Something to cheer about....finally....

Indian Senior Cricket Team after defeating Australia in the finals of the CB Series.



India U-19 Cricket Team after winning the World Cup.



Indian Hockey team after defeating Austria 7-3 in the Olympic qualifiers.

Congrats to the Indian Senior and U-19 cricket teams as well as the Hockey team for putting up some brave performances in recent days. You’ve really done us all proud and as I said, given us something to cheer about finally. The U-19 team should be specially applauded as they showed real spine in beating SA even when defending a meager total. Some real good players like Virat Kohli, Sourav Tiwary, Manish Pandey and Tanmay Srivastav came in the spotlight and might one day play for team India.

Last night I was watching TV and all the news channels had nothing to do but talk cricket. Some even had “experts” like Saba Karim and Nikhil Chopra to provide thoughtful insights on how these teams managed to achieve what they had. Others had Navjot Sidhu to entertain the audience with his witty “Sidhuisms” and brag about the team’s achievements down under.

Sometime in the midst of this program, a member from the audience raised his concern about the players’ performance dipping after they achieve some success initially and then go on a sponsorship deal signing spree. Our dear Navjot Sidhu had some good counter points to throw at the poor chap who finally gave up on his comment and agreed with Sidhu that this was not really the case. Excerpts from his expert comments…

Why is everyone so concerned about cricketers earning that extra bit of money from endorsements? Why do people think that their performances dip when they start doing these commercials? Come to think of it…an average commercial of say 30secs takes about 3-3.5 hours of shooting time. Now, if you watch these commercials 30 times a day, it doesn’t mean that these guys shoot for them 30 times. What’s wrong in taking out a few hours time on a break between tours and earn some money? And its not that these guys endorse 10 or 12 products. The maximum a player has is 5, and his name is Sachin Tendulkar and he just won India a tournament on Australian soil. So this argument that players don’t perform after they endorse products is completely groundless. Another case in sighting is MS Dhoni. Maybe you see him riding bikes one minute and selling hair gel the other, but there’s no denying the fact that he is today being regarded as one of the best captains in the world and the future of Indian cricket. He is soon enough going to take lead of the test team as well. So, a player’s performance doesn’t get affected at all. At the end of the day, he goes back to the nets to practice and gives his best on the field.

Point taken, Sherry Sir!!!

And for all you Sidhu (or rather Sidhuisms) fans out there…a collection of Sidhuisms for you… http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Navjot_Singh_Sidhu

Cricket is the game of glorious uncertainties! Glorious-when Sri Lankans play; Uncertain-when India play!!!