer's death during the world cup, I'm sure this controversy too is going to be brushed under the carpet. I'm really interested to know if there is any proof of fixing umpires which I believe is the safest and easiest thing to do. If any of you bookies are reading this, give me a call and lets discuss it in detail :). This raises doubts with the credibility of people running ICC and their inability to implement the Umpire Decision Review System(UDRS). Implementing that system will probably take the fixing of umpires out of the equation and probably the committee members will loose out on the cut they are getting out of all the fixing portfolios.

CLT20 started last week and I'm so glad not to hear any DLF maximums or Karbonn kamaal katches or Maxx mobile timeouts. It is understood that a lot of money is riding on these events but one has to draw a line when it comes to commercialization. If the same trend continues, we might even get to see the "spot the fix" contest in which contestants not only have to guess which ball might be a no ball but also the exact number of times Deepika Padukone and Siddarth Mallya are shown on the big screen with a "oops we got caught doing it" expression. The problem with anything related to management or administration in India is that people are like crabs in a box trying to pull each other down all the time, unable to stand the success of a colleague or a fellowman. It wouldn't be surprising to see the IPL fade out like fizz in a soda bottle as a result of too much of commercialization. With the ousting of Lalit Modi and a highly confusing format for the next IPL just to make every team play 14 matches, I feel biting the dust is imminent. The organizers of CLT20 have done a fabulous job on the number of advertisements and sponsors even though they have made a horrendous mistake in choosing commentators like Ganguly, Manjrekar and co. But guess one has to compromise on something and I hope at least this tournament runs without any glitches and I get to see RCB lifting the cup on 26th :). Jai RCB.

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Godz-illa

I was reading the story of Adam and Eve the other day and was wondering how naive we were to believe that story. In fact almost all the fables about the birth of religion or Gods have had lots of flaws in them. Well to start off, I believe that these are the common assumptions that we have about the almighty or the superpower.

1. God is omnipresent and powerful than any being on the earth.
2. We are mere puppets in the hands of the God and everything is controlled by him/her.
3. God not only knows what is going to happen in the future but also makes us pay for our sins.
4. People who do good things go to heaven and people who do bad things go to hell.

Coming back to the story of Adam and Eve, apparently God advised them to not eat the fruit from only one particular tree. And as the story goes, world's first ever dickhead and booby without brainy committed that mistake and then god punished them. That punishment is what we see today as earning our bread, emotional discharges and even childbirth.

Well if the god knows the future, then he would have surely known that Adam and Eve would have eaten the fruit and hence it dismisses the very motive of the story. Why couldn't he cut to the chase and pose a set of challenges for them in the beginning itself? The same conclusion can be reached if one looks at the fact that we are mere puppets in the God's hands. In that case, I wonder why people spend millions and millions on building a place of worship and praying. If praying would solve all the problems, then life on earth would have felt like lap dances even while writing exams. If praying doesn't solve all your problems, then why do it?

If God is present everywhere, it again dismisses the existence of a room exclusively built in the houses for worshiping which in many cases is bigger than the bathroom itself. This means that the almighty is spying on you even when you are taking a dump, or go to the restroom in the pretext of taking a dump or even when you are humping. Doesn't that creep you out? If God sure is invisible then I wonder who saw him first and painted him as a dude with blue skin with source of potential steak on either sides or a grumpy woman with weapons in six hands enough to decapitate or even circumcise a hundred men.


If I did something good today, does that fetch me clubcard points to go to heaven? Is a point deducted for bad thing that we do? In fact what is classified as good and bad? Taking your wife out to a romantic dinner in your new Hummer might be considered good, but isn't it bad for the environment when instead of using a fuel guzzler, you could have taken public transport? So where does one find the cut off level, like getting 15 in internals and a stamp 35 in the externals?

Well, it all looks like a series of deadlocks and ambiguities and we are only succumbing to the  fake stories dating back to thousands of years, told by our ancestors just to keep the mankind in check and ultimately to deceive the weaker class in order to lead a luxurious life. I mean lets face it, why does one need to donate money or carry out a ritual to reach out to the God. If we do not have access to these high end money fleecing places of worship, we have  back up plan depending on the class in the society.

The funny thing is, we always point towards the sky to show god. Assuming that people near the equator point somewhere above their heads to show the good old almighty's abode, shouldn't the people moving away from the equator point towards the horizon?

Let us assume that Adam and Eve had remained good and if that had happened, we would have not paid any rent and stayed in bungalows, got drunk, puked, got drunk again and still wouldn't have had a hangover, the dining table would have looked like a lavish buffet and still we would have stayed slim, people would have gone not just all night long but instead all week long without any Redbull or STD scare and programmers wouldn't have found any bugs in their code and would have reached home everyday before 5 in Bengaluru traffic. I can probably imagine all of these happening except the last one and I guess a lot of people would agree with me on it even those who have been fuming till now.

I'm neither a philosopher nor a hermit but I have lived long enough to see the power of sheer human willpower and strength and would not like to deface the achievements of man over these years with one word "God". I rest my case and hence as long as the traffic in Bengaluru doesn't come under control and as long as the weather in Glasgow is not wet or cold,  I can be sure that there is not God and hence Godz-illa.

  

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Pilot

Have you observed the fact that the 1st episode of any television series is named as "Pilot"?

According to Wikipedia, "At the time of its inception, the pilot is meant to be the "testing ground" to see if a series will be possible and successful and therefore a test episode of an intended television series." So I decided to use the same for my first post. The thought of blogging had been lingering in my head for a long time now, and this is just an effort to dip my toes in the water to get a feel of it and probably making it into something big in the future. 

With all the formal stuff completed, its time to get down to business. I have been reading a lot of blogs in the recent past and even though the authors of some of them try to act too clever by overly critiquing some of the obvious facts and try to portray themselves as a cross between Paris Hilton and Marilyn Monroe , the fact still remains that at the end of the day, a blonde is still a blonde. Hence, I would like to openly declare that this blog is not only serving as my virtual jerk-off junction but is also aimed at attracting both wanted and unwanted attention. If at all any of the readers do get offended by my posts, I'm sorry to tell you that the sole intention of it was to offend you. I can guarantee that my posts are going to cover all the sensitive issues with a topping of dark dirty humor. 

I am currently unemployed  and can only be described as "dharti pe bhoj". This blog is aimed at reducing that unwanted weight on the earth and in an effort to put my meager knowledge to better use. Please feel free to follow me and I would love to receive all the censored and uncensored abuses in the comments section even though I wouldn't mind an occasional  complement. Now that I have almost come to the end of this post, I think I should think about what to write next and in the meanwhile, think I'm going to watch an episode of "Two And A Half Men"(highly recommended).

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