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India gets a thrashing in Australia

THE Indian cricket team is licking its wounds after having suffered a third straight loss in the Test series against Australia, the latest inside three days. On the surface, there appears to be more to the plight of the Indian team than just its lack of ability.

The players do not appear to be united and one wonders if a change of captain will make a difference. That fact can be tested in Adelaide as the captain, M.S. Dhoni, has been suspended for slow over-rates and Virender Sehwag, who is said to be at loggerheads with Dhoni, will be taking over.
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Some myths about the Australia-India Test series

EVER since the Indian cricket team was two months away from its current tour of Australia, the media and the PR people have been boosting it as being based on some kind of “traditional” rivalry. This is just one of the many myths that was being spread about this tour in an attempt to draw crowds.

There is no such traditional rivalry. Australian teams have been historically reluctant to tour India, because of the conditions. Indian teams have been similarly reluctant to tour Australia because of the one-sided umpiring. (A good example of this was seen in 1999 when Sachin Tendulkar was given out lbw in the second innings for a duck after a ball from Glenn McGrath hit him on the helmet!

The umpire was none other than the corpulent Darryl Hair, the same man who tried to extort money from the ICC after he was embroiled in a row after making Pakistan forfeit a Test in England.)
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Australian cricket continues on its old, merry path

EARLIER this year, after England sealed a resounding 3-1 win in the Ashes Test series, Australian cricket authorities, apparently all shaken up, launched an inquiry to find out why the team had been beaten, and so comprehensively too.

This was the third time that Tasmania’s Ricky Ponting had led the national team to a loss in the Ashes series; Ponting lost twice in England, in 2005 and 2009. The Ashes is the series that matters most to Australia as England is historically the enemy.

When the inquiry reported back and recommended sweeping changes, there was hope that things would look different this summer. Of course, the captain had to go – of that there was little doubt. But despite a lot of talk, much promise of change, one finds that with the summer cricket season nearly a third over, things are pretty much the same.
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Why I don’t feel threatened by racist Americans

[Before you read this, go here. Read the post, and the comments. Then come back and you will understand why this item has this particular heading.]

IN TIMES of economic gloom, the people in any country tend to blame the outsider for the malaise that is eating into their vitals, spoiling the good times and generally ensuring that an air of gloom hangs over proceedings.

When things turn particularly bad, people tend to even turn to lynching the outsider. In the US of A, 46 million people are living below the poverty line (nearly 15 per cent of the population if one goes by the last census figure of a population of 307,006,550) and the economy is shot to pieces. In this climate, the foreigner becomes an easy target.
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Pakistan feels the blowback from the US

WHEN Britain engineered the split of the Indian subcontinent back in 1947, there was little indication that the colonial masters would face a big blowback. The old policy of divide and rule was used to give the Muslims a separate state, resulting in one of the bigger bloodbaths in history as people fought during the partition.

India has gone on to become a force in its own right and somehow has survived any number of problems; it has been under democratic rule for all but 26 months since the partition. Pakistan, on the other hand, has been under various forms of dictatorship during its history and become something of a vassal state for the US.
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Time for Australia to blood new cricketers

NEXT week, the Australian international cricket season kicks off with the first Test against New Zealand. The Kiwis will play two Tests and then India will play four more, beginning in December. Next year, Australia, India and Sri Lanka will play a triangular limited overs tournament.

Australia is in the midst of a transition but it remains to be seen to what extent the new set of selectors are prepared to experiment. Ricky Ponting and Michael Hussey are both well into their 30s and not exactly setting the Nullarbor on fire when they go out to bat. Mitchell Johnson has been erratic to put it mildly, with more downsides than upsides.

And Brad Haddin has shown an inclination to throw his wicket away at the worst of times. His keeping is pretty poor too.
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Farewell D’Oliveira, a man who changed the system

BASIL D’Oliveira died on November 19. I remember him because of the fact that he was a principal actor in what was the first international series of cricket which I followed on the radio. Later, when I was much older, I realised the significance of the role that he had played in exposing apartheid for the evil it is.

The year was 1968 and I was 11 years old. Back then Sri Lanka — which was known as Ceylon — was not yet an international cricket-playing country. That would take another 13 years. But the interest in the game was phenomenal, so much so that the local radio station was able to find a sponsor to cover the charges of broadcasting BBC commentary on the Ashes series that year.

Before the series even began, the South African prime minister John Vorster had told Lord Cobham, a past president of the MCC, at that time the body administering the game in England, that if D’Oliveira was selected for the forthcoming tour of South Africa, the tour would be cancelled.
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Desperate US gets set to take advantage of Asia

AUSTRALIA is putting itself in a dangerous position by agreeing to be the meat in the sandwich between the US and China.

The US, realising that it cannot stand up to developing powers on its own, has devised a deal called the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement; this enables the US to act as a parasite and live off eight other countries.

But over and above this, the US wants to use Australia as a proxy staging ground for displaying whatever military might it has left and trying to hold off China from claiming its rightful place as the supreme power in the Asia-Pacific.
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Australia gets ready to bend over for the US – again

After being in force for seven years, the free trade agreement Australia has with the US has yielded the former little benefit. The US has been the net beneficiary – last financial year imports from the US totalled $26 billion while exports were $9 billion. [1]

The figures for 2004-05 were $21.4 billion and $9.2 billion respectively.

Given this, one would naturally conclude Australia would be wary of further deals that would expose it to being taken advantage of by the US.
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Why journalists are treated with contempt

NEWSPAPERS are dying. Circulations are dropping and owners are desperately trying to find new business models to keep their companies afloat.

One of the reasons that people in the US despise the written word is because of the amount of spin that is transmitted by journalists.

And here is an excellent example of the kind of garbage that makes people ask whether journalists are in possession of their senses.
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