World Cup loses its most exciting team

In sport as in war, victory and defeat is delivered on the field much later than it occurs in the mind. Last night's quarterfinals between Argentina and Germany was lost in the South Americans' mind much before the penalties. They never seemed to recover from Klose's header in the 80th minute when they were already beginning to imagine their victory celebrations. I cringed at Klose's header. Reminded me of the FA Cup Final this year when West Ham thought they had won it only to be hit by a sucker punch by Gerrard. Here the characters were different but the denouement pretty much the same.

The turning point of the match for me took place in Pekerman's head. It came in the 72nd minute when Pekerman decided that he had won the match and he just had to protect his lead. He made a defensive move by bringing on Cambiasso for Riquelme. A midfield lock in front of his defense vs. a creative fountain behind his attack. Not satisfied by this, he inexplicably brought on Julio Cruz for Crespo instead of unleashing Messi on the Germans. The latter would have been a menace and would have distracted the Germans from the imminent task of equalizing - thus closing the game for Argentina in normal time. This, however, was not to be and the world was robbed of a true talent's performance and of a great team in the final.

Once Germany equalised, Argentina had no way of coming back. Short of their creative spark and lacking ideas upfront (in Messi's absence) they looked lost in extra time. Penalties were a formality - anyone who could read their body language could make out that they had lost the match in their mind.

It comes down to one man's decision. Last night, Pekerman gave in to his defensive instincts and the whole nation will pay the price for the next 4 years.

It comes down to the mind. Seeing their visions of victory evaporate with Klose's header and missing their creative catalyst, Argentina lost the match much before Cambiasso hit the ball in Lehmann's grateful arms.

Working with clay: Our experience from a Summer Camp in India

Education in India needs several leg-ups. One of the most apparent ones is the lack of education for 40% of our population who are classified as 'illiterate'. Second, where a lot of private enterprise is being seen over the past few years, is to improve the quality of education among the 60% who are getting it. A recent survey conducted by the Department of Education, Govt. of Maharashtra realised that among those people who were officially classified as literate (based on the 3 R's) only abt 20% could do simple arithmetic or write their name - An alarming statistic, if it is representative of the country!!

Anyways, cutting to the chase, during our sabbatical from work last year, we decided to stop thinking and discussing these things and start doing something about it. From there, emerged the idea of utilizing the summer vacations to spend some time with kids. We wanted to focus on small town kids because the Metros have gotten enough of these things.

Over emails and virtual chats, we clarified the objective of this exercise in our mind. What did we really want to achieve? What did we want the kids to take away? How do we define success? There are so many things that you can do, so many avenues to explore, so many topics to cover making this the toughest and the longest part of our journey.

Eventually, we got down to saying that if we can show the kids a world beyond their textbooks, leave them with some tools to make learning fun and we get a sense of fulfillment out of it - THAT'S SUCCESS!!

The nitty gritties of which place, how many days, how many kids, the menu, transportation, agenda etc followed and suddenly it was 9th June. We had 17 kids in our hands and felt like potters working with clay :-)

What followed was 5 days of immense learning for us. We discovered reserves of patience that we did not know existed. We encountered countless questions from the kids - some of which left us scrambling into the deepest recesses of our minds & memories. We experienced parenting and the emotional highs & lows attached to it. It was an emotional roller coaster.....

The lows were handling kids patently lacking in manners - misbehaving & abusing their room mates, cheating in the games, creating a mess in their rooms, creating a fuss over food and generally carrying a sense of entitlement around themselves. They typically happened to be male kids from non-working mothers.

The highs were the conversations - How can we see Jupiter? What is that shining thing next to it? What is a black hole? What is a supernova? Is sun bigger than Pole Star? Is a galaxy bigger or a constellation? The Berlin wall is in Berlin, right? Is a tetra-pack bio-degradable?

It was amusing to see the sense of competition so deeply ingrained in them. Anything that won them points was important, anything that didn't was a chore. Their smiles when they won and their dropped heads when they lost were emotions of such contrast that we found it hard to maintain our equanimity.

But the biggest reward was their unwillingness to go home on the penultimate day. The camaraderie that got established between them over the 5 days was amazing. When we saw them exchanging phone no.s, emails (the few who had access to the net) and addresses - we thought maybe, just maybe, we have begun what could be a life long association.

At the end, for a first attempt - this was great! We had a lot of fun and left the camp with an overwhelming sense of fulfillment. And the kids responded positively to our stimuli. They had a great time playing the learning games, many took to reading beyond their text books - some doing it for the first time!, others started looking at the sky with new eyes - trying to see whether it was Ursa Major or Minnor, still others promised to imprint the world map on the retina of their mind.

There is a sense of power and responsibility when you are dealing with kids. They are like clay and you feel like the Potter who can give them any shape. It's scary and empowering in equal measure.

The stupidity of reservations

The shameless attempts by the Congress and Aligarh Muslim University to accord it minority institution status and thereby reserve 50% of the seats for Muslims flies in the face of India's claim to be a secular state.

What is the need for such reservations?

If universal education at the primary level is the goal of the Government, shouldn't this enable everyone - irrespective of caste, creed or religion - a platform from where to find their deserved position in the society in a meritocracy? Where then, is the role for reservations at the Higher Education level? What's the overall strategy here?

If someone is not capable of getting into an insitute of Higher Education, what is the purpose of providing him the crutches of reservation? Won't this merely delay his eventual settling down to his steady state where his job/role fits his capabilities?

Vote bank politics is screwing the country and no one is thinking of the long term implication of such short sighted appeasements. Tomorrow, if Benaras Hindu University reserves 50% seats for Hindus, will it be acceptable?

People asking for reservations on each and every count of caste, religion and region is a dangerous trend that can tear the unifying fabric of the coutry (or whatever remains of it).

Can someone drill some sense into Arjun Singh, the HRD Ministry, the Congress and the Government? Manmohan Singh and P Chidambran - two of our learned politicians and our hope - are you listening?

An Agitated Me

All's well?

India has won 6-1. Right? Wrong. Sri Lanka has lost 1-6. And that causes me to put a pause to the euphoric celebrations going around in the country.

We have 4-5 match winners now. Right? Maybe. The debutants have admittedly made better contributions than performances by earlier experiments. Still, I have a bit of a question mark over MS Dhoni given that his success owes as much to Sri Lanka's profligacy in the field than his clean hitting. Raina, Venugopal, RP Singh and Sreesanth need to prove themselves against quality opposition and that too, outside India before their promise starts deserving reputations. Only Irfan Pathan seems to have added a batting dimension to his contribution to the team.

In International Cricket, consistency separates champions from the pretenders. India needs to show that they have truly turned the corner by repeating their performance against South Africa, Pakistan, England and West Indies. Then we can start talking about being World beaters, champions or other such terms. Else, we'll soon start hearing about the danger of 'wholesale changes' & 'tinkering' if South Africa 'finds us out'.

Zaheer Khan needs to be brought back and the support staff should work with him to improve his fitness. He is a quality fast bowler and with teams such as South Africa, Pakistan and England we'll miss him. Sreesanth & RP Singh might even benefit from his presence and India could rotate them as per the situation in the series.

Another player we still miss is a quality spinner to support Bhajji. Murali seems like a stop gap arrangement at best and we need to quickly draft in new blood to be ready in time for 2007. Wonder whether Chawla is the right choice.

In a nutshell, the victory over Sri Lanka could be the beginning of a Golden Run or a flash in the pan. My gut tends towards the latter mainly because 1) success was achieved against a clearly under-performing team thereby over-stating our capability, 2) the balance in the team is skewed a bit too much towards experimentation making the team raw and 3) we are yet to prove ourselves abroad.

The jury is still out on Team India but this is one time, I hope I'm wrong.

Is this a sign?

I was wondering yesterday whether this is a sign.

There seems to be an increasing frequency and intensity of natural disasters around us. And all these seem to be linked in some deep terrestrial web.

Lets take the earth's crust and its upheavals. Earthquakes have flattened cities starting with the ancient town of Bam in Iran in Dec 2003, followed by the tsunami-causing Mega-quake off Banda Aceh in Indonesia in Dec 2004 and now in Oct 2005, we have one in Kashmir. Can't be mere coincidence. Infact, it was a bit bizzarre that National Geographic ran a story just a few minutes back on how this could be a seismic chain reaction.

And what about the might of water. The tsunami last year was triggered by a quake but those who drowned under the fury of the ocean would have been left wondering why a calm blue ocean suddenly turned into a furious grey monster. Then there is the cloud burst over Mumbai which not only killed thousands but brought a city of 12 million people on its knees. And the mud slides in Guatemala have already consumed a thousand lives.

Not to be left behind, winds too have unleashed their killer blow. Hurricanes, typhoons and storms are nothing new in the N-W Atlantic belt, the West Pacific belt and the Indian Ocean but Hurricane Katrina, Stan and Rita have come too close together to allow humanity to take a breather during the onslaught.

Maybe it's just nothing more than a heightened sense of awareness in a flat world where events in Guatemala affect us as much as those in Aceh and where New Orleans seems as close as Kashmir. Or maybe there is some connection between these deadly events.

Is Mother Earth telling us something??

Cricket World Series - A circus of well paid performers

What are we all getting excited about?

On one hand is a team in desperate need of redemption and on the other hand is a motley group of uninterested players.

Australia, after their recent mauling at the hands of England have their confidence shaken. Some of the established stalwarts (read Hayden) have been shown the door. The others need to regain public confidence (and some self-belief too). What better way than to chalk up performances against a bunch of players for whom the matches are no more than a distraction from a well paid holiday.

The World XI is made up of uninterested stars with little in common. With no flag to play for, no national pride to fight for and no public egging them on, there is little reason to sweat and toil. It's more about showing up in a blue jersey to which no one owes any allegiance and making up the numbers for a fat packet and the opportunity to wine and dine with their like in one of the better holiday destinations in the world.

This is clearly Commerce winning over Cricket.