Cricket and APL Part 1

My buddy Kiranraj Kamath a.k.a KK signed us up for a hard tennis ball cricket tournament called APL(Azro Premier League).  The tournament was supposed to be a one day affair, with 6 teams participating in a round robin format at Dee Park, Des Plaines. Our team was called the Lycans and the tournament was held on 20th May, 2012.


We played our first game against the Raging Bulls. We won the toss and elected to bat first in the 10 over game. We did not start off well, however, some great hitting by Rajesh and Alam took us to a competitive score of 92. Our innings was marked by some terrific, straight down the ground hitting, which resulted in some amazing sixes.


With a score of 92 on the board, we were the favorites and our body language reflected that, when we came on to field. Everything was going good for us until the end of Over 7. The Raging Bulls had scored 56 and required another 37 off 3 overs. With our bowlers bowling well, we considered ourselves the favorites however, we soon lost the tag as we leaked 20 off the 8th over.


Raging Bulls required 17 off the last 2 and it seemed as though the momentum was now shifting. 9 runs were scored off the penultimate over and it came down to 8 runs required off the last over. 


Rajesh bowled a very tight last over and the Raging Bulls could manage only singles off the first 5 deliveries. 3 runs to get off the last ball and once again we thought it was our game. The last ball was also good and the batsman only managed to hit a skier without any kind of distance. Our fielder was right under the ball but ended up grassing the catch. In the ensuing confusion, the batsmen ran two and the match ended in a tie! We could not believe what had just happened. We had ended right at the line and now it would be the Super over that would decide the outcome of the match.


KK won the toss again and inserted the Opposition in. Clement from the Raging Bulls hit 2 towering sixes and we had to score 15 to win the match. From our team, KK and Rajesh started the proceedings.


The first ball of the over was creamed through deep extra cover for a massive six.   At this point we were screaming our lungs out and jumping in joy amidst chants of KK! KK!. The second ball was smoked through long on for another huge six. Our dancing and shouting continued as just a shot separated us from victory. The 3rd ball was a dot and KK again went for it in the fourth but he top edged the delivery and the ball ended up going to the boundary. All of us ran to the pitch, lifted KK and celebrated as if we had won the IPL.  My life's first super over and what a fabulous start to the tournament! 

Top 10 Movies of 2008

Although I have been very poor at blogging I always thought I would be able to blog atleast once a year with the top 10 hindi movies of the previous year :). However, this also did not happen so tonight almost 2 years later I thought why not correct this and be regular(once a year) here after :). As a first step, here is the top 10 movies of 2008.

1. Dasvidaniya
In 2007, Vinay Pathak was amazing in Bheja Fry. In 2008 it was Dasvidaniya. Great acting as usual. The stand out scene: Vinay Pathak thinking he should have bought a bike instead of a car after he watches Purbi Joshi hopping on to her guy's bike. That's when his alter-ego appears and tells him tere paas Jumbo Jet hota toh bhi tu kuch nahi kar pata :).

2. Aamir
The big-screen debut of Rajeev Khandelwal was a scorcher with an engaging storyline that kept you glued to the screen.

3. Mithya
Everybody knows Ranvir Shourie has a great comic timing. This one with him in a double role is an absolute must watch.

4. A Wednesday
Similar to Aamir and very nicely done. Engaging from the beginning to the end and of course top notch acting from the legends- Naseeruddin Shah and Anupam Kher.

5. Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na
Imran Khan and Genelia's chemistry took us back to college days. Great songs, great acting and well great movie :).

6. Welcome to Sajjanpur
Shyam Benegal's direction, Shreyas Talpade's acting and a simple story set in a village was comical as well as touching.

7. Rock On
Debut of Farhan Akhtar and the role suited him to a T. Although the movie had some cliches but still was one of the top movies of the year.

8. Fashion
Looked similar to Madhur Bhandarkar's Page 3 but great acting by the 3 models was the USP of the movie. Somehow I feel Kangana Ranaut always does justice to psychic roles :). Standout scene: Kangana doing a cat walk after snorting cocaine.

9. Jodhaa Akbar
Many people thought it was too long and boring but I liked the picturisation, story and Hrithik-Ash chemistry.

10. Sarkar Raj
It may not be Ramu's best movie but I found it pretty engaging.

Besides these, I liked Dostana, Sunday(nice premise which I felt could have been made better) and Rab ne Bana Di Jodi :)

Toto's 15 mins of fame

In the 90's there was a programme on DD called Flop Show directed by Jaspal Bhatti. One of the episodes was about "The Govt Officer" and at the beginning of the show ran this note "Yeh Episode samarpit hai sarkari cheez ka durupyog karne waale un officers ke naam jinhone humhe prerit kiya hai yeh episode banane ke liye." In this episode Bhattisaab who is the MD of a company tells his staff to help him find his dog Jackie that has gone missing! Many times we see real lie imitating reel life and something similar happened in the capital when the Delhi Commisioner's dog Toto went missing and the entire Delhi Police was looking for the dog probably to win a quick promotion or to win the 10K cash reward :-). Yes, a 10K cash reward was announced for people providing info about the dog and pamphlets with the pic of the dog and a caption "Ghumshada ki talash" were distributed. I dont think my parents would have announced 10K if I would have gone missing :-).




If this wasnt amusing enough the Indian Media latched on to this piece of news like Ranbir Kapoor has latched on to Deepika these days :-). Star News' breaking news was "Commissioner saab ka kutta milla" and some of the blogs screamed Indian media has gone to the dogs :D.



Now you must be thinking where's this story going. Is it about the misuse of govt machinery or the Indian media's tabloid journalism? Well, it isnt about any of these things. I just found this story amusing so I posted it :-).
Anyway, the latest is Toto is back at his place and some security changes have been made at the Commissioner's house after the incident. Hmmm....

Skating on St. Patrick's Day!

The day began with five of us deciding to go ice-skating at the Millennium Park in downtown Chicago. It is always difficult to get parking in downtown Chicago and today we expected it to be worse because of the St. Patrick's day parade. We decided to take the train to downtown and reached the Prospect Heights station at 11:30 to catch the 11:37 train. Surprisingly, the station was empty. We thought maybe nobody uses the station on the weekend. It was 11:50 and still there were no signs of the train. Usually, if a train is running behind schedule there is an announcement made but here there was none. One of the guys who saw the train schedule online said that the train was supposed to depart from Mt Prospect at 11:37 and that's when it occured to us that we had come to the wrong station!Prospect Heights instead of Mt Prospect.Phew! On weekends the frequency is not all that good so we finally caught the 12:37 train from Arlington Heights. The train was crowded for a weekend but it was great to see almost the entire train dressed in green for St. Patrick's Day. After we reached the rink it was time to put on the skating shoes! Boy! it was a struggle to stand straight after wearing those shoes so I was thinking how people do all that dance and stuff. In the beginning Humpty Dumpty had a great fall lot of times and one or two times Humpty even ensured that people close to him also fell down because he made contact with them when he fell down. The problem was the opposite also happened :(I went down because of somebody else's feather touch. Two things I clearly remember during my skating. One, a kid fell down and almost at the same time I also fell down. The kid was about to cry when his dad told him(pointing at me) see that guy also fell down :-). I guess I became an 'example' for that kid there :-). Two was the RJ's announcement that the Indian Supreme Court had dismissed the obscenity case against Richard Gere for kissing "Bollywood" actress Shilpa Shetty :D. After doing some skating with great music playing in the background I finally completed one full round without falling even once for which I must be applauded and rewarded:D.
After the skating we went to see the Chicago river which is dyed green for St Patrick's Day. I havent seen a "Green" river before but I think I like the traditional color more :-). On the way back the atmosphere in the train was truly electric with people making a lot of noise and one guy was happily drinking beer in the train. He was warned by the Conductor but he was so drunk that he said ok and went to sleep :D. All in all a great day but one thing I missed out on was "Green" beer :D.

Top 10 Hindi Movies of 2007

1. Taare Zameen Par
Great acting by everybody in the movie and of course superb direction! My favorite scene was the one in which Ishaan tells his bro that he bunked school and was roaming about on the streets. Many of the scenes especially the 3X9=3 scene reminded me of Calvin and Hobbes.

2. Bheja Fry
Remake of the French movie The Dinner Game(dont remember the exact french name).Vinay Pathak all the way! Best Scene: The scene in which Vinay Pathak explains Rajat Kapoor's nympho mistress what a particular word means :).

3. Johnny Gaddar
Liked Sriram Raghavan's first movie "Ek Haseena Thi". This one is even better with its pace and unpredictability.

4. Black Friday
Hard hitting docu drama which keeps you hooked right till the end.

5. ChakDe India
Komal Chautala's haryanvi dialogues and of course Preeti Sabharwal(Sagarika Ghatge) :)

6. Jab We Met
Hate to admit this but yes loved Kareena in the movie. This movie also made me unjoin the "I hate Kareena Kapoor" community :)

7. Life in a Metro
Best part of the movie- Irfan Khan and Konkana Sen Sharma. Best Scene: Irfan Khan bursts into tears and tells Konkana what will he do if his future wife doesnt allow him to meet Konkana :)

8. Guru
Best part of the movie- Abhishek and Ash's chemistry. Somehow, Mani Ratnam always manages to get the best out of his actors. Always preferred Sush over Ash but after this movie I am not sure whom I prefer :)

9. Manorama Six Feet Under
Inspired by Roman Polanski's Chinatown.Although Abhay Deol, Raima Sen and Gul Panag have acted well in the movie it's Vinay Pathak who stands out with his awesome dialogues and "Malpuwa":)

10. Honeymoon Travels Pvt Ltd
Loved the characters in the movie especially Kay Kay Menon and Raima Sen. I think the super hero track was a bit too much.

Besides these movies, I also liked Eklavya, Shootout at Lokhandwala, Ek Chalis ki last local, Bhool Bhulaiya, Risk and Traffic Signal. Overall, a good year for offbeat movies.

Yuvi and Dhoni's Dard-E-Disco

A day before the Perth test it became almost certain that Viru Sehwag would replace Yuvi in the team and this did happen when the team was chosen. While I was happy that one of my favorite players made it to the team after a long time I was disappointed that Yuvi had to sit out. What makes me sad is not that Yuvi is not playing but the fact that because of his exclusion he gets to spend time with Deepika Padukone .Deepika is in Australia for the shooting of a Yash Raj movie and recently celebrated her birthday with Yuvi in Sydney.
I think it is unfair that Yuvi has got rewarded for not playing well. Yuvi’s exclusion has obviously not gone well with me, some of my friends here and of course Mahendra Singh Dhoni. My theory on Yuvi’s exclusion is this. Yuvi is plain smart as he figured out even before the start of the series that if he didn’t play well in the first 2 matches he would be made to sit out and that would allow him to spend quality time with Deepika. Dhoni also realized this and so he also started to score less. Ultimately, in this battle of who scores LESS, Yuvi won and now he is out somewhere doing Dard-E-Disco with Deepika while Dhoni is doing Dard-E-Disco with RP Singh, Irfan Pathan and Ishant Sharma. Dhoni is all the more angry because from the beginning while the media kept linking Deepika with Dhoni it was Yuvi who was going out on long drives and dinner dates with Deepika. In December, Deepika even hosted Yuvi’s birthday party at a popular nightclub (Enigma) in Mumbai!
Agreed that the chances of Yuvi scoring against Deepika were more than Yuvi scoring against Australia but why should BCCI pay for all the fun that Yuvi is gonna have? :-)Keeping in mind Dhoni’s anger (and my anger) I would request BCCI to send Yuvi back to India :-).

Why starting a blog aint easy

I have been thinking of starting a blog since a long time now but laziness always got the better of me. Finally, I decided 2008 is gonna be the year for the launch of my blog and so, I kick started the process by signing up at blogger.com. While filling in the details the system asked me for the name of the blog and this is where I got stuck again. I hadnt thought of any name for my blog :-( !So, I went looking for help from the most helpful source in the world-Google. I googled in "How to name a blog" and I got http://elliottback.com/wp/archives/2004/12/21/what-do-you-call-your-blog/. According to the info here "blog" was the most commonly used word in a blog(phew!) followed by other words like life,weblog, world,from,thoughts etc. I thought I will try to give a different name to my blog, a name that should be crappy :-). I thought of various names such as Rava Masala Dosa,Much Ado about Nothing,Triple Schezwan Fried Rice,Idle Mind is a Devil's workshop, Laziness is Life and Asta La Vista I love Pasta. As you can see most of my names were food related and that pretty much also shows the thing I love the most in life. Anyway, that's a different topic altogether so I 'll leave it at that. I sent these names to 4 of my friends here with whom I interact daily and 2 of them said that "Na Champa Na Chameli" was the most suitable name for my blog! The 3rd friend liked Triple Schezwan and Asta La Vista and came up with some great names like Phata Poster Nikla Hero(from the movie Hero Hiralal) and Sooraj-Aditya-Johar-Bhansali(from the movie Love ke Liye Kuch Bhi Karega). The 4th one -my colleague here liked "Idle Mind is a Devil's workshop" the most and also added that it was apt for me considering the time I was spending on naming a blog :). After taking into account all of this I decided on Triple Schezwan Fried Rice. There's no particular reason for this. It's just that of all the names I had/heard I liked this one the most. Now that I have decided on the name it's time to think of a post for the blog. I dont know how much time that will take :-)