Tuesday, December 29, 2009

India and 2011 deadline

With the date of 2011 word cup coming near and nearer, the problems for BCCI are increasing rapidly. The most reliable and historical players of the BCCI's venue team are seem to be unfit just 13 months before the start of the biggest fight.

India's two most historical and oldest stadiums have recently disclosed their poor conditions during the one day series against Sri Lanka.

Eden Gardens, India's biggest and the oldest cricket stadium, had been showing it's dark side very often. The light towers of the stadium going powerless during the fourth one day between India and Sri Lanka was not the first time.

Earlier to that, in April last year an IPL-I match between Kolkata Knight Riders and Deccan Chargers was disrupted for more than thirty minutes when two of the four light towers went powerless.
In May this year during IPL-II the media centre of Eden Gardens plunged into darkness when KKR and Bangalore Royal Challengers were facing each other in the historical ground. The journalists sitting in the room were forced to stop their work for almost fifteen minutes and lost very crucial data due to the sudden power cut.
And once again the main reason of the fiasco was covered under the blame game between Cricket Association of Bengal and the power supplier CESC Ltd.

But now, sighting the big event coming, BCCI wants no more dark glitches on its favourite ground and now thinking of not organising any day-night match at Edens during IPL-III.

Worse of the Eden Gardens situation, the second oldest stadium in India, forced the ICC to decide its fate for the coming world cup.

Firoz Shah Kotla, had hit the headlines for its pitch when Shiv Sainik's dug up the strip. Soon Anil Kumble covered the stain with his ten-wicket world record. But this time it is unfortunate for the DDCA that Kumble is no more playing for Indian team and ICC Chief Executive Haroon Lorgat has also got to know the buck-buck (money and talk) going on in the association. Lorgat is almost ready with ICC's decision over Delhi's fate.

The stadium went through a face-lift in 2005 with around Rs 1 billion spent to make it a model stadium.

With four matches of the 2011 cricket World Cup scheduled to be hosted here, the DDCA will have plenty of catching up to do before it is cleared to be a venue.

As these stadiums are scheduled to host eight matches (four each) of world cup, BCCI has got something to really worry about. This time with Indian team's great performance India might with the world title, but if these two stadiums don't perform up to the mark India will lose it's face.

Saturday, January 24, 2009

UPA's Options

After Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's illness and second bypass surgery, the UPA is now left with no prime ministerial candidate for upcoming General Elections. Depending on the health status of the PM Congress will have to decide atleast one name very shortly to project him/her (obviously him) for the top post.
Already UPA is suffering from deficit of star leaders and after this surgery UPA's election preparations have gone for postmortem until the new name comes up.
Since Congress chief Sonia Gandhi seems not to be very happy with Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee, there is only one option left for UPA and that is Rahul. The name has been echoing in 10 Janpath and other Congress offices from last many months, especially after the Trust Vote.
Sonia Gandhi has distributed the PM's responsibilities to many other ministers. Though she gave very crucial roles and functions to Mukherjee but still Sonia's trust level on Mukerjee can be seen very clearly.
There is a long list of names in Congress and supporting parties, but no one will dare to go against Gandhi's like always. And after J&K polls Rahul has made is possition really strong in the UPA, the Rahul-Omar friendship, earlier which was outside, now can be seen within the UPA as National Congress chief Omar announces his party's merger with the UPA.
And the most important thing is being stronger than the opponents, and for that UPA's best man (no other than Rahul) has to be projected. Otherwise NDA has its strongest man, L K Advani, out on the front from a long time. If the worst poll result comes for nations biggest alliances (NDA and UPA) and both don't get the majority then Maya Behenji is geared up with her arsenal from very long time, and UNPA, with the support of Left front, is all set to get both NDA and UPA down.
So if PM Manmohan Singh doesn't come out 'fit-for-fight' form AIIMS, UPA has to get its best man on the job.