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Friday, May 2, 2008

This is not cricket

Yesterday after winning the Rajasthan Royals vs Kolkata Daredevils game, RR teams captain, Shane Warne, blasted KKD captain Saurabh Ganguly for unsportsman like behavior.

His points,

1. Saurabh Ganguly came late both during RR's batting, making them wait in the sun, and also during his own teams batting.

2. Saurabh forced the Indian umpire to call for third umpire when he was caught out.

This stirred a hornet's nest. Suddenly, people belonging to Saurabh Ganguly's city started attacking Shane Warne, without even bothering to find out whether the incidents were true or not. While attacking they blabberred like anything, forgetting that they are on media and media was also led by a person of the same type. Let us go factual.

Arnab Dasgupta, News anchor of TimesNow, launched a scathing attack on Shane. In this he was supported by Boria Majumder, so called sports journalist of Time Now. Then they called in Joy something, Saurabh's coach from kolkata and he also blasted Shane.
As per Saurabh's coach, Graeme smith's word is not enough as Hansi Cronje, ex-captain of South Africa was guilty of match fixing. Stumps me. By this logic, his protege Saurabh, ex-captain of India, cannot be trusted as One of the Indian captains was also charged with match fixing.
Then Boria Majumder, wents on blabberring about what has happenned during India- Australia Tour.
And Arnab was blasting Shane Warne.

But all of them forgot to address the issues raised by Shane Warne. It was a typical nauseating regional chauvinism at display. Made more nauseating by the fact that one of the persons involved is a news anchor. It does raises doubts about all the news he reports.

The issues raised by Shane were answered by legendary Navjot singh sidhu on another news channel.
As per Sidhu, Saurabh always had a discipline problem. During England tour in infancy of his career, he refused to take drinks to the players on ground. Plus many more anecdotes were recounted by Sidhu showing the true nature of Saurabh Ganguly.
On the second charge, Sidhu said that Saurabh was within his rights to ask for the opinion of Third Umpire.

In this case, Third umpire, gave the benefit of doubt to Saurabh as to him catch was inconclusive. Funny. It was conclusive to commentators, leg umpire, millions of spectators watching on TV who saw the replay, but not to Arsad Rauf. Perhaps the gentleman needs a change of glasses.

Coming back to similar incidents, in the RR innings, Shane Watson was given LBW, when the replays showed that it was not lbw as he has nicked the ball before it touched the pad. Umpires game him out and he walked.

Similar incident had happenned with Rahul Dravid and he has also walked.

So why did Saurabh Ganguly do such thing? Reason lies in the personality of an individual. He thinks that he is beyond the game and the whole world should bow down to him and this is fed upon by his admirers of whom we have spoken above. And let us not forget that it is the same gang which came down heavily against Michael Stuart for staying on the crease after nicking a ball. Then Stuart was wrong, but this time Saurabh is right. What a joke? Looks like this anchor, sports journalist, keep different parameters for saurabh and another set for rest of the world.

Saurabh Ganguly said that 'claiming a dropped catch is not in the spirit of game'. Replays show, it was not dropped. And replays also showed that Shane Watson was not out of lbw, when Saurabh Ganguly and his team appealed and got him out.

Makes one wonder.

Saurabh Ganguly is the most successful test captain of India and he is at the fag end of his career. He started the IPL successfully, but in the second match which he won on his home ground, it was found that the pitch is broken and midway when his team was losing, lights went off breaking the concentration of his opponents. He won that game and after that has lost every match, inspite of having one of the best star studded teams of IPL.

Shane Warne, retired Australian player, got a team with only newcomers. His team even before the tournament started was written off by everyone. He is the coach and captain of his team. He has molded the team into one of the most powerful teams of IPL and is currently at no2 after the team led by MS Dhoni.

Is this riling Saurabh? God Knows, but somebody needs to tell Saurabh Ganguly that this is not cricket.

IPL also needs to apply its rules without discrimination. We cannot have Harbhajan singh disciplined and Saurabh Ganguly let off. But again, when Lalit Modi, commissioner of IPL is friend of Kolkata Knight Riders owner Shahrukh Khan, which was reported before the start of IPL at the auction time itself, then I think Saurabh will be let off. If he is not then Cricket will win else Corruption will win. It remains to be seen which one wins.

1 comment:

broca's area said...

very well analyzed!!!:))....saurav really is an arrogant person but since he is quite successful it nullifies it!![rule of nature]!!!