a ball biting match

Team Pakistan had to go through two humiliating incidents. one was the loss of a match that was the last one in the 5-0 whitewash by the Australians. the other one was when Shahid Afridi was caught biting a ball, was called for ball tempering and was barred from participating in two twenty20 matches.

when two teams collide, one of them wins and the other loses. so whether the team won or lost did not matter much. that it showed a fighting spirit and took the match to the final over was something enjoyable. and even though the team lost, it should be given full points for it. and one rare thing happened with that. someone actually took the blame for it. the Chief Selector of the team resigned.

usually when a match gets interesting, it becomes nail biting. but Ball biting shows the kind of anxiety. it was against the spirit of the game. and banning Afridi for two twenty20 games was the right decision taken by the match referee.

Now this was cricket

Pakistan has finally won the second edition of the T20 international cricket tournament. Pakistan has won a major tournament after such along time. and the victory can not be any sweeter.

basically no one lost the game. both the sides played well but in the end the better one took the Cup home. and the better one just turned out to be Pakistan.

so Congrats to the Pakistani people and to the Pakistani team.

and as Borat would add at this moment : “GREAT SUCCESS”

oh and lets not forget the man who made it all possible: SHAHID AFRIDI

some economic sense at last

Pakistan has always experienced some very acute shortages of electricity. that has always been the case but in the recent one year or so it reached unprecedented levels. in fact it had made the people of pakistan to start using techniques of lighting that were part of the bygone era. Lanterns were supposed to have died with the advent of electricity. but as the power outages, euphemistically called loadsheddings, became severe, Lanterns made their way back into the lives of people.

thanks to the present interim government that it was finally able to see what the previous governments had not been able to see, or did not want to see. this government has decided that it would use the coal resources that are available in abundance in the Sind area. they are so vast that they could provide electricity for centuries.

one thing that must be looked at is why all the subsequent never tried those vast reserves. after all they are not a new discovery. they had been discovered 15 years ago. and why have they suddenly realised that we have something we can use.these are some questions that need be answered.

is winning that important?

fame has its own evils. we have seen more and more high achievers in sports being caught for taking steroids. the recent case was that of the Marion jones, who has returned the five medals that she won at the Sydney olympics. but she is not the only one. there are many still who have not revealed their reason of strength; some do not accept that they might be taking steroids. Jose Conseco was not the only one to have taken performance enhancing drugs. Barry Bonds, Jason Giambi, Rafael Palmeiro have all been the culprits. the recent suicide of a well known wrestler, Chris Benoit, was also related to it. what we have seen is the proliferation of the use of steroids in every kind of sport.

why is that? one possible reason is the kind of competitiveness that is seen at the top level. in order to stay ahead of their colleagues the sportsmen these days rely on drugs that would enhance their strength. another is the money factor; a better player gets a higher pay. then there is the fame that comes with being at the top of the game, not to mention the records that keep piling up in one’s name. so there is always an incentive to take drugs.

but is that good for the sports as a whole? the answer is “no”. it gives an unfair advantage to the player taking drugs. the other players not taking drugs have to compete with a person who is “super” human, sort of. so the players who have taken such drugs should be stripped of all their winnings. that will discourage unfair competition. while Marion jones has returned the medals, it remains to be seen what MLB will do in the case of numerous of its culprits, particularly Barry Bonds who has been breaking record after record.

The ICL is making a good stir

ever since the Inidan Cricket League(ICL) was launched and it started offering huge contracts to the players in the arena, the cricket boards of the world have been on back foot. they have been trying to stop their players to move it. they have threatened them with banning them from world cricket. the reason is clear. they dont want competition and they dont want their monopoly broken by the ICL.
but the players can not just say no to the lucrative contracts. consider this, for example.:

Media reports said some domestic cricketers, who earned a maximum of 500,000 rupees [$12,200] from the Indian cricket board (BCCI) during a season, were reportedly being given nine million rupees [$220,000] by the ICL for three years.

now that is some money. that is way over the paltry sums that the players have played for years. and also they will get to play against the top quality players.
we have seen that some, like BC Lara and Glenn McGrath and Shane Warne, have signed. others have followed suit. after getting a cold shoulder from the pakistan cricket board Inzamam, Yousaf and Razaq have finally signed with the ICL.

not only that, Razzaq has also retired from international cricket.

I am optimistic about the future of this league. many people have recalled the opposition to the Kerry Packer era and how it changed cricket. and they hope it will do something like that too.
I am optimistic for another reason: it is bringing competition into the game. now people will have quality cricket to watch.
plus the boards will also lose a lot of power concerning the future of the players. The Pakistan cricket board(PCB) wasted Waqar Younis, Aqib javaid, Rashid Latif and Basit Ali. they had the talent but they did not want to get involved in the dirty bookie business. and they were determined to not staying not quiet about it either. in Pakistan, people say that Wasim Akram sidelined Waqar because the latter was the better of the two. and Wasim Akram did not like the competition. Waqar was always going to overshadow him. his record speaks for itself. had he played as many matches as Wasim would eventually play, Waqar would have taken many more wickets than him. had there been an ICL, Waqar could simply have gone to it.

so I think it is a good development. whether it will fail or pass i am not sure. but i hope it would succeed. the betterment of cricket depends upon it.

yankees at the cellar

these days a yankees win has become as much of a news as a win used to be in the past. the yankees it seems have spent $200 million too many on their roster; they are last in their AL east.
I am not a yankees fan, never have been one. but there is one certain thing; people who have always accused them of buying championships would now be happy that atleast they are being beaten on a regular basis. and George streibrunner must be fuming in Florida.
I am suspecting heads are going to begin to roll. Cashman might go; Torre is another scapegoat candidate.
what are your speculations? do you think George will be hold his cool for long? what is the future of this team, for this season at least.

Yousaf piles on records.

Muhammad Yousaf is one of the few batsmen in the world who is technically almost perfect. he plays by the book, so to speak. but he probably did not know at the time he started this season that he would be able to shatter a record that had stood for 31 years.

he scored nine centuries in the year, itself a new record. and he missed so many good opportunities to get double tons. but a mammoth of a year for him. congratulations.

other than that, Pakistan team has become a one man show. I think the other guys have to stand up and take some burden of his shoulders.

and now some sports

the dallas mavericks have won ten straight after losing first four of the season. wow they are on a roll. do you think they will win it all this year. i hope so.

Indian team lost to the south africans……again. and I hope they continue losing. i dont like them..

oh by the way, someone mentioned to me earlier yesterday that i look like Hershelle Gibbs.

one more celeberity to my list. others include Zidane, and henrick larsson

why do they all look like me??