tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-63375189173953254442024-03-14T07:39:55.279+05:30I Have the Right to Remain SilentBecause there's a good chance that anything I say can and will be used against me in a court of law.Eashan Ghoshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04515726258864143918noreply@blogger.comBlogger257125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6337518917395325444.post-89369241800842411032017-11-07T10:46:00.002+05:302017-11-07T10:48:08.692+05:30Grateful.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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For silence, for people I didn't think I could admire any more than I already do, for quiet resistance under unimaginable circumstances.</div>
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Sometimes what you've been looking for isn't out there or in front of you or even within yourself. Sometimes what you've been looking for manifests itself through something you never wanted, and couldn't have imagined.</div>
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We always say goodbye with the heaviest of hearts but how do you say goodbye to the very idea of what your hero should look like? You don't. You just dismiss hurt and plough on. You don't flinch because all you've ever been taught is to try to be like your hero, even if you know that all you're really trying to be is a fraction of what he showed it was possible to be.</div>
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Eashan Ghoshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04515726258864143918noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6337518917395325444.post-26512761509175416992017-04-07T13:08:00.001+05:302017-04-07T13:08:25.543+05:30Big events, small margins, and a whole lot of relief.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Bz got a job! :D</div>
Eashan Ghoshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04515726258864143918noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6337518917395325444.post-11158546695569503362016-12-28T11:19:00.003+05:302016-12-28T11:21:05.061+05:30They Don't Want None<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Y4NS1FzeWwM/WGNRgSy7ehI/AAAAAAAAEYY/CeWcFleEdzsnc-1d3Gax7IsJM6-JAnxRQCLcB/s1600/cena-aj-shake.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Y4NS1FzeWwM/WGNRgSy7ehI/AAAAAAAAEYY/CeWcFleEdzsnc-1d3Gax7IsJM6-JAnxRQCLcB/s320/cena-aj-shake.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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What a title match to round out a Phenomenal year. The kickout after realizing Corbin wasn't going to get there in time to break up the pin after Ziggler's superkick was the best running adjustment in a high-stakes environment I've seen in a long, long time. To think he pulled this off after working MSG on Sunday night, and with a bum ankle that is clearly nowhere near battle ready is so much mitigating overhead that I find that I am utterly incompetent to process its ramifications.</div>
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When the dust had settled after his debut at the <i>Royal Rumble </i>on January 24, the aftertaste was the kind of temporarily fulfilling but distinctly vacuous sensation that accompanies a climbdown after ticking something off your bucket list. That suspicion appeared to have been confirmed when he jobbed to Jericho at <i>WrestleMania </i>and was all but guaranteed to be ensconced in the welcoming arms of the upper mid-card for the remainder of his run. What has followed in the days, weeks and months since then, however, has demolished virtually every single stereotype that has been or could have been constructed around a 5-foot-10, 215 pound white boy from Gainesville, Georgia.</div>
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Onwards, then, to a date with John Cena in San Antonio. It may well be an exercise in futility to expect him to be put over Cena given how long a shadow 16 world titles are capable of casting but, frankly, I am done doubting what this man is capable of.</div>
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Each week, his arrival is announced by a loose, ungainly, almost unbecoming scattering song-spiel about blue collar boys, rednecks, southern boys and mack trucks; about feeling pain, giving respect, farmer strength and getting hands muddied. They may as well replace it with a simple sentiment that could have been made with confidence at pretty much any point over the last nine months but one that rings so true now that it admits for little disagreement: AJ Styles is the best clutch professional wrestler in the world today, and we haven't found a close second.<span style="text-align: left;"> </span></div>
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Eashan Ghoshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04515726258864143918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6337518917395325444.post-12418404707936042222016-11-30T14:46:00.001+05:302016-11-30T14:47:12.494+05:30Jewel Thief<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Once upon a time, a merchant approached Emperor Akbar with a
problem. A box containing some jewels was stolen from his house in the morning
while he was away. “I don’t know who has done it,” he says, “but I am sure it
is one of my neighbours.” Akbar refers the case to Birbal. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Birbal summons the merchant’s seven neighbours to the palace
that evening at 8pm. <o:p></o:p></div>
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“One of you has stolen the jewels,” he says, “and I will
catch the culprit by morning.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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“Here,” he begins, handing around sticks to each suspect,
“these are magic sticks. They’re all the same size. They’re magical because they’re
sensitive to the physical touch of a thief. If you’re the culprit, your stick
will grow by two inches overnight (an idea an Italian author may or may not rip
off in spirit three hundred years from now while writing a story called
Pinocchio).” <o:p></o:p></div>
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“To make sure you can’t get away,” he continues, “you’ll be
locked up in separate rooms in the palace until tomorrow morning. I’ll unlock
the rooms in the morning, collect the sticks and catch the thief.” <o:p></o:p></div>
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The first suspect is the merchant’s next door neighbour. He
knows both the merchant and Birbal very well, having helped them out with some
business dealings in the past. The merchant trusts him too, so before the
suspects are to be locked up for the night, he approaches Birbal and the
merchant and asks them to let him go. The merchant agrees. Birbal sees no
objection. The neighbour walks out into the cool evening breeze a free man. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The second man is locked in a room with a small window. He
props open the window to let some fresh air in. He alerts the attention of a
passerby who passes him some food through the window. He’s really upset about
the rising crime in the neighbourhood and can’t wait to see the thief caught.
The more he thinks about it, the more he realizes that Birbal is a genius.
These are magic sticks, after all – what can possibly go wrong? <o:p></o:p></div>
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The third man is in a room with no window and no light. He
hasn’t eaten all day and has no idea why Birbal has locked up everyone like
this. He didn’t even know the merchant had jewels in the house. Tired and
hungry, he stays awake all night.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The fourth man is in a dark room with no window. Being
locked up for the night is causing him extreme despair because he had to
conduct private business with some traders this evening. The traders owed him a
large sum of money, which he needed to feed his family. That opportunity is
gone now, and he doesn’t know when he’ll be able to meet the traders again.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The fifth man stole a jewel from the merchant’s house last
month and promptly sold it on. He doesn’t know if the sticks are actually
magical, though, and that’s making him nervous. Desperate to find a way out of
the predicament, he probes around the room and finds a loose panel in one of
the walls. He has a confederate waiting outside, to whom he explains the
situation. The confederate searches around outside and quickly finds another
stick that’s the same size as the magic stick. The man then cuts off two inches
from the magic stick. If the stick is magical, it’ll grow back overnight and be
the same size. If it doesn’t, he’ll just show Birbal the second stick instead. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The sixth man is extremely sick. His room is completely dark
and cold. He feels utterly helpless and is struggling to see out the night.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The seventh man knows he’s ruined. He stole jewels from the
merchant’s house this morning. He checks his room carefully for any means of
escape but doesn’t find any. There’s no way he can get rid of the jewels from
his house before sunrise. More than that, he’s worried about the damn stick.
Like a lamb to slaughter, he chops off two inches from his stick thinking it’ll
grow back. <o:p></o:p></div>
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It doesn’t grow back, of course. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Birbal rounds up the suspects the next morning and proceeds
to collect the sticks. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The first man left the previous evening. There is no stick
to collect.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The second man hands over his stick with a smile on his
face. When Birbal asks how he spent the night, he brushes off any concerns. “It
was only a minor inconvenience,” he says.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The third man is confused, upset, tired and hungry but he
dare not say anything to the mighty Birbal. Dejected that he has not even been
compensated for the night in restraint, he quietly leaves. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The fourth man is furious with Birbal. “Do you have any idea
how much I have lost overnight?” he asks angrily. There is nothing he can do,
though. He, too, leaves.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The fifth man has called Birbal’s bluff about the magic
stick. He notices that the stick hasn’t grown, so he coolly hands over the second
stick that was slipped to him by his confederate at night. Birbal doesn’t
notice the difference in sticks and lets him go. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The sixth man’s condition has worsened considerably
overnight. He needs urgent medical attention and is taken away. An unaltered stick
is found in his room.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The seventh man is caught with a stick that is two inches
shorter. Birbal declares him the criminal. He tells the merchant to go to the
man’s house and recover the jewels. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The merchant is ecstatic. He goes to the seventh man’s house
and finds the same box that he had left unattended the previous morning. He takes
the box home and shows it triumphantly to his wife.<o:p></o:p></div>
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She unlocks the box, surveys the contents and goes, “WTF? These
are only 6% of the jewels – where are the rest?” </div>
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Eashan Ghoshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04515726258864143918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6337518917395325444.post-44435372185639584502015-11-16T14:16:00.001+05:302015-11-16T14:16:16.468+05:30Wow.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
No talk, no intimidation, no octagon fright, no confusion, no panic, no kicks thrown until it really, really mattered.<br />
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Instead, assuredness, some excellent cornermen, the best angling off exhibition in women's MMA history and straight lefts thrown sweeter than I've seen for quite a while in a championship fight.<br />
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The rematch is going to be off the chain and, having seen this particular furrow of the sport in its infancy, I can't quite believe this is happening.<br />
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These are very, very exciting times.<br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-WNBemyaiD0M/VkmXT3ymKzI/AAAAAAAAD2k/JScO6plScdw/s1600/images.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-WNBemyaiD0M/VkmXT3ymKzI/AAAAAAAAD2k/JScO6plScdw/s1600/images.jpg" /></a></div>
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Eashan Ghoshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04515726258864143918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6337518917395325444.post-38534163579702161732015-06-24T18:58:00.000+05:302015-06-24T19:05:19.350+05:30Slightly under the surface, and remembering Benoit<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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The biggest learning for me from a slightly jagged and often frustrating June so far has been that clarity of thought isn't linear. This might not seem like a particularly spectacular conclusion but there's been a definite - if shrinking - and possibly extremely middle-class part of my mind that has always believed that chains of continuous and fruitful thinking aren't so much a matter of finding inspiration or reason but more just a function of removing the distractions and focusing hard enough on the links in the chain to the point where the solution is compelled to present itself to you.</div>
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I've found efforts in the latter direction entirely unsuccessful for the past three weeks or so. In true hard-thinking fashion, I attempted to blame it on everything around me until I was left with no other conclusion than the inevitable one - one that forced my mind to acknowledge, <i>you know, no matter how much you try, you really aren't very good at answering these questions</i>.</div>
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Perhaps equally surprisingly, this hasn't caused me to question whether I've lost the ability to 'switch it on again', whether I'm getting too old to dramatically clear everything off my metaphorical desk with one swish of the crook of my arm and take time off to just <i>think</i> or even whether, as I did through a disturbingly vacuous eighteen month spell in 2012-13, I've lost the desire to want to think - all it has really done is make me appreciate the vagaries of the accessibility of the thinking process, vagaries that, I now realise, aren't so much unfathomable as they are inconsistent in themselves.</div>
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So the process behind clarity of thought is vague, it would seem. Yeeeeeah. I'm just going to park that there. And not think about it again. </div>
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Also: Eight years today since Benoit, and a wound that simply refuses to heal. However, with every passing year, I'm starting to accept that, while I will never be able to forgive what happened at the hands of Chris, the person, <i>nor </i>forget Chris, the wrestler, there doesn't have to be a personal explanation for why I feel the latter as strongly as I do the former. I'm just going to park <i>that </i>there, too. And think about it again and again and again. </div>
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Eashan Ghoshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04515726258864143918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6337518917395325444.post-60912129578126650272015-04-21T16:56:00.001+05:302015-04-21T16:56:11.678+05:30Exhale<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Phwoa<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQRmCy6LfjI">r</a><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvJKVKglIRs">r</a><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVT3p6SaUbw">r</a><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66GHz-H4k6M">r</a><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCmw7tzkik8">r</a><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KR4DjYczINM">r</a><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PP2Dgftin6M">r</a><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vt1Pwfnh5pc">r</a>.</div>
Eashan Ghoshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04515726258864143918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6337518917395325444.post-88045613522693743322015-04-15T15:14:00.000+05:302015-04-15T15:14:08.289+05:30Epitaph<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Age is not a number - it is the piercing pain at the junction of your C4 and C5 when you wake up every morning.</div>
Eashan Ghoshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04515726258864143918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6337518917395325444.post-60181932193231779792015-03-30T11:41:00.000+05:302015-03-30T11:41:02.529+05:30The Perfect Weekend<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-CoojEBhFjio/VRjoCfKqrrI/AAAAAAAABVI/34Jm_iPydPY/s1600/209769.3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-CoojEBhFjio/VRjoCfKqrrI/AAAAAAAABVI/34Jm_iPydPY/s1600/209769.3.jpg" height="179" width="320" /></a></div>
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The circle completes itself. After three Ashes defeats, 47 all out and 11/25/2014, there is finally reason to rejoice. </div>
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Eashan Ghoshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04515726258864143918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6337518917395325444.post-19091615882108601822015-03-17T19:03:00.001+05:302015-03-17T19:06:13.503+05:30Confessions of Sins, Sharpening of Knives<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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There's little doubt in my mind now that making relationships work is a function of patience, maturity and a little bit of judgement. Then, of course, there's the little issue of timing - timing that surreptitiously but unerringly tugs away at the things you need the most, timing that serves as a persistent, mocking reminder for all those times when you allowed yourself to be filled with optimism thinking of an indeterminate future, timing that claws away furiously at everything you've constructed and shreds it down to a set of characterless, once-bloody stumps.</div>
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So please know that if anyone, however genuinely, supremely and indisputably wonderful they might be, starts talking as if their personal experience with relationships validates any notion of sincerity, fidelity, responsibility and love conquering all, I <i>will </i>want to take the conversation off the record and share with them an open secret, spoken freely on the streets but never even whispered in the repulsively smug corridors of self-congratulatory people in their late 20s who suddenly find themselves tenderly in love - that it's a big world out there and sometimes, despite all your best efforts, despite however much you honestly fulfill virtually everything another person asks of you, events get out of your control and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it, except pick yourself up, go to the back of the line and hope - because it's nothing more than that - <i>hope </i>that, somehow, it'll be your time at some point in the same indeterminate future that you've spent the last several years preparing for. </div>
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Eashan Ghoshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04515726258864143918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6337518917395325444.post-44631090042262207452014-12-18T11:07:00.002+05:302014-12-18T11:08:04.571+05:30You can't eat this soup standing up, your knees buckle<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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El Generico <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9U_R29pb3Xk">beats</a> Pac with an Olé Kick to round out the <a href="http://grantland.com/the-triangle/wwe-tlc-nxt-takeover-evolution-cm-punk-sami-zayn-vince-mcmahon-kevin-owens-john-cena-seth-rollins-ppv/">best wrestling show of the year</a>...on a WWE developmental pay-per-view.</div>
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Those last three words are incredible enough in and of themselves but the talent on show, top to bottom, was so frighteningly good that it was unreal. This is mid-90s ECW, this is mid-noughties SmackDown Six, this is late-noughties ROH, this is every rogue shock wrestling sub-culture there has ever been, and it's happening all over again.</div>
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I can't believe we've been slamming WWE Creative and bemoaning the lack of long-term storyline development and the lost ability to create true superstars. The future has been under our noses this whole time. It's taken me a week since NXT R-Evolution to write this and trust me when I tell you, I've been gasping for air this whole time. </div>
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Eashan Ghoshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04515726258864143918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6337518917395325444.post-61113706687613730082014-06-16T06:36:00.002+05:302014-06-16T06:36:58.460+05:30Middle of Centre<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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"It's not so much what you say <i>to </i>her, Eashan", she said, "what really makes me happy is what you say <i>about </i>her instead."</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I've finally figured out that the stinging, tired eyes and the arm that ceaselessly spits out vile spurts of pain are no more than excuses. The truth is, I've been running on empty for a really long time without appreciating it. I still don't have answers, though, and that's just a terrible feeling after a day that made my heart feel so complete and brought so much of the finality I had quietly been looking for. There's another bag of rocks that's been strapped to my back and I'd gladly take it on if I could just get that one chance to lay all the bags down for a little while and start over. I know what's likely to happen - two short weeks will pass, things will inevitably move on and I'll regret that I didn't quite feel that one moment of complete tranquility that could've made these rocks so much easier to carry. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
It's been gnawing at me in an incoherent, incomplete sense for several hours now but if there's one question I'd like to ask myself from two weeks in the future, it would simply be, If I know I have so much more to give of myself, why do I feel so utterly hollow inside? </div>
</div>
Eashan Ghoshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04515726258864143918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6337518917395325444.post-17356713138057922742014-04-05T21:04:00.001+05:302014-04-05T21:04:26.630+05:30The Red Parcel and Bags of Candy<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
It's a wonderful feeling when a genuine smile can so fully validate an occasion, a friendship and weeks and weeks of quiet expectation.<br />
<br />
My heart feels full, my mind is at peace, I'm really, really happy.<br />
<br />
Here's to more unexpected three hour phone conversations and to more ways of sorting out our lives' endless little problems. :-)</div>
Eashan Ghoshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04515726258864143918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6337518917395325444.post-53653341969579055092014-02-12T18:54:00.000+05:302014-02-12T18:54:33.256+05:30The Truth About Everything<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
The smoke was swirling, the
carpet was blotched with spilled drinks, the faces were a blur as they passed
me by. I’d been here, of course. The failings were all too familiar, too
soul-crushingly irreversible to do anything but be courteous, walk away, go
back, bury my head under a pillow for a couple of hours and cajole one more
early morning airline dash from a body that had seen far too many sub-6 a.m.
economy class queues in the past two years. So I told myself that this wouldn’t
be about trying or pretending or keeping it real – it would just be about
saying thank-you, nice-to-meet-you, see-you-soon, buh-bye. That it ended up
being a lot more than that really had nothing to do with me. It had everything
to do with someone who has, much against my will, got me to care deeply about an
imaginary rubber duck.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
I’m overwhelmingly thankful to
you, in a way that I haven’t been to anyone in a long time. For being unafraid
to tell me things, for pulling down the barriers I had so pettily constructed
in my head, for giving my meaningless ideas only as much credit as they deserve,
for saying sorry when you didn’t need to, for processing details of events,
people and places rapidly enough for our conversations to not get bogged down
by minutiae, for leaving me time only to react and not to think, for your
rolling laughter over the phone, for doing all this without making it seem like
a big deal. There is so much more to learn from you and there is so, so much
more to tell you. I hope that, in the days and months to come, I get the time
and attention to do both. I’m truly amazed at how much of my time devoted to
you has resulted in overwhelmingly happy memories. I’m even more amazed at how,
whatever the complications or context, you just get it. </div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
A lot of this is still so absurd
that I can barely wrap my mind around it – I have no idea if you have a good
singing voice, I don’t know if you hate clubbing, I couldn’t even begin to
guess what your favourite colours or fruits or books are. But having spent the
majority of the past three years dropping the heavy latch on that door without
a second thought, I’m finding the effort involved in keeping that door propped open
just a crack a challenge worth pursuing. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
It has also been accompanied by a
realisation that I didn’t think I’d be willing to share with anyone up until I
started writing this – that maybe this isn’t about locating or sharing
happiness or sadness or emotion of any description. That maybe what we’re after
isn’t love or companionship or empathy or acceptance. Maybe what we’re after is
what we’ve both had within us all along. </div>
</div>
Eashan Ghoshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04515726258864143918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6337518917395325444.post-30423678226566173562013-12-17T14:27:00.001+05:302013-12-17T14:27:05.945+05:30The Comeback<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vLkNjRWZo8c/UrARx3OQx1I/AAAAAAAAAPI/kNLpy3gTVu4/s1600/174267.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vLkNjRWZo8c/UrARx3OQx1I/AAAAAAAAAPI/kNLpy3gTVu4/s320/174267.jpg" width="210" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
What a moment. What a feeling.</div>
Eashan Ghoshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04515726258864143918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6337518917395325444.post-82848797582354999612013-11-24T20:58:00.000+05:302018-04-24T16:38:29.031+05:30The Sachin Years<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="height: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>I</b></span></div>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">There
is already a stand named after him, his legacy has been permanently fortified
by a Bharat Ratna which will arrive in short order, and I’m sure we’re not too
far from the day when his birthday is declared a national holiday. </span></span><br />
<div style="height: 0px;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Yet, for all
the drama surrounding Sachin Tendulkar’s retirement from international cricket,
the <em>denouement</em> felt suspiciously like a well-directed movie rather than a
spontaneous sporting moment. Even in this oddity, it was not alone – after all,
this is exactly what ESPN had done with LeBron James and ‘The Decision’ – but,
given the token resistance the West Indies provided, it felt a little <i>too
</i>perfect. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I’m sure a movie will be made on Sachin some day and, of course,
Sachin will make a hundred in his final innings in the movie but, for all the
effort it took for us to suspend our disbelief just about long enough to treat
his retirement as a genuine moment, nobody quite thought it’d end like this.<br /> </span></span><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>II</b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">When
the FTP calendar was rolled out a while back, those of us with fertile
imaginations were already dreaming up a Sachin retirement on the back of a
long-awaited away series win against a heavyweight team. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">We dreamed into existence the images of
frantic, uncoordinated, typically indigenous celebrations in the moments after
it happened that were almost too real to not be true. We constructed the perfectly imaginable looks of
disbelieving joy etched on everyone’s faces, unable, in the moment, to grasp
the significance of what had just transpired but ecstatic in the knowledge that
it was monumental. And then, we imagined him, winning a
man-of-the-match for another stirring Tendulkar special; the series win offering the best possible parting gift and lesson to the MS Dhoni-led younger generation. It would be fitting that he would teach us how to
overturn a history of underachievement abroad that had, over the past twenty-plus
seasons, so nearly consumed him.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The template for these visions was informed
in spades by the truly other-worldly experience that was the 2011 World Cup
final in Mumbai. But with Sachin having failed in the final, it was not difficult to imagine that he had a script for a finish very much
like the one we had fantasy booked tucked away in the recesses of his mind. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(Sachin’s lack of clarity on his retirement has been symptomatic of his
inexplicable reticence on commenting on the state of the game in general. It
wasn’t until after he retired that </span><a href="http://www.espncricinfo.com/india/content/story/689651.html"><span style="font-family: inherit;">he told us why he had</span></a><span style="font-family: inherit;">. I remember Mike
Coward’s wonderful open letter to him during India’s ill-fated 1999-2000 tour
of Australia, imploring him to speak up on the game’s big issues, given his
pre-eminent status as the best batsman in the world. It’s as hard to contest
anything Coward said in the letter as it is to explain why we don’t know what
Sachin’s views on rule changes, match-fixing, retaining interest in Test
cricket, umpiring, and a host of other crucial issues are. His retirement speech
proved that it certainly isn’t because he can’t express his views eloquently.) <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>III</b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Like
many people of my generation, my first Sachin memory is of him being mobbed by
his teammates after delivering a near-perfect 50th <span style="font-size: small;">over under
unimaginable pressure in the 1993 Hero Cup semi-final. More than the match that
he won by bowling his first over in the final one of the match when South
Africa needed six runs to win, what strikes me most when I go back to it now is
how absurd it was: he was <i>twenty-and-a-half years old</i> and we’ve hardly
seen anything like it since. </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></span>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">Coming as it did during mid-Azhar India,
in a team that seemed physiologically incapable of taking a chance, it painted
Sachin as the boy who could do anything. And for those who allowed themselves
the luxury, it finally changed their view of giving younger players big
responsibility, which was a victory in itself for a setup that had seen
Maninder Singh and Laxman Sivaramakrishnan crash and burn so spectacularly in
the recent past. </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></span>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">Looking back on a career that was rare in that it actually
fulfilled its potential, it’s difficult to identify every individual
contribution but, to my mind, shaking the cobwebs of that typically Indian
slit-eyed suspicion towards young talent was as big a contribution as Sachin
ever made to Indian cricket.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b style="font-family: inherit;">IV</b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></b></div>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">That
Sachin’s place among cricket’s greatest batsmen has been over-analysed to
vanishing point isn’t surprising at all. What <i>is</i> surprising, to my mind at
least, is that the post-retirement retrospective from credible sources has been
quite negative. (Sample </span><a href="http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/PKgPHTk5wKn8DZLRpCtCyK/Master-Blaster-or-Master-Laster-A-revisionist-look-at-Sachi.html"><span style="font-family: inherit;">this</span></a><span style="font-family: inherit;"> slating Sachin’s selfishness, </span><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24941869"><span style="font-family: inherit;">this</span></a><span style="font-family: inherit;"> highlighting how
Sachin’s was only the 29th<span style="font-size: small;"> greatest batting peak in Test history or
even </span></span><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-24830995"><span style="font-family: inherit;">this</span></a><span style="font-family: inherit;">, pointing out that he wasn’t the best player of his generation, or the
best Indian player ever.)</span></span><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">My
default position is that I find the obsession with individual records tedious
more than a little unhealthy. So while Sachin has the most runs and most
centuries ever, he also has played more than anyone else and those records, of
themselves, carry little value. There are those from whom this obsession with
individual records can’t be entirely excoriated but it’s telling that 72 Tests
(and not more) of Sachin’s 200 ended in victory, only 14 of those away from
home in countries not called Bangladesh.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Combining
meaningful records with meaningless ones, it’s also revealing that Sachin only
ranks 12th</span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"> on the list of runs scored in winning causes away from
home, calculated from the time of his first away Test win. Most jarringly, he
has played in 4 fewer of these wins than Rahul Dravid, and while he’s still got
65.05rpi for 2017 runs in those 20 Tests with 9 hundreds, crucially, of the top
100 performances by a winning batsman away at a particular opponent, only <i>one</i>
of Sachin’s contributions qualifies – his 688 runs in Test wins in Bangladesh. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">[To put this in perspective, of his contemporaries, Ricky Ponting has three in
the top 100, including two (v West Indies, v South Africa) in the top 15, Steve
Waugh has two in the top 50, as does Justin Langer. Graeme Smith has three in
the top 100, Dravid has two excluding Bangladesh in the top 100, Inzamam-ul-Haq
has two excluding Zimbabwe in the top 100 and Saeed Anwar, Gary Kirsten and
Mark Waugh all have two each in the top 100).]</span></span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Remove the six Test wins in
Bangladesh and Sachin’s record in winning causes abroad is 55.37rpi for 1329
runs in 14 Tests, which isn’t particularly distinguishable from his overall
Test batting record. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">And that’s telling.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>V</b></span></div>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Yet,
one of the most frustrating aspects of watching cricket is the shocking lack of meaningful statistics. We have no statistics to speak of when looking at
factors such as shot efficiency, aerial shots, session scores and strike rates,
opportunity cost runs while approaching individual milestones, success rates
against concerted bowling plans, match dynamics statistics when batting with
the top- and lower-order, acceleration stats, shot selection alteration based on repeated modes of
dismissal, comparative bowling line and length analysis for dismissals in
specific conditions or at specific grounds. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(On the last of these, the best we
have right now are over-wise line arc summaries which offer little more than
the knowledge that if the batsman had not been there - you know, in the
not-at-all ridiculous hypothetical situation that the bowler had just been
bowling at three stumps - that ball would’ve hit the stumps but this ball
wouldn’t have or, worse, those 3D-colour-under-the-shaded-area graphs depicting
bowling lengths which look like giant piles of poo and enable the commentator
lucky enough to be on air at the time to inform us ‘he’s been so effective because
he’s been bowling a lot fuller today’. Really? No way.) </span></span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">For the few statistics
we do have, there are no popularly accepted metrics - run-rates sliced by
blocks of overs (I don’t know if an average run rate of 7.5 to the over in the
last 10 of a 50-over game is good enough) and dot ball percentages (I don’t
know if a batsman who eats up 60% of deliveries faced as dots is a good player
or not; moreover, I know a dot ball while chasing 6+ an over is a bad thing but
I don’t know who has the best and worst figures on that specific metric) to
name just two. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I have a feeling it’d enrich our understanding of cricket no end
if we had these details. They’d certainly make it easier to evaluate
irritatingly frequent statements such as ‘Sachin is the best one-day player in
history’.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>VI</b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Nevertheless,
something that goes really underappreciated when evaluating Sachin’s career is just the sheer number of matches he played during his most productive years. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">This isn’t simply the boy-on-burning-deck narrative so lazily stapled onto Sachin in relation to the Indian team of the 1990s; one which, insidiously, lets
pro-Sachin statisticians rely on performances in individual matches rather than
full series. It is at least as much the ability to continually get up for big matches when
you know you’re in a team that can’t consistently punch above its weight but is
expected to. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">This period of Indian cricket history - from the time Sachin hit
the main event at the beginning of the 1996 World Cup (February 1996) to the
breaking of the 2000 match-fixing scandal (April 2000), which I will hence call
The Sachin Years - is as remarkable for his numbers as it is for his workload. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Overall,
Sachin played ODIs on successive days on <i>twenty-three different occasions </i>in
his career, the majority of which were during The Sachin Years: on seven
separate occasions in Sharjah (October 1991, April 1996, November 1998, March
2000, October 2000), four times (including three in three days) in Toronto
(September 1996, September 1997), thrice in Colombo (September 1994, September 1997, January 2000), twice in Adelaide (December 1991), once in England
(remarkable because the first game was in Leeds, the second the next day in
Manchester in May 1996), once in Durban (February 1997), once in Port of Spain
(April 1997), once in Gwalior (March 1993), once in Dhaka (January 1998), once
in Bulawayo (September 1998) and once in Singapore (September 1999). </span></span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Wake up in
the morning, warm-up, play an eight-hour one day international cricket match
and go back with the knowledge that you have to do it all over again the very
next day. Twenty-three times in all. </span></span><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Add up the 38 Tests and 144 ODIs he played
during this Killer Kalendar and it averages out to just a tick under one day of
international cricket that he signed up for every four-and-a-half days. As in,
one day every four-and-a-half days <i>of his life</i>.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">His
record in winning causes in this time is 3585 runs in 60 ODIs at 73.16 with a
strike rate of 94.56, 17 hundreds and 12 fifties (heck, even his bowling record
in the same period of time – 27 wickets at 34.9 and a wicket every 40.5 balls
is borderline acceptable). His record in matches <i>not</i> won in this time is 2311
runs in 84 ODIs at 28.88, with a strike rate of 81.05, 4 hundreds and 12
fifties. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">These were The Sachin Years, in the days before squad rotation, at a
time when calling India a team of Sachin-plus-ten may have been insulting but
it’s exactly how many India fans thought of India as well. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(Bizarrely, my
clearest memory from this time is not an international match but the Princess
Diana memorial match at Lord’s where my intrigue was based on watching Javagal Srinath
and Anil Kumble - both of whom I had a lot of time for - bowl at Sachin. I
distinctly remember the thought crossing my mind that this is how the Indian
nets probably look like everyday. Allan Donald later said Sachin’s whole
innings of 125 - 84 of which were from hits to the fence - was as though he was having
a net. It was the one time I stood convinced that Sachin was, by a distance,
the best batsman in the world.)</span></span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>VII</b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The
chain of events that catalysed The Sachin Years, like most great stories, was
born out of accident. </span></span><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">On a cool morning in Auckland on March 27, 1994, with Navjot Singh Sidhu indisposed, the
Indian team management took another rare chance and pushed Sachin up to open a
chase of 142 in 50 overs. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I remember watching the match on our faulty old Nelco
Blue Diamond TV with my mouth open, gobsmacked by what I was seeing. It wasn’t
so much the kind of shots he was playing, it was just the unerring certainty
and confidence with which he was finding the boundary, like a hyperactive bat-wielding Energizer bunny. Even my sadness brought on by Matthew
Hart getting him for two runs short of his then-highest ODI score of 84 was
buried in the tectonic shift in the nature of approaching ODI cricket that I
instantly knew I had witnessed. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The whole thing was over in an hour, the match
an afterthought, and, even in surveying the wreckage of that whirlwind innings
at a distance of twenty minutes after the game, the expert panel in the
post-match TV coverage found it impossible not to wonder if this wondrous young
man in far-away New Zealand was going to change world cricket forever. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">To this
day, despite the T20 excesses that are now commonplace, that innings
ranks as one of the most astonishing display of sustained and controlled aerial
hitting I have seen in my life.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>VIII</b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In a
classic bit of reverse-<i>Baazigar</i> irony that was the hallmark of 1990s
India, Auckland 1994 was a template that Sanath Jayasuriya and Romesh Kaluwitharana
of Sri Lanka picked up and amplified with staggering and, frankly, emasculating
success, especially against India, including at the 1996 World Cup. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I speak not
of the Calcutta semi-final where Srinath so memorably got them both caught in
the first over of the innings, allowing Aravinda De Silva to claim credit for
setting up that era’s staple India choke but of the league game at Delhi. </span></span><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It was here that Sachin’s dominance of a very competent Sri Lankan spin attack in a heart-stopping
run-a-ball 137 was blown to pieces by a
referee-stoppage-in-the-first-minute-style pulverisation of India’s opening
bowlers. I recall they were particularly severe on Manoj Prabhakar, whose first
two overs went for <i>thirty-three runs - </i>a number so mind-bending that it
doesn’t need to be adjusted for 2013 run inflation. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(Prabhakar was actually
brought back for a couple of overs later in the innings as Sri Lanka cruised
towards a victory that was never in doubt and, so traumatised was he by his
opening spell, that he actually bowled off-spinners. No dice. Sri Lanka carted
him for fourteen more and eventually won with six wickets and eight balls to
spare. Prabhakar never played for India again, though he did provide A-Class
entertainment a few years later by hosting Indian cricket’s and, thus far, only travelling drinking and bitching roadshow marathon with the
infamous <i>Tehelka</i> tapes, which established once and for all that men gossip
way-hey more than women. </span></span><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The reason why he couldn’t or didn’t want to entrap
Sachin as part of his fail investigative journalism is something that isn’t
apparent but it’s quite incredible that, even in circumstances so primed to
destroy characters and careers with no one the wiser, Sachin emerges, to the
best of my knowledge, entirely unscathed.)</span></span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>IX</b></span></div>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Despite
that particular setback, the future was here – hit the ball in the air, clear
the infield, but do it with percentage hitting – and Sachin’s contribution to
setting it in motion was immeasurable. </span></span><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">This change in approach is also
incredible for how sudden, almost overnight, it was. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Pre-Auckland, Sachin had
1758 runs in 69 games at 30.84 with a strike rate of 74.36. To put that in
context, only ten of the fifty highest ODI run-scorers in the period between
Sachin’s ODI debut and his Auckland innings had strike rates higher than his
and only four of those ten regularly batted in the top three. Yet, post-Auckland,
he’s suddenly striking at 89.56 for 7356 runs and <i>fifty-eight </i>50+ scores
and <i>thirty-two </i>Man of the Match awards in almost exactly six years.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Breaking
down that strike rate shift further, the only people with higher strike rates
over that period are Jayasuriya, Shahid Afridi, Lance Klusener and Adam
Gilchrist. Of these, Afridi, Klusener and Gilchrist are distinctly post-Sachin
risk-takers whose numbers have been roughly similar throughout their careers.
Jayasuriya’s numbers are the consequence of a more dramatic transformation (going from a 1989-to-pre-Auckland tally of 639 runs striking at 69.98 and an
average of <i>14.20</i> - yes, you read that right - suggesting to me that his
batting talent was not so much underutilized, as Sachin’s was, but
undiscovered) to striking at 93.91 for 4613 runs in The Sachin Years. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">So not
only does Sachin have an extra 2743 runs in the same six-year period but,
significantly, he’s going at 42.32rpi as against Jayasuriya’s 31.59rpi, so he’s
a qualitative level above in terms of reliability of run-making for roughly the
same rate of output. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And so it continued to the end of the 1990s, a glorious
decade where every year, every big event and every Sachin innings (the latter
two frequently overlapping categories) is marked out clearly. </span></span><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">To think that
Sachin has only retired <i>now</i>, in 2013, makes you open your eyes to how
long the 2000s actually were. All those games, moments, wins and losses that
we just assumed were time-compressed have actually been a sustained period of
time every bit as real as the 1990s, a stark contrast to the utter
indistinguishability of one day from the next over the same period of time we have now retrofitted into our cricketing memory.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>X</b></span></div>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The
end of The Sachin Years, to my mind, was the approximate marker for the
beginning of possibly the most simultaneously rewarding and frustrating period
of his career. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The captaincy issue is sorted. (There were rumours in the summer
of 2001 that Sachin wanted the captaincy back at some point in the as-yet
undetermined future - rumours serious enough for Sachin to address and politely
clarify as baseless in an extraordinarily lengthy interview to <i>The Times of
India</i>. If anything, this only went to strengthen Sourav Ganguly’s resolve
to do better at the job.) A battery of middle-order batsmen are hitting the
main event at the same time. Kumble is finally figuring out how to bowl well
abroad (121 in 27 Tests at 32.9, sharpening to 52 wickets in 10 away Test wins at
21.3; compared with 101 wickets in 30 Tests at 39.4 previously, during which
India won <i>one </i>Test abroad). Zaheer Khan is doing a more-than-passable
impression of a venue-agnostic strike bowler (he’s actually the highest away
wicket-taker in Test cricket <i>bar none </i>since 2000, if you’d believe that). Irfan Pathan has made his hard-to-believe-now start to international cricket
(65 wickets in 13 Tests at 25 in this period), and generally a lot of feelgood
stars are aligning type stuff. Several Test wins are about to arrive. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Sachin,
at the start of this period, shockingly, is still only 27.<br /> </span></span><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Somehow,
it just doesn’t click. And it’s not just a matter of him struggling to accept a
role requiring him to slot his vocals into the overall team harmony. His raw
figures from this period in ODIs are fine but, with injuries catching up, he’s
missing games and - not that this is an insult - has less ODI runs in this time
than Dravid. Curiously, this is also around the time when, to my mind, bat
starts to irreversibly dominate ball and big-hitting becomes the dominant
factor in cricket. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(This profound realisation hit me while watching Sehwag’s
first ODI hundred: that <i>this</i> is what international cricket is now. That the
true tests – Australia away, South Africa away, England away – are few and far
between and, indeed, if you were to take India’s cricketing calendar for the
next five years and mix it all up, the mean would be closer to this kind of contrived,
manufactured cricket than challenging tours of any description.)</span></span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Remove
Sachin’s average-steroiding centuries at home to Zimbabwe and away to
Bangladesh and he’s actually down to 41.5rpi in Tests. In terms of pure
run-scoring, he lies 14th <span style="font-size: small;">on this list, behind such distinctly
time-slot hits as Herschelle Gibbs and Marcus Trescothick and even Gilchrist,
who rarely, if ever, batted higher than number six in an extremely dominant
Australian batting lineup. </span></span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">(Distilling further, his 2005-2007 figures are of
the look-away-now variety: 1487 runs at 39.1rpi, 29th on the international
run-scorer list and Virender Sehwag, VVS Laxman, Dravid, Ganguly and - wait for
it - Wasim Jaffer, all have more Test runs in that period.) </span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></span>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">So when a similar
bad spell over the last three seasons started to become too apparent to ignore
(substitute Gibbs and Trescothick in 2005-2007 with Azhar Ali and Kane
Williamson in 2011-2013), it is more than understandable that Sachin decided to
call time on his playing career. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></span><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span></span></span><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b style="font-family: inherit;">XI</b></span></span></div>
<br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">However,
what that doesn’t explain is the three seasons (2008-2011) in between, because
what happened in that time really ought not to have happened. There’s no way a
broken-down 34-year-old - seriously hurting, confidence shot, murmurs of
retirement louder by the day - ought to have done what he did.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">But
he did. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">He scored lots of runs. 3166 (</span><a href="http://stats.espncricinfo.com/ci/engine/stats/index.html?class=1;spanmax2=31+Dec+2010;spanmin2=01+Jan+2008;spanval2=span;template=results;type=batting"><span style="font-family: inherit;">second</span></a><span style="font-family: inherit;"> behind Sehwag in the equivalent
period) in 33 Tests with <i>twenty-four</i> 50+ scores in 57 innings. Big runs (1675 in
16 away Tests at 57.75rpi, second behind Alastair Cook in that specific
classification). Important runs (1680 in 16 Test wins at 64.61rpi, second again
behind Sehwag). Lots of big, important runs (five 50+ scores for 658 runs in 7
away Test wins).</span></span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It was a second wind of epic proportions. Four of his six ‘</span><a href="http://www.impactindexcricket.com/~impactin/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1025"><span style="font-family: inherit;">series defining performances</span></a><span style="font-family: inherit;">’ (new addition to vocabulary) came in the 2008-2011 period. Outside this phase, his decline was very much terminal (much as it was for his predecessor Gavaskar, whose career graph dropped off alarmingly post-30). </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></span>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">But this ‘phase’ was still 3166 runs in 33 Tests. It defies logic.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>XII</b></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">And
then the 2011 World Cup happened. His two hundreds in the group phase were
superb displays of ruthless manipulation of fielders and some smart hitting in
the fielding restrictions, just like The Sachin Years. But a long tournament started
to visibly take its toll and, by the time he scratched his way to his
freakishly lucky 85 in the Pakistan semi-final, I had a quiet internal
conversation, telling myself I had probably seen Sachin’s last great innings - and this wasn’t it. (A lot of recent Sachin tribute pieces have praised how he
buckled down and fought it out as if this revealed some heretofore undisclosed
element of his cricketing ability, with the general refrain being that this
innings finally silenced all questions about his mental fortitude. How about
this for a real question: it’s a World Cup semi-final against Pakistan, you
expected him to not to try? You wanted him to gift his wicket away? Trust me,
he tried the latter - the Pakistanis kept returning it.)</span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">This
innings also made me realise that Sachin’s remaining appeal to me was that of a
survivor, a sort of homely bridge between the generation I watched fade away
before my eyes and the swaggering, any-ODI-target-chasing, bowlingless Indian
team of today. This realisation wasn’t saddening, it was almost liberating
because, by this point, my cycle of Sachin expectation had just about run its
course. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It was almost a guarantee, I thought, that he would flop in the final.
He did. Thinking back on it now, the World Cup win could and should have been
the perfect send-off. A lot of people said so at the time and Mark Nicholas <a href="http://www.espncricinfo.com/sachinfarewell/content/story/688341.html%E2%80%8E">said so</a> again </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">recently</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">, in a piece marked by uncharacteristic sycophancy. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">But he played on.<br /> </span></span><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>XIII</b></span></div>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I
don’t know what made him play on but he certainly ‘made’ a few other things. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">He made us feel sorry for him as Stuart Broad and Jimmy Anderson knocked him
over again and again and again and again and again (I’m not overdoing the
agains; they actually <i>did</i> dismiss him five times in four
Tests in England) in 2011. He made us sit through that painfully slow 100th<span style="font-size: small;"> hundred against Bangladesh in a game that India contrived and deserved to lose.
He made us donate mindspace to the two farcical Tests against the West Indies that serves as his retirement series when we could’ve had a proper Test series in South Africa. And eventually, he made sure that he played long enough to retire with a Test
average lower than that of Vinod Kambli. (This was pointed out to me by a friend on WhatsApp the other day and, given the difficulties of discerning tone over text message, I remain unclear on whether irony was intended.) <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Yet,
incredibly, not only did he hang around in some capacity for two and a half
years following the 2011 World Cup, he played in the IPL as well, which
produced some of his most wince-inducing moments. However, his overall IPL
stats reveal that, though his impact in an otherwise big-hitting team was
objectively lukewarm, he was almost impossibly and - notice the irony here - <i>against
</i>expectation, absurdly successful at it by traditional metrics. The Mumbai
Indians’ 2013 IPL winning run was just one more addition to everyone’s
abnormally large database of memories which name-checks Sachin.<br /> </span></span><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>XIV</b></span></div>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">So,
from its birth in the blast furnace of Pakistan 1989 (and, by association,
retconning a degree of historical importance entirely unjustified for a four-Test
series that finished 0-0), the Sachin story was almost immediately blazing a
trail in the early years with talent exceptional enough that it soon
merited recognition as world-class. This developed into an aura of consistent
brilliance during mid-Azhar, dragging performances out of a team in a manner
that was cruel in terms of how much hope it offered a nation. These hopes and
dreams were soon held exclusively in the palm of his hand in the midst of a
six-season streak so white hot that the gap between him and the other claimants
to the title of best in the world was so demonstrably great (and greater still
when compared with his own teammates) that you could, with no great effort,
fathom the near-identical thought processes that compelled the single track
idolatory that engulfed every wannabe cricketer of that generation. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Yet, from
late-Ganguly through pre-Dhoni, the time when Sachin seemed most primed to
render all individual batting records obsolete, there was an odd inversion
of the progress chart and Sachin, as a batsman, appeared to be swallowed whole
by the supernova his persona had become: a persona that created an
extraordinary expectation to be the fearless,
destructive and selfless batsman that he no longer had the capacity to
consistently be. Then came the defining white star of early-Dhoni, a time of
disconcerting largesse - best typified by the sudden glut of Test
hundreds at home - that supplied the fully-developed richness of success (and,
in the context of the tense individual battles with his closest contemporaries,
statistical volume) that provided the makeweight for fashioning Sachin’s
position as many fans’ ‘1B’ to Bradman. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Even so, this was largesse, complete
with undeserved Test No. 1 ranking, that India didn’t really know how to accept, and the karmic cycle duly forced the black, empty vacuum of the post-World Cup
0-8 in England and Australia. From these ashes came India’s first, once-inconceivable, entirely
Sachin-free recovery back to a stable, if worrying, position of
batting-fuelled optimism, simultaneously and hastily rendering ever-distant
the alarming and corrosive decline that so many fans already seem
eager to write out of Tendulkar’s freshly-minted history.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">For
those of you who haven’t managed to decipher the shallow, garbled metaphor that
I’ve been scratching at for the last four hundred words, Sachin was a star,
plain and simple. And while his longevity became an increasingly
heavy cross to bear rather than the hallmark it is celebrated as, perhaps the biggest reason he’ll forever remain irreplaceable is because, to those of
us who grew addicted to cricket during The Sachin Years, he spoiled us by
offering us the guiltiest pleasure of all: the thrill of winning matches
which - we can finally admit to each other - we didn’t deserve to win.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div>
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Eashan Ghoshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04515726258864143918noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6337518917395325444.post-68589783769487754182013-10-21T11:15:00.003+05:302013-10-21T11:15:48.671+05:30Anniversary<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
The IIT Delhi connection turns 28.<br />
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Happy anniversary, folks! Evidently, there's something about <i>ashtami </i>weddings. :-)</div>
Eashan Ghoshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04515726258864143918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6337518917395325444.post-61721504979111507092013-10-14T17:02:00.003+05:302013-10-14T17:02:57.973+05:30Dig Deeper<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I'm no less amazed today than I was a few years ago when I first started to appreciate the magnitude of our everyday outward abstraction of things which are so essentially and fundamentally human endeavours. On my office list, I have reduced into a few short words entire chains of command, processes, works-in-progress, physical activities, online activities and conversations, all of which easily have several dozen, if not hundreds, of people they impact directly. That these few words represent these microcosms is something I've always known, but now that I have the time to light a fire under one or more of these words by my simple action to do or not do something, I realise that what I'm contemplating is likely to have far-reaching and almost certainly unimaginable consequences. </div>
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Eashan Ghoshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04515726258864143918noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6337518917395325444.post-79948451881451922772013-07-18T10:24:00.000+05:302013-08-02T11:34:34.262+05:30Staring<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Observation: <em>If a man is staring at another man, the second man won't stare at a woman that he would've otherwise stared at if the first man hadn't been there</em>.</div>
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Objection 1: Because the second man would rather stare at the first man?</div>
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Answer: <em>No, because he's conscious that what he's doing is shady and doesn't want other men to know that because of some unwritten universal bro code </em>(not that the first man and second man in this - or any other such - scenario are 'bros' but please work with me here).</div>
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Objection 2: But if the assumption that all men are shady is right, then they could both go wink-wink and then stare at the woman together! </div>
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Answer: <em>That's right</em>. <em>But - and it's an important but - I'm talking about situations where the first man has chosen to stare at the second man and not at the woman and has thus already made his moral choice. The second man knows - as all men know - that staring is wrong. They do it anyway because they think they can get away with it</em>.</div>
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Objection 3: How do you know that the second man would've been staring at the woman anyway?</div>
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Answer: <em>Because that's what men do. </em>(Sad but true.)</div>
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Eashan Ghoshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04515726258864143918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6337518917395325444.post-81004643574752182932013-07-09T14:16:00.000+05:302013-07-09T14:16:28.185+05:30Victory<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I just had my 2013 version of the Austin 3:16 moment.<br />
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You sit there and you commit infringement and you evade service of documents and it didn't get you anywhere! Talk about your employer, talk about your settlement...Order 1 Rule 10(2) of the C.P.C. says I just impleaded your ass! </div>
Eashan Ghoshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04515726258864143918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6337518917395325444.post-82260641649648925992013-06-10T02:28:00.000+05:302013-06-10T02:28:08.972+05:30Prophecy<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
One for the money, two for the show, three to get ready...<br />
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Eashan Ghoshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04515726258864143918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6337518917395325444.post-8395550159774488002013-04-04T11:25:00.001+05:302013-04-04T11:25:51.643+05:30It's Almost Time<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EgRqQK1BxnM/UV0VvYPnXGI/AAAAAAAAAN0/ZQkUSD1bxbM/s1600/WM+29+set.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EgRqQK1BxnM/UV0VvYPnXGI/AAAAAAAAAN0/ZQkUSD1bxbM/s1600/WM+29+set.jpg" /></a></div>
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Eashan Ghoshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04515726258864143918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6337518917395325444.post-61517069676958916502013-04-03T11:46:00.002+05:302013-04-03T11:46:38.855+05:30Merry-Go-Round<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I've never liked Neil Warnock, I probably never will. My <a href="http://eashanghosh.blogspot.in/2012/11/leeds-united-1-6-watford.html">rant</a> last November about Warnock having "cut Leeds United adrift from footballing relevance" may have been an exaggeration, but not by much. In fact, I've had friends tell me that Leeds United has been irrelevant long enough for Warnock's thirteen months in charge - which came to an <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/teams/leeds-united/9965594/Leeds-United-line-up-Martin-ONeill-as-Neil-Warnock-falls-on-his-sword.html">end</a> Monday night after a loss by the odd goal in three at ER - were never going to have a significant impact on their relevance. That may well be true but my sense is that far more powerful changes are being felt - the continued, unsanctioned sale of a bunch of our best players, the GFH Capital flight ruse, the Thorp Arch drama and, ultimately - and perhaps most damagingly - a team ethic and a style of play that has been bent so far out of shape that the Grayson way seems like it was ages ago.</div>
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Yet, the gates are still strong, the fan base continues to be immense, the facilities are among the best in the north of England and it looks like financial stability, if not affluence, can be counted on in the medium-term. O'Neill or Coyle or Hughes or whoever else it is will have little to blame but themselves. The heart, however, pines for an identity, a character and a style to call our own. </div>
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So here's to knowing just a little bit better what does <i>not </i>work at this club, here's to the days of Dirty, Dirty Leeds, here's to the next manager and here's to being hopeful for all times to come. </div>
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Eashan Ghoshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04515726258864143918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6337518917395325444.post-73277900857445122132013-03-21T21:20:00.003+05:302013-03-21T21:20:35.611+05:30Choco Lava Crap<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
She dumped me, dude. It's over.</div>
Eashan Ghoshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04515726258864143918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6337518917395325444.post-59722913191762385592013-03-02T15:22:00.002+05:302013-03-02T15:24:55.421+05:30lolol<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;"><em style="font-style: normal;">The best of Benoît Assou</em>-<em style="font-style: normal;">Ekotto:</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13px;">@Hamz_K: </span><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13px;">@AssouEkotto</span><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13px;"> youre the shittest player I've seen. I don't think you'd even get anywhere near my club mate..and we needed a LB because gibbs got injured</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Benoit Assou Ekotto (@AssouEkotto): </span><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13px;">@Hamz_K is just bcs u support arsenal...that's all ...if I was in ur club u wouldn't need to buy a left bk around ten million! LOLLOLOLOLOL</span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13px;">@Kirby_Jx: @AssouEkotto</span><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13px;">I want to name my son Benoit after you. You're an inspiration!"</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Benoit Assou Ekotto (@AssouEkotto): </span><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13px;">@Kirby_Jx i'm so proud lolol</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13px;">@joannfairs: @AssouEkotto you're a true gent, now hurry up and get back on that pitch, we all miss you! ;-)</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Benoit Assou Ekotto (@AssouEkotto): @joannfairs lolol u miss me? Lol ;-) lol </span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;">Benoit Assou Ekotto (@AssouEkotto): Sunday morning! Lets go to church...i need to ask GOD some thing... 3 POINTS. For US TODAY COYS LOL</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;">Benoit Assou Ekotto (@AssouEkotto): Happy for the team today!!! Every one can sleep well tonight. Lol</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; font-size: 13px;">Hugo Lloris (@hugolloristhfc): @AssouEkotto Benny it's me, Hugo lool</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;">Benoit Assou Ekotto (@AssouEkotto): @hugolloristhfc yeah i no u next to me now and its strange he dont no this Twitter lololol so i dont no u lolol</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><br />
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Eashan Ghoshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04515726258864143918noreply@blogger.com0