on Virender Sehwag

He just stands there. Looking generally disinterested. People around the world are yelling, jumping, screaming, laughing. Mouths are wide open, jaws are on the floor. But he doesn’t react that way. He almost never does.

 

There is a flash outside off. The bat has missed the ball. Yet the same general look of disinterest and calmness he has after a boundary follows a play and miss. Other days he uses the same smile after his best shot, or his worst.

 

Playing and missing is supposed to be a test of who you are as a human being. Do you believe in luck, do you believe in hard work, do you believe in faith? In his case, none of these applied. As to whether the ball went into a scoreboard, into a crowd, onto a roof, or safely nestled in the keeper’s gloves, it was gone. Finished. That moment, that euphoria, that danger, doesn’t matter anymore. The greatest legcutter, the sexiest doosra, or a mystery ball fired from a cannon, it doesn’t matter. It could be a long hop. A full toss. It just goes past him. When you bowled to him, you weren’t bowling to a batsman; you were bowling to a belief system.

Source: Jarrod Kimber on Virender Sehwag: A wild animal of batting | Cricket | ESPN Cricinfo

Fly Away @ Zurich

Fly Away… by Kunal

Tendulkar, Federer and the pull of love

The two careers have much in common. Both are global icons who transcend their sport. Within cricket and tennis they are regarded as the most complete players of their generation. At their best, both have touched a kind of serenity that is beyond the imagination, let alone the ability, of even very good players. Both have avoided controversy. They have little left to prove to anyone.

…

But I suspect the deepest pull of all is love. Love of the peace that comes with total concentration; love of the craft and the discipline of routine and practice; love of defining and controlling events; love of nervous excitement; love of winning; love of mastery; love of the stage.

via Ed Smith: Tendulkar and the pull of love | Cricinfo Magazine | ESPN Cricinfo.

On blogging

Captures my thoughts absolutely perfectly, the only point is – when would I resume writing?

But let me not forget that I belong to Ganga Mail as much it belongs it me, and that I owe my identity to whatever I have written on it so far. The idea, therefore, is to resume writing on it without worrying about what people will have to say. I really don’t give a fuck — so why pretend that I do?

via On The Ganga Mail: The Return Of Ganga Mail.

Notre Dame, Paris

Notre Dame, Paris
by
Kunal