Despite having possibly the most balanced team in the Indian Premier League, Chennai SuperKings contrived to lose and that too in a pathetic fashion in the semi-finals.I am pretty sure every Chennai fan would have strangled M.S.Dhoni to death, if possible as soon as they saw the starting XI for the match. I cannot not rant and vent out my feelings of depression on seeing the same, please excuse me for this post.

1.There was no logical explanation for Jacob Oram being an "important player" . Despite never being used as a bowler in the league stages, the captain believed that when called to do a job Oram could deliver the goods.The reasoning would have been extremely sound if Oram had been used consistently throughout the tournament, been used to bowling such a thing called as "dibbly-dobbly"/millitary pace/ medium fast.It clearly showed when Oram could not even hit the deck and managed to save some trouble by using his expertise to concede 14 runs in 4 balls.

2. Mike Hussey. It is probably only in a country like Australia that a player of the calibre of Mike Hussey could be kept out of the national team till he was 28( 30 in case of tests ! ). Irrespective of however excellent Jacob Oram is , nothing should have kept Hussey out of the Chennai Super Kings team,especially after he made himself available despite the taxing international schedule for the knockout stages. Form or no form , any Chennai school kid knows who Mr.Cricket is , only the man in charge doesn't.

3. The love for small town boys has been carried a bit too far. Joginder Sharma and Manpreet Singh Gony do not win you matches. The captain seems to be in love with "rural development", but you are not being paid for that, you are being paid to win. M.S.Gony's 2 overs cost 23 runs, it always has. For no fault of his, Sudeep Tyagi was missing from the line-up, his 2 overs might have cost the same, but it probably would not have been the rank long-hops and full tosses that deserved to be smacked. Tyagi seemed to have mastered the art of bowling 2 overs in the start, taking a wicket and getting done with the job ( except for maybe McCullum). This was not right and might have lead to the team's victory, hence drop him !

4.Taking charge was the captains responsibility and man did he do it well.Throughout the 2 seasons of IPL, Subramaniam Badrinath was grossly under-utilised.A player of his mould is best coming in at no.3/4 in the first ten overs after the fall of wickets, not in the 18th over when you use your ingenious batting technique to swat balls down the track. But again this might have lead to better performance and hence forget that.The innings in the semi-final was excruciatingly painful to watch, the consolidation and building up was much better left in the hands of Badrinath, the "slam-bang-thank-you-ma'm" is something which players like Badri (I should add Dravid too here) cannot learn.

I do have my own theory which can back this up, the performance of Badri could have cost one very good friend of the captain a place in the test side. Badri is due a place in the national test team, the fact that he fails to suck up to Dhoni is the cause for him not being there is disheartening. Smacking Stuart Broad for 36 runs in a T20 match does not make you fit to become a test player.

The failure was in no part the fault of the players, the fault lies in all its entirety with the "Cool Dude" - "Win my Love Songs " - "I can field as badly as you guys too" Captain Fantastic Dhoni. Being Cool is over-rated *. It does not bode well if you stand around and smile while your team is dropping catches left, right and center . In the semi-final,where you have a small possibility of winning, this demands some intensity/display of emotion/inspiration from the captain, which was very clearly missing.In sharp contrast at the other end the captain was Anil Kumble and you could clearly see the difference in attitude.

I have always stood with the fact that Dhoni has been riding his luck. The current Indian team is probably the best ever to play in a long time, we have a good pack of pacers up front who can perform in any set of conditions, few decent spinners ( according to the cricinfo Page 2 resume one of them is the best spinner for India abroad after Irfan Pathan ) and a batting line-up which no longer revolves around one man.This team does not need an inspirational/special/magical/made in heavens captain, it will probably perform the same if the "match ke pehle first ball" captain continues to captain the team throughout the T20 World Cup.

At the end of the tournament, none of the teams looked like champion material.Though, I really feel for Anil Kumble, under him the Royal Challengers were a different team, he did his best and the others just could not deliver when it mattered. The IPL is yet to be won by an Indian captain - Sachin can never be a great captain, Dhoni's luck has run out, Kumble needs an ounce of luck and Yuvraj needs to do something other than take hat-tricks (Sehwag/Gambhir dont deserve a mention) .It is going to take sometime coming , but I hope it comes soon.

P.S:

1.The T-20 "Champions League" beckons and in all probability that will be a bigger farce (or in Lalit Modi's words "Marketing Success" ) than the IPL . Do the rules of the IPL stick there too ? - Not more than 4 overseas players ? Isn't that putting Deccan/RCB/Delhi to a disadvantage ? If you know the answer, please leave a comment.

2.*Thanks to Srikanth, my PS team-mate for this.

The last 12 months have easily been the most eventful period in my life so far . There have been some unforgettable experiences , over-the-moon periods , down in the dump despair times and of course just the fun of the exciting life in the city and not a village . But taking into account everything, it has been the most enjoyable spell irrespective of successes and failures.


The Good :

There is no guessing what occupies the top spot. The entire experience, preparing , trying to make sense of completely random terms in the Economic Times , making new friends , "selling myself",learning about Mr.TKGR (the above-God authority) - all this compromises what I call the B Experience .

But I should say something that I enjoyed more would be the summer of 2008 , which is more or less responsible for the above mentioned result.Working for 2 months with Arun and Kaushik , the benefits of learning while you work , the chance to visit the campus of IIM Ahmedabad ( which now unfortunately has become the taboo word ) and of course the chance to see a lot of surprised faces when being told that I was still a student who was trying his hand with work in the firm . It truly was something which changed me in all terms and will probably be a part of my introduction to anyone for a few more years to come.

Even though its significance has been lost in view of the present situation, getting the job at Morgan Stanley was another thing which gave me an "unrecoverable" high. I had people abusing me for the grin on my face while walking on the roads for even a week after the results.At that point of time, I was completely overwhelmed by the same.

The Bad :


Even though , it should not be counted as bad if you get paid for doing nothing except occasionally being asked to do something which even Zimbu, the monkey could probably do,PS 2 falls in this category for me. But fortunately, the people and the firm are really a great place to spend 6 months and it has been a mixed bag to say the least.

Despite spending 4 ( ok, not 4 , 3.5 ) years in Pilani , there was absolutely a lack of "emotion" if I can call it that when I left the campus. Most people have been taken aback by my obvious relief on leaving the place.Like many of my previous posts, it is always the people that made the place so enjoyable for me and I shall be ensuring that I get more of those moments with the people whom I spent those 3.5 years in that village in Rajasthan.
Unfortunately , the times have changed since the time we were on campus for our placements.

This semester has been particularly bad for many friends I know and I am sure everyone will find / make their own way out of this messy situation, if I might add , all that it takes might be some patience and compromise for better things to happen to you soon.

The Ugly:

Fortunately/Unfortunately this happens to do with only my sports affiliations .

Arsenal F.C has progressed from bad to worse in this period. The signing of the wizard Andrei Arshavin must have injected some sense into the all-knowing, kids-loving Professor we fans hope. Development or not, the club needs to progress and it is the time to make a few inspired signings rather than harp on the talent present in the academy. 16 year old Luke Freeman is not going to win us anything next season.


I shall still call him by the same name I always refer to him with : His Royal Highness Roger Federer is going through his worst slump of form and for the love of the game I hope he returns to his stylish and devastating best.

Formula 1 is being hijacked by teams who previously had nothing significant attached to them. Ross Brawn is a technical genius beyond doubt , but I do hope that things return to normal soon and more importantly Scuderia Ferrari getting things back in place.

That ends what is a brief description of how my last one year has been. Though , I am not celebrating my birthday or anything of that sort , I just realised that the technical 1 year - 365 day period for which I have mentioned the activities above will be coming to a close soon.

P.S:

1. Of Course something are just priceless , such as the 5 months in Hyderabad , where I have had the opportunity to meet so many people, weekends spent just watching football and playing UNO , learning a few nuances of poker - everything has made this a really enjoyable experience .

2. I co-hosted a quiz last week for the K Circle with Psyche(less popularly known as Vijay ), Hyderabad Chapter whose review can be found here, written by dear friend Praveen. Thanks to him for portraying the quiz as not the complete disaster it actually was.

The wait has ended and the title must have more or less given it away . I have made it into IIM Bangalore for the PGP Batch of 2009-2011. What I feel at this moment is relief, more than anything else .After all this, I wouldn't have really wanted to go through this entire process again, fortunately I don't have to . This post if any longer wont make much sense and I stop it here.


A special thanks to the Great Man Above .

P.S:

The madNavin most of you know is in some other dimension and cannot be reached at this moment due to the state of euphoria he is in. This post is by his alter ego : N Madhavan.