Rohit Sharma and Dinesh Karthick are the only members of the 2007 World Cup Team who are still active players. They survived the libellous comments of the Pseudo Print Electronic Digital (PPED) media when the early part of their careers was nothing short of nightmarish as both had to go undergo phases where they were dropped from the team
Rohit somehow resurrected his career post 2013 and found himself being called a celebrity by the same group who questioned his attitude; Karthick found himself in shaky ground battling it out with Dhoni and Parthiv Patel for a wicketkeeping slot. This battle was eventually won by Dhoni while Karthick and Patel become reserves filling in his absence. History repeats itself as Pant find himself in a similar situation with Ishan Kishan and Sanju Samson with Pant having the upper hand. Karthick’s entry into this three-way battle means things are going to get lively and real complicated India never did have secure self-confident dependable wicketkeepers till 2004 relying on discards and rejects (Nayan Mongia, Ajay Ratra, Deep Dasgupta, Sameer Dighe, Vijay Dahiya, Kiran More etc.) and stand-ins in Rahul Dravid. That is why the sudden love professed by the PPED Media for Karthick is full of irony and shows two-facedness of the arrogant and conceited media. Therefore, it is not surprising that when the trust in Pant has been low, they have asked Lokesh Rahul to be stand-in keeper. The love for Karthick based on his performances in the National T20 Cup and sporadic for the national team has turned into an odium for Pant who is seen as maverick and erratic with discussions around inconsequential articles like Averages and Strike rates, with a powerful lobby dead set against him being in the world cup team. Who will make it to the 20-member squad is a mystery as one does not know what is churning in that hollow mind of the arrogant selection committee? As the PPED Media tries to influence selections and deselections of specific players adding their own prejudgment and adoration for certain players, those who will miss out won’t be due to their talent and merit but due to antipathy towards them. Humans are and will continue to be avaricious by nurture and nature and this becomes more prominent when they try not only to control fellow humans through various systems of governance but added to this greed is the tendency to apply dominion over animals.
The deceptive nature comes through when on one hand we exploit nature through various activities and then feign regret by creating false narratives around superficial disasters like climate change, diminishing food supply, rising and falling population so that the fate of the world is in the hands of a few organisations who want to control most activities This authority over animals is called domestication in micro terms and in macro terms through structures like Zoos and National Parks where animals become a spectacle to seen and exploited. In the fictional world, we took this to another level where extinct creatures were revived about whom our knowledge has always been inadequate, yet our curious mind did not stop us from experimenting on those whose result was the creation of genetically modified intelligent creatures who saw humans as adversaries waiting to be eliminated. Theme Parks were envisioned where these colossal creatures would perform for humans as have animals for centuries in circuses but as it happened things went slightly out of control. The makers tried to induce nostalgia by recalling the original characters from the first movie though in a more restricted role for whom it was a Déjà vu moment when they had to flee another research facility cum Theme Park going out of control as dinosaurs ran amok forcing them to team up with the more impulsive characters The Plot of the first, the fourth and the sixth instalment are eerily similar where a millionaire’s vision and ambition to have a theme park cum research facility whose location is on a classified island miles away from civilisation ( the intention is to have people throng it eventually) is shattered when the dinosaurs though to be safely detained in their cages go on a rampage destroying equipment forcing them to shut these facilities due to inadequate security measures. They are only able to escape due to ego clashes between two of their biggest creations which comes from the theory as to who is the apex predator on this island Till December 2019, Virat Kohli was in GOD MODE; he was living up to the moniker King which the incompetent Indian Sports Media had showered upon him. There was an inexhaustible flow of runs, his record as a captain had exceeded all expectations and his partnership with then coach was seen as mythical. The fact that he could and would break Sachin ‘Fluke’ Tendulkar’s record was no longer a fantasy but a reality. The team had come close to entering the Finals of the 2019 50 over World Championship but a controversial ending to the Semi Final meant another four-year wait. Then came 2020 and along with it the make-believe virus and that meant citizens were forced to be locked inside their homes for an indefinite period as the media began to fabricate horror tales about this imaginary situation and the gullible and naive world fell for it hook line and sinker. This meant that from April 2020 to September 2020 sporting events at least Indian came to a halt. Post that period, his run making machine ran out of gas, centuries eluded him, he resigned from captaincy and that wait to break records would go on stretching. Now every bungling pseudo expert and equally arrogant media began (and is still) to decode as to what was wrong and reasons behind this fall from the mountain of omnipotence and whether the challenges, he faces are psychological or technical or just a clouded mind. Now this same incompetent Indian Sports Media calls him pauper with relation to the dry run situation. Every time he scores less than 50 runs in the National T20 Competition, pages are filled in print and electronic media as to whether we need to move on from him and focus on the younger lot who will be leading the sport into the next decade. The Indian T20 National Domestic Competition has some of the most unrefined group of commentators. This group whose in-ring career did not last more than 6 months run their mouths on the microphone as if they had a 20 plus year career. It’s not as if there is a lack of commentators with skill and flair; the only reason to recruit these half-baked chowderheads is because the broadcasters are not willing to pay the market price for those with a voice and flair and would rather recruit those who would happily do the job gratuitously. Recruiting rejects is the flavour of the season as teams enroll former players whose career ended as a reject as they open arms but not the chequebook to recruit these individuals as coaches and mentors The Indian Men and Women’s respective World Cup tournaments ended in the most anti-climactic fashion as both these were eliminated at the group stage which was not helped by the disparagement by the Pseudo Print Electronic Digital Media who think they have a skin in the game. They went on a rampage with articles being written attributing the elimination to lack of proper planning- too many cooks spoiling the broth with the introduction of a mentor in the men’s world cup and a coach who had a tumultuous relationship with the team at the women’s level. On the other hand, the same Pseudo Print Electronic Digital Media went on an overdrive praising the champions- the Australian teams with the broadcasters showing the teary-eyed coaches, that how for both the teams this was a kind of a redemption after elimination from the previous competition and how they wowed to change their approach to the game with a synchronised change in attitude and performance on the field. Neeraj Chopra, Lakshya Sen and Rishabh Pant are now locked in a three-way competition to become the baby face sports representative of the country with their hall of famer like performance in their respective sports. If Neeraj Chopra got the nation on an adrenaline high after a gold medal finish, Pant broke the wall of distrust with his matured performance in Australia and Lakshya Sen didn’t disappoint anyone after reaching the finals of All England Open despite falling short. While there are many other athletes who with their legendary performances got everyone’s brain scrambled, these three individuals seemed to have taken the bull by the horn. The flip side to all this is if they are not able to continue performing at the same level with the same intensity, the Pseudo Print Electronic Digital will not hesitate to toss them aside like garbage and make someone else the babyface. While Pant and his teammates already got the brickbats after the 20 over World Championship exit, Sen and Chopra will find themselves under the spotlight with the arrival of exaggerated competitions like the commonwealth and Asian Games and nothing more than a gold level finish will be acceptable, especially after the lows of the over-rated Olympics and a nation yearning for a gold medal in every category. AEW and WWE are near rival wrestling sports entertainment promotions using creative methods to keep their audience involved in their various wrestling matches and the recurring debate that which of these along with ROH-TNA is the best promotion is a highly emotional and instinctive feeling. They may present different ways to showcase their talent but in a hypothetical world it would be a mouthwatering moment if the wrestlers of both these brands come across face to face- for example the likes of Adam Page- the AEW Men’s World Champion vs Roman Reigns- the WWE World Universal Champion had a duel and a similar story with Tag Teams and Women’s Champions. While for these wrestlers and other employees representing a certain brand makes a difference to them as they able to explore and adopt a different in-ring persona, for those who watch, the brand is only a metaphorical wall as it hardly makes a different who plays for whom. Imitation as the sincerest form of flattery works up to a certain extent not when there is a brazen attempt at Xeroxing an idea.
The Indian TV Show Rudra is supposed to be an adaptation of the British TV Show Luther but the way the TV Show is written, it shows the lack of creativity by the writers as they could not create an original TV Show but instead were happy to xerox Luther into Rudra. This is not the first time Indian creators to make up for lacune of ideas have xeroxed scenes from different movies into a single production or the whole movie being Xeroxed (Partner from Hitch; Hey Baby from 3 men and a baby etc.) Those who will watch Rudra for the first time without the knowledge of its original will be pleased and at the same time shocked and will have an emotionally cathartic experience to see fictional Indian Law Enforcement Officers adapt a contemporary approach to catch suspects. They use the twin tools of Artificial and Human Intelligence to collect evidence, question suspects politely rather than blame them without any proof. Luther-Rudra is a senior police officer at the rank of DCP and DCI with a chequered past who is averse to instructions by senior ranking officials or being concerned about by the book police procedures which often gets him into trouble despite catching suspects. The noir theme of their respective cities Bombay and London highlights situations where the characters are full of despair, paranoia and nihilism. Luther-Rudra is alienated by friends and near ones before bumping into someone who connects with them at a deeper, emotional level and despite initial attempts to break contact they end up becoming a support group for the other. For a better part of a quarter of a century, Indian viewers were tormented by CID- (Comedy Investigation Department) a make-believe hyper nationalistic TV Show where the detectives would solve cases attempting to use Artificial and Human Intelligence but the writers’ obsession to attract more viewers would show these very detectives use unlawful methods to catch suspects. For these 20 plus years this TV Show attracted the fancy of the viewers as their detectives would appear unscathed and unaffected by bomb blasts, exposure to deadly viruses, being shot by criminals and became immortalized due to such scenes being put in every episode. The iconic slap by the detectives where the suspects would start confessing and end episode dialogue by their boss that now for your crimes “ Rot in the cell until the death penalty order” shows the lack of research by the writers and an equal lack of respect for the law and the line between the judiciary and law enforcement. Cricket, the game where the least fitness and mobility skills are required and if that was not the case then out of shape individuals like Tendulkar, Lara and their contemporaries would have never played for 20+ years. These individuals played for that duration only because of the way they were able to generate a fan following based on misrepresentation and crocodile tears. The resignation of Dhoni from captaincy of the Madras Super Giants team should neither be a surprise nor a shocker. He knew wannabe experts had trigger fingers ready to whip up an article on a moment’s notice judging and focusing on hum-drums like age and how long can one individual continue to live rent free in the minds of the fans and have the spotlight on them. The question then becomes will he be able to sustain under a new captain but that’s hogwash because it doesn’t really matter. Instead, he played chess when everyone was playing checkers. Even Tendulkar, Jayasurya and a few others dragged their lifeless careers beyond 40 but no one questioned them because of the die-hard fans chakravyuh. Captaincy in sport is only a temporary job so it becomes irrelevant who the specific captain is as other things are more in focus. But Cricket where everything happens in slow motion that focuses shits on implausible situations like captaincy skills, coaching strategies and leadership styles and attitude and other thing which are secondary. The irony of a captaincy in this sport is that is the arresting bureaucratic machinery who decide that who should be the captain based on statistics brewed up by those desperate for a job and will whip up any imaginary data to screw with the individual. “Kaalo asmi loka kshaya kritpraviddho”
“I am Death, the destroyer of worlds” An influential story of a young god-fearing Indian from the Indian state of Kashmir who uses the oft familiar path of cricket to uplift his family from poverty and fulfill his fathers’ wishes and escapes being used as a scapegoat in the plans of the antagonists to bring forward their own agenda. The plot revolves around the cold war between the neighboring countries India, Pakistan, and China and strategic efforts by government officials to counter the same. The characters travel from the valleys of Kashmir to the quiet town of Dharamshala to the city of Oslo to catch the anti-heroes and save civilization from a tragic event. The Baramulla Bomber is an edge of the seat political espionage thriller with the brewing of mythology and modern warfare where men and women positioned at the highest echelons of world governments are part of a cloak-and-dagger non-government, privately funded organisation that has been formed to provide intelligence to various federal agencies without being shackled by bureaucratic hurdles. |
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