When do you realize that you should have got a smaller vacation

1. Your Mom no longer makes food of your choice.
2. Seeing you idle everytime, your father starts predicting that you don’t study at hostel too and start scolding for that.
3. You start reading Harry Potter books again and follow them with the respective movies and then try to point out the difference between them.
4. You try to download @5kbps though you know it won’t finish till you board back.
5. You open Twitter and wonder what to do now and then check others’ tweets in hope of replying someone.
6. You start pinging your online friends and say that you miss them even when you feel it’s gay-ish.
7. You start watching England vs Bangladesh test match.
8. You start watching India play in ODIs even without Sachin-Sehwag-Yuvraj.
9. The most awaited Bollywood flick turns out to be a disaster and the most awaited Hollywood movie is not being released in your city.
10. You get a week long fever when you are about to book tickets for a trip.
11. (Directed at someone) You start making political blog entries and expect your friend to make a comment.
12. (Once again directed at someone) You visit Kanha National Park nth no. of time to woo a tigress and proposing that you can make the no. of Tigers rise if she agrees.
13. Your blog looks like a CBSE board answer sheet.

Once again India Disappoints in ICC Event

So once again India has fared poorly at an ICC event (2007 WC, 2009 T20 WC, 2009 CT, and 2010 T20 WC). However this time it wasn’t such a big disappointment for me as I had expected it. The only little hope was due to the expected slow nature of the West Indies pitches but as soon as I saw the pitches at Barbados and Kenningston Oval, the scene had become very clear. Indian squad had only one player that could hook and pull, the skipper himself rests were dancing puppets.
Why the selectors showed hurry to pick the team was a curious case because the squad wasn’t supposed to join any camp and all barely got a 5 days rest after the IPL. But in the process they left the most dangerous Indian Batsman, Robin Uthappa (who had hit almost 2km of sixes in the IPL and had the best strike rate after Kierron Pollard), preferred to choose a spinner (Piyush Chawla) who had gone for most number of sixes rather than the one among the highest wicket takers (Amit Mishra) and an all rounder who was without any match practice (Ravinder Jadeja).
West Indies had shown the world that the Indians don’t like the ball at their chin and it was amusing to see that even after knowing that they once again would targeted, no one had done any preparation for that.
Gambhir , test player of the year, got out to similar length deliveries throughout the tournament and his running between the wicket in the match against Sri Lanka prompted Ravi Shastri to say “worse than gully cricketers”!!
It was always going to be difficult for India without Sehwag to get a flying start because though how good form Murali Vijay was in IPL, he neither possess the instincts, attitude or caliber of Sehwag. Yes he had scored a terrific 127 off 56 in IPL but there he had benign pitch and at least 3 sub standard bowlers to prey upon. Here he had to face quality bowlers bowling in tandem.
The inform Raina looked dangerous in St. Lucia but was soon found out at Barbados. Yuvraj looked more interested in sporting new goatee than cricket. Once touted as the best fielder India had, he made too many misfields. Dhoni never seemed as pumped up as he was playing for Super Kings (remember the game against Kings XI when he almost caused cricket to be censored!!). The generally tidy spin of Jadeja was easily hit for maximums and he spilled more catches than anyone else. Pathan as expected was never as dangerous as in IPL. Bhajji was economic but failed to take wickets, Zaheer was off colour too.
Mind you all batsmen struggle against good quality short pitched bowling not only the subcontinent batsmen but the problem is that we don’t have the ability to give them their own medicine. Even after over 50 years of cricket we still haven’t been able to unearth a genuine quickie who can bowl consistently at 150 kmph mark. So its our batsmen only who find them at the receiving end. What Nehra and Praveen did to the minnows Afgani batsmen, came back to haunt our own batsmen! But then there was Pieterson showing that it wasn’t any difficult to handle short pitched stuff even on Barbados against Steyn and Co. which was for me the innings of the tournament alongwith Cameroon White’s 85 against the Lankans.
The fielding of the Indians was below standard too with catches being dropped on regular basis and easy runs being provided in the field whereas England and Australia held on to even half chances and fielded and attacked the bowled like tigers.
India actually never played the fearless brand of cricket that won them the inaugural T20 WC. The Proteas also paid price for the same mistake. The teams faring best in this tournament are the teams who have played fearlessly i.e. England and Australia. Kieswetter and Lumb have added freshness in the English team and this time they are the best considering the Powerplay scores are concerned. Kevin Pieterson has looked the old fearless, dominant, arrogant KP.
Aussies have the best new ball pair in both batting and bowling. Both Nannes and Tait can hit the 150kmph mark consistently and trouble anyone with their pace (infact Johnson, Harris also cross the 145 mark regularly!) and bounce and the pair of Warner and Watson are the most destructive pair to say the least. The Aussies have always found a rescuer when the chips were down like Mr. Cricket Mike Hussey, Cameroon White and even the kid Steven Smith.
So most likely its gonna be or should be an England vs Australia final. Australia have the edge in bowling department while probably Swann gonna hold the key against them. Australia will be wary against the new daddy Pieterson and Morgan. Whatever be the final result I would say that I have enjoyed the English team play this time.
BTW, it looks like for India to win the ICC T20 WC again, they have to organize it in subcontinent or get it approved from ICC that they can play four foreign players in the team!

P.S. Vishwanath Anand once again made India Proud by winning the World Chess Championship on the same day the Indian Cricket Team was knocked out.

Home! (Sweet) Home!

Sitting in my home, feeling sleepy because I missed 6 hours of precious sleep as waken up earlier by mom (@10.30 am instead of 4.30pm in the hostel!!), I started writing this blog after mom hijacked the TV to watch some helpless, crying women on TV whom she considers to be her family (well I can’t blame her as I consider the likes of Dean, Michael,Barney, Ted, Robin etc. as my family!). BTW, my face is covered in some experimental face pack shown on AASTHA channel, I suppose. It contains potatoes, cucumber, papaya and other weird smelling wild stuffs. Tomorrow my hair will join my face being the subject of experiment!!! The food is great though and Papa had brought chocolate, chocolate pastries and soft drinks for me. Still haven’t gone out of my home in nearly 48 hours because most of my friends here will join me in June onwards so it’s getting a bit boring as most of my time is being spent watching cricket or seeing the Katrinas and Deepikas shaking their booties on music channels (because the movies they show on the movie channels have already been downloaded and seen in the hostel!). Still loving my mom’s care and food and the luxury of ordering anything I want and getting it without moving my ass.
The freedom of hostel is gone though with the rules & regulations of home have been imposed. I had to convince so much to watch the late night world cup and Fool’s Gold. But the thing I miss the most is the free net, free downloading, tweeting, facebook-ing and chatting.

Moving back to 1st May

I once again missed my Alleppy Express by oversleeping (why do they schedule trains at 0530 Hrs??) so I boarded Tapaswini 3 hrs later to reach Ranchi in time. Nikhil had got the ticket, when I checked I found I was reserved as
BITANSHU DAS Female 20 C1/62
I don’t know whether it was an unconscious mistake or my Nikhil had become despo enough to travel with a girl!! Well I was thinking of buying a pair of orange!!
Next hour was passed checking and rating girls at the station with Ashesh. I was already missing Twitter. There were so many things to tweet about like “Checking that girl in white Lee Tee-best I have ever seen if we remove her teeth!!”, ”some guys are dinking coke mixed with water!! And faking it as beer!!lol!!”, “Oh! Look at those foreign chicks, the last one’s HOOOTTTTTT!!”, “Oh! F***! I am F20!!”, “There’s a books called 20years and still virgin. I want to buy it but cant read it at home!! ?”
But the reservation mistake soon was found to a wonderful one as the highest rated girl(she was rated 8.3 by me and 5.6 to 6.8 by Ashesh) had the seat no. C1/63!!
So here’s the tip guys: next time reserve yourself as Female in a train!!
The TT didn’t make an issue out of the reservation and all my efforts in thinking excuses were wasted. However there wasn’t a dull moment in the journey with the lappy, high ratio of fairer sex ratio and the storm around.

P.S. Sorry friends for such a horrible post!! It was written just for making an entry though every incident mentioned is true! Shit! I have already started missing hostel life!