I’ll bet hockey’s really jealous
Posted in Uncategorized on March 18, 2008 | No Comments »
Rajiv Shukla: “Now-a-days, Shah Rukh is eating cricket, drinking cricket and sleeping with cricket.”
Archive for March, 2008
Guilt
Posted in Uncategorized on March 18, 2008 | No Comments »
I’ve been somewhat irregular here lately not because of the usual reason - I don’t have anything sensible or nonsensical to say - but because there’s really no decent internet connection except at the ground. I suppose one could blog from here, but it’s very hard to not feel guilty when you’re blogging from the [...]
Business plans
Posted in Uncategorized on March 17, 2008 | No Comments »
“The expenses involved are huge and I am not doing the figures. I will see what it is like at the end of the year and then, depending on the balance sheet, I will have to dance at a few more marriages.” - Shahrukh Khan.
Atmosphere
Posted in Uncategorized on March 15, 2008 | 2 Comments »
Players in orange wearing out practice pitches, the wicketkeeper wearing a baseball mitt, television producers on their walkie-talkies, helpers fixing the outfield. The DJ is a genius. He’s blasting blues music to an empty stadium. This is a morning to beat.
Questions
Posted in Uncategorized on March 12, 2008 | 5 Comments »
Where did the tradition of extras lifting up bollywood actresses and carrying them across the stage come from? And why is it so important? Why do so many dance sequences have a section where exactly that happens? All the while the actress is frozen, her face either cool or ecstatic. No inbetweens. Where did this [...]
This piece appeared in Rediff.
A strange thing happened yesterday. The stands were fuller than before. The crowd was noisier. Why, after two days of cricket bereft of any emotional attachment – or ‘emotional connect’, as the organizers would probably call it – was there life in the stands? It’s because the people behind it, having [...]
The schedule that aspired to be more
Posted in ICL, cricket on March 10, 2008 | No Comments »
Thirty seconds ago a schedule for the tournament was dropped on my desk. The fine print caught my eye because I’ve never seen fine print on a basic schedule: ‘This is not a ticket’.
Well, it’s not like the gates are under siege. I can see three hundred people in the stands. Maybe these things should [...]
Heh
Posted in cricket on March 10, 2008 | 1 Comment »
The death-defying league
Posted in Uncategorized on March 9, 2008 | 6 Comments »
There’s a certain homey feel to this ground, the one at Panchkula. It’s the openness of everything, the nakedness of everything. In two hours we’ll know how it looks on television, but right now the stands are being swept, Neha Dhupia’s dancers are practicing on a stage for this evening’s entertainment, the guards are meandering between seats. There’s [...]
The next month
Posted in Uncategorized on March 7, 2008 | 2 Comments »
I’ll be in Chandigarh from tomorrow until the middle of April, reporting on the ICL for Rediff. Blogging might be light until then. But here, I’ll leave you with my first piece for them. If the article is not of interest, I recommend the comments.
