The return of my first love.....
Hmmm........Hmmm..........Ok, I have absolutely no idea how to start this blog so this will have to do.
In fact, this blog owes its existence to a friend of mine who has been bugging me to start blogging again.

Dude, there was a reason I was not blogging! I felt that I didn't really have anything to write about which people would be interested in reading. So, if I bore some of you with this blog, you know who to blame. Of course, if some of you like it, the credit still goes to me- after all, I'm the one writing it...
Anyhow, enough of that. Back to business.
Since I can't figure out what to write about in this blog, I guess I'll just have to write whatever comes to mind.
As a tribute to the guy who's making me write this blog in the first place, I'll start off with cricket.
After coming here, my interest in cricket, which was already waning in India, had drastically reduced.
But recently, there has been a sudden upsurge due to a combination of factors. First of all, I was lucky enough to stumble across a website that was offering the India-England series for 10 bucks. And however much the passion for cricket may have dwindled, this was a deal too good to resist.
Of course, the URL crickettv.ath.cx raised doubts about the legality of the enterprise, but, in the end, who cares? :)
So, I purchased the series for 10 bucks, and even those we split among 5 PIGS(for the uninitiated, PIGS= Poor Indian Graduate Students, in which I use poor in every sense of the word).
So,after many months, I and cricket met again. Thankfully, my cricket gods, who had been enjoying an extended vacation for the past few months, got their act together pretty quickly, and chose to bestow on me four consecutive India wins. Of course, coming off such a long rest, their performance wasn't spotless, and they had a major failure when they got Sachin Tendulkar injured. Ah well....they'll improve with time I suppose-hopefully Sachin will be back after the Windies tour.

As for the series itself. The Indian team has been performing pretty consistently in ODI's for some time now which augurs well for the upcoming World Cup. (It's pretty amazing how cricket WC's, which happen once in 4 yrs., always seem around the corner. Seems just like y'day when the whole bunch of us in the IITK Audi were egging on the rain in the WC final). For once, the Indian team has a pool of players that can be called on to perform when needed.
A lot of credit for this goes to Chappell, who came to coach this Indian side under a fair bit of pressure, having taken over from Wright, who had done a pretty fair job himself. There was a huge media circus when the coach was being chosen and Chappell's proposed "hi-tech" methods came under a lot of scrutiny. Especially when our resident joker Mohinder Amarnath(he has a history with the work "joker"-if you don't know what I am talking about,look it up) proudly displayed his inability to handle computers to contrast it with Chappell's. I mean, I can't figure out what he's so proud about in that. Using computers and data analysis sort of stuff is an added asset Chappell had, it's not like that's the only skill he had(compare his record with that of Amarnath's and you'll see what I'm talking about).
Anyway, after all this, Chappell has come in and done a great job. One thing he has brought into this Indian cricket team is professionalism. The thing that I admire Chappell most for is the way he has dealt with Ganguly. Chappell and Ganguly were supposed to be all chummy and Ganguly is supposed to have played a hand in Chappell's appointment. But when it came to choosing the best team, Chappell wasn't reluctant to kick Ganguly out. Hats off to him for that. But that's all I'll say about Chappell...for more about him...look at the blog "It's all about the game" in my blogroll.
So,back to the games. The good thing is that the new guys are putting up their hands and doing the work. Dhoni, for all his unorthodox batting, has amazingly climbed to number one in the ICC ODI rankings. You keep thinking that with his technique, bowlers will sort him out soon enough, but thankfully, it hasn't happened yet. And Yuvraj, is (finally) making the transition from a "talent" to a "performer". Add to that the emergence of Raina and possibly Powar(I still have plenty of doubt about that though), and India has a nice core of young guys. And of course, I have neglected to mention Pathan who's been a major part of the Indian team for some time now.Apart from performing consistently as a swing bowler, he has also been making a substantial amount of runs up the order, giving the "think-tank" the flexibility of playing with the batting order when required.

All these things make me think that perhaps, by the time the World Cup comes, India will have a side with fairly young players, but these players will have had a fair amount of experience.
Having said that, let's see how many of these guys actually make it to the World Cup. When new guys come in and perform, there's always this feeling that they are going to make it big, but somehow, a lot of them fall by the wayside.

Enough about Indian cricket. Now, about me. I have started playing cricket here in Ann Arbor!!! This is about the last thing I imagined myself doing in Ann Arbor.....but as they say, life is what happens to you when you are busy making other plans...
Anyway,it's a lot of fun. Granted, I usually just stand around and escort the ball to the boundary when it comes near me, but still, it's fun, I tell you.

Well, I think that this much is about enough for one blog....I think that another one should be coming up pretty soon...till then, ciao!!!