A great TEST

Gautam Gambhir becomes a Test batsman!!! 

Being the purist that I am, I have never been a great fan of Gambhir's batting. He is one of those modern era batsmen who believes in scoring runs as opposed to having a tight technique. The present generation of batsmen have bloated averages, in spite of below-average technique, due to a number of factors - small grounds, flat tracks, lack of good fast bowling pairs, dearth of quality spinners and most importantly availability of protective gear. (Imagine, if there were no helmets, would Gambhir even think of trying to jump out of the crease to a new ball bowler??!!)

The second test between India and NZ was a weird one! The track at Mclean Park was as flat as a pancake, with absolutely nothing for the fast bowlers early on, or spinners later in the test. India was extremely over confident for the first three days and paid dearly for it. If India had taken all their chances while fielding, they would have bowled out NZ for the next test as well! The batting display was still worse, reeking of arrogance, with almost everyone getting out playing a bad shot. However in the second innings, Gambhir and Dravid swallowed their pride, and played gutsily to salvage a draw.

While Dravid hardly played a false stroke, Gambhir was not timing the ball well for a long time. His confidence was low, and he could not hit his way out trouble this time. True, the NZ bowling attack is the not the greatest in the world and it was one of best possible fourth day surface to bat on. But still, for Gambhir to play the way he did, was quite surprising. It is no joke to bat for close to 11 hours in any kind of surface, not to talk about the pressure of a 314 run deficit. Gambhir played the knock which defines a test batsman - an innings to save a test match, a battle against time. It was not a very fluent innings, but he showed a lot of grit, determination and courage. He was also lucky in the sense that he had Dravid and Sachin - two of the greatest stalwarts of test cricket in our times - to bat along with. This was followed by a Laxman masterclass - he is just a wizard! His touches are magical, placements accurate, timing immaculate and with that lazy elegance, he continues to enthrall people wherever he goes.

To be fair to NZ, they played extremely well, especially coming back from a defeat and 23/3 in the first morning. NZ is not a particularly talented side, but if they are anything, they are a bunch of triers. They do their basics right and you don't often see NZ getting thrashed though they do lose quite a lot. Their huge problem is their bowling line up. They don't have enough fire power to bowl out a good batting side twice, which makes it impossible for them to win games. 

This match wasn't exactly great in the sense that it didn't produce a nail-biting contest, but it was good to see a game that was really competitive in the final two days. The match was bound to be a draw thanks to an absolutely dead pitch. But India managed to dig a huge hole and jumped into it, but played heroically to get out of the hole!

Old Memories ...

Today morning, when I was flipping channels while watching the match, I stopped at a vaguely familiar scene. A guy was standing in a river, face not clear - with Yesudass singing in the background. It took me a couple of seconds before I could recognize the aalaapanai - It was the song "kamalam paadha kamalam" from the movie moga mull. I love this song - brilliant rendition by Yesudass, pleasing but not too great lyrics, and amazing composition by IR. In fact, I like every song from this album (Sollayo vaai thirandhu, nenjey gurunatharin). The movie as such is a bore - but at least would have done justice to the novel by T.Janakiraman. This was one of those IR's carnatic-based classics,  and has prompted me to download songs from this movie and also from the movie Shankarabaranam.

This incident rekindled a lot of old memories and thoughts. When I was a kid I used to be surprised that most of the English movies that I saw, didn't have any songs as such. In the middle of the movie, no one used to jump out and sing a song. (I hadn't seen many musicals when I was a kid, I still haven't seen many!) After a point, I used to wonder, why people don't sing a song, say, when they are sad, in real life! Pondering about it now, I know very few movies in Tamil film industry that are devoid of songs. 

In fact, one of the biggest criticisms of tamil movies and other Indian movies, as well, is that, songs in a movie make it unrealistic - so why then do people use it? To me, the answer is very simple. Why should movies be realistic in the first place? All that matters is logical consistency, and not realism. Making a film is an art and it is upto the director to convey his thoughts on a film reel. Just like an artist who is allowed to use any colour to express his feelings, the director can choose any form of expression. Songs are exceptionally good at conveying emotions and are very powerful forms of expression in the sense they can stick to your mind better than, say, a dialogue. Of course, what I am against is the current trend where songs are placed in the movie just for the heck of it and nobody cares a rat's ass as to what it conveys. 

This prompted me to think of movies which would have been otherwise unknown if not for the music. I guess the same could be said of most of the movies of the mid-eighties and early nineties. So many movies would have been a huge flop had it not been for IR or Rahman. Actors like (mike)Mohan, (G)Ramarajan, would have gone into oblivion, but for IR! Will people even remember movies like Mr. Romeo, Kaadhalan, Kaadhal Desam if not for Rahman?!

I guess this one random post where I have started writing thinking of one thing and ended on a completely different note. A good, fruitful waste of a morning! ;-)

Section 49-O

Sitting jobless at home in the afternoon gives me a lot of time with nothing to do. My morning ritual has been to get up late and then have a late brunch and then keep flipping the 24x7 news channels. With the general elections around the corner, the news channels provide me with variety entertainment. 

Before I start, I want to say that I belong to this group of "educated voters" who can think, analyze and decide and vote based upon that decision. Sadly, the majority from my group think, analyze and decide, but never vote. People from my group take the extremely rational view of the whole issue and hence like Dostoevsky's Underground Man, do nothing about it. ("How-can-my-one- single-vote-make-any-difference?-It-doesn't-matter" kind of attitude)

Having said that, what does a rare "educated voter"- who actually wants to vote - do, when he/she does not want any of the candidates to win the election? Hypothetically speaking, if we had a considerable percentage of the electors who do not want any of the candidates contesting in that constituency to win, what then is the solution? 

A section of the Constitution of India, The Conduct of Election Rules (1961), governs the elections in our country. This set of rules has a particular rule which addresses the case of an elector not wanting to vote, which I quote :

"49-O. Elector deciding not to vote.-If an elector, after his electoral roll number has been duly entered in the register of voters in Form-17A and has put his signature or thumb impression thereon as required under sub-rule (1) of rule 49L, decided not to record his vote, a remark to this effect shall be made against the said entry in Form 17A by the presiding officer and the signature or thumb impression of the elector shall be obtained against such remark."

I see two problems as such with this rule. First, the elector has to inform the presiding officer that he doesn't want to cast a vote which goes against the secrecy of ballot. Second and the most important point, the non-vote is not taken into account and just an entry is made some register. The non-votes do not count towards the election results. So the elector who doesn't want any of the candidates to get elected and someone who is sincere enough to go to the polling booth to say so does not matter! So if an elector thinks all the candidates are unworthy, then he might as well sit at home and not go to the polling booth at all! (Of course, there is the problem of someone else casting your vote, which is very difficult to talk about. So I confine my arguments to a hypothetical, ideal scenario!)

Supposing, in that hypothetical constituency, if more than 50% of the electors decide to cast a "no vote", then the voice of the majority of the electors is entirely useless! So one might think that a possible solution is to bring in a clause which says something like, if more than 50% of the electors in a constituency decide to cast a "no vote" then all the candidates must be disqualified and a new set of candidates should contest in a re-election. 

At first, this seems to be a fair enough solution. But on giving it a bit of thought, it is just a way of postponing the inevitable, with only a more expensive ordeal! Considet me, I do not even know who the candidates in my consituency are, and all that matters to me is which party is going to form the cabinet. Even if that means I am not an "educated voter", what I am trying to say is, majority of the people vote for the party than for the individual. (I am not denying that there exist people who vote for the individual in their constituency as against the party as such, but my opinion is that most people vote for the party of the prime ministerial candidate whom they want to win). So if I do not want any of the present prime ministerial candidates to win, I still can't do anything about it, as in the re-election only candidates from the same party are going to contest!

 

What, then, is a solution to this issue? I am afraid, there can be no perfect solution to this problem. On a personal level, I have to resort to deciding between who is the lesser of the evils and vote for that person. (I have quite a bit of problem in deciding that!)

On a more personal, biased and controversial note, I feel democracy is a farce! Simply because, I feel it is not only improbable, but impossible for a billion people to agree on one single person to lead a country. Just imagine, if democracy were to be the idea behind choosing an Indian cricket team, I am sure we would have no single majority and we would never be able to agree on one particular team! So how then are we going to agree on a cabinet of ministers??!

(We could possibly go back to monarchy! Our rajas and sultans weren't that bad after all. Anyways that is what is happening in our country today!)