Great Bong is a genius…

Great Bong a.k.a. Arnab is a genius if you did not know it already. He has an original masterpiece (which is being copied all over) on the state of Indian cricket now. You cannot simply afford to miss it. Click here and find out why I admire this man so much.

Last and final chance, BCCI must take the gamble NOW!

It would be too far fetched if we expect the BCCI to think of what is really good for Indian cricket. No, BCCI is not Cricket Australia who can think out of the box and go to any level to make sure that its team ends up on the winning side each and every time.

To say BCCI is only interested to fill its coffers would be an understatement. Actually, a much-divided body across regional and political lines, the main concern of the BCCI honchos is how to win the next board elections.

I was reading Arnab (Great Bong) Ray’s article Just Sourav and could not help but agree with him completely. In fact, my support for Saurav now is based on the same reasons Arnab cited for his. During my student days when Saurav was blazing centuries after centuries in ODIs averaging over 45, I supported Sachin Tendulkar despite the fact that it meant high-decibel fights with my father who is a blind Saurav supporter. I still am a great, great fan of Tendulkar despite the fact he is a Marathi and would still support him over Saurav whose main destroyers had been Marathis.

I will not mince words here today. I have now started believing that the Marathis are the worst culprits in dividing the cricketing nation on regional lines followed by non-Bengali Sachin supporters. They simply could not digest the fact that their beloved son – the great Tendulkar proved to be a miserable failure when it came to leading the team. Five consecutive Test drubbings – three in Oz and two on home turf (that incidentally was India’s first series loss on home ground since Pak beat them in 1986-87) meant that he was a meek guy whom the team did not have any fear of, his batting capabilities notwithstanding.

Under the shadow of the match fixing scam, the relatively inexperienced Saurav Ganguly made a great turnaround in Team India’s fortunes. We all know his contribution to the resurgence of the Indian team. The Ganguly-baiters just could not digest his success. By then Sachin’s future as captain had evaporated and the baiter needed another guy to fight Ganguly with. Rahul Dravid, whom Ganguly gave a second life by making him the wicket keeper of the ODI side, was the perfect boy for them to do the trick. Rahul Dravid, despite his role as batsman-keeper for over a hundred matches was still cribbing about being the wicket keeper. Ganguly would have none of it; and didn’t Rahul flourish during that time?

Unfortunately, for Ganguly, two Marathis took office in the BCCI who could spell his doom. The chairman of the selection committee Kiran More was the first to make the move. Though one might argue that Ganguly lost his place during the Dalmiya reign, it was not supposed to be a permanent removal. Then the Dalmiya faction lost the elections and another Marathi – the spineless Sharad Pawar became the president. Ganguly’s fate was sealed. He simply won’t give up his Aussie-worshipping rituals even though the Aussie in question is a saboteur.

Then the blogosphere was suddenly abuzz with pro and anti Ganguly articles, analysis and rants. That was the time when I lost all respects for another Marathi because of first his pedestrian analysis, and then when his regionalist mask fell off, which left me with no other alternative but to react in my own way.

Ten matches to go before India plays in the ICC World Cup 2007 and what are we seeing now? Team India, led by a pliant and meek puppet captain and run by a saboteur, is viciously trapped in the quagmire of defeatism.

The only mantra to get it out of this load of total mental wreck is to bring back Saurav Ganguly in, kick the saboteur out and instead appoint a manager. We don’t need a coach now, it is already too late in the day for that. Ganguly in the recent Ranji match has shown what a helluva good captain he is. Give him the control again and trust me, he will spank the despondent team back to what they were under him – a bunch of fighters.

Precious little time remains, the BCCI must take the gamble. Not to stoke some Bengali or commie ego, but for the good of Team India.

Web 2.0 and new age spamming and ethics

This is going to be a short post; at least I intend to keep it as short as possible. I just have a few things to say about this recent Web 2.0 phenomenon with all kinds of social networks, communities, blog networks, niche blogs, AJAX scripts in news and info aggregators, publishing platforms etc, etc.

In the last two years we saw dozens of blog networks like Weblogs Inc., Gawker Media, B5 Media, Creative Weblogging springing up. We even have one from India called Instablogs. These networks have a large number of blogs catering to ‘niche’ audience. However, none of the blog networks including Weblogs Inc. that runs the famous Engadget blog is above spamming. All the above mentioned networks have spam content in their blogs. Simply stupid and plain spam.

Typically, they have an army of rewriters of news stories and while some do it with finesse, some are downright unprofessional. Also, some do it with impunity and some on the sly. More often than not, most of these networks pay people who can rewrite stories, and not necessarily anyone who has any knowledge of the domain he/she is writing upon. In time, they start gaining some knowledge on the subject and at best they become pundits with half-baked knowledge.

Then comes the point of being ethical in the business. No matter however critical these networks are of mainstream media (MSM), especially print media (read newspapers) they still want the old media to give them publicity whenever they are doing something ‘different’. In one hand they would loathe MSM to be in the league of blogging brothers, but on the other hand, they would even lick the anuses of the old media for publicity. This is duplicity; hypocrisy at its best.

Whatever the case is, a few blogs have indeed become a part of my life and for the last 2 years or so hardly any day passed when I didn’t read blogs such as Techcrunch, GigaOm, Mashable, Engadget, Robert Scoble, Read/Write Web to name a few.

I am afraid to say that given the very personal blogs such as Read/Write Web, Scobleizer, and to a great extent Mashable, every other blog mentioned either stooped to rewriting or yellow journalism like the recent GigaOm post by Shailaja Neelakantan that incidentally didn’t escape the notice of perhaps the best writer of Indian origin and most ‘commented’ blogger in the blogosphere today – Arnab Ray a.k.a. Great Bong.

The venerable Michael Arrington also didn’t prove to be above unethical practices with his recent sacking of Sam Sethi from the helm of affairs at Techcrunch UK over what I would term as a clash of egos. This is despite his pathetic attempt to justify his act following the expected outcry.

Pramit Singh in MediaVidea has written a must read article titled - ‘Ethics 101 for blog network owners - part 1’. I shall be looking forward to the rest of the ‘series’ if he continues this from where he ended.

The point is that when the only objective is to earn money through online ads, why take the pain of employing high profile editors, writers etc, etc for your blog-based magazine or blog or blog network? It can be done in a much simpler way. What are you folks trying to prove?

It is such a shame isn’t it? At least the Clue Chick is original and for news, we have online editions of the BBC, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Hindu, The Times of India etc, etc, etc…

Alas! This post hasn’t remained a short post as I intended to keep it. Sorry folks.

There is but one God – Mithun

Starting this month, I found myself running into some rough time with health and household chores. It was my birthday last Sunday and I spent it under the quilt due to high fever with shivers. Today is also the first day after weeks when I am yet to down a single peg of my all-season favourite Old Monk (and it is 9:10 pm now).

It seems the fever has decided to migrate from my body to someone else’s (pity those blessed souls who came to wish me when I was down). I decided to watch Dance Dance in SET Max that I watched in 1988-89 in Hasimara, Jalpaiguri as a school kid. I still remember what a craze the movie had become there. Mithun Chakraborty is no less than the Almighty himself. The Jalpaiguri angle in the movie made it some kind of a rage, a phenomenon that was more than the normal ‘rages’ of a Mithun movie in Bengal.

Coming back to the movie I watched today, I had to go out just as the last dance started for a minute. On return, I found myself having missed the opening lines of the song, but immediately took out my N93 and recorded the whole dance from the TV. Mithun was really awesome, awesome. Just before I started to compose this post, I decided to look around for the clips of the movie in YouTube and I got them aplenty. However, I was particularly searching for the Zubi Zubi number, which was there but didn’t star anyone from Bollywood, but someone who could have well made it there.

Just watch the clip above and let me know about your thoughts on this. I am sure the number one Mithun fan Great Bong would surely love it. :-)