Apocryphal Stories !!!

On a fateful day in March 1992, few hearts were broken and a lifelong relationship for a young kid started, with a team that scraped through with the skin of their teeth. It was the second one-run win for the team against their opponents in a World Cup setting I was too young to realise the vagaries of the rules in the rain-hit matches. They favoured Australia more than India in that game. What I realised, though, was the importance of the game. It was one of those days where my father put a stop to the ad-guess game, as we called it. As my father sunk into despair after the match, I found a new hope- Australian cricket team. It didn’t matter to me that they were out of the tournament before the semi-finals Cricket is a team game but there are individuals whom you find yourself drawn to, more than the others. From that day on, I had at least one person in the team that I looked up to. Mark Waugh, Steve Waugh, Shane Warne, Ricky Ponting, Damien Martyn, Adam Gilchrist, Michael Clarke,...

BREAKING NEWS: Allu Arjun and Ravi Teja from Telugu movies make a fleeting appearance in Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol. Doesn't matter that they appear in a TV footage in the movie From the time it was announced that Anil Kapoor would be a part of the Mission Impossible franchise, it was marked as an awaited movie in India. It was widely anticipated that he would play a major role in the movie. Though he serves as a major connecting link in the movie or rather the main reason, why the movie moves to India, he is projected as a lusting billionaire One of the very good things about the movie is its humour content. There are a lot of subtle one-liners by the guy who operates the computer and is the technical guru in the movie. The movie is about an evil mind getting his hand on nuclear warhead and the mission is to stop a full blown war between USA and Russia There are a lot of things that are interlinked in the movie. For example, at the beginning of the mission when it’s sa...

What does a person do when he/she has tasted success in life? Look to better it obviously. What if the success has resonated for a period of time? That’s when the person grapples with questions in the mind. Whether to succumb to the need of people who have gifted the success or to satiate the urge within Ten years ago, after his biggest hit, Pawan Kalyan, was compared to Rajnikanth by AM Ratnam (the producer of the movie). He said that these were the two actors that knew the public pulse very well. Ironically, after Khushi there is not one movie that Pawan Kalyan can remember with fondness When confronted by similar questions, Mahesh Babu, went for an overhaul in his image and came out successful with Dookudu. One can’t expect Pawan Kalyan doing a similar thing because the carefully cultivated image might go for a toss In his initial movies, he tasted success through remakes and there is no harm in actually doing the same now. That his next movie is a remake might provide the emotio...

A rain truncated day will be remembered for three reasons- uncertainty about DRS, Pattinson’s second five wicket haul in his second test and the mental disintegration of Phil Hughes A few days ago Dhoni said that he would want the pitches in India to turn from first day. Players and critics were quick to pounce him and speak for the so-called betterment of the game. If seen in the same light, the pitch and it’s maker will be under censure in the coming days. He prepared a green top, which made the decision for the captain winning the toss, easy Taylor couldn’t call correctly and Clarke had no second thoughts about inserting the opposition in. His move paid off 2 overs into the day as Siddle induced a drive from Guptill. The ball straightened after pitching and found the outside edge. The next two dismissals shifted the focus onto the new baby of cricket- DRS. In case of Ryder, it wasn’t clear if the ball thudded onto the pads after an inside edge. Hot Spot which facilitates these de...

The two movies of Selvaraghavan that I have seen turn after a death scene. Mayakkam Enna is no different. It turns after Richa suffers a miscarriage. Credit to the director that he dared to delve into a lot of emotions in the movie and put a full stop to each one of them Selvaraghavan always has the protagonist as an errant individual. In this movie, there is a slight deviation. The protagonist has creativity and is mightily confident about it till a certain point in the movie. What lights up the movie is the individual sequences in the movie. I don’t recall carrying back so many sequences in my head from a movie There are so many good scenes in the movie. If forced to pick two or three of them, my choice would be as follows 1)     The scene where Richa questions Dhanush’s profession and advices him to look for something more viable. Dhanush on the way back gets an old lady to pose for him and surprises her and her husband with the inherent beauty of the lady. The ph...

Imran Khan once said that if cricketers were to base their self-esteem on the comments made by public, it would be stupidity. He said that people tended to lift you, when you performed well and hurl abuses when you failed Michael Clarke has just gotten himself into that place where he can say that he has seen both the sides of the coin. He was one of the failures in the Ashes and was rightly castigated. His place in the team was under scrutiny, both from the public and selectors alike After the 168 that he scored in New Zealand, he endured a rough patch till the second innings century in the final Test of the Sri Lanka series. It was in Sri Lanka that a lot about Michael Clarke was unravelled. For starters he was the Man of the Series in the ODI series and found that responsibility bought to surface the bubbliness that made him an exciting player to watch before Ashes 2005 The sixty runs that he scored at Galle in the second innings were crucial to the team’s cause as he stood stro...