The Lonesome Road

India and Pakistan are back to doing what they do best - entertain people from around the world. Could not watch today’s match live because of college - but I did manage to catch the highlights. Was an interesting first few hours with the ball seaming around the place and a lot of near misses. In that sense, it was a good time for our bowlers and we made a few early breakthroughs.

However, once the early morning moisture wore off and pitch started slowing down, it was a different ball game altogether. When Inzi started taking charge, it looked like Pakistan would stage a recovery. Unfortunately for him, his partners felt the dressing room was a better place and kept getting out. And when Inzi got out - with the score at 156, most of us were confident we’d get them out soon. Kalam had other ideas. He took the attack to us - and the pitch wasn’t as conducive as it had been in the morning. Along with (decidedly nervous) tail enders, he managed to take the score past 300 before he was castled by a beautiful delivery by Balaji. That more or less wrapped up the innings for Pakistan. In the process Balaji picked up his first 5 wicket haul. Now all we need to do is bat sensibly for the next two days and try to bowl Pakistan out after that. Come on India!

It’s on bad, watching the match on DD. The problem lies in the show - optimistically called The Fourth Umpire that Doordarshan seems hell bent on inflicting on the helpless viewer. It “starts” Charu Sharma (ex star sports, ESPN), Krish Srikkanth (ex India player), Atul Wassan (who??) and some floozie whose only job is to smile and ask memorized questions. The “analysis” is bad and the show format is really, really boring. How I miss the telecasts on ESPN/Star where we had Boycott, Gavaskar, Shastri, et al.

Anshul put up a favorable review for Angels and Demons. When I get the time (hopefully in the next few days) - i’ll try to take it apart. Hey - need two sides to an argument right