India will never win a World Cup..

Its sad but i feel its true.. India is only as good as a team like Sri Lanka, whose lone claim to fame was a by chance World Champions title. I am in sync with Mr. Malcom Speed who said India's last major victory was 1983 World Cup. That bought entire world's attention to India and thanks to some apt marketing techniques and some real real talents like Gavaskar, Kapil and Sachin, it stayed here. What have we done special apart from the lone victory?? A few tournaments here and there.. sparks of individual brilliance.. and rare sightings of TEAM INDIA.

Indian cricket doesn't need BCCI. It needs people like Saurav Ganguly, who provided us a glimpse of team India. In the current Indian team there is no one who can take on the mantle like he did and i see no promise in the near future as  well. I feel Indian cricket is going Indian tennis way. Gone  are the days  when we  were so so confident about them. In fact i feel more confident about our tennis players than our pack of blue. Its just so sad to see a country with richest cricket board and best talents to falter at each and every step.

"Phir se aayega India"  claimed a US based MNC. They care shit about cricket in general and Indian cricket in particular. They need visibility and India's success and failure provide them with ample opportunities.

We are a nation of billion and some of us will always believe that India is one of the world's best team. They still belive that India can do it in 2007. BCCI can only promise. They can never deliver. Guys.. we could be world's richest team.. we could be world's most endowed team.. but in no way world's best team.

Politics plays a very big role in india and its really really sad that its has ruined our opportunities to become a world class team. Kapil's team bought hope to millions, which produced a Sachin,a dravid and a ganguly. But we weren't able to build on that. What we really built was BCCI corpus which benefited all but Indian cricket and Indian cricket fans.

Our generation is still being deprived of what generation of 1983 did. The joy and proud to be Indians. I feel Sania, Leander and Mahesh Bhupathi have not cheated us in this respect.

I feel that we should look beyond cricket.

Book Fair in Maidan: No... in Bypass: Noway..

I feel we as Calcuttans should grow. If we can accept Kolkata instead of Calcutta. If we can accept to being Kolkatans then why we cannot shift the grand carnival of annual Book Fair away from already choking maidan and central kolkata. I agree book fair is our heritage. But we should understand that both book fair and maidan are our heritage and both should be protected. Sadly for us, the state of affairs do not allow them to co-exist. So it is better to divorce them where after they can  exist happily ever after.

A grand carnival like book fair attracts business and it also attracts numerous difficulties. Try passing the maidan area  during book fair days by bus and you will understand what i mean. Even you if you are not a part of fair, don't intend to go to the fair, you will have to suffer the long traffic snarls for no fault of yours. Heritage is not this taxing. Even inside the fair the atmosphere is choking. Maidan is no longer a green piece of land and millions of hoofs spreading dust, eateries spewing smoke and garbage, make shift toilets adding manure to maidan is all what you will notice first.

So the next question is if not maidan then where??? People are suggesting EM Bypass. Is some one nuts or crazy?? You mean shift all the madness to EM Bypass so the time when people are moving out and into Salt lake they suffer the same as people traveling from and to central kolkata used to?? Is it their time to suffer now??

I feel its time for Book Fair to move indoors. We too like Delhi book fair should move to indoors like Pragati Maidan. But we don't have any such place in Kolkata?? I know. So what the Booksellers and Publisher guild wants?? A free lunch?? Why cant they contribute and construct a book plaza kind of thing. Book fair can continue all year round and would be much more sleek and enjoyable.

Poor Sachin ....

My heart really goes out for Sachin.. had he been part of team like Australia or even South Africa, his greatness would have been perceived and appreciated in a much global way.

Sachin is not a match winner.. tell me one player who is?? No body can win a match on his own. He needs support from his teammates. This is perhaps the reason that players with half or even a quarter of Sachin's brilliance command a "match winner" tag. The prime reason being their 40's & 50's & 60's count. Sachin's exploits on the other hand added to his individual tally only. Sachin hardly received any support from team India. I still remember I used to say if Pakistan could score 180+ Wasim and Waqar would win the match for Pakistan. I've myself seen many matches were 180+ and so was a winning total. Pakistan was hard to beat. But neither Indian bowlers had performed to defend nor other batsman have had supported Sachin. He was supposed to bat India out of trouble almost every time.

Sachin did his best to deliver the performance desirous of him. But it takes two to tango. Atleast two. Saurav did supported Sachin on the batting front for long and also Rahul but that  was it. Who can forget, we were unable to score 20 odd runs after Sachin got out against Pakistan. Such a shame.

I pray Sachin if  is re-born as a cricketer, may he be born in any country other than India.