Our Funarena!

It has turned out the way I’d analyzed in an earlier post that either RCB or DC is going to fill up the only vacant 4 th spot in the play-offs as MI defeats DC at the Wankhede tonight by 5 wickets. In fact, the five-time Champs Mumbai, coming to its true potential much too late with Ishan, Bumrah and to some extent Rohit firing with the batting mainstay of Tilak Varma and Suryakumar Yadav the latter being sorely missed in the last few matches due to injury, has become the virtual eliminator of the tournament: they first threw CSK out of contention; then they nearly did the same to SRH much earlier than yesterday when Hyderabad was finally ousted as RCB defeated GT by 8 wickets; and today they ousted a very deserving Delhi who needed only a win to secure a berth based on its much better net run-rate than Bangalore. Opting to field first Mumbai restricted Delhi to 159/7 in 20 overs thanks to superb bowling by Jasprit Bumrah who took 3 for just 25 in 4 overs. Delhi has been badly missing

Lord Shiva is believed to be the most powerful God in the Hindu Trinity with Brahma and Vishnu. Lord Shiva is described as a destroyer and also a recreator and transformer. He is also referred to as Mahadeva or Maheshwar—the Great God. In his benevolent form he lives like a simple householder with his family of other Hindu Gods and Goddesses and spends His time in Kailash with the simplicity of an ascetic. But when He is angry, he becomes the Destroyer in which form he can obliterate demons, impurities in human minds and even the whole world. He is everywhere like any other omnipotent and omnipresent God. You can find Him in your heart, in the environs of your home and do your prayers accordingly; and if you want to worship Him in the form of an idol you can install a Shivling or Shiva Linga, the mark or sign or symbol of Lord Shiva, in your home or visit a temple or a shrine or a place of worship even under a big tree that are found almost in every locality in India. There are even ar

Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) opener Quinton de Kock, the South African southpaw and keeper, created an incredible chapter of a superlative batting display in the Indian Premiere League history by scoring an unbeaten 140 off just 70 balls with 10 fours and 10 huge sixes. He has become the first cricketer with the highest individual score of IPL-2022 so far and the third highest in IPL history after Chris Gayle (175 not out in just 66 balls with 13 fours and17 sixes) in 2013 and Brendon McCullum (158 not out in 73 balls with 10 fours and 13 sixes) in 2008 editions. Quinton has also created the highest opening partnership of 210 runs with captain KL Rahul (68 not out in 51 balls) in IPL history, this being the first time ever when not a single wicket of a team fell in the full 20 overs. Both of the openers showcased a batting display that can give precious lessons in cricket to the budding cricketers, apart from entertaining cricket lovers to their heart’s content. This is indeed the triump

Against my wishes as a true lover of the game of cricket, I’ve still preferred to use the word ‘dubious’ in the title of this piece. This is essentially because what happened in the 18 th over in the match between Mumbai Indians (MI) and Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) belied all logic and tenets of professional cricket. Further, this basically business-driven tournament has had its long history of controversies and scandals over the decades. Even now, if you surf the internet over IPL matches, you’ll find a whole lot of sceptics who think most the matches are always stage-managed, primarily through the scourge of the game called spot fixing. Well, their views cannot be correct in general, because we’ve been witnessing fiercely competitive cricket in most of the IPL seasons, and on many occasions this writer has commented about the triumph of cricket over business. Okay, now to that moment that happened last evening at the Wankhede stadium in Mumbai.   Mumbai, opting to field first, eve

It was extremely hot and dry, in the peak of the pre-monsoon summer. Stay-home was mandatory as it was also the peak of the national lockdown. The ceiling fans didn’t do much help except for circulating the hot air more liberally. All those fortunate people who could afford the ACs made it more unbearable for the have-nots, as the relentlessly whirring machines outside their homes emitted still more hot airs. Going out for the essentials like fruits, vegetables and grocery was a must, and it was never a good idea to go marketing in the hot sun and carrying heavy loaded bags back. More importantly, we needed the dehydration-preventive fruits like the water melons very badly. But sadly, that fruit was scarce in our locality and it required quite a long walk which was further accentuated by the normally heavyweight fruit. Therefore, going for the watery fruit was not exactly a nice thirst-quenching idea. Not to speak of the accumulation of sweat inside doubly-secure masks in the process.

I did indeed have some regrets though as I couldn’t pay my homage to the legendary Santoor maestro Pandit Shiv Kumar Sharma on time, and as an aftereffect failed to write about the Australian cricketer Andrew Symonds. Pt. Shiv Kumar Sharma passed away in a Mumbai hospital on 10 th May 2022 after a prolonged period of kidney ailments and dialysis, at the age of 84. The glowing and flowing tributes paid to him from the music world, particularly the field of Indian Classical Music, and from all other fields which are still continuing show what a music stalwart he had been since the fifties. Panditji had introduced a folk string instrument called Santoor that used to be played in Kashmir and had Persian origins to Indian Classical Music and popularized it immensely with his learning, concerts and fusion all over the globe and through an invaluable collection of albums. At his very initiation to this instrument by his vocalist father Uma Dutt Sharma young Shiv Kumar observed the playing st

Rajasthan Royals thanks to an intensive bowling effort by all their pacers and spinners, Boult, Prasidh, Ashwin in particular, easily defended their score of 178/6 against the Lucknow Super Giants beating them by 24 runs at the Brabourne stadium on 15 th May 2022. By this super victory Rajasthan moves to the second spot in the points table with 16 points with a healthy net run-rate while the newbie Lucknow slides to the third position, remaining with 16 points. Bangalore in the fourth spot has to win their final match against Gujarat convincingly to move to 16 points and better their sluggish net run-rate. Once they achieve that it’ll be very difficult for the other 4 teams to have any chance of making it to the play-offs. Essentially, with three teams on 20 and16 points each, it means that only one spot is up for the grabs for four franchises with a possibly 14-point deadlock between them.   The real contest is now between Delhi and Punjab, both of them with 12 points and each ha

It had been one of their usual shifting of quarters as per the allotment rules or upgrades of the company where Udit was employed. It was the fourth shifting to have taken place in his ten years of married life with Rohini. This time, luckily, the new quarter was just in the next campus, and so they’d decided to engage one maintenance employee for the shifting work rather than going for the expensive movers and packers. The maintenance employee arranged a couple of hand-pulled carts along with three laborers. The work started in the morning and was going on smoothly, in batch by batch.   Rohini had been accustomed to this business of moving to new houses in every two or three years. She took pride in the fact that she kept every household matter in systemic and organized arrangement so that nothing untoward happened during the inevitable shifting seasons. Although she’d always been very fastidious about order and cleanliness the experience over the years had considerably and progre

Putting ‘goodbye’ in the headline could have more significance than perhaps you can possibly imagine; of course, the very few who ‘read’ these pages must have understood. Yes, we’re referring to the Goodbye post a few days back. However, that apparently painful post did not contain any kind of commitment or decisive action on the part of the writer which is significant in light of some famed international cricketers saying quits to the game through public announcements and then coming back again as if nothing was the matter. Therefore, that ‘goodbye’ meant nothing to the public, even if it could’ve hurt this writer a lot since he’s been rather harassed four times in the last four months for the purportedly suspicious visitors to the site who never read, but don’t care to go on a sabotaging rampage. Out of a morbid fear I've stopped posting my links on the social media too. What a pity! But still, why should I care who read and not read but try to damage! This site is very dear to m

  (Anonymous, collected from internet)