I read this article in today’s Herald Sun by its Jon Pierik, as representative a writer of that paper as can get, about Australia reactive plans on scuffing up the ball early in the piece, a la India.

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,24538494-11088,00.html

To which I must draw his attention to Australia’s own Shane Warne’s entry on Virender Sehwag who makes #35 in his list of 100 top bats.

Sehwag was batting with Jeremy Snape for Leicestershire and Abdul Razzaq, who was playing for Middlesex, started to reverse swing the ball, creating all sorts of problems.

“I have a plan,” said Sehwag and promptly hit the ball out of the ground so that it had to be replaced.

That’s what he does when the ball reverse swings.

Just so you are aware Jon.

Soundar

My boy is a bit over five.  

The other day, in the car, he asked me to play his favourite ‘dolphin’ song. Now, this Tamil song from ‘Boys’ goes ‘Enakkoru girlfriend vaeNuma-da’ translating to ‘I want a girlfriend’. Smug in the belief that he’d misheard it as dolphin, I slid in the CD silently. 

A friend of my daughter was in the car as well. Hearing the opening of the song, she corrected him with

‘It’s girlfriend, not dolphin’!

And he whispered back urgently

‘Shhhh! I know, be quiet or I’ll get into trouble!’ 

Barely five, and already street smart.

There are times like Sunday, when unexpected wins are gained. These are indeed the moments we live for, hoping against hope.

 However, an observation, hopefully shared by others, is that memorable wit on Indian banners held aloft for the cameras is as rare as a Bangladesh victory over Australia. 

Lack of imagination, paucity of ideas and laboriousness of doggerel are more likely to be encountered. 

Living as I do in Melbourne, I can safely hazard that the bulk of the Indian supporters at the MCG would be well educated, in professions requiring the application of brainpower and also have a formidable representation of 2^nd generation Indian-Aussies.

 Fertile ground you would think, for displays of cutting wit and wisdom. 

And yet, thought is noticeably absent. They either read “Chak De India”, “Incredible India”, “Kangaroo curry”, or variants thereof. To leaven the dross are laboured acrostics on Sachin’s name or long paragraphs on bedsheets.

Nothing near as original as the Aussie kid in Perth (if memory serves) over ten years ago who, once Sachin had crossed ten runs, crossed out the first three letters of his daubed sign that read “Tendulkar” and kept score till a century was struck. The camera kept panning on to him regularly through the day.

I accept there can be just the one Bharat Dabholkar, however should not a talent pool as large be capable of more memorable work?

Or is this a metaphor for the Indian condition as a whole?  

-Soundar.

Unfortunately, the racism message has not sunk in-even in urban India.

I received one of those mails from a friend in India with a picture of Symonds next to a monkey, drawing attention to the physical similarities.

This really got my goat.

Most Indians privately agree India is quite a racist, colour conscious, caste conscious society. Can’t do much immediately about the hinterland where these abominations are entrenched.

However one expects better from educated friends. To receive such a mail from a friend made me angry.

I let him have both barrels.

Maybe he is now an ex-friend.

Both the American (seppo-s in Oz speak) expatriates returned to Australia on the Monday morning after the Sydney test.

And thought they were entering a war zone. The papers, TV, radio and blogs were all alive. Gunsmoke was everywhere.

Things finally died down around yesterday.

Today one of them cautiously crept around and asked

“Is it safe to come out of the trenches?”

Nice win today.

En passant and without warning, one of the Aussies at work threw me a squash ball. The reflexes came together to hang on to the one-hander.

I threw it back in the same motion. He grasped, dropped it and caught it on the rebound.

It was with delight that I went

“Typical. You Aussies can’t catch anything unless it is on the bounce.”

Amid all the drama surrounding India and Australia in the aftermath of the Sydney test, there’s at least one group feeling vindicated.

The Italians.

They’ve had to wear it for the past year and bit as ‘cheats’ ever since Australia was dumped from World Cup ‘06 by Italy.

The second generation Italian in our office came into work, bounced a tennis ball, caught it and went ‘howzzat’ to the true blue Aussies, followed by a “Who’s a cheat now then?”

I will leave all the hot air creation apropos the Sydney thriller to those far more capable than I, such as this blog.

I will instead focus on one of my pet peeves which is pronunciation.

 I particularly think those handed the microphone should research the correct pronunciation, as us great unwashed generally tend to take our cues from them. Commendations are due to Ian Chappell (Romesh Kaluwitharana) and Peter Roebuck (Srinivasaraghavan Venkatraghavan) for their punctiliousness.

I will generally try and point out where the transgressions occur, such as this.

Interestingly though the moustaches and lovelies of Sun TV are regularly guilty. Celebrated instances in the past include Sexoslovakia and Shane War-nay. 

And yesterday it was Mike Who-say for Mike Hussey.

..it would have been the SCG yesterday when Lacchu’s grace brought to mind, among other things, Brearley’s immortal lines about Azhar.

“..if his genius could be bottled, the future of Test Cricket is secure” or words to that effect.

Watching the extended highlights on Foxtel reminded me of two pieces of poetry.

“Mazhai, pala koti thanthi-hal udayadhorr isai-kkaruvi.” Subramanya Bharati.

The bard was listening to the raindrops on his roof when he made the observation about rain being a multi stringed musical instrument.

Lacchu’s bat as a musical isntrument? Not far fetched at all.

Sab kucch dekh liya

tujh ko dekh kar

utthe nahin hain haath mere

is dua ke baad.

A substitution of ‘dekh’ for the original ‘maang’ in Agha Hashr Kashmiri’s original urdu couplet and, batting-wise, I had seen all there was to be seen and I have no desire to see any more after this benediction!

The airwaves and opinion columns are abuzz with the woeful umpiring decisions of yesterday, not least here.

And this blog is fast turning into the ethnic version of Mediawatch.

Listening to Russell Mark discuss this on ABC radio this morning, I was reassured that had the Symonds appeal been turned down in “Delley, Moom-baaai, Calcutta wherever, they would have torn the place down”.

And just in case you are thinking this is a towering, sorry, tubby intellectual like Greg Ritchie passing judgement, no, Russell Mark is none other than Rajyavardhan Rathore’s coach.

He travels often to India, so he knows what he’s talking about.

And just because some of you readers might have been born in India, spent a large portion of your lives there or even travel back regularly doesn’t mean you know the mindset, or indeed the pronunciation, come to think of it.

Listen to Rusty, he knows.