What about us?

"We don't stand a chance. Thai players are too short and they can't shoot." The fact that his nation's footballers are all like Mickey Owen does little to cheer up Bangkok bank worker Samkan Chartprasert, who sums up the national sentiment after the Thai government launched a public appeal asking fans what they could do to ensure qualification for the 2010 World Cup. Should we, in India, be shameless enough, foolish enough and moronic enough to, even, ask the question? Or is it a dream we harbour only because a lot of people can make a lot of money trying to make the dream happen?

Crossing the boundaries of credulity

So now Kevin Pietersen has written a book? Does it take so little time in international cricket to come out with a book? Whatever happened to spending some time being an international sportsman, doing a few things over a sustained period of time, learning a few things about the ups and downs of a career and then writing a book? Guess in a time of instant everything, it doesn't take much to come up with a book. If Andrew Flintoff can, if Wayne Rooney can, why can't Pietersen? After all, money talks. And writes. We're pretty sure Crossing The Boundary will not have a fraction of the shelf life Beyond a Boundary has. And why should it? It's not meant to.

Fever pitch

What is this obsession with trotting out with nauseating regularity that Bradman thought the batsman who came closest to his style of play was Sachin Tendulkar? Is it really such an important achievement? Haven't we had enough of that line of thinking? Will we never stop writing articles about Sachin Tendulkar without that idiotic piece of dumparrotison? If you think of it, minus the thoughtless repeating of it, it really doesn't mean much. The last person we expected to read it from was Mukul Kesavan. And that really got our goat. To think, even a fine fine writer like Mukul Kesevan has to stoop to such parrotisms. Are cricket writers so short of things to say on Sachin that they have to keep saying the 'right' things? Just ask us.