Month: November 2013

Day 16/ 365 – Drive to Nathdwara (1/3)

~ Akshay ~ Leave a comment

I wanted to write this post right after I did this trip 6 weeks back, but somehow was too lazy to write the post. Me, along with my family members decided to drive to Nathdwara, Rajasthan on Friday evening and return back by Monday morning. The distance from Mumbai to Nathdwara is approx. 840 kms one way – so more than 1600 kms driving with one day stay at Nathdwara. You got to think, we are crazy. The reason for such a short and crazy trip was that I was joining a new organization and wanted to visit the temple before starting at the new place as I wasn’t sure that I would have leave available to go anywhere in the next couple of months. Also we got a new Maruti Swift and I thought it was a good opportunity to go on a long drive with the family. So with that in mind, I started the process of convincing everyone to join the trip. My wife couldn’t join me to due to work issues, but slowly steadily remaining members got on board with the idea.

We left on Friday evening around 8pm. Initially my brother took the wheels, with me sitting next to him. This was his first long distance trip. I had already done a trip to Pune earlier. He always had issues driving in the night and that day also it was no less. It is difficult to drive when you lights from the oncoming traffic hitting right in your eyes. However, he was able to adjust well after sometime and took to night driving like a fish in the water. In no time he was driving at speeds well over 100kmph and with extremely good control. We halted after crossing Vapi to have dinner. It took us around 3.5 hours to reach Vapi and so far the roads were excellent. Post dinner, also the smooth roads continued until we reach Surat. Post Surat, the roads until Bharuch was very bad. This was also the time when there were extremely heavy rains in Gujarat, esp. in Bharuch and Vadodara. The potholes would appear out of nowhere. We had the car fog lights on, tried the high beam on but nothing would work to allow an early sighting of the pothole. The problem was also that most of the road was very good, and thus we were going really fast. But then a pothole would appear out of nowhere and car would take a hit.

We reached Ankleshwar bridge and found out there was a huge traffic jam and nobody was sure that when the jam would be cleared. Me and my dad stepped out of the car to check out what the situation was. My brother told me to come back quickly in case we needed to turn around. I went and spoke to a couple of nearby truck drivers and they told me that the traffic jam would only be cleared the next morning. I came back and conveyed the news to my brother and asked him to turn around. However, my dad had gone further ahead to ask a few more people, so I called him. Getting no response from him, I decided to go looking for my dad and I asked my brother to stay where he was and not turn around. That was a big mistake. By the time, I found my dad and told him of the development, my brother called frantically to say the turn to the left was blocked by the truck and now we are stuck. We reached where our car was parked and requested the truck driver next to us to reverse a little so that we could take a left turn. The good driver obliged and we were able to take a left turn on to a service lane and drove in the opposite direction. In between our way was blocked by another truck. Again the same request was made and we got lucky this time too and had enough space to wriggle the car out. We drove in the opposite direction and reached a junction and asked a few local rickshaw drivers directions to Bharuch. They asked us to take the Golden Bridge, which is an old bridge and is only used by light vehicles. We duly crossed the bridge and were once again on our way to Nathdwara. When we reached the highway, the road in the opposite direction was full of traffic. Apparently due to heavy rains, the bridge had developed craters and hence traffic was being restricted. We decided to drive safely here as we were faced with oncoming vehicles. After driving for 40 odd kms, the traffic evened out again and we were on our away to cross Vadodara.

It was approx. 3:30am. My brother had driven for almost 7 hours.

Day 15/ 365 – Bowlers bowled out

~ Akshay ~ Leave a comment

So we saw another high scoring game on Wednesday between India and Australia. While India did manage to win, it makes me wonder how the new ODI rules are simply making bowlers irrelevant especially in India where the outfields are superfast, grounds smaller and pitches are a batting paradise. The entire game has been made very lopsided. Earlier, I used to think that the Indian bowlers have lost their mojo, but now I think it is just that they don’t stand a chance against these rules. Reverse swing is a crucial asset for a bowler, especially in dry conditions. But with the two new balls and ball change at 35 overs mark, that advantage has also been taken away. Meanwhile the batsmen have everything going for them. Broader bats, smaller grounds, one less fielder in the outfield – nothing to stop them. If we observe the changes that have been introduced in the game of one day cricket over the last 20 years – most of the changes have been made to make cricket more entertaining – whereby losing the aesthetic value of the game. First came the 15 over rule, which was then extended to 20 overs and has now been reduced to 15 overs again – where in 2 fielders and now 3 can remain outside the circle during this period. Earlier, you could have fielders anywhere and it wouldn’t matter. This gave rise to the batsmen like Jayasuriya, Kaluwitharna from Sri Lanka, Adam Gilchrist, Sachin Tendulkar – the list is endless. Not sure if the bowlers got anything in return. Then the smart men managing cricket decided to come up with a interesting change of allowing 2 bouncers in an over – while this did help bowlers to some extent. Bowling bouncers on Indian pitches is some kind of a joke as the ball sits up nicely to be hit. So the smart men thought.. what else can we do to make it more spicy – right lets now play with 2 new balls at either end and reduce one more fielder from the outfield. So that basically makes bowlers even more handicapped. The truth is – cricket grounds in India have been turned into a slaughter house for bowlers (ours and theirs).

I am not sure how many youngsters out there would really want to take up bowling. What role models do they have? There was Kapil Dev, Javagal Srinath, and Zaheer Khan. Who do we have now? I am sure no kid would want to look at Ishant Sharma and be like I want to bowl like him after seeing get whacked for 30 runs in an over. I believe the pitches in this country need to be changed drastically to ensure that our bowlers get a chance to perform, else the rules need to be changed. I completely agree with MSD that in these conditions the bowlers would prefer a bowling machine then them throwing the ball.  There is nothing more awesome than seeing a fast bowler run charging in and send thunderbolts at the batsmen who is ducking, weaving, leaving good balls and punishing the bad ones. But when the good ones start going over and above the boundary rope very frequently, something needs to be changed or very soon we would have ODI’s being played as 4 innings T20 game and that would be a serious blow to cricket.