Cricket ‘predictions’ that came true

Sports

Ok these are not predictions in the ‘astrological’ sense of the word. These are statements (or my memory of them) made by cricket commentators/writers in the last few years. Disclaimer: These are not ad-verbatim.

Sunil Gavaskar on Pakistan winning the 1992 World Cup:
This is one of those rare occassions when Sunil Gavaskar stuck his neck out, and got it right when he backed Pakistan during the 1992 World Cup, even though Pakistan got off to a bad start.

Dileep Sardesai on VVS Laxman before the 1999 tour of Australia:
Sardesai said that ‘…Laxman (is) as good as the big-three…‘! The big three being — Sachin Tendulkar, Saurab Ganguly and Rahul Dravid. This was the series where Laxman regained some pride for India with a masterful 167 in the last test at Sydney, which India lost (India lost the series too 0-3). Soon after that series Laxman made it the big-four!

David Gower on Saurav Ganguly before the 1999 World Cup:
‘…The player to watch from India is Saurav Ganguly…‘ This when we in India expected Sachin Tendulkar to be one and only name that should’ve cropped up for this. And Ganguly was the second highest run getter for India in the tournament — and hit that 183 in a (then) record-breaking partnership with Rahul Dravid against Sri Lanka at Taunton!

Ravi Shastri as a television commentator on India’s disastrous New Zealand tour of 2003:
After India, batting first, got out for 99 in the 2nd test at Hamilton. ‘…The crucial thing is India has got those runs, while New Zealand is yet to get them…‘ And then NZ got bowled out for 94 runs — Zaheer Khan taking 5 wickets for 29! (However, India still lost the match!)

The hanging of Saddam Hussain & the madness after

Media & Entertainment, Zeitgeist

I had once mentioned what kind of video clips make it to the viral-able grade. That was in the context of sports events/incidents. I also believe the days of ‘World’s Most Amazing Videos‘ genre of programming are over on TV. YouTube and other video-sharing sites completely own this genre now.

Similarly, while ‘breaking news’ is still most dramatic on TV, the reference / search and archival possibilties ensure a much longer life for these videos on the Internet.

There is a popular post which compiled a list of the top ‘Viral video moments of 2006‘. However even as that list was doing the rounds — the biggest such event happened — the hanging of Saddam Hussain.

It was against this backdrop, and being a faithfully-in-love-with-the Internet person, that I was checking out YouTube on the morning of January 1. And that’s when I made the observation about 18 17 of the top 20 ‘most viewed’ YouTube videos on that day being of Saddam Hussain’s hanging. Somehow I wasn’t comfortable linking the actual videos here.

And then two days later when I logged in to my WordPress dashboard I did a double-take with disbelief!

My daily visit count was just going through the roof. The previous best ever was 348, the day Amit Agarwal had tipped DesiPundit about the Maxim magazine post of mine.

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This was because the top result on Google for “hanging of Saddam Hussain” was my post! (That has since been moved out owing to Google’s strange batch-indexing policy. It should be back soon.)

Here are the Yahoo! screen shots (till I get the Google screen shot which Nigel took for posterity :-))

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People were getting referred from search-engines I never even knew existed…

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The search words that were taking people to this site went something like this…

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My post stats looked like this:

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And then based on this traffic, WordPress started featuring me in their ‘Blog of The Day’ lists… The highest I reached was No.2 (click to see full image)

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I wanted to write this post two days back, but was waiting for the deluge to ebb a little. Sadly, I still don’t have a point of view on this issue yet.

Incidentally there was no visible increase in the list of spam messages, thus proving that the sheer magnitude of organic activities far out-strips the dogged efforts by spammers!

The hanging of Saddam Hussain

Politics, Zeitgeist

Today morning on YouTube — 18 of the 20 most viewed videos were about of the hanging of Saddam Hussain.

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My stance on this is still a work-in-progress.

However I do have a couple of thoughts.

It is a poor-poor defence when Americans say, “It was their (incumbent Iraqis’) decision to hang him. We had nothing to do with it.” Yeah sure buddy, we believe you as much now as when you told the world that Iraq was sitting on a tranche-load of Weapons of Mass Destructions! And if going against the grain of incredulity, I were to believe you on WMDs — idiots you killed the only man who could have told you where they were hidden!!

This is the third such political execution I have seen.

The first was that of former Romanian President Nicolae Ceausescu, who was executed by a shooting squad after a hasty trial in 1989. That was the Christmas on 1989. BBC says:

Two days after the death of Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife, Elena, video pictures of their summary trial and execution were shown on television in Romania and around the world.

The images of their dead bodies, riddled with bullets, were broadcast and much of the unrest which continued after their deaths subsided.

The second was that of former Afghanistan President Dr. Najibullah who was publicly hanged by the Taliban in 1996 and whose body was left hanging in the open for a few days. The newspaper pictures of those hanging bodies are graphically imprinted on my mind. Especially since in India we were used to seeing him as guest of the State. In fact the rest of his family had taken shelter in India after the Taliban captured power in Afghanistan in 1996.

Somehow this time around I feel a sense of apathy seeing the visuals. Perhaps the earlier pictures where a fugitive Saddam was shown being pulled out of his hideout, had somehow prepared me for the things to come.

This gruesome link on BBC throws some light on this issue:

Releasing the normally gruesome pictures of dead leaders is a powerful gesture. It has often been used in the past to mark the end of an era.

Hmm…

Yet another Guru. Now Mani Ratnam’s

Media & Entertainment

Other reasons** aside, I will be seeing Mani Ratnam’s Guru (that hits theatres in India on January 12, 2007) for the quirky reason that I have seen both the previous films called Guru, and would like to keep my guru-trysts in tact!

The first Guru I saw was the Mithun Chakraborty – Sridevi (double-role) starrer released sometime in the late 80s. (Okay it was 1989, I just checked on IMDB!) That was a regular 80s film; with Bappi Lahiri’s 80s style music; which I, as an 80s fan, enjoyed! I believe, notable 80s fans like Greatbong and Meghalomania, may also remember this movie for ‘the-kissing-controversy-of the-times’. The gossip-press suggested that Mithun and Sridevi were seeing each other around the time the film was being made. They later broke off around the time the film was being screened. So Sridevi tried to use all her influence to get the ‘offending scene’ removed from the film — a split-second peck! Boy! We have changed as a society in the last two decades!

The second Guru (2002, a.k.a The Guru of Sex) was a comedy starring the ethereal Heather Graham, along with Jimmy Mistry and Marisa Tomei. Incidentally, Shekhar Kapur was the executive producer of that English film, which — surprise surprise — had one of the Hindi chart-toppers of the year, ‘Chori chori, hum gori se pyaar karenge‘. I so actively recommended the film to friends including gifting VCDs to some of them!

So now Mani Ratnam’s Guru is about be released. The songs have been airing on TV for some time now. And my 3-yr old nephew has his own rendition “Dosa hai, Dosa hai, baarish ka dosa hai“. I obviously lack the heart as well as the wherewithal to correct him and tell him it is ‘Kosa hai kosa hai, baarish ka bosa hai‘ — as that would mean introducing him to bosa (kiss)! I shudder at the mere thought of doing that! More so because the same 3-yr old believes he will get married to Aishwarya Rai when he grows up!!

Have a mind & body uplifting 2007 :-)

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**Other reasons being:

Aishwarya Rai
Aishwarya Rai
Aishwayra Rai…
Right, so now you get the idea how my nephew started believing who he would marry? ;-)

Insurance Term Policy, Endowment Policy, Whole Life Policy

Zeitgeist

Ok, don’t get it wrong, I have no expertise on or avid interest in the subject of insurance policies! This post has been deliberately titled thus — to explore the myth about what words work for search-engines. (The Paris Hilton vs. Lindsay Lohan and Teach an old CAT new tricks: CAT 2006 posts earlier on this blog were also an attempt towards that.)

Immediate fall outs?

I did have a few days of spike in traffic owing to the contextuality of those posts, but I am also left to contend with a legacy of hundreds of spam comments! Mercifully, WordPress has provided Akismet spam filter on all its blogs, and I am highly indebted to them for that. Akismet works like a dream, totally weeding out all the spam comments. The ones it is unable to mark as outright spam it sends for moderation.

Also, lest I disappoint you beyond redemption here is the information on insurance. I really like the betting analogy.

…Term insurance works like a betting game.
You are willing to bet that you would die this year and cough up, say, Rs 2,000.
The insurance company bets that you will not die and is willing to pay your family, say, Rs 1 million if you do.
If you survive, you lose the bet. And the insurance company takes away the Rs 2,000.
If you win the bet, you know what happens!
The bet goes on over a period of 5, 10, 15, 20… whatever number of years that both you and insurance company have agreed to.
Don’t give up so quickly!
If this does not tickle your fancy, there are other options to consider…

All this is from an old article on Rediff.com by N Sriram ‘How much is your life worth?‘