Original Pic : Save the Tiger Fund

(An open letter to umpire Daryl Harper)
Dear Daryl Harper

My sympathies are with you. Not because of the unfortunate circumstances surrounding your exit from international cricket. But mostly because you weren’t born to a feisty north Indian woman called Avtar Kaur. For if she had been your mother instead of Harbhajan Singh’s, you would have never needed the ICC or any organisation in the world to stand by your side. Who knows maybe her slap to your detractors would have overtaken Harbhajan’s as the most talked about slap in cricket folklore.

I really like you. Your stoic expression on the field is what makes me nominate you as the next Bond after Daniel Craig. But what I don’t understand is why you were so hell bent on wasting your time. Surely there are enough bars, babes and barbecues in Australia to keep you grounded at home. Then why did it take you 95 test matches to realise a simple fact. Cricket doesn’t need umpires anymore. Period.

Remember the nice little colourful drinks trolleys of the 90s? The broadcasters decided they weren’t needed anymore because those precious seconds in which a trolley was shown were sold off to one among hundred mobile handset advertisers. Ad revenues buried the drinks trolley spectacle. Umpires will be the next to go.

It is, after all, the next logical step. Do we need umpires for LBW decisions? Nope, we have Hawk Eye. Judging difficult edges? Nah take a break Umpy. The Hot Spot knows better. And if you still insist on making your decision in the middle, the players can always prove how (in)significant you are to the game by using that delightful little tool called the DRS. So you see, in short we have it all covered.  You are still welcome to foray into match commentary and analysis if you wish. But I hear they are making a cyborg version of Ravi Shastri..so its’ clear there isn’t much time left before they phase out humans from there too.

What is that you’re asking? If you’re not needed how come ICC has umpires rostered for its future tour programme for the next 10 years? Well…I hate to break it to you Harpie but you know the Fly XYZ airline message that all you umpires sport on your uniforms during matches? That’s why they have you on the cricket ground. They could have probably used a blimp to convey the same commercial message but then you’re in direct sight of the cameras…

No offense mate but at the end of the day its’ all about the money. One day they’ll probably count the last of you..just like they do them tigers. Meanwhile, ask your colleagues to enjoy hunting in pairs on the pitch…can’t guarantee how long this will last.

Cheers
A nostalgic cricket fan

Pic source : iplcricketnews.com

Source : computerweekly.com

“BFT! Call ASAP” screamed the new message in my mobile inbox.  I looked at the contents and sighed. It was going to be a long day.

“He has done it again” squealed the sender of the message (let’s call her X) in between big sobs.

“His OP says ‘committed’ and his FBP says ‘It’s complicated’. That sneaky snake! Just because he knows FB isn’t my strong point”.

I hmm’d sympathetically. This wasn’t my first BFT counseling after all.

For those who came late, BFT stands for Boyfriend Trouble. Let me explain the situation. The boyfriend’s relationship status said “committed” on OP (Orkut profile) while it said “It’s complicated” on FBP (Facebook Profile) which was the reason for X’s fury.

“I cannot understand why he would do this to me, especially when all of his friends are on Facebook” she said.

“Yeah” I nodded thoughtfully. “But didn’t he introduce you as “my good friend” to his colleagues?”

“Oh my God! You’re right!” she shrieked. “Now I get it! He purposely put his status as “It’s complicated” on Facebook because  he doesn’t want to introduce me as his girlfriend to his friends. I’m such an idiot…” she wailed.

“Now come on..” I said, putting my arm over her shoulder.

“No…I’m a big idiot and you’re such a genius for figuring it out!” she cried. I proceeded to deny that then shrugged. Hey…now that I could believe!

It may sound silly to those who aren’t on social networking sites but the pressure of maintaining your profile on a social networking site is immense. Think of the witty message you have to put up on your profile everyday and the ordeal of commenting on every silly snap or video your friends put up (which you have to, just so that it could be reciprocated). Not to mention the constant race to keep adding odd-sounding strangers just so that your friends list remains on the higher side!

Sigh! It’s not easy being young and tech-savvy!

To top it, a silly post could get you in big trouble! A friend once called in sick from office and took off with his pals to a resort near the city. While in the resort he sent in a SHweet (short form of Shashi Tharoor Tweet which stands for a tweet that invites trouble) saying that he was “chilling out in the resort’s pool”. In his gala mood he had missed a glaring point — that his boss kept a vigilant check on Facebook 24/7 just for this kind of behaviour.

Needless to add, in two hours, he was found in his cubicle, his tail tucked in between his legs and his desk overflowing with extra files.

Being in the media business, I have worked on more than my share of news stories that proclaim the ‘social media’ to be the next biggest thing in the world. The instant connection and addiction are all alright…but what is up with companies whose sole purpose of existence is to analyse all the Twitter feeds and Facebook posts being made every minute! And who are the poor desolate people who are assigned the dreadful job of sifting through the truckloads of rubbish posted by people in the name of ‘updates’?

Ah! I see it now. When John pokes Manish in Facebook and Priya announces that she has a bad cold in Orkut, the RAW can secretly add this data to each of their files. Next time they meet John and Priya they could just stroll up to them and say “John, we know you poked Manish. What do you have to say about it? And Priya, why didn’t you  cover your mouth while sneezing?! Jail time for both of you! 24 months!”

In short I hate social networking.

I often think of joining the small but growing number of people who have decided to delete their social networking accounts and go back to good old real-life networking without worrying about other people’s pictures, updates and farms. But invariably when I’m about to press the delete profile button, a message pops in my inbox.

“Haiii Archana, you are tooooooooo goody I tell you. I friend of your friend. Do frandship with me?”

I see this message and change my mind. To hell with real-life networking. Where else but online can you tell pathetic creeps exactly what you think??!!  Here I go.

“Go away creep. Im blocking you”. Ah! Sent. Now then, who wants me to water their crops?!!

I love social networking!

Source : layoutsparks.com

“Where are the poor and oppressed people,” demanded Jane, the cigarette hanging more dangerously than ever from her lips. I instinctively looked down at the manuscript she was holding, one which had taken me two years to write, and heaved a sigh of relief that I had made copies.

“Try p-page 64,” I stammered, as a drop of sweat glared past me. “Where Baburao puts in his last penny to purchase the rat poison. It’s for his consumption..you know..”.

“Hmmm” she nodded appreciatively and went back to reading. I was surprised she had agreed to meet me after reading the draft manuscript.

“It’s a win-win situation” an enthusiastic literary agent had told me over the phone. “You want an international publisher and they want a title in their kitty on rural India that’s dark and shocking “.

I was thrilled that I had finally made it to a publisher’s office instead of being a deleted e-mail in their computer, but the reference to my ‘dark and shocking’ country made me a little uncomfortable.
You’re not the only one, I consoled myself. All writers, artists and filmmakers make a lucrative living by straddling on the impoverished Asian man’s back. Still, it did little to ease my conscience.

Like everyone else, I had started out wanting to change the world with my writing. Three years and sixteen rejections later, I was ready to feed rat poison to my protagonist Baburao, if someone agreed to touch my manuscript.

“Frankly, the story is unbelievable” said Jane, making rapid notes in her book. “And I don’t mean it as a compliment,” she added hastily. “Your basic premise, of comical situations taking place amongst bare conditions in rural India, is very unrealistic. People don’t joke when they are poor, they suffer”.

My eyes lit up. “That’s the misconception I want to clear” I said. “Rural India has always been associated with poverty and suffering. But that’s not how it is. The real India is very different. One of hope, confidence and optimism and…”

“Hmm hmm..yeah ok” interrupted Jane impatiently. “Then why is your protagonist about to consume rat poison?”

“Oh…” I said, a little taken aback. “He doesn’t actually…consume it”.

“What?” her voice reverberated across the cabin, confirming my suspicion that she had barely skimmed though the draft.

“That thought was just a momentary lapse in sanity,” I explained. “The bottom line is that he is happy with what life has offered him”.

Jane immediately put down the manuscript in a thud and looked at me. Her glare suggested that she would have been happier feeding me the rat poison instead of my principal character. Neither of us spoke for a few minutes and the undercurrents were starting to unsettle me.

“Look, I know my story may not win an award or be made into a movie that wins a dozen Oscars, but it’s about real people and real situations,” I said, finally breaking the silence. She still did not react.

“Maybe,” I declared boldly. “It’s time for people to look at India in a new light”.

If this was a movie, this would have been the final punch dialogue that transformed bad guys into good and a happy ending would have followed. In real life, however, my posterior was asking for a kick.

“Jane,” I tapped on her side of the desk when the silence became unbearable. “I just spoke my mind. I need to know what you think”.

She simply turned to her book.

“Rat poision,” she wrote in the notes column. “Too expensive for the character. Substitute with death by starvation”

“At the end of this session, you may check the final list on the notice board. Those selected are truly blessed for they will have the opportunity to be God’s soldiers on earth,” the Commander was saying.  The boy clutched his stomach tightly, afraid that the rumbling hunger sounds would reach the Commander’s ears.

As a strong patriot training to fight for a cause, he knew that words like ‘hunger’ were taboo. But when the clock struck 11 and he hadn’t had a morsel of food since 4 am, the mission was the last thing on his mind.

“….our blood for freedom. No more are you teenage boys. You are real men, fighting to get us our rightful share of liberation” the Commander droned on.

The boy suppressed the urge to smile. When the Commander had come to his school to recruit strong young boys for a mission, he had lied about being 14, an addition of two years to his actual age and gotten away with it. It was the happiest moment of his life. He had managed to fool a man who was being chased by an entire army force.

Two of his neighbour’s sons had been picked up by the Commander the year before and they had come back burly and handsome, walking around with guns slung on their shoulders and boasting about the number of heads they had blown off.

The boy couldn’t wait to be one of them. But midway into the lecture when his eyes began to get blurry and the Commander’s face began to resemble a tasty piece of chicken curry, he realised that there was nothing more he wanted in the world than to have a quick bite.

“Oh God…” he prayed silently. “If you love me truly, if I have been a good son to you, then please answer my prayer. Please tell the cook to make chicken for lunch today. Any chicken preparation will do. But please I want to have chicken. Please accept my prayer”.

Meanwhile, the Commander‘s tone had attained urgency.

“… as a soldier, you have only one way to go; forward. Leave no space for fear in your heart. And if by God’s will, you have to lay down your life, do so with the bliss of knowing that you will be accepted with open arms at the gates of heaven by God himself,”.

The Commander paused and took a moment to look into the faces of each one of his young recruits.

“Ask yourself! Do you want to live a life of poverty and misery or do you want to die and achieve salvation?”

“We want to die!” said 25 teenagers in unison.

“May God protect you,” said the Commander signaling the end of the lecture.

Hungry bodies immediately leapt out of their seats and ran towards the notice board.

“As our good wishes, those who have been selected for the mission will be served a course of delicious chicken biryani,” said the Commander as the boy threw his hands in the air and exulted in delight after finding his name in the list.

The Commander looked at him fondly and left the room silently. It would be the boy’s last meal.

Hundreds of tiny unwashed hands clapped as loud as they could, unwittingly displacing the army of flies that hovered around them.

It must have been one of the windiest January mornings in the village because I saw a young boy; around seven years of age cover his ear with the brown malnourished pigtail of the girl standing in front of him in the line.

I, of course, did not need to resort to such adverse measures. My freshly washed and pressed black suit and silk tie immediately set me apart from anyone residing in the vicinity of over 100 kilometres.

“Good morning, children. Do you know which country I belong to” I began, my deep confident voice soaring beyond the tiny piece of land which housed the dilapidated make-shift school.

“Amreeka!” said a sweet voice from the crowd waving both hands in a desperate attempt to be noticed.

“Yes!” I said, matching the little boy’s enthusiasm.

“And what language do we speak in America?” I asked, expecting one of the older kids to answer me this time.

“Englis!” screamed the same voice again.

“Correct, again!” I said, bringing a big smile to his face. “Since, you are so smart, why don’t you tell everyone how an American like me is able to speak in Hindi just like you” I said, doing a wicked imitation of the village’s local dialect.

Loud laughs drowned the boy’s response. In my experience, this question never failed to enthuse the crowd. The image of a foreigner speaking the dialect of the village was a sure-shot winner when it came to audience retention. Personally speaking, I found nothing even remotely funny or interesting in the thought. But If I were to tell the crowd assembled to hear me, that some foreigners did speak Hindi, I would be booed off, most likely by the scruff of my neck by the headmaster. Everybody is possessive of their version of truth.

At this point, I should probably tell you about me. I am not the actual Barack Obama, as you may have guessed. My name is Ramcharan Singh, age 35, son of a wood cutter in Uttar Pradesh in India. I was living the proverbial life of poverty and hunger till Barack Obama got elected as the 44th President of USA. I would have never even known about it had it not been for a cousin in Mumbai who wrote to me saying that the new American President bore an uncanny resemblance to me. A relative of mine had once made a lot of money as a duplicate of Dharmendra, the actor, so, I decided to do the same. I got my hair curled the way it looks on Obama and invested my savings in a good suit.

I was a last-minute replacement for the village jester as the Chief Guest of the Republic Day function in the school and was determined to fill his shoes.

“Excuse me young man. Can you repeat your answer” I demanded of the boy.

He nonchalantly stuck a finger in his ear. “I said, you are able to speak Hindi like us because you are not from Amreeka”.

My carefully cultivated poise took a beating. The last thing I needed was a puny boy blowing my cover.

“Why do you say that?” I said, making sure I sounded exactly like the great man I was impersonating.

“Because you are black. I have seen it on TV. Amreeka is a land of white people”.

Click this link and scroll down to know more about The American

Source : nampblog.com

A few days back, I was caught on the wrong side of the law and for once, was thrilled.

I always threw longing glances at a tiny corner bookstore on the busy mainroad near my office and finally mustered the will to enter the place. The only problem, ofcourse, was that Mr. A Zayed (the owner of the store) had not exactly constructed his shop with a parking lot in mind. Therefore, while I was lovingly poring through the titles, the towing guys had managed to pinch away my two-wheeler which had been parked bang opposite the shop. Ironically, I had been reading Osho’s quotes on staying alert at that very moment.

An hour later, when I found the vehicle missing, I cursed my aquarian spirit for its tendency to look for novelty, which invariably courted trouble. Needless to say, I was soon found at the nearest traffic police station with other offenders awaiting our turn to get fined. I was on my second round of “Why did I go there” thoughts when I chanced upon the traffic policeman fishing a Blackberry from his pocket.

Yippee! In a second my mood had brightened. My heart soared! Wow! All these days I had only read on paper about how the face of traffic policing in my city had transformed with the introuduction of Blackberrys to traffic cops. Now, thanks to my careless parking sense, I was about to get a taste of technology at its very best! Perhaps a smart policeman would stylishly jab a few buttons on his mean Blackberry and I would hold the ticket as a souvenier to show my grandchildren. Sigh!

I impatiently waited for the traffic policeman to rob three hundred rupees of my hard-earned(fine…I admit, not-so-hard earned) money. When my turn finally came, I excitedly told the cop my vehicle registration number. He gave me an annoyed glance and slowly reached for the Blackberry on his desk. I creeped a little closer to him so that I could see what was on his screen. It was blank.

I should have guessed how this would go the moment I saw him holding the phone like one would hold a coconut. His eyes strained to read the screen and he tentatively pushed a few buttons. Nothing seemed to be happening. He looked up, scratched his head and went back to jabbing some more buttons. Twenty minutes passed by and the damn thing wouldn’t register my offence let alone print the ticket. He had pressed so many buttons that the phone had hung! Meanwhile, he spared his head and move the fervent scratching to his nose. After what seemed like eternity, I heard a little creaking sound on the tiny printer. Finally! He had accidently pushed some button which seemed to have done the trick.

As I came out thoroughly irritated by the experience, I realised why Blackberrys had been introduced in the first place. So that people will be terrified of parking their vehicles in a no-parking zone lest they get Blackberry’d (read tortured) by the cops!

Source : gogicomics.com

Source : discoversouthside.com

I hope Mr. J Murugavel, the founder of Bharatmatrimony.com reads this. (In case you are wondering, yes, it is the same company whose ads show incredibly good looking dreamy young people who apparently will settle for nothing less than good-old arranged marriage)

On the long way back from a press conference on the outskirts of the city, a journalist colleague of mine declared that female journalists are not ‘marriage material’.

“Let’s face it,” she said. “We can’t take the mother-in-law for shopping when she feels like it, can’t help out with the home loan with our salaries or worse, come home before midnight! The only category lower than us in the ‘prospective marriage market’ are chain smokers and females with two heads!”

“Make that three” said another member of our group dryly. She would know better. Despite standing reasonably tall at 5′5, with all her fingers and toes intact, having a lovely smile and a pleasant personality, my friend is yet to hear from a single “groom party”.  She touched the ripe marriageable age of 26 last year and her parents have spent the better half of this year frantically searching for a ’suitable match’ for her with no luck.

On the outside, the girl would make for a very attractive matrimonial ad. 27/f/Bangalore, very fair (killer of a quality isn’t it? :p), attractive, loves to cook and watches movies in her spare time, no siblings and parents are retired government officials. However, one line in her ad would shake things up. ‘Reporter in a newspaper, flexible timings’.

So, when prospective grooms from self-professed modern families knock at her door, the first thing they want to know is when she will be home. Of course they may not ask it that way. Here’s one gem of a question my friend got to hear from a prospective groom’s mother.

“Beti, I have heard that you make very good tea. So will I be able to have a cup of your famous tea at my tea time at 6pm??!!!”

Or this one from a guy who came to see her.

“Can you collect all your news before 5.30 pm? Actually it gets very dark in our area after 6..” Thanks for the heads-up, dude. We really appreciate you telling us in advance how sun-deprieved your area is.

“But your dad says your job timings are flexible..so can’t you work from home?” was another landmark suggestion thrown at her. Yeah sure why not, let’s all work from home and send the family dog to go collect information for stories and deploy pigeons to make news pages.

You see, the list goes on. Girls who were able to tag a fellow in their school/college/office etc are the smart ones ( Go on, gloat!). For the rest, I hope Mr. Murugavel of Bharatmatrimony.com comes up with something like a journalistmatrimony.com exclusively for journalists.

So instead of the option- “your skin colour” with options like Very fair, fair, wheatish, dark and very dark (lol seriously they do exist in most marriage portals), maybe we could have something like how many stories do you file in a week or how many pages do you make in a day! Maybe it could have an option of what beats do you cover or even how many cups of tea do you drink in a day! Options that would not require a furious use of fair and lovely!

The newspaper business is not easy to understand. Most people think the stork drops the newspaper on their door every morning and curse it for not coming by on the day after a national holiday. Perhaps it is not easy living with a person whose profession tends to consume most of his/her time. But that is not to say journalists make bad life partners.

We’ll be there for you if you need a lift at 2 am, we would probably know all the best places to eat and life will never have a single dull moment with us around. We might even consider waking up before 11 am if it’s really important to you.

Just one request.

Do NOT ask us when we’ll be home!

Source : cafepress.com

I was on the phone the other day with a seemingly bright young guy. A recent IIM graduate who is now with a reputed (so far) financial services company.

“Our current media mechanism isn’t structured well so I want to set it right,” he told me with enthusiasm that is usually inversely proportional to age.

“Our company is launching a new product and we want to ensure it gets good coverage,” he began, as I steeled myself to listen to the spiel we journos hear only a few hundred times a week. Little did I know how unusual the call would turn out.

After droning on for a few lines, he suddenly said something I would remember for a long time.

“So how much do we have to pay to get the news published on the front page of your newspaper?” he demanded, his tone-very much business-like, no doubt tutored well by one of the best business schools in the country.

I cringed the moment I heard it. Rewinding and playing it a few times again in my head only made it worse.

“What pay?” I blurted out feeling the sense of an impending disaster of a conversation.

“Payment Ma’am,” he replied in the same tone. “Cost to get our news item on the front page headline.”

“There is no such cost” I muttered under my breath and cut the call. I took a moment to compose myself before slumping into my seat with disbelief.

Is that what people think about newspapers???!! That we are some kind of a non-glossy 20 page advertising pullout where the highest advertiser gets the front page story! Had all those hours of forgetting to have lunch and running from pillar to post for quotes come down to this? That we are now viewed by a section of people as selling our main editorial space for cash!

I had a sinking feeling that maybe in all those countless press conferences we attend each week, sifting through endless heaps of “urgent” press releases in our inbox promoting companies and their products, perhaps we have forgotten to promote what we stand for over the years.

Perhaps in the race to break stories and gossip about our competitors (yep, everyone does it) we forgot to reiterate what we stand for, why we exist and how we function( pls, a crash course in this for the IIMs).

If the “elite” educated Indian could view newspapers like this, I am sure we are looking at a pool of thousands of people who think the same. This does not spell good news to the industry, which is already struggling with high input costs and a sluggish readership.

Maybe its time to re-introduce ourselves, or even re-invent ourselves in the way we present our industry to the audience. It does not need to be an outlandish outburst of promotion or anything. It could be as simple as climbing down a few floors from our ivory towers and listening (actual ‘listen’ listening, not just press conference listening!) to what people say about us without expecting to file a story out of it!

Like the IIM guy I am also tempted to make a statement like “I want to set things right” but at the moment as all of my colleagues are, I am occupied with far more pressing issues. You see, all of us journalists want to make difference, which is why we came to the profession in the first place. However, such is our lives that on a Sunday evening, all I can think about is –

What story am I going to file for the Monday page!!

disclaimer :Waat to do, we journos are like this wonly!

Source : Satish Acharya

Would someone please explain to Mr Gill that a Formula One car is a teeny weeny little different from the car he drives. I’m sure our Sports and Youth Affairs Minister has the country’s best interests at heart ( like all sports administrators do) but casting doubts over whether Formula One is a ’sport’ in the first place is amusing.

With warring sports associations and lack of sponsorships for Karting and Rally events, motorsport in India has survived despite the suicidal forces that govern it. And just when you thought the flamboyant Vijay Mallya brought a fresh leash of life for the sport with his purchase of Force India, in comes Mr Gill with his comment that “Formula One is entertainment and not sport”.

Agreed, Formula One is not something you can start playing in your backyard when you feel like it but to shun it under the guise of being “elitist’ looks to be a little too much. Let’s just take some perspective on this one (cos, it looks like we have nothing much to do today..)

Name the top three seeded Indian players (male and female) in the following sports:

1.Tennis 2. Golf 3. Badminton  4. Boxing  5. Swimming  6. Squash

Other than a few statistic crunchers, I’m sure most people will struggle to think beyond Leander Paes, Mahesh Bhupathi, Sania Mirza, Saina Nehwal, Jyoti Randhawa, Joshna Chinappa and Vijender Singh.

The open secret is that these top players were sucessful on their own account and not because of the system therefore in a way these sports are elitist too.. (how many people can afford a golf club membership?) yet they have never been questioned. We have several international level tournaments in each of these sports despite them not having a mass following then why should motorsport be any different?

As for it not having enough followers, we shouldn’t ignore a sport just because the majority don’t play it. In that respect, the most popular game in India, played in every nook and corner is Pakda Pakdi (I have absolutely no idea of how to translate it..how about catch and run?) so shouldn’t we build a stadium to allow everyone to play the game on a bigger stage?

Those who have not followed Formula One say that there is nothing interesting in watching a sport where a car keeps going round and round in a race track. What could be the challenge in that? Well, throw in speeds of over 300 km/h  with engines revving up to a formula imposed limit of 18,000 RPM, gravitational forces that pull the driver apart, the tactical pitstops and mechanical wizardy and you would know why Formula One is not just a sport but one of the most demanding activities in the planet.

Do a google check on packages offered to Indians travelling to Singapore and Bahrain for F1 races and you might have a re-think on how many Indians watch this sport. (oh my God, that is a story idea!) This is not to say that the Indian government should pull all stops to host a grand prix race; just that maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to see what a sport like this offers to a country’s tourism industry.

Source : chakpak.com

If not for her outstanding taste in wardrobe, I would have been found chopping onions in the kitchen when a cricket match is shown live!

I saw Dada’s adrenaline pumping jig during the Natwest series and held my breath as VVS Laxman and Rahul Dravid stood headstrong to climb out of the hole Australia had dug us but that couldn’t be the reason for a woman to be crazy about cricket, could it?

Bring out Mandira with her noodle straps and we women supposedly appear magically infront of the television all set to take notes!

No offence guys, this isn’t really a man vs woman post. It’s just that it would be refreshing if people weren’t so surprised to see a passionate female cricket fan. By passionate I don’t mean just those who flock to cricket stands or check the score ontelevision once in a while. I’m talking about the category that will plan its day based onthe timing of a cricket match and google “cricket” the first thing in the morning.

I can’t tell you how many matches us females won for India because we stood/sat/walked/ran/drank water/cooked brinjal/sneezed for superstition! So it seems a little silly then that in the middle of a conversation with male colleagues about cricket, an odd comment about Yuvraj Singh’s batting average against Pakistan will inadvertently draw puzzling faces even if there is nothing earth shattering about it.

Here’s how a typical conversation goes :

X : Batting average? (with eyebrows raised). You watch cricket?

Me: Yes (Thinking here it comes!)

X : Wow, that’s great! Didn’t know girls also like cricket. So what do you watch?

Me : Cricket! (duh!)

X : Ha ha yes..I meant what kind of matches do you like?

Me : All involving batsmen, bowlers, wicketkeeper, umpires, crowds and dogs on the field.

X : Hey! that’s great. So who is your favourite player?

Me : (I know there is nothing wrong with the question..still…looks a little patronising). I like Dada, Dhoni and Dirk Nannes.

X : Dirk Nannes. Cool! (Then he steals a smirk with those around and comes back to me).

So..which country does he play for?

Me : (I pause for a second to let them enjoy the moment.And here we go!) Dirk Nannes, age 33, plays for Netherlands, Delhi Daredevils and the Victorian Bushrangers, left arm fast bowler, former world cup skier, founder of an adventure sports company, speaks Japanese and plays the Saxaphone.

X : Goes into shock! Mouth falls open and eyes bulge out

Me enjoying…

What a great moment for women cricket fans all over the world! And the men think we don’t know our cricket, huh! I feel like some kind of messiah..

X : Wow..you do know your cricket! So when is the women’s twenty twenty world cup starting?

Gulp! My breath stiffens. Panic starts spreading inside me.  I should know this one!! I wriggle an imaginary speck of dust from my eye to buy out time.

The messiah image breaks into a thousand pieces..Oh the shame of it! Sorry girls!

Finally I mumble under my breath.

Me: well…you know what…I wouldn’t know that…Mandira Bedi hasn’t announced the dates yet!

Moral of the story : Gloat by all means, know when to stop!

Source : cartoonstock.com