Tittle-Tattle

This IPL's television coverage is all screwed up. What a sentence to start a blog! But really, they are messing it up a lot. The host commentators are all amateur including Ajay Jadeja. May be I am so used to Harsha Bhogle. But surely, Max thinks that putting pretty faces can do it for them. They started with one face earlier (Yeah, Ms. Bedi) and now there are plenty. And they all slip and flip on their words, switch overs and match each other in asking silly questions. I wonder why I have not seen Sunil Gavaskar in the studios. Coming back to the point, there is no sync between there various departments, including the audio and video department. Once we could see Symonds and the commentator talking but couldn't hear them and on another occasion the video showed players warming up while the audio was from the toss. And then it seemed that the host commentators heard and saw everything correctly, no apology for the mixup. The camera men frequently lose track of the ball especial...

Sunil Gavaskar came to our office campus today for some promotion. And we got a chance to hear him. Me and Veetrag went together to see him. We didn't bring our cameras and we didn't have anything appropriate to take autograph on (and not even a pen). Luckily, people arranged for some notebooks and pens in the audi and Veetrag's w700i worked as our camera. Since Gavaskar retired some 20 years ago so the junta which turned up on time was mostly from that era when he played. But later on the hall was full with people from all ages. The Gavaskar I saw right there speaking in front of me was a little different. When I looked up at the screen behind him, the Gavaskar in that looked familiar. I am so much used to his on screen presence I must say. Some very candid discussion on all aspects of (mostly Indian) cricket happened. He fielded all the questions very coolly and I felt good seeing and listening him. I asked a question (why no triple hundreds from Indians (only one ...

The presentation ceremony today for the India-West Indies cricket match was quite interesting. Some 15-20 people (dignitaries) were standing there on the dais, or probably more, including two ministers. What for? To give out some 3 awards to the man of the match. Lot of big people in Orissa! And what is this Tripti Foods? Their CEO was also named there, last match also some similar company's CEO was there. Both seem to be related to Pepsi. Tried googling without success. My guess - local franchises of Pepsi and misuse of sponsorship rights. Hope its not true, but still the crowd on the dais is annoying, especially when there's nothing much to do. With each of these ODI centers getting matches after a long time (3 years+)... nobody knows when the next time will come. But then how does BCCI manages maintaining such huge lights put for day-night matches when they can give a match to this venue once in every three years only. Or may be they are used for local matches like Ranj...