Death of a Professor

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The brutally slaughtered Professor Harbhajan Singh Sabharwal never gave me classroom lectures. Neither did he solicitously provide me career advice. In fact, outside the academic fraternity of Ujjain, he was perhaps just a simple middle - class family man , low profile and living a modest existence of a professor a few months shy of retirement. . But last Saturday, as a frenzied mob of irate students of Ujjain , visibly bursting with incendiary fury and seething with incalculable rage callously hammered him to death, he has overnight become a national symbol of our disintegrating culture, caught on candid camera as he collapsed into a tragic limp heap, motionless . I am compelled , by an imperceptible surge to remember another professor. Professor Diwakar Jha. A teacher. And my father. Father's Day for me , in our rain-washed metropolis , is a wet manifestation of the onset of the....

Impotent cricket council? Or plain stupid!

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At least currently the most famous Darrell in the universe can boast of hair, but the game's so-called highest governing body , the ICC, has at best revealed it's shining bald plate, bereft of simple common-sense, lacking an iota of basic intelligence, and perhaps most horribly, being egregiously unethical. I personally feel that in the interest of the game at large, on account of abdicating responsibility, delaying prompt justice and encouraging back-door political manouevering , the current ICC management must take full ownership and collectively hang their head in silent shame. Because unlike the two principal protagonists in this War of the Worlds, Darrell Hair and Inzaman-ul-Haq, it is the ICC in fact, through it's unprofessional, incompetent and incongruous dilly-dallying in resolving the ball-tampering issue which has " brought the game into disrepute ". Since that dramatic ball-fingering incident , much soiled and slushy water has flown under....

8/20 -- Cricket's equivalent of 9/11

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It was a catastrophe of cataclysmic proportions at the Oval stadium last evening; an out-of-the-blue-accusation of ball tampering, penalty imposed, protest staged, drama hanging temporarily in animated suspension, and then after prolonged deliberations behind closed doors, for the first time in Test history a truncated match awarded to a team, struggling to stay afloat. Decided by stodgy, defiant umpires. End of story! By the time you will read this, cricket analysts will have poured out encyclopedic research on Australian umpire Darrell Hair's alleged prejudices against the brown-skinned Marauders of Multan and Sultans of swing, the Pakistanis, their close cousins in the ever-affable Sri Lankans, and of course, the proverbial sacrificial goats, India. Sunil Gavaskar will be on every conceivable TV channel reminiscing his brisk walkathon at Melbourne in the sober company of Chetan Chauhan , whereby he miraculously missed stealing Inzaman-ul Haq'a dubious, debatable, and daring sobriquet of being....

How India can win the World Cup: John Wright

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So erstwhile coach John Wright got so exasperated with Virender Sehwag's natural instincts, he almost thrashed the stout, brawny, beefy Nawab of Najafgarh in the dressing room in England in 2002. Now how in heavens has this so- far- concealed- act- of classic Kiwi aggression been suddenly let out of the Pandora's box? Obviously, in Wright's just published memoirs when handling a band of highly talented and equally unpredictable Indian cricketers during sweltering moments appropriately titled Indian Summers (albeit it reminds of high-priced Indian restaurants in downtown Manhattan). Now surely if the deceptively genial looking Wright believed that as a coach he could have his paroxysms of temperamental outbursts, I am hardly surprised that the Indians cussed under their breath and redefined many of Wright's ancestral and family relationships using colourful local dialect. But more on that later. Imagine the scenario vividly in your graphic mind. Wright....

Being John is my right!

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Philip Kotler, the great marketing guru, was in town recently lecturing Indian marketing professionals and brand managers on concepts, positioning and strategy. I have a sneaking suspicion that the former Indian cricket coach, the Kiwi John Wright, was hurriedly taking notes, surreptitiously and incognito. Everything about John Wright's book has a methodical marketing mind behind it; the title (Indian Summers), the launch (pre-Champions Trophy in October later this year in India), the pre-release publicity being done by the publishers (juicy excerpts are floating around with insouciant ease). But pray, what exactly are we getting so excited about? Just what is that big bombshell USP about Wright's cricketing experiences which has been so generously leaked? So Wright says that the selectors were happily doing their own number, promoting their own back street boys. Now how in heavens is that "breaking news"? In fact, this is such hackneyed stuff that....