I just realized that a long long time ago, I really thought that our men in Blue were Champs and not Chumps! Something, I am afraid, is not the case anymore.
What if the Final Frontier could not be defended. As Team India lies all battered and bruised at the hands of visiting Aussies, why have millions of cricket lovers donned their hats of critical analyzers and have come up with the unanimous verdict- Ganguly's men have failed them. Why is it that contempt is all what the public is throwing at 'its' team.
I seriously think our players deserve much better treatment than what they are being meted out. This is the same team that took India to the World Cup finals, the same team that stunned Australia, with the very same bunch of 'invincible' players, on their own soil, and tamed the Pakistanis in their own den. The Men in Blue have not played upto their full potential. But no one likes to under perform. The guys are out there giving it their best, and they are the best in their own rights. The day we question the ability of the Sachins , the Sauravs and the Dravids, I say, we better question our own sanity.
And so, today when our team takes on the Proteas, after a really long time, I'm going to be there cheering for India sitting in front of the idiot box watching a channel that is something of a mix of white-noise and ESPN (courtesy the cablewallah.) This, should the rain relent.
Talking of sports channels, I've always believed that ESPN Star Sports have been the best producers/broadcasters of cricket in India. Not only is their production top quality but the line up of commentators they have is really impressive- Gavaskar, Boycott, Shastri, Harsha Bhogle, Alan Wilkins and Wasim. But if any of you had been watching Star Sports during the first washed-out ODI looking for sporadic rain updates, you'd have seen three clowns all gussied up in some sort of weird kurtas talking all crap on anything and everything but cricket. That was supposed to be Star Sports' answer to MAX's Mandira - Shekhar Suman and Arun Lal presenting the match in Hindi. Horrible is horrible. But this was b***s***!!! (a la Shiv)
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