Hockey, get off cricket’s back!!!

Like anybody who has at least a casual if not serious interest in Indian hockey’s fortunes, I was dismayed by our failure to qualify for the Beijing Olympics, though it was by no means a shock – I feared the worst when India lost to England in the league encounter.   It has been heartening to hear an outpouring of anguish over hockey’s  terrible and increasingly chronic slump and also a justified anger at IHF’s mismanagement. What irritates me though is the tendency to give a side-bashing to cricket – people think only of cricket, all the money is ‘diverted’ towards cricket and worst of all, those selfish cricketers make so much money!!!!!

And it has nothing to do with the fact that I follow and love cricket.  I just find the irrationality of these arguments off-putting.  First of all, no great deal of money is bestowed on cricket or cricketers by the Government from taxpayer’s earnings; yes, rich cash prizes are handed out occasionally, like after the T20 triumph and that is deserved – maybe other deserving sportsmen don’t get similar incentives, but you cannot argue that the cricketers didn’t deserve it in their own right.  All the big money is spent either by the BCCI from its massive TV rights collections or by corporates who think cricketers endorsing big brands is good business sense – rightly so when the game has a fanatical following in the populace.  Finally, the BCCI has offered financial assistance to various sports bodies, including hockey, from time to time.  In their infinite wisdom, these bodies did not even respond to the offer.  EGO PROBLEM??? You bet!!!!   A valid question: why is hockey in such a bad state, when it is supposed to be the national game??  Good question, and the answers follow.

Let’s do some history.  India quickly established itself as the hockey superpower with a stunning run of success at the Olympics.  By contrast, cricket was the suzerainty of England and, with grudging approval of England, Australia.  India was for a long time an also-ran. Yes, we were a Test Nation, we produced talented players and even won a few matches every now and then against tough opponents.  But hockey was the game of choice.  Cricketers were poorly paid and old-timers will recall that the famous first ever abroad Test series triumph against England in England was earned with the blood and sweat of the players  and the record chase in West Indies even literally so because the West Indies pacemen had no qualms of knocking the heads off hapless Indian batsmen.

There was always a difference between IHF and BCCI though.  There was always warring and bickering between the hockey association and the players and within the association itself; a split in the association once forced the FIH to shift a hockey world cup allotted to Mumbai (deja vu??).   By contrast, although corruption allegations have followed the BCCI through the years, by and large they have protected players’ interests and those of the nation.  Crucially, unlike IHF,  BCCI realized and tapped the commercial potential of cricket with appreciable business acumen.  Money talk is bad, you say??? Well, it is money that pays for cricket academies, stadia, coaches and talent scouts, the sum total of all of which produces world-adored – already – bowlers like Ishant Sharma.

Hold on, didn’t the IHF launch the PHL with much fanfare just a few years back? I know, tell me about it, what of it.  Big corporate sponsors deceived by the promise of the format are now pulling out, many already have in fact and ESPN wants to renege on the 10-year telecast and promotion contract.  After all, even that would be cheaper than running a no-show where events are cancelled with scarcely any notice and IHF insists on spoiling the broth by interfering in the marketing team’s job.   This is where BCCI, for all its failings, stole a march over IHF and as cricket began to produce the results even as hockey declined, the march of cricket was not to be stopped.

There was but a window of opportunity when the Asia Cup triumph closely trailed the ODI World Cup debacle last year.  That window was gone when India won the T20 World Cup against all odds and followed it up with increasingly improved results.  It culminated in the trouncing of World Champs Australia in their own backyard.  When was the last time our hockey team beat the Dutch in Amsterdam, now??

Ah, that brings me to a common hockey fan’s grouse.  Hockey has hundreds of nations from which India has to compete and emerge, in cricket there are only 10 nations, it’s easier to stand 4th out of 10 teams.   Except that there are more than 10 teams – the ICC has precisely 101 member countries.  It is just that outside of the original 8 Test nations, no other  nation can consistently produce a commendable performance at the World Cup level.  How is that so different from hockey??  Do you see Netherlands or Australia losing to Austria or Russia, against whom India scored copious goals in the fateful qualifying tournament??  Hardly if ever at all.  The fact is that consistently poor performances have relegated India to near-minnow status in hockey and that’s a national shame.   If we were among the top 5 ranked teams in the world, we wouldn’t have had to go through a  qualifying  tournament months before the Olympics – Australia completed their qualification last year, India blew their chance at Doha in 2006.

The shift to astroturf too is lamented to date as a devious move to neutralize India’s traditional strengths.  You know what, change happens and the sooner you adapt to it, the better for you and everybody else.  Cricket too moved from SG balls to Kookaburra balls ostensibly because the more prominent seam in the SG make suited India’s finger-spin prowess.  Harbhajan Singh once openly blamed a poor showing in Sri Lanka on Kookaburra balls.  Cut to 2008 and Kookaburra balls didn’t stop Harbhajan becoming giant-killer par excellence in the CB Series finals.   Poor performance abroad was attributed to fast pitches.  We now count among our most cherished Test series Jo’Burg 2006 and Perth 2008, both extremely bouncy decks.

The point is the hockey administration and the players had better get their heads down and excel in their chosen field rather than stare green-eyed at cricket’s riches.  Riches are after all temporary, roles may yet be reversed if only people of eminence in hockey show some vision and imagination, something the BCCI did at crucial junctures of the imaginary tussle.

In an aside, the Women’s Hockey Team have pointed out that they are yet to play the qualifiers and India’s showing at Olympic Hockey has been written off without a thought about them.  It is this spirit and spunk that is most heartening and I hope it translates into results.  Chak De real mein??? Who knows, at least they have given the message that they are important and will not take indifference and insults lying down.  Now to see if they walk the talk and I sincerely hope that they will.

The downfall of Ricky Ponting

One image of champion batsman Ricky Ponting I vividly remember is his acknowledgment of yet another century at Melbourne against India in 2003. He rushed forward on and on as he completed the single and waved his bat vigorously, delight etched all over his face. It was almost as if even he couldn’t believe what was happening.   Lara had always been the enigma, Sachin hadn’t been the same batsman ever since he was first haunted by the back injury, Ponting from almost nowhere was rising further and further and seemed unstoppable.  As Sachin Tendulkar turned in a dismal performance at the 2007 World Cup in the Caribbean Islands – a stage he had previously revelled in – we Indian fans took it for granted that the record of highest Test centuries Sachin had earned would not be his for long, in fact assumed that Ponting would snatch it right in the India-Australia Test series.  As a pointer to how much things have changed in a very short time, Tendulkar usurped the no.1 spot in the ODI batsmen rankings with a commanding performance in both finals of the CB series, more importantly sealing a shock victory of India over Australia. Ponting for the record couldn’t muster double-digit scores in either match.

Ricky Ponting had always been marked out as a special talent.  He got into the international team surprisingly early and the Australian cricket administration too acknowledged that they had made an exception because he was a potentially exceptional player.  And yet – world’s best batsman?? For quite a while, nobody quite thought of him in that light. There was Sachin Tendulkar, there was Brian Lara, there was Saeed Anwar, there was Mark Waugh in Ponting’s team, Ponting didn’t seem to quite belong in that league yet.  There were two reasons for this – he looked extremely susceptible against quality spin bowling.  And then, his elaborate forward and across stride made him vulnerable to penetrating swing and seam bowling early in his innings.

With the turn of the century, all this seemed to change.  Partly responsible for this was Mark Waugh’s fading into sad oblivion after match-fixing allegations and a concurrent slump in form and Steve Waugh’s ouster from ODI captaincy after failing to make the finals of the VB Series in 2002.  That the team had collectively failed around him was another matter, which I will come to later.  In the meantime, Ponting’s handling of spin bowling improved and the emergence of a formidable – formidable is not the word – opening pair in Matthew Hayden and Justin Langer routinely shielded him from the new ball. To his credit, he put the new ball to sword when called upon, but when a batsman is in the form of his life, the red carpet seems to roll out just like that, doesn’t it?  As of now, Ponting’s Test average is still almost 2 runs clear of Sachin Tendulkar, so he can be legitimately called the world’s current best Test batsman, though for how much longer remains to be seen.  Another hallmark of Ponting vis-a-vis Lara and Tendulkar was that he seemed to be unfailingly there for the team on the big occasion – the fearful pounding he meted out to India in the 2003 World Cup final comes to mind.    That Tendulkar and Lara were overburdened in weaker teams didn’t seem to matter  – at that time.

The turning point perhaps was the post-match conference after the Sydney Test early this year.  On being asked about a catch he claimed off Dhoni which the camera replays showed to have been grounded, Ponting flared up unreasonably and thundered that if the journalist in question was questioning his integrity, he shouldn’t be standing there.  It was ugly and distasteful and though Ponting has steadfastly insisted that given the same circumstances, his actions would have been no different, it is quite possible the events of Sydney haunted him for a while. Anyway, Australia coasted to Perth, expecting to romp over an already battered Indian team. But nothing went according to the chosen script.  After India had put the runs on the board, Chris Rogers and Phil Jacques departed in quick succession, leaving Ponting to face the seam bowlers when they were still hungry and lethal. He failed, and Clarke and Hussey departed on either side.  By stumps on the third day, Australia were staring down the barrel – 400-odd to chase with both openers already back in the pavilion.

This  should have been the ideal situation for Ponting to stamp his authority over the game in his usual style. He – he survived, he struggled and nearly made it to lunch before a rookie seamer snapped him up.  More importantly, at no point in his uncomfortable stay did he look close to the dominant batsman he was supposed to be. He was playing and missing, he was pulling when the shot was not on, inswingers jabbed back into his pads or ribs.  With his failure, the morale of the team seemed to collapse and Australia lost at a venue which most visiting teams dreaded.

The story continued in the CB series – and now the other Indian seamers and even the Lankan bowlers got into the act.  To use a harsh adage, Ponting simply couldn’t get the ball off the square.  His century at Sydney looked like a catharsis, but by his own oblique admission, it seems to have been made possible partly by a designer batting strip.  When the first final was played at the same venue, he couldn’t repeat his feat, far from it, his contribution with the bat was nothing to speak of. Meanwhile, an old rival had achieved something rarely, if ever, seen in cricket – re-invention. Sachin smashed two big centuries in the Test series and then in the last three games played by India, all three being crunch games, he hit an unbeaten hundred and two big half-centuries.  Tendulkar was the first to admit that he wasn’t the same batsman of 17 years ago, but he used his experience and acquired craft to work around his strengths and weaknesses and score vital runs without resorting to diffident plodding.  In the final analysis, that may well have been the difference between the two teams – the champion batsman of one team was earning his worth in gold and the other was unable to pull his weight time and again.

The question now is: will Cricket Australia do unto Ponting what they did unto Steve Waugh?  There are many differences between the two set of circumstances.  Steve Waugh hadn’t failed as a batsman when he was dumped, but he seemed to have failed as a leader and Australia doesn’t believe in saddling former leaders in the team.   By contrast, Ponting’s teammates have done well in patches but are missing the spurt of inspiration they need from their leader because he himself seems riddled in self-doubt.  On the other hand, when Waugh was dumped, Australia felt a team without Waugh both as captain and batsman was doable.  They are probably not so sure they don’t need Ponting the batsman if not the captain.

Since being caught running astray by an Australian newspaper almost a decade ago, Ponting turned a new leaf and curbed his alcohol binges and got hold of himself. Today, having been in contention for the best batsman spot and leading the team to more victories than one can count on both hands, life seems to have come full circle for Ponting.  He has failed to pull up and discipline teammates who seemed to liken cricket to Rugby or WWF, in turn he backed them steadfastly to the point of raising an incriminating finger on the opponents much to their consternation, but above all he couldn’t get his bat to wield over all his troubles as would have been his wont in the past.    Today, one has to ask: is Ponting still in the race at all? Perhaps, a stint for the IPL on designer featherbeds will help tide over his poor form temporarily.  After that……

Melbourne, the new Perth

The title might suggest a cliched celebration of a landmark ODI victory for a young, brave Indian cricket team….after all, Perth was just a month ago, right?? However, my proposition in this piece is quite the opposite. The ghost of Perth, the unconquerable Aussie hell-on-earth for visitors, has been exorcised in as dramatic a fashion as cricket could have conceived. The truth is out: notwithstanding their defeat to India yesterday, Melbourne is indeed the one ground where it is hardest to beat the Aussies.

Traditionally, visitors have run for cover at the thought of battling it out at Perth. It has a monstrous reputation as a bowlers’ paradise, generating pace and bounce not seen anywhere else in the world, with only Durban and Australia’s own Brisbane – though friendlier in comparison – coming close. In that lies the closely guarded secret of Perth: it also plays true all five days and therefore presents no demons to the set batsman. Besides, the sheer bounce generated on this pitch makes the short pitched delivery a liability and forces bowlers to bowl length or pitched up to make a contest. Ergo, Perth definitely assists the bowlers, but only if they bowl accurately and incisively. And a bowler of that calibre would probably do well on any pitch that ain’t dead as a Canberra dodo, oops, sorry!!!

Even if one takes India’s victory out of the equation, there are other pointers to the real Perth: South Africa and New Zealand both drew their last-played match at this ground…both teams comfortable with pace, seam and bounce. So too, a positive approach by India from the outset undid the Aussies and their failure, except Brett Lee, to penetrate the corridor of uncertainty on the first day cost them dearly. By contrast, the extra bounce made the Indian seamers – who tend to pitch it up as they don’t hit the deck as hard as the Aussies – lethal and unplayable. This could be the analysis of a match played at windy Wellington or Edgbaston …so that is what Perth is indeed, a harder, zippier and hotter version of those venues, with the sea breeze, more than anything else, aiding the seamers.

Sections of Australian followers have said Perth simply wasn’t what it used to be this match. That is not really true if you listen to Chris Rogers’s pre-match statements. He said his highest score for Western Australia at Perth in the season of 06-07 was 60, despite having played there all his life. He did indicate it would be a brute of a pitch and hoped to roll over India in 3 days. Going by that, the pitch seems to have been true to type; the Australian approach was what was wrong.

Right, over to Melbourne. The reason it is tough to beat Australia in Melbourne is that the ground is just very difficult to play in. It is the largest cricket ground in the world, has a lush outfield and in recent history has a slow pitch with occasionally uneven bounce. A ground of comparable dimensions would be India’s Eden Gardens; however, it is significantly smaller, has a quick outfield and shorter boundaries and generally plays true though that ground too has produced its share of quagmires, notably the 96 World Cup semifinal. Ergo, at the G, the ball doesn’t quite rush onto the bat, the boundary is a distant object in the horizon and even after a good strike, the thick grass stops the ball in its tracks. Hello, this also makes life tough for the bowlers; they have to maintain a tight line and length relentlessly and neither half volleys nor long hops will do. And the fielders have to run long miles all day long. The sheer Herculean labours of performing on this ground daunt most opposition players…except, for a strange reason, they never seem to expect it. The ground’s deceptively benign reputation and the apparent absence of demons in the pitch lulls opposition into near-complacency and by the time a long, hard day of chasing leather has undeceived them, the initiative is lost. And you know what they say: give Australia an inch, they will take a mile.

On the other hand, Australia know MCG for exactly what it is and always approach it cautiously and watchfully, quite unlike their normal tendency to dominate the opposition from the start. Matthew Hayden said a zillion times during the Melbourne Test of last year against India that it was the toughest Melbourne pitch he had batted on; India came to realize this…with a huge deficit staring them in the face at the start of Day 3. This is why, on precisely the ground the opposition give themselves a good chance, Australia have a formidable record. Sure, Australia being who they are have done well in all their grounds, but make no mistake, Melbourne has played host to some ‘benign’ innings or two hundred run/ten wicket defeats over the years. TV Channel Star Cricket even has a series ‘Boxing Day Knock Outs’ to satiate the appetites of hungry Aussie fans!!!

So how did Australia come to lose an admittedly tight-fought contest to India yesterday in their grand fortress?? Well, they did what you can call an Adelaide 2003….the pitch was tough but not tough enough to support a defence of a sub-200 total and even Ponting admitted this. A flurry of early wickets did not instill the instinctive caution that it should have in the Australian batsmen. They lost only two of their specialist batsmen – Michael Clarke and Brad Haddin – to pure indiscretion; the rest, barring the unlucky Gilchrist, fell to good bowling efforts. But that was enough to nip in the bud a famous Australian recovery; they could only manage phlegmatic resistance with the tail, or to be precise one of the tailenders Brett Lee. Australia fought lion-heartedly with the ball, but 160 was never going to be enough, especially after a quick start that whittled down half of the target with barely 2/3 of the overs completed.

The Twenty-20 match played at the same ground was a characteristic display of the Melbourne nemesis; the boundaries were farther and harder to scale than Durban or Wanderers, but by the time the Indian batsmen realized this, they had lost more than half their side and were in no position to recover. Perhaps this early nightmare made the Indian batsmen more circumspect in their approach, simultaneously inducing rare complacency in their Australian counterparts.

Finally, I had planned this piece even prior to the ODI fixture of yesterday…..I had a feeling deep down though that against the run of play, India would clinch this one. I waited to know the result, but my opinion is only reinforced, not changed by it. Kudos to India and God bless Ishant Sharma, the first real Indian tearaway!!!

What price patriotism??

Well, well, she may not possess the most lethal serve on the circuit (huge euphemism)..but Sania Mirza has really served an ace on the media, the religious zealots and the fervent pseudo-patriots. She has indefinitely quit participating in any tennis event held in India. That’s right, she’s gonna play tennis, she will play FOR India, but not IN India. There are a lot of questions now about her spirit, her character and lot of strident exhortations to take all in her stride and participate. I….I give her a whole-hearted thumbs-up on this one, she has once again shown that her verbal volleys seem to have more sting than the ones played by her on the tennis court!

Cut to 2005. Sania Mirza, fresh from a decent and encouraging showing at the Australian Open, wins the Hyderabad Open, a Tier-IV event (read: easy opponents). An eager, and lamentably uninformed, Headlines Today correspondent announces that she, unlike the Indian cricket team, showed real fighting spirit. Remember our team was in the throes of the “To sack or not to sack Dada” crisis at that time and the amazing victories against the world’s best team in Kolkata (2001), Adelaide (2003) and Mumbai (2004) were already well and truly forgotten. Ironically, today there are calls for Sania to draw from Sachin or Dravid’s example and accept controversy as part and parcel of fame.

To digress, much water has since flown under the bridge. Sania Mirza’s doubles performances have been steadily improving but in the singles, she is unable to go beyond the last 16 of a Grand Slam simply because she neither has the firepower nor the consistency to break into that league. Form is fickle, but class is permanent and the Indian cricket team meanwhile have gone where no subcontinental team, not even Pakistan of the 80s , have ever gone – beating Australia at Perth. India also won the Twenty-20 World Cup in the meantime, putting cricket firmly back in the throne as far as Indian sports is concerned.

Perhaps the effect of that was to somewhat negate the wave of sympathy towards other sports that was gathering strength in the wake of the ODI World Cup debacle. Maybe or maybe not. But the first thing I said when the controversy of Mirza resting her feet “near” the Indian flag arose was “Chak De!!!”. If you have seen Chak De India the film, in the opening scenes, Kabir Khan misses a penalty shot that would have equalised the score in an India-Pakistan hockey match. As he goes down on his knees dejected, a sympathetic Pakistan player commends him for his efforts and offers him a handshake. An opportunistic journalist immediately photographs this gesture and cooks up a match-fixing slur on Kabir Khan. Doesn’t the Sania Mirza incident strike you as uncannily similar (maybe the photographer was – in the great tradition of Bollywood – inspired by Chak De??) ?? Henceforth all photos must come with the warning, “Objects in a photograph may be farther than they appear.” Rohan Bopanna has said that the flag was nowhere near as close to Mirza’s feet as it appears to be in the photo. He may only be expressing his solidarity for her, but there is a lot of truth in that statement. It also appears from the photo that there clearly was no intention to offend the tricolour in anyway by Mirza; for God’s sake, she was just watching the match!!!! It is easy for me to see that the insidiousness of the whole thing must have deeply shaken and hurt her. It is as if a billion pairs of eyes are watching her actions – Truman Show, you bet!!! – to spot anything ‘condemnable’ in them. If indeed it is so important that her conduct must be worthy of a Goddess, surely she might as well not risk playing in our beloved country, right??…it solves the problem for everyone – everyone, except the media. Now there’s one less story to crow about, to sensationalize, to ignite fires with….it also offers a certain tennis player the chance to fire a volley at his one-time doubles partner.

It is ironic that she used to sport a shirt with the caption, “Well-behaved women don’t make history”. Sadly, it seems that’s what the zealots and the swadesis are affirming unwittingly. It is also ironic that I should write a piece in defence of Sania Mirza….I have always been critical of her performance on the tennis court and scoffed at those who said she will get there with time – on the evidence of her records, she hasn’t. On her day, she can topple the top seeds – not necessarily by playing superlative tennis for there are too many weaknesses in her game for that to be a possibility!!! But even the top seeds aren’t always at their best and especially in the early rounds, they take time to get into their rhythm. If Sania plays close to her best tennis on such an occasion, she can and has beaten top seeds. What is required is for something that is merely an aberration at present to become habit. She has to capitalise on opportunities to advance and needs to be a little more disappointed about losing to Venus Williams after serving for the first set, not satisfied that she NEARLY got a set, the nearlys of the world are never even nearly recorded in history. I have been afraid that she’s just a little too satisfied with what she’s got – much like Harbhajan Singh – and doesn’t quite seem to realise that she needs to work harder to get to the next level.

However, all that cannot excuse such rampant, self-righteous scrutiny of what she does off-court and she has driven exactly that home in her original Sania isstyle. Way to go, Sania!!!!

Just not crickee

What a difference time makes!!! The last time India toured Australia, it was Steve Waugh’s last outing and therefore, the series was hard-fought but with an off-field warmth that might have misled you into thinking India were playing England sometime back in the 60s. ..not Australia in 03-04.  The only discordant note at all came in fact from an Indian – Parthiv Patel – who taunted Steven for shelving his slog-sweep in the 2nd innings at Sydney.  Steve Waugh finally succumbed and went for it only to hole out at the deep and miss out on a fitting century.

Right from the time this series started however, a palpable over-zealousness was all too evident in the demeanour of the Australian team. They were – in one word – DESPO, as they say in Bombay.  Desperate to beat their own record of sixteen consecutive wins, desperate to retain the trophy and clean-sweep the Indian team, desperate to prove they didn’t need Martyn, Langer, McGrath, Warne…and so on.

Commentators have observed that the Melbourne Test was played in the right spirit.  This was because the Indian team was underprepared and – barring the spiriting counter-attack by the bowlers on the first day – couldn’t muster a semblance of a fight.  Au contraire, at Sydney, they had Australia on the mat and then seemed to overcome all obstacles on the way to a slender first innings lead. Not only were they not succumbing easily, they looked dangerously close to beating Australia.  And it was here that the desperation revealed itself in its fully ugly splendour.  Set up the hot-headed, brash, arrogant Harbhajan Singh for the racism-trap.  Not a soul barring Symonds heard what Harbhajan really said and yet, Bhajji was immediately circled by ‘angry’ Australian players saying  “you’ve crossed the line” or whatever.  Fit for a Broadway production, I say. You deserve an Oscar for this, Ponting!!!!

But, obviously, the hearing would be after the Test. In the meantime, work the umpires furiously, abuse the catching agreement to claim grounded catches, don’t walk even when the ball has travelled to first slip…it didn’t help that unlike previous Indian teams, this one refused to wilt easily..although succumb they did, with a little over 2 overs left in the match.

Ponting & Co could have easily salvaged the aftermath if they had not committed the cardinal sin most champions do at one or other stage – underestimate the opponent.  Chris Rogers and Shaun Tait were supremely confident they could knock the Indians over in Perth – that’s right, knock Tendulkar, Ganguly, Dravid and Laxman just like that.  They lost the toss but at that time, Ponting was probably pleased as punch that Kumble elected to bat.  2 days on, they had allowed India to reach a respectable 330 and furthermore collapsed for 212. Their bowlers had failed to read the conditions in all their infinite experience of playing in Australia. When the bowlers couldn’t ‘knock’ the Indian batting for below 200, which was the least they needed to do, the match was over, though Australia resisted bravely and gave a scare to the inexperienced Indian pacers.

One would have expected Australia to bounce back with a vengeance at Adelaide. Far from it…the bowlers once again allowed India to build a few big and many useful partnerships. After that, the Australian batsmen gave a fine demonstration of a virtue that might have helped them avoid defeat at Perth – grafting.  Crawling along at sub-continental run-rates, they took  two full days to get merely a flimsy lead over India, which was not enough to force victory on the final day.

After all that, the self-righteous cursing and finger-pointing at BCCI’s muscle-flexing….hmm, perhaps, it was the only thing left for Australia to do. Their collective ego had been dealt a huge blow….the visitors had refused to submit to their dirty games, they had been conquered in their hitherto impregnable fortress and the world now knew that even Australia preferred to save a match rather than win it.

All this is not to justify holding the threat of a walkout even when matters are in independent hands.  Indeed, the moral high ground the Indian captain claimed triumphantly after Sydney stands well and truly squandered.  Problem is, it is hard to convince sub-continental teams that independent hands are necessarily unbiased as the ICC hasn’t exactly supported India or Pakistan or Sri Lanka on numerous occasions when we stood upright for what is right. Hansen on his part gave one and all a scare by talking of new evidence, of re-hearing the case.  The mistrust, however, is not directed at Hansen, but at ICC. Remember Mike Deness?? Remember how ICC superiorly refused to change the match referee ..even when the South African Cricket Board backed us???

Again, all this hardly absolves Harbhajan of blame.  The adage “barking dogs don’t bite” never rung truer.  Australians may not play spin quite as fluently as Indians, but they are no push-overs. You won’t give it air, you won’t get your loop right, you insist on pushing it through, how do you hope to get wickets?? By saying “Teri maa ki” to Australian players and getting into a soup??? It’s time to  -perhaps late in the day – give Murali Kartik and Ramesh Powar their due.

Kumble, after the Sydney Test, said only one team played in the spirit of the game.  Well, one Indian player certainly played the game in its finest tradition – Ishant Sharma.  He got Ponting in a soup, got some deliveries to snort viciously at right-handers, hit 140-plus consistently and resisted Brett Lee & Co – all without uttering a word.  Sreesanth, watch out, your place in the team is in danger.

This piece will not be complete without a word about Sachin Tendulkar.  I supported the idea of dropping him  after his dismal performance in the ODI World Cup.  Not anymore, he can play as long as he wishes to…and I am sure he will choose the right moment to quit.  It appears now that his shelving the pull shot, the cover drive on the up, the paddle sweep, the dance down the pitch and loft over long-off, had less to do with his “new role” in the team and more to do with creeping self-doubt. He charged Saqlain twice in the ‘99 Chennai Test and miscued on both occasions. Out goes the lofted drive. He pulled McGrath to his end in the World Cup final. Out goes the pull shot. He was trapped plumb to Monty Panesar manufacturing a paddle sweep. Out goes the paddle sweep. He was getting out driving at away-swinging deliveries early in the innings. Out goes the expansive cover drive. Boss, how do you score if you cut out all your strokes even if you are Tendulkar the great??

A good performance in back-to-back ODI series against Australia and Pakistan seems to have given him the confidence he needs to attack.  The cover drives are back, the disdainful loft off Brad Hoggg is back, the paddle sweep too. The pull shot hopefully will, too.  Notice one little detail – in all his big half-centuries and centuries in this series, he was poking tentatively at Brett Lee’s deliveries early in the innings but didn’t nick it. He won’t – because he will be too far away from the ball and it will be travelling too fast for him to reach it. This, more than anything else, is proof that the Sachin of old is back. Remember how in his peak, the late 90s, we all used to watch with bated breath whether he would survive the early nerves and go on to make a big innings?? We are doing that again – because he has to poke, explore and attack to get his eye in and get the measure of the conditions.  Everybody plays and misses at the start of the innings, you can’t make your luck unless you make an attempt to ride it. Purists can go to hell!!!

Random scribblings…

First, a few words of comfort for ’stunned’ and ’shocked’ Team India fans….first of all, don’t be…it’s fucking Australia, they haven’t lost a home rubber since roughly 1992 or so which was to Richie Richardson’s mighty Windies. Secondly, you would do well to recall that in the 2001 rubber, it was the bowlers who resisted the Aussie charge in the opener in Mumbai and the batsmen who capitulated twice. We won later in Chennai and Kolkata because both bat and ball fired in unison. Even the test match win in Adelaide depended as much on Kumble and Agarkar’s performances as Dravid’s and VVS’s. Thirdly, just check out their domestic circuit matches and then our Ranji matches to get a reality check. For us, playing wonderfully is a celebratory event, for them, it’s business. When we do overcome them, it’s a miracle, mate and miracles don’t happen all the time.

Hmm…. there’s not much to say about Madame Bhutto’s assassination, except that by and large, the coverage of her whole campaign to return to power and then the ultimate untimely death by our English TV media, particularly NDTV, has been rather disappointing. She may have been chanting the Indi-Paki bhai-hai mantra in interviews this year, but back in the 90s, when she was in power, I distinctly remember she was looked upon as the enemy, the hardliner, the threat. More measures to break the ice have been undertaken in the General’s regime (though he has arguably done much more to fight proxy ‘jehadi’ war in Kashmir…in fact India??) than in her time. Don’t people get it, she was just playing to the gallery, as any consummate politician would….much like Metallica want to go back to their roots. Why??? Not because they finally heard their fans, but because United Abominations, A Matter of Life And Death, Enter the Grave all these albums have sold well, it’s cool to be heavy metal again..and St Anger isn’t exactly what gives Korn sleepless nights anyway!!! Has our media become so base, so opportunistic, so vulture-like that anybody in power who is assassinated automatically becomes a martyr – the Kurt Cobain syndrome, eh?? A word for Dr.Roy, as Prannoy Roy sometimes calls himself: your channel, right or wrong, is perceived as pro-Pak in a country of Indians….and now, you are seemingly proving all those believed so to be right. Of course, good ol’ journalism comes first, but um…do take care of the TRPs…we can’t afford the risk of “Sansani” sweeping the English TV media in NDTV’s hypothetical absence.

The other day, I read an ad in the newspaper for a grand do at Sahara Star, Vile Parle. Apparently, Mika Singh, Tanushree Dutta (or is it Datta) and Shakeel are coming over. One look at the price of the passes made my mouth open wider than I would have laughing over Shakeel’s jokes. Fucking 11500?? And I thought the threat of 7500 passes for Scorpions was insane??? Seriously, how much more overpriced can you get, guys?? And then I read between the lines: it is possible that all the ads for international rock gigs and their subsequent coverage in newspapers didn’t escape the attention of those outside the rock circuit. And possibly, looking at the thrilled faces of satisfied rock fans after a gig, they feel left out, envious even??? So here it is…event organisers, sensing the existence of such a market for so-called ‘rock shows’ organise a New Year’s Eve ‘rawk show’ for this market, except of course, Shakeel has to play Ozzy, Mika has to play umm…Hetfield, perhaps?? and Tanushree is going to be Shakira or Beyonce…because this new “I wanna rawk” crowd will find the real deal “too hot to handle” to quote UFO. To compensate for this slight problem is the price…they are paying much more, much much more than the average rock fan can afford for an evening’s noise…if it’s costlier, it got to be better right?? What of course is lost on them is that we get a kick out of the music, the sheer spectacle and not the money..if anything, a high ticket price is a deterrent!!

Stung by the Scorpions and loving it!!!!

In yet another of life’s ironies, one of my all-time favourite bands were coming over to Bombay and here I was, planning to give it a miss. Why?? It was a weekday firstly, secondly the queer ticket pricing of 7500-1500-1000 put me off. I was almost certain that the 7500 class would be for our Bollywood buggers to come up, close and cozy with the band and the commoners would be condemned to watch our band from a safe and sorry distance. As luck would have it, my best friend happens to get free passes for the two of us and lo and behold, on Friday the 14th (why couldn’t it be 13th though?? ), we arrived at the venue, staring at a wide empty arena!!

I must say it was very disappointing to see such a poor response for the one-time heavy metal pioneers. We in Bombay have always complained that high taxes keep the big gigs away from our city and then when the prices were actually within reach, we kept away..oh well, guess it was the VIP factor for them too. Seriously, what happened to the 7500 stand, because I didn’t see one!! In fact the few people in the 1000 stand (including yours truly) were emptied into the 1500 stand to create an illusion of a packed arena. Whatever, it gave me the chance to get real close to ze Scorps.

So, first a doomed duo covered some country/folk rock classics on acoustic guitar and vocals. They were decent but not spectacular and soon the crowd lost patience…better luck next time boys!!!! Then, after a seemingly endless wait, came ze Scorpions. The first thing everybody would have noticed:

a) They were so fucking heavy, heavier than Iron Fucking Maiden, that wasn’t something I expected, no sir.

b)  Klaus Meine still sings soooo well….maan, anybody who can still maintain his voice at 60-plus is blessed a thousand times over.

Talking of Meine, his frontman-act is rather unique. With his short build and curly hair, he lacks the charisma of Bruce Dickinson or James Hetfield. He compensates by being an absolute joker – what with a ridiculous grey jacket complete with loosely worn tie, Cyrus Broacha-ish dance steps (sorry Cyrus if you are reading this) and comical, heavily accented Hindi to boot.  Best part, it works superbly.  We loved him, every minute of it…well, he helped his own cause by doling out drumsticks ceaselessly, keeping us hooked to his every move.

But the real revelation was Rudolf Schenker.  Also over-60 and the main man (and rhythm guitarist) of the band, he was a livewire on stage. People who debate endlessly about whether Scorpions are heavy metal or not only needed to watch him play the rhythm parts of Dynamite at some incredible pace for proof. If you don’t think THAT is heavy fucking metal, go suck your own sorry cock, is all I can say. By contrast, Jabs looked occasionally lost; maybe the crowd noise made it difficult for him to pick notes but he’s been on stage for so many years now. He more than made up with the usual stunts and the whole lot; besides the sound was rhythm-heavy, so we struggled to hear Jab’s leads anyway so it didn’t really matter.  The relatively younger bassist and the drummer had a full fifteen minutes of jamming to themselves and they made the most of the time.

Now, coming to the organisation: it was very well done, much much better than Bangalore, thank you. Only one thing: do the MMRDA have to dig up approach roads so strategically…the road leading from the Bandra-Kurla complex arterial to the ground was a mess, potholed and dusty, coming from a Bombayite, so I ain’t cribbing. And while I had my friend’s vehicle to get to the nearest railway station, many others were waiting to get into the nowhere-in-sight ricks. Maybe with more and more concerts taking place, those guys will get know about this rawk show thing and line up in droves to fleece passengers next time!!   Another thumbs up for the Bombay gig: though Scorpions wound up at 10:00 as opposed to 9:15 odd for Iron Maiden, water, snacks was still available at the venue when we left and a few shops in the neighbourhood were still open, with no policemen imposing curfew, unlike oh so high-tech Bangalore.

Ah, I haven’t talked about the selection of songs yet: it was ex-ex-cellent. All the classics and no songs from the abominable Savage Amusement and Eye II Eye. They didn’t play the 70s songs but they haven’t ever since Roth left, so no point fretting about that. They played Blackout, they played The Zoo, they played Dynamite, they played Bad Boys Running Wild and this alone would make the gig a rockin’ one for me. But they also played Send me an angel, Always Somewhere and Holiday unplugged and then of course those three songs without which no Scorpions gig can ever be wound up, you know them if you are a Scorpions fan so I won’t mention them.

All in all, those of you who can’t stop blabbering about Metallica, Iron Maiden and Guns N Roses (why is it always these three bands, wherever I go, no seriously!!!) and thereby underestimated the Scorpions, you seriously missed out bigtime. Scorpion stung like only they can and it still feels sweet. Do be back sometime soon, Mr.Meine. Still loving you, baby!!!!

At last some great commercial Hindi cinema

Is the classic Bollywood love triangle still feasible in new India?? Can you still sell movies that are high on aesthetics and low on noise??? Can you earn critical acclaim with a film that has no express social message?? Above all, can a movie sans SRK and/or sex succeed at the box office??? The answer to all of the above is three words: Jab We Met. 

Now, I must disgress a bit before I get back to the topic. I have had a small craving for long: would I be able to see a contemporary romantic flick that would actually be satisfying and at the same time not essentially deviate from the love story formula?? You see, whatever romantic pics I have seen over the years were either not “quite the thing” or they were crossed with a divergent sub-plot,i.e, hybrid.  Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa was probably my first vivid experience of a romantic movie and it was great. After that: Yes Boss – essentially comedy, Ghulam -gangster/dadagiri angle, Kaho Naa Pyaar Hai -  lookalike/murder twist, Dil Chahtha Hai – friendship, Cheeni Kum – age gulf and its perception in society…thus, all these films had something other than the love story to keep them going. On the other hand, classic love stories that didn’t quite do it for me – DDLJ, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam, Raja Hindustani.  Yes, I am aware that these films were landmark blockbusters , but every blockbuster is not necessarily a good film; even if it is, it need not have an universal appeal.

That said, I went to Jab We Met with absolutely no expectations. I had, as mentioned in my earlier post, burnt my fingers with OSO, though the reviews were universally gung-ho. Plus, I was wary of what to expect from the Shahid-Kareena  jodi. Above all, ironically, it was just A love story, how good could it be anyway. As the opening scenes captured a depressed Shahid ambling down Bombay’s streets aimlessly, my fears appeared to be confirmed. And then, as Kareena jumped onto the train she never missed in life, it suddenly seemed to take off and then seemingly skipped all halts en route to the destination. When the movie was over, not only did I feel it was money well-spent, I felt good and refreshed (though not too good a thing when the movie is getting over at 11 in the night ). What happened??

Well, it is a love story alright, but one told with lot of conviction and sincerity. At no point did I get the impression that the crew were going through the motions, looking to complete just another romantic flick. On the other hand, the movie was bubbling with life in every frame and exuded palpable energy without getting too boisterous or too loud for its own good.

Ah, that’s the other great thing about the movie. Somehow, in Himesh-era Bollywood, these guys had the guts to actually make a movie that is not too loud, too jarring. Particularly, the songs and the background score are cheerful and breezy without getting on your nerves while even the flow of dialogues is crisp and fast but uncluttered and devoid of overt melodrama.

I also noted a tastefulness in ‘executing’ the frames quite unusual for a commercial flick like this. For instance, the choreography for the songs is graceful, elegant and colourful rather than loud and attention-grabbing. The lighting too finds the perfect balance of the gaudy and the grim – or rather it looks REAL. Most importantly, this ‘tastefulness’ finds its way into the acting – a casting coup, if you will. Everybody seems to be perfectly cast and go through the frames naturally, without the shrill histrionics of perhaps a decade earlier.  Particularly the lead pair deliver a pleasant shock: Shahid and Kareena, whatever be their status as a pair off-screen, share some amazing chemistry.

Wait, there’s still something else. You know what, I was wrong: the conventional love story devoid of sub-plots doesn’t really exist. The sub-text in this movie is in two parts: one being the positive, albeit dreamy, attitude of Kareena’s character prior to rejection, the other being the repeated displays of great character by Shahid. Be it supporting a girl he has never met before to help her fulfil her dream, be it understanding and respecting his mother, be it being honest to the girl’s family and taking on the responsibility of searching her out or be it stepping out of her way to join hands with the man he thinks is her true love.  Perhaps, in our increasingly amoral times, this nice man who does a lot of good things without the pomp that generally comes with it in the movies strikes a chord at some level. For instance, today I let a guy who was in a hurry to get his train go ahead of me at the ticket queue because his need was greater than mine. Let’s face it, one part of us wants to be nice to everybody but circumstances conspire to make us less hospitable, so the rich industrialist scion with a golden heart seems to be a great ideal to look upto?? Don’t know, but what I do know is these moments of great character make the movie stand apart from the mundane, from the run-of-the-mill – it enables the characters to transcend the formulaic and come across as real people you actually relate to.  And when the predictable happily-ever-after ending eventually transpires, you are not grumbling,”Bah, I knew this was how it would end.” You feel happy for the imaginary couple in spite of yourself.

That, there, is the hallmark of good cinema. No, it need not have a powerful message, it need have no impact on society, it need not take cinema places technically, all it needs to do is get you to buy into the story, buy into the dream…for all commercial cinema is just one big fantasy ride. Difference is, most of the rides are boring, some are so awful they make you wanna puke, a very few like Jab We Met leave you with that “Wow” feeling when you’re through. What are you waiting, take the ride and enjoy it whole-heartedly before Yashraj films and Madhuri Nene nee Dixit take you for yet another marketing ride (oh, how I wish they would prove me wrong :/ ).

Yeh k k k kya kar diya aapne Farah ji???

So, the word is that King Kong,oops, Khan has roasted the two newcomers from the rival camp (as if they had any chance against the SRK hype machine anyway) and Om Shanti Om looks all set to be a blockbuster (and one of the few of this not-so-great year so far for Bollywood). I haven’t seen Mr.Bhansali, the arty commercial director’s magnum opus-not-quite, but, to my good fortune (or misfortune), I got to catch OSO and I sure do have a lot to say about it, and lot of it not too complimentary either.

Ok, what did I like about the film? I thought the cinematography was mighty impressive, particularly the fact that in the first half, the 70s feel was introduced even in the lighting…a rare eye for detail that I don’t generally expect from Indian commercial cinema. The parody of Bollywood by Bollywood itself was very funny (though I will delve on said parody again later). There were touches of a promise that the film could go deeper into the underbelly of Bollywood, particularly in the scene where the actress tells the junior artiste that the best part of shooting for her is “pack-up”. Deliciously cynical!!! What was however more impressive for me was that SRK is seemingly able to get the whole of Bollywood (except the other K, Aamir Khan, oh did somebody say Sallu??) to dance in one seemingly endless party song for him….Shabana Azmi, Vidya Balan, Aftab Shivdasani, Govinda, you name it, they were all there for that one song. What is it, his goodwill in the film world as such, or that he knows how to talk the language of money better, I don’t know, but the output is an impressive feather in his cap, yessir.

Unfortunately, or fortunately, Farah and SRK are not quite cynical enough to believe that making a cynical film about the cynical film industry with a cynical spattering of age-old Bollywood cliches will be lapped up by the not-so-cynical audience. All the cynical potshots at what Bollywood is all about, of which mind Farah ji is very much a part, is enjoyable and all but you can’t make a film on that.

Or, you actually can, if you have a linear, gripping storyline and some crisp direction. When you are randomly weaving together oh-so-filmi-oh-so-funny moments for 2 hours, then you need to give some largesse to the audience for the next half hour so that they don’t whine about money gone down the multiplex drain when they exit. Thankfully, Farah & Co do realise this need and so the film must culminate in a grand filmi finale.

But wait, like Mukesh Mehra’s dilemma in the film, who is going to write it? Remember,this is the new “Chak De” India – everything, from Indian cricket to Hindi cinema, got to be spectacular, we can’t spare no expenses no more,right?? Unfortunately, the well of creativity, atleast for this film’s ensemble, seems to have dried up long ago. So!!! Farah madam got an ingenious idea…why not “uthao” a scene from a good film that was made a good 50 years ago…aakhir people who were old enough to remember that film may not even come to watch OSO…agar aaye aur pata chala, people will say, buddhe logon ko aur koi kaam nahi, wahi puraani baaton me dube huye hein. But what their cynicism cynically prevented them from foreseeing is the existence of connoisseurs even for so cynical an affair as Bollywood. Yessir, I wasn’t born when the Dilip Kumar – Vyjayanthimala starrer Madhumati was made, but out of my own interest in great cinema, I happened to watch the film. And mon ami, the climax of Om Shanti Om is – as we say in Bombay – a chaapa of Madhumati.

I am sorry, madam, but asking me to buy this also as a tribute-shibute of Hindi films is a bit too much. Every little detail, right down to Sandhya arriving late for the climax and missing the magic-wagic, is copied from that landmark film. Now, I know ki many Hindi films are copied from Hollywood and maybe Madhumati was too, but apne hi ghar me chori karna…na re na. It does appear that the pre-release buzz about Karz being the inspiration for this film was the proverbial red herring to divert focus from the asli kahani.

And, either the red herring worked fabulously or movie critics are more cynical than I had bargained for…because I have scanned reviews in the papers, on the net, but nahi, Madhumati yeh shabd nazar nahi aayi . Ironically, reviews on the film Sawaariya have faithfully noted that it is ‘inspired’ by some Engleech peekchar. So, it boils down to the SRK effect, eh?? Even professional critics will bend over to serve the King of Bollywood and allow him to get away with anything – even being the co-architect of a cynical attempt to pass off plainly incompetent scriptwriting as great masala cinema. I won’t stand in the king’s way, no sir, but I have but a little wish….it would be so delightful if Farah madam or Shah Rukh sir read this and it had on their minds the same effect that Sandhya’s mysterious appearances have on Mukesh Mehra in the film….somebody was there to see through your bery bery clever trick…I rest my case here, fully expecting this film to succeed hugely, maintaining the status-quo of literary incompetence and artful deception that is Bollywood..salaam Bollywood, ha!!!!

Edit:  Well, the post-release publicity is still very much in full swing and Farah Madam has now given an interview to rediff.com. When asked how much 70s and 80s cinema influenced her, she said and I quote verbatim, ” I’m not at all inspired by the 80s because that was the worst era in the history of cinema – - the worst movies were made during that time.” Oh really!!! What is so undistinguished about Shekar Kapur’s Masoom and Mr.India or Govind Nihalani’s Ardhsatya, or maybe you decided you won’t be able to make movies like them and so won’t be influenced by the 80s…lol!!! Let the show go on!!! *sigh*

Monkey chatter

Ok you know where you heard this phrase. It’s about Andrew Symonds being called a monkey and jeered at by the crowd. I am against such mischief-mongering as it is distasteful, but Australia of all teams have no right to tell us that, beyond that the incident doesn’t interest me.

I am interested in some comments Mr.Symonds made at the start of the tournament,

” We have been winning all the time and we have been very humble about it. I have been watching this Indian team’s celebrations and they have been way over-the-top. Yuvraj Singh got a Porsche for his six sixes.” Ahhhhhh!!!! There, that’s the catch. Why does it infuriate Symmo how much adulation Yuvi gets or not. Or is a he car freak who looks down on the Porsche and wanted – ahem – a better choice for Yuvi?? Well I enjoy Symmo’s batting and bowling but wouldn’t credit him with so much grace *cough*.

One thing is clear though,  Symmo . You didn’t hit six sixes mate, not in any form of the game, but he did and against England, no less.  Sure our govt has been doling out awards wildly, but then, we don’t win World Cups too often, you do, maybe it pays to lose sometimes, lol, and learn to respect your opposition a little more, else what you get back is monkey or whatever faces, from the players, from the crowd. Sorry to say so but only two players from the mighty Aussie side have done that consistently, good ol’ Gilly and then Brett Lee, gracious off the field, now just excuse his unforgivable ‘unintentional’ beamers.

But more than ‘monkey chatter’ (just a phrase, no racist intent there if you will excuse me)  it is Punter chatter that really takes the cake. Ponting declared boldly that they would win and deflate the Indians at Brabourne. Uthappa coolly retorted that they weren’t particularly looking forward to the game to prove anything, they would only go and enjoy themselves. Boy and did we enjoy watching the haughty Roos brought to their feet. Brad Hogg at the 10th over of the Indian innings : “This is a great game but we are not winning it right now.” Savour this any India fans out there, you won’t hear such diffidence too often from the Aussies. Those of us who retained a semblance of equanimity during the Twenty 20 World Cup knew that the semifinal was a close affair and Australia deserved to win it as much as we did, only they lost their way when it mattered most and there was no time to claw back into the game. But this time, India’s champions status was driven down Punter’s throat emphatically; he said it in as many words, “Well, they are the world champs and they have won.” Ooh, that did take a lot of ego-swallowing, eh Rick?

In case you think this is my way of getting back at the Aussie press’s extremely racist comments on Sreesanth’s antics on the field,  buddy, I have always admired the Aussies – for their sheer formidable talent, for their mental strength, for their never-give-up attitude, for their intuitive understanding of the game’s flow and thus the ability to apply pressure on the most painful points. But the whole post-T20 fracas has brought out a less admirable facet of this great team – they are bad losers, nay, they are foul losers, sour grapes overflowing from their mouths. They didn’t wish to admit they lost to a team that played better on the day and made a big deal about India beating them till it induced headaches for all and sundry.

So, India ‘deflating’ them first at Wankhede, then at Brabourne, served another purpose : it finally shut them up, put an end to all the grumbling, to all the bad mouthing, to all the grudges, to all the debates. India took some time getting over the T20 triumph for sure, but they were catching up halfway through the ODI tournament already and but for a combination of Dada’s atrociously lazy middle overs running and Dravid’s capitulation under pressure in the 6th encounter, the scoreline would likely have been 3-3.  And now, there’s proof that they can not only match Australia in all departments but even outdo them, atleast we didn’t concede 8 runs in overthrows, lol!!! Will they be as consistent, as intense as Australia?? Who cares, enjoy the moment, mate, you won’t get too many of these, I should know, having waited 22 years to catch a proverbial repeat of the 1983 triumph.

Oh, what was it the Aussies said, they don’t enjoy T20…well, here’s the news, all ye blokes, Uthappa doesn’t enjoy it either..but that didn’t stop him demolishing the fastest bowler in the world!!!

P.S: And the news of the day, Dumbledore is gay, it seems.  Oh, perhaps, Hermione thought he was straight and fantasised about him at night,lol!!! I read the first four Potter editions with lot of interest thought I was already ‘too old’ for such books because I was elated that Rowling had reinvented the Blyton days for a new generation. Well, I stand disillusioned.  She probably just discovered it’s hard to cut out of the Potter mania and break free as a writer, so why not feed the franchise while it is still hot??? But I will admit to one good outcome of this apologetic media gag she has subjected herself to: maybe this will ensure that gays are no longer looked at in a derogatory sense as a new generation grows up idolizing a gay wizard.