NFL

Have you ever felt bad that the team that you supported lost a match and then watched the replay of the match to accept that they deserved to lose? The replays atleast showed as though the Vikings were trying hard to lose the match. Five turnovers in a championship match is a bit too much to take. I was hoping that Bret Favre will have a fairy tale end to his career. But he has to end his career (again) without much funfare.

When I started watching the Colts Vs Jets match, the Jets were leading 14-3. A disappointing start as I was supporting the Colts. But Peter Manning and the team turned the heat on and won comfortably. I will be favoring the Colts to win the SuperBowl and I guess that will be the thought of most NFL fans.

Sports Center

Waking up at 3 in the morning was worth it. Tsonga played an awesome game to demolish Rafa in the semis of the Australian open. This is the first time I saw Tsonga and it seems he has a very physical game dependent on his powerful serves and good forehand. But whatever his normal game plan is, he better have a backup as he would face either Federer or Đoković in the final. Today’s match was against my expectations. I was expecting Rafa to thrash Tsonga, but it happened the other way around. I am expecting a closer match tomorrow between the in-form Đoković and the scratchy Federer. But the king is a big match player and I expect him to change gears in the semis. However…I’ll be supporting Đoković. Monopoly is bad in any form, and Fed’s monopoly on Tennis needs to end.

In cricket, some of the buyers of IPL teams have come as great surprises to me. I expected Mallya and Ambani to buy teams, but not corporates like GMR and India cements. SRK and Ness Wadiya were minor surprises, but nothing to throw me off. It is interesting to see so many people having faith in cricket reaping profits. May be we should list and trade these IPL teams to get BSE back on track!

With the possible delay in my return trip to India, I guess I might get to watch the Super Bowl. Go Pats!

Football - Not Soccer

You cannot work in India and not know cricket. Everyone talks about it and you would feel left out if you do not have any interest in the game. A similar scenario prevails in the US with respect to American football. For a starter it is only Football and not American football anymore. The Football that we used to know in India and the rest of the world is Soccer here. Since I came to the US with the decision of not staying here for more than a year and since I was too lazy to start following a new sport, I was oblivious to football, NBA and baseball. The other 2 are fine, but not knowing football seems to be considered equal to blasphemy here. Good mornings are followed by discussions on the game and team lunches are filled with football opinions. Forget the Americans, even desi lunch and dinner chats center around football. I was still stubborn not to follow the sport but then the local team here, The Minnesota Vikings, started performing well during early December and the discussions in office became even more frequent. So I started learning the basics of the game and watched few minutes of some games.

As fate had it, the Vikings crashed out of the tournament as soon as I built some interest around the sport. Not that I am big fan of the team, I hardly know any player. It is just that the talks in office have reduced and following a sport is always easy when you support and follow a team. But let us see. With this new found interest I might follow the play-offs and determine a favorite for next year’s season.

World Cup Fever

With the cricket world cup approaching I am beginning to miss all the brouhaha that used to surround cricket back home. Reading about the event over the internet is no substitute to hearing people discuss about it whichever way that you turn, and watching so many TV channels dedicating most of their time to some thing distantly related to cricket. The Indians in US seem to be more interested in football (please note: not soccer), basketball, and sometimes even ice hockey as compared to cricket. I wonder how few months in a new place can change the passions of people so much.

Since the world cup is going to happen in the West Indies, the problem of time zone arises. Yes, the problem is that I am more closer to the time zone of the Caribbean. Matches will happen during office hours, which would prevent me from having the vicarious pleasure of checking the live scores in the internet. One positive aspect though is that I don't need to think about trying to get the channel that telecasts the matches

Master of Masters

He was surely a class apart. It was a treat to watch Roger Federer outclass James Blake in the finals of the Masters cup. As Blake commented during the prize ceremony, it was a Tennis lesson given by the master. All said and done, Federer's demolition of Blake was expected. What I did not expect was the way Rafael Nadal was dismissed in the semis. Nadal has been the only person in recent times to have shown the talent to beat Federer. Yes, Federer has also lost to few others like David Nalbandian, but those defeats have been too few and far inbetween, and the kind that do not get repeated. Nadal is a player who has shown the grit, the tenacity and the talent to beat Federer. I love Federer's game, but am not quite satisfied watching a single person dominating a game. Hope Nadal would give Federer tougher times in the future, or, may be, a new talent surfaces soon. Till then I guess I would just sit back and enjoy the artistic exhibition of tennis displayed by the champion.

Football Mania

With most of my predictions going haywire in the quarterfinals, I have started appreciating the game more. I have always loved the unpredictability of sports, and football is showing me its own version of the phenomena.
Over the past few weeks the general discussion topic anywhere is football. It is quite interesting to note that a cricket crazy country has something that would eclipse the Indian team's victory in the Caribbean. Yes, not many are talking about the Indian cricket team's victory, and the event that they are discussing does not have India participating! Is football really that attracting that people are wooed towards it? Or does it have to do with mere exhibition of knowledge in different sports? I don't know about other places, but atleast in Chennai it could just be attributed to the lack of transmission of the cricket match. In effect, the set-top box issue is popularising football

Cricket Cribs

It's not too rare to hear the commentary, "One-day cricket is about what happens on the day. It is a funny game and everything is so unpredictable". If that is the case, why is it so predictable that Australia will win most of its matches, Bangladesh will lose most of its, and India will lose most of its finals?
I am not as disappointed watching India lose yet another final as I would have been few years back. But still there is this "So near yet so far" feeling watching them slip from the comfortable 186-2 position to 263-9 falling short of the target by 18 runs. Atleast it is better than matches like the world cup final where we got pounded miserably.
Not being an ardent follower of cricket anymore (ok, that's relative), I now get to hear the disappointment-soaked comments of others from a third party perspective. When I see people cursing Yuvraj on getting out, I get to see their frustration rather than making literal sense of their words.
I know that even after making resolutions not to watch cricket anymore, these people will get back to their seats once India plays its next match. They exhibit enormous excitement and enthusiasm while sitting glued to the match and keep postponing dinner, which my flat-mate did yesterday. But once again the question is, "Is it all worth it?" If you are thinking about leaving the match in joyous mode, then may be the answer is "no" with this Indian team. But if you are thinking of enjoying the match, then this team provides quite a good number of close matches to relish.

Excitement? Yes
Expectations? Yes
Disappointment? Yes
Withdrawal? No
phir bhi dil hai Hindustani