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I am game to holding people to a higher standard, especially those snarly ruthless politicians since they are coaxing and cajoling me to reach the highest office. Even I was shocked to find myself outside of the political realm and moving into another realm altogether. I could hear Rod Serling voiceover in the background - you unlock this door with the key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension, a dimension of sound, a dimension of sight, a dimension of mind. You just entered the twilight zone of - Professional sports!

That’s right ladies and gentlemen - Professional sports! Today, it’s not as easy as throwing marbles or playing sticks, is it? It’s highly complicated and life consuming. We are talking about putting people on a pedestal, holding them accountable, and expecting them to dole out miracles everyday. Even Jesus Christ didn’t have this kind of pressure on him to perform miracles every day. And sports fans, oh we are ever so picky and downright hypocrites.

Hypocrite! Me, you say. Yeah! You and me both darling! Let’s look at some of the recent events that rocked the sports world. Sure, I exaggerate a little bit, but, you know me - what’s life without a little drama. Manny Ramirez, for those of you who don’t know him, is arguably the best right hand hitter in baseball, goes from Boston to LA and Boston fans hate him like he’s their evil Mother-in-law and cry foul. Should Sourav Ganguly be playing or sitting it out? Is he being selfish for wanting to play? Australian cricket team decides to travel to India, but not to Pakistan and Jones cries foul - they are doing it only for the money and not for security reasons. Finally, the outcry over IPL - players are selling their souls and doing it for the money. How can we lose our culture and do such a thing? What’s this country coming to?

Let’s look at the logic here. What’s wrong with playing for the money? We all do it, but only when we do it, we claim a noble goal (career growth, right opportunity - fill in the blank with your favorite cause here). The noble and not-for-profit messiah Jones himself did play for the money and continues to do so even today. Why else did he leave a trail of vomit at Chepauk like a scavenger hunt gone bad and continued to play?

It’s easy to critic Manny, Sourav, Australian team and players in the IPL, but, it’s downright hypocritical for you and me to question it and pretend that we don’t / won’t do the same. Let’s not kid ourselves. We’d jump ship too if someone offers 100% or 200% more money to do the same job, or pay 50% more than the next person for the same house. Not one of us will say, Oh no! I’ll only take half that money because I like charity. Of course, you are exempted if you are doing real charity work.

Let’s stop holding sports stars to a higher standard that we won’t hold ourselves to. They are, after all, human. And please, let’s stop pretending that it degrades our culture. Unless you are a Martian and you just landed here, you are no different than the next Joe Sport and it’s not detrimental to our culture any more than you switching houses.

What do you think? Are you a hypocrite or did you just land here?

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A lot has been written and talked about the poor standard of umpiring in the ongoing 2^nd test between India and Australia. There were at least 4 bad decisions during Australia’s innings – 3 going against India and 1 against the Aussies.

One was a very blatant out – the Symonds catch by Dhoni. Symonds accepted as much later – that he knew there was an edge.

Here comes the question – Should a batsman walk when he knows he is out? I can hear the standard arguments from both sides.

Not Walk -

• One should not, because things will eventually even out and there have been instances when a batsmen has been wrongly given out
• There is too much at stake – both monetarily and patriotically and it is hard for the batsmen to walk out

Walk -

• It is a gentleman’s game highlighted by individuals such as Gundappa Viswanath who has always walked when he knew he was out. Glichrist is known to do the same today
• Cricketers – fielder’s bowlers and batsmen owe it to the game to make the job of the umpire easier etc.

With all this there is a push for more use of technology available and options for captains to use a ‘challenge’ twice during an innings (like it is available in Amercian football today).

Given the high stakes of these matches, I am a fan of using technology and anytime an umpire has a doubt, he/she has to refer it to the 3^rd umpire. The captain’s challenge can come above and beyond this. Note that even with this there is no guarantee that the 3^rd umpire will get things right as noted by Symonds’s stumping decision – he was given not out when it seems like he was out (though I have to agree that the decision was extremely close). But we can eliminate a big chunk of the mistakes by leveraging technology. What is your opinion?

While watching the highlights on youtube, there was an interesting comment by Harsha Bhogle and it goes something like this – The Aussies and particularly Ponting expect the batsmen to trust the fielder when a catch is in doubt - i.e, if it is not clear if the fielder pouched the ball before a bounce on the turf. If Aussies expect batsmen to trust the fielder and take the fielder’s word at face value, should an Aussie batsmen also not walk off the field when he knows he is out? Is there a double standard? I believe there is. What do you think?

Ganesh

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• Fond farewell to Shane Warne and Glen McGrath. Both retiring at the top of their game and more importantly on their own terms.
• Things that I have been forced to look up on the internet or learn based on my daughter’s constant barrage of questions –
  • Difference between a moth and butterfly
  • Is Penguin a bird or mammal
  • How many mammals lay eggs?
  • What is a starfish made of?

Of course, for almost all of them Wikipedia is the source of answer. Came across this interesting site while searching for origins of the word “tutu”. This site also as interesting information about the word.

• My DISH network receiver is broken and I have been waiting for a new one to arrive for the past 10 days. This has forced me to read more books and spend more “quality” time with my daughter.
• Just finished reading Moneyball which has been generously referred more than once in “Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths, and Total Nonsense”. Moneyball is about how the Oakland Athletics baseball team is able to succeed as a small budget/small market team against the bigger budget teams. Very interesting read, and though it is about a baseball team, it is more about data – importance of collecting the right set of data and coming up with the right set of formulas to analyze them to make scientifically sound judgments. It is also about how not to get caught with historical perspectives just because that is the way things were always done or seems like it should be done.
• Talking about collecting data and putting them to good use, watched Kinsey recently. Dr. Kinsey in order to understand human sexual behavior, started collecting data in unorthodox ways, and this was around 1947, a time when any talk about sex was taboo.
• Other movies I watched recently –
  • Groomsmen – Movie about 30 something’s getting together for one of their buddy’s marriage. Proves that a decent movie could be made for 3 million dollars. Watch the bonus feature with commentary by Ed Burns were he describes the optimizations used to control the budget of the movie
  • Monster House – A good kid’s movie with great CGI. However, unlike traditional CG movies that primarily has animal(s) as the central character, this one has computer generated humans playing that role. Day is not far away when actors will not be needed to make movies L
  • Pirates of the Carribean - Dead Man’s Chest – Not as good as Part One, but still “savvy” enough only due to Johnny Depp.
• After a lot of research and time on the internet (which only leaves you more confused), bought my first DSLR – Olympus E-500 that comes with 2 zuiko lenses. Very excited about this purchase and who knows – I may even post a few photographs.

Happy 2007!!

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