Another TOI bashing

I have for sometime now been using the TOI e-paper (see here) to keep me abreast of events in Bombay. Unfortunately (or perhaps, fortunately), I do not utilise it to do the same as regards sporting news. Yesterday, I did. The result is the discovery of a new section (it must be new - I can't recollect ever noticing it previously) amongst the sports pages titled 'Graffiti'.

Here is an excerpt from yesterday's edition of Graffiti that no doubt every discerning parent will want their precocious 5-yr olds to begin the day with. After all, the sports pages (now web-pages) are the place we all did (I still do) most of my news reading.

ANDERSON SCORES IN THE TOILET!
Manchester United ace Anderson scored with a model in a Travelodge toilet after chatting her up with those three little words: "F***, f***, f***." The Manchester United midfielder, who is Brazilian and cannot speak English, demonstrated his low-league seduction techniques on a night out with team-mate Patrice Evra. Firstly he tried to bed Leah Houghton, 20, in front of her pals and Evra in a hotel bedroom. Then, he led her to the bathroom while their friends waited outside. A pal of Leah said: "Anderson couldn't talk to her because he is from Brazil and only speaks Portuguese.

"So he took his top off, stripped to his boxers and socks and pushed Leah on to the bed in front of everyone. "She asked, What are you doing?' Evra translated for Anderson, who told Leah, F**k, f**k, f**k.' Then he dragged her to the bathroom. "He ripped off her grey pencil skirt and knickers, and they had sex on the toilet while we and Evra sat in the bedroom watching the TV.

PS to Hayden Post

Hindustan Times has managed to find the audio of the now infamous Hayden interview. See here. (Firefox users may need to use IE to get it to run) It is, to say the least, shocking.

I cannot believe the ICC is going to let this pass with a simple reprimand from Cricket Australia.

Note especially Hayden's response to 'why are they (the Indians) so sensitive'? This from the Team which has complained to the umpires every time an Indian has said something to an Aussie player.

'You obnoxious little weed'

But Matt Hayden's 'intentions were never to denigrate cricket or anyone.'
Which led me to try and figure out what denigrate means. Here it is (courtesy dictionary.com):

Denigrate: 'to speak damagingly of; criticize in a derogatory manner; sully; defame'

The Aussies are not known to be the most academically oriented bunch (AT tends to refer to them as radiya's), but its a little hard to see how calling Harbhajan an 'obnoxious weed' does anything but 'denigrate'.

My next pet peeve about Hayden's delightfully obnoxious buccal weed (my intentions are not to denigrate). Here referring to Ishant: "He is just young. I have said to him many times, 'You are 19, take it easy'. ... He is 19, why doesn't he just worry about his bowling for a while? I like the idea of actually getting into the ring (with him). I like that, bring it on."

2 things: first, Ishant seems to be concentrating more than enough on his bowling. Certainly enough to regularly get Ponting ('the world's best batsman') out through the summer. Second, are you seriously asking for a match-up in a boxing ring? WHO DOES THAT? The only people I recall are slightly obnoxious boxers (my intentions are not to denigrate) and for them, its sort of their job.

So to you Mr. Hayden - keep that tongue inside the mouth and score some runs if you can. If you can't, I'd recommend you concentrate on your own batting rather than telling 19 year-old's to worry about their bowling.

And women's cricket should be encouraged, eh?

From the BBC:

South Africa women took just four balls to sweep to a 10-wicket win after bowling out Bermuda for just 13.

South African bowler Sunette Loubser finished with 6-3, with 10 of Bermuda's 13 runs coming from extras.

South Africa's score of 15 for 0 was also made up of ten extras - nine wides and a no-ball.

Bermuda's embarrassing defeat will not be recorded in official statistics because they are ranked outside the world's top ten countries.

Sporty post...read on

After 6 months in this wretched country with no cricket, a few of us decided that enough was enough. We (Roomie, AT and I) took out my squash racquet and a foam ball and started playing in the hallways of my dorm. Before long, one of the staff seemed to think we were upto some mischief, because at least one of us was jumping up and down appealing for a caught behind when he emerged through the elevator. Luckily the other two delinquents had become adept at hiding the racquet and ball as soon as the elevator opens.

In the urge to find a larger arena as well as to avoid any sort of disciplinary action (which we were quite happy to invite, mind you), we moved to the vacant indoor tennis courts in our Sports Centre. There we began what would become a 45-minute game(s) of rounders with the foam ball swinging like a TT Ball and where the task of hurtling the ball in a legal manner towards the batsman proved rather tiring. So much so that Roomie even ended up using the bhatta route in one instance before the remaining players vehemently protested this blasphemous use of the elbow.

Americans, I have noticed, tend be fascinated with things they don't understand. (this is incidentally my explanation for why bizarre theories in academic papers make super-geniuses out of academicians here) So too with cricket. While a couple, to their tremendous credit, recognised the game (although they may have been european), the others stood watching in awe until their respective games of racquetball and squash beckoned.

Plans are now afoot to bring together a large pack of Indians to appropriately utilise the wide open spaces that NYU has provided within the confines of the warm indoor complex.

In other sporty news, we came 2nd in our division in TT this semester, famously upsetting Columbia. Unfortunately (as is so often the case in these things), my worst form coincided with this happy occurence and so while I won all but one match (the one I lost being non-crucial since we had already lost the tie), I found myself in terrible form and playing a series of under-quality matches. But then...the overall result is good enough for me! Hopefully these kids will pull it off again next year and make it to the Nationals...