Saturday, March 24, 2007

World Cup 2007 - Indian Loss (or Gain?)

India lost to Srilanka and are virtually out of the World Cup.
This image on Cricinfo says it. Dravid with a dropped shoulder, waiting for the next batsman. Something makes him look even thinner. This crying Wall is touching. The coach kept on repeating the same reason : 'We were not good enough'. Look at this funny interview. It is funny because the same questions were aimed at Greg again and again. It would be nice to say that the repeated questioning was silly, but look underneath, the press were wanting the coach to talk...talk more...say something which is catchy enough to be put in the papers.

A normal cricket fan like me would get bored to see the Imran khans, Sreekanths chatting away to glory on the NDTV, CNN-IBN and the like. Today, out of the blue, after more than 2 months of cricket "shows", asked public how they felt and "what was the reason for the defeat". Weren't they able to figure out the strengths/weaknessess even after so many shows?

Reality is that we want to talk cricket, talk so much cricket that selecting, planning, execution, discipline of cricket takes a backseat. Everyone is a cricket expert, take these:

  • Why the hell was Agarkar included in the team!
  • Why wasn't Kumble included!
  • The standard one : Tendulkar should be scrapped! ( not the orkut one)
  • You hit Vaas 20 runs in an over and they will not let him bowl again till the end of the innings
  • India cannot chase maan!
  • Let them come back, see how they will be shoed!
  • The entire thing is fixed


It may take a week and things will be back to normal. Sanity. The best result is that people would talk less about cricket. People will go to bed early. Hopefully, they will get time to read better stuff. The frustrating helplessness amidst wishful thinking would be spared. Wives at home would be happy. I should say, we will be leading better lives. Which would have got lost had India continued playing in the Super eights. (Or am I too optimistic/pessimistic? Should I wait for Bangladesh vs Bermuda?) Strangely, Optimisim and pessimism seem to be very near each other.


While the BCCI learns how to make the team "good enough", we can take a break. BTW, am hopeful of a great game between Australia and South Africa today. And from this world cup, hope the team learns to learn...again wishful?

Monday, March 19, 2007

Failed to book Railway tickets online?

I know most of us would be aware of Indian Railways introducing online reservation. I guess many would also be aware of a nagging problem in the site : As we proceed to Confirm the reservation, it gives an error
'unable to retreive due to communication error'
and would not continue :(

The railways support has the following solution:
Open new IE>> Tools>>Internet options>>Delete cookies>> Delete internet temporary files and delete all off line contents>> Clear history>>Click OK.

I tried deleting just the temporary files and found that i didn't the error :)
Try your luck!

BTW, KSRTC have also introduced online ticket booking supporting SBI accounts, other banks should have it soon as well. Haven't tried that yet http://www.ksrtc.in/AWATAROnline/