world cup woe #4 - aussie whining

The Aussies whined like bitches once again, this time because Sri Lanka refused to give them a look at their three strike bowlers in their redundant Super 8 match. Never mind that Australia frequently rest their key players when they have already won, or don't care about, a tournament (see here).

I do think it was a bit wussy of the Sri Lankans to rest the players, but tactics are tactics, and the Aussies should be the last people on earth whining about that. If Malinga had taken a hat trick in the final, we would all have been saying what a brilliant move it was.

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For more World Cup Woes, click here.

world cup woe #3 - administration

What I'm about to say here has been said to death. The tournament was too long, ticket prices too high, the last three overs of the final were a fiasco, and it was a bad format. Next time there should be quarter finals, fewer minnows, fewer officals muddling over the rules, and the locals should be able to bring trumpets to the stadiums.

i.e. this time it was not perfect, next time it should be.

I get it. You get it. Let's move on.

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world cup woe #2 - a hat trick for st patrick

April 17th, 2007: I am soaking up sun on Miami Beach when I hear that Pakistan is out of the World Cup after losing to Ireland. Shock, horror, self-pity, and much sulking ensue.

Ireland went on to beat Bangladesh, and had previously tied with Zimbabwe. That's three good results for them. Of course, questions abound. Did their presence in the Super 8s diminish the excitement of the tournament? Yes. Are they a shit team? Yes again. But did they deserve to be there? Most definitely.

There's little else to say about this, except that people should stop all the conspiracy theory bullshit about how "interesting" it is that a green pitch was prepared for this Pakistan match. If Pakistan wants to win the World Cup, they should be able to beat Ireland on a green pitch. They didn't. They were unprepared for the torunament, and they lost fair and square.

Besides, everything else was green that day, so why not the pitch. It was Ireland v Pakistan on St Patrick's Day, after all.

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For more World Cup Woes, click here.

world cup woe #1 - farewell, bob

One of the reasons I went on hiatus last March was that when Bob Woolmer passed away, I felt I needed to write something that both matched the solemnness of the situation and expressed my personal disgust at whoever was responsible. Since I am good at neither personal nor solemn writing, I found this particularly difficult. There were enough comments about how cricket is just a game, and a man's life should not be on the line for it. To me, this was too obvious to mention, and so, for want of anything original or appropriate to say, I refrained altogether. But it behooves me to say a few words before I write anything else on my blog, and so I will.

As much as I disagreed with some of his tactics as coach, I was a huge fan of Bob Woolmer the man. He took on a team that was as dysfunctional and confused as the country it represented. Yet, throughout his tenure, he saw their dysfunctionality as neither a weakness nor the product of an inferior society, but merely as a cultural difference. And he tried to deal with it by understanding it, rather than by attempting to change it. What's more, not once did he criticize or badmouth the team or the country. And for this, I admire and thank him. No man deserves to die like that, much less a good man like him.

We may never find out what happened in that hotel room. But one thing is certain - no foreigner will ever want to have anything to do with the Pakistan team again. Sigh...

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For more World Cup Woes, click here.

guess who's back...

Dear readers,

It's been a while. Much has changed since my last post, both for me personally and in all the spheres where I usually target my commentary. Often in this period, I've come across something and thought, "Ooh, I should blog about that," and then not had the time or the energy. But here I am again, at your service.

Let's get some of the backlog out of the way before I start writing in real time again, as it were. Pakistan is, for want of a better analogy, going through another serious contraction in its ongoing quest to birth a solid identity. A comment on my previous post wondered why I hadn't written about the law minister debacle. I get depressed when I read this stuff, and even more so when I talk about it, so I will let it be what it is, and stick to the lighter stuff from which I have carved my niche here on billu.net.

Which brings me to another dilemma. For lighter stuff, I often resort to writing about cricket, which, over the last two months, has produced a string of news that is anything but 'light'. My last post was on the first day of the World Cup. Now the tournament is over, and there are many things to be depressed about. But to shy away from even these would be akin to resorting to a blend of journalistic laziness and cowardice. So here comes a series, in chronological order, of my World Cup woes:

Bob Woolmer's Death
Pakistan's Exit
Administrative Mishaps
Aussies Whining About Lankans
Lankans Whining About Aussies
Cricket's Identity Crisis

Hopefully this will give me a nice segue into a regular routine.

the pakistan team is a choot

My last post about the Pakistan team was about how awesome they were. And here I am writing another incendiary choot post with them as the subject. I'm not schizophrenic, and it's not that my opinion has changed. It's just that the team navigates so effortlessly between being "the shit" and being "just shit" that you can't really blame a person who tries to evaluate their performance on a day by day basis.

So anyway. They sucked yesterday. They were so completely lackluster and undominating that it was depressing to watch. Pakistan is the most nondescript team in this tournament. Apart from a vague reference to Mohammad Yousuf, it'd be hard to identify any one particular strength of this team with any degree of certainty.

Everyone has their own view on what went wrong. They may all have different opinions, but they're all correct, because the fact of the matter is that everything went wrong. Rana continues to suck balls, Imran Nazir is a jackass, and the "senior" batsmen played like idiots. Omar has summed it all up pretty well, so no need for my redundant analysis. I will add only that Azhar Mahmood would be an infinitely better choice than Rana. In fact, I was going to write a "Rana is a choot" post, but that would be unfair. Everybody sucked.

Umar Gul was the only one who actually put in a solid performance. The next game should be called Umar Gul vs. Ireland. It's not like anybody else matters.

Of course there is a chance that they will now play brilliantly and make me eat my words. Let's just say I've never wanted so badly to be proved wrong...

a tale of two pities

As the World Cup draws near, we are being hit every day with news of another player that must miss out for such and such reason. Each of these incidents is a shame, because the whole point of the tournament is to bring together the best talent in the world. But few are as interesting as the two most recent tragedies.

First, it's official. Shoaib and Asif are out, due to "injury." I put the word in quotation marks because I, like many, don't believe they are really injured. The conspiracy theory, for anyone who hasn't heard it yet, basically says that they are waiting till the nandrolone is completely flushed out of their bodies before they test. That way they might miss the World Cup, but won't have to deal with the prospect of a life ban.

Meanwhile, around 8000 miles away, New Zealand's Jacob Oram is grappling with a personal dilemma of his own. Having fractured his ring finger, Oram has been told by doctors that he will have to sit out the World Cup. But with himself and the rest of his team in tremendous form, Oram is so desperate to play that he is considering amputating the finger in question.

So here's a pair of players that are feigning injury to avoid having to take a urine sample for the duration of the World Cup. And there's another who is willing to injure himself just for the chance to play.

Here's a couple of men who have tried to patch up numerous problems by piling complication upon complication. And there's a man who knows how to cut to the chase. Literally.

Surely there's some middle ground somewhere.

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cross-posted at cricket.bloggers.pk

oranges and lemons

A common motivational statement goes something like this: "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade." Turns out, you could also make the Taj Mahal. Or that big Jesus statue that sits on the cliff above Rio de Janeiro.

Here are some of my favorite pictures from the Fête du Citron, an annual festival on the French Riviera in which people get together and make gigantic sculptures out of oranges and lemons. It's all pretty fantastic.

It also gives me a chance to post about something that makes me happy, to silence all you "billu.net is too angry" folks. You know who you are.





It also makes me think of a recent post by 4e44. How the heck do you find out that you have the uncanny ability to make sculptures out of citrus fruit? Is it discovered by your parents when you're young? "That billu, he's good with his hands, he's going to grow up to be a famous orange sculptor."

I wish. All my poor parents could say was: "That billu, all he'll ever be good for is writing a blog detailing how everything in life pisses him off."

Well, billu.net may fall short of the proverbial lemonade, but it's the best I can do with my lemons.

a show by any other name

The L Word is a TV show on the Showtime network about a group of women, mostly lesbians, living in Los Angeles. It's something of a soap opera, with terrible dialogue. It does, however, contain some steamy scenes that make it mildly bearable. But before all you pervs who found this blog through weird searches get all excited, that's not what this post is about.

The show is typical of Showtime's repertoire, which often brings into the spotlight issues that many are not comfortable with. The issue in this case is: lesbians. The show has a number of items on its agenda: Making people talk about lesbians; Asking questions like 'What does it mean to be a lesbian in America in 2007?' And most importantly, pointing out that apart from the way they have sex (which is totally hot), lesbians are just like the rest of us.

All that is fair enough. But I have a problem with the name. I'll explain. The show is about a group of women. The bigger issues are dealt with through the women's stories, but for the most part it's a soap opera about these characters, who are individuals in their own right. Calling it "The L Word" implies that it is a show about lesbians that happen to be these characters, rather than one about these characters who happen to be lesbians. In other words, they are implying that this is a show that represents not these lesbians, but all lesbians. It's like doing a show about a group of black people and calling it "Black People." The "L Word" is, after all, just an 'edgy' way of saying "Lesbians."

I understand that this is the first big show about lesbians, and therefore groundbreaking. But what about the second show about lesbians in, say, 2012? Will it just be called "The L Word 2"? I also understand that many lesbians are proud of the show for bringing their lifestyles into the mainstream. And they should be. But part of bringing something that others consider alternative into the mainstream is to not put a label on it that says "ALTERNATIVE" in big block letters.

blood will have blood

Shoaib, Asif to Get Complete Transfusion from Razzaq's Blood

In order to remove all traces of Nandrolone from their urine in record time, the PCB has launched an incredible and impressive secret campaign. Adbul Razzaq, an important, yet replaceable, member of the squad, conveniently fractured his knee just minutes before leaving for the Caribbean. In an interview, he appeared completely befuddled as to how it happened. Chloroform, anyone?

Meanwhile, the rest of the squad, including the reserves, and even a few spectators, have already pissed in cups and been cleared by some drug testing authority in Malaysia. Wasn't the movie "Entrapment", starring Sean Connery, filmed in Malaysia? Didn't Connery play Bond for a while? Wasn't "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" the worst film ever made? Exactly. That's shady too.

Doctors in England will be performing the world's first (maybe 100th – who knows, first sounds better) complete blood transfusion and muscle sieving procedure to remove the controversial nandrolone from Asif and Shoaib's bodies. They will then use Abdul Razzaq's blood to fill them up again. It's dramatic, it's crazy, but it just might work. As long as they don't somehow infuse the two with Razzaq's somewhat insipid bowling ability, it sounds completely foolproof.

Of course, questions abound. Is the procedure safe? In particular, will Razzaq survive after donating every ounce of his blood? The answer is: who gives? We've got Azhar, haven't we? They're practically the same person.

If all goes well, Shoaib and Asif will be nandrolone-free and ready to roll when Pakistan take on the Windies in a couple of weeks. In fact, they might as well pop a few more doses while they're at it.

co-authored by Omar

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cross-posted at Omar Loves Cricket and cricket.bloggers.pk