World Cup Preview

So the cricket world cup is underway. it seems more like a media event than a sporting one but who can blame them, in these days of scams and revolutions nothing is better than watching a sport where the results are almost unpredictable (there are exceptions). i know i'm a week too late to write this preview but hey you'll probably be reading this post the world cup so it makes no difference. so what are each teams chances in this world cup? well after no research and thanks to the 48 hour bandh in hyderabad (JAI TELENGANA) i have a lot of free time to come up with this crap.

1. Australia: three time defending champions and a team seemingly on a mission (so is everybody). you can never write them off but trust me this time they are not winning the world cup. i don't care what the pundits say but australia will NOT win the cup this time around. and after this ricky poiting will be dropped as captain and he'll probably never play again.
2. South Africa: well the tag 'chokers' is not a mistake really. it's happened always and this time around it's bound to happen again. it's a question of when they are going to choke. i think they'll sail through the group stages and beat India as well and top the group. however they are going to end up facing australia or pakistan in the next round and then they will implode handing them an exit in the quarters or semi's
3. England: if they manage to get though to round 2, KP will fire esp if they play the aussies and then they will lose in the semi's. they have to be one of the most overrated teams in the world at the moment. and their performance against the netherlands proves this point.
4. Sri Lanka: the only real team i think thats superbly balanced and you would be an idiot to think that they wouldn't win the whole thing. sanga and mahela will be the men to watch out for.
5. Pakistan: your guess is as gud as anybody else's. the most talented team in the world but they are just so confused and troubled at all times it's like if the pakistan team has no problems you'll know that there is an imbalance in the world.
6. India: well objectively speaking, we won't win this cup. it's as gud a chance as we'll ever have but still we might end up losing in the semi's or finals. dhoni is a coolest captain around but with sreeshant in the team he's going to screw it up like zaheer screwed it up in 2003.   

so what can we look forward to from the meda?

1. Crappy songs meant to motivate the team. every noticed how badly we do in WC's when anybody makes a song for India? i'm sure they didn't do it in 1983 and we won. they didn't do it when we won the T20 world cup coz no one really thought we would win, but guess what we won. so DO NOT COMPOSE A SONG YOU IDIOTS!!!
2. Rajdeep sardesai screaming on TV about cricket. Arnab interviewing someone about how india won/lost a match and then just talk till you want to throw something at him.
3. A new 'special program' named something like 'field of dreams' launched buy CNN-IBN during the knockout stages of the competition.
4. A stupid 'sting' operation by some news channel exposing how players went drinking the night before a match.
5. offers for tv's, video players and any possible thing you can think of.
6. new zoo zoo adverts thats going to annoy the crap out of you. (move on vodafone, we are fed up of it)
7. advertising between the overs will be so gud that you'll miss the first ball of the next over
8. horrible commentary from sanjay manjarekar, ravi shastri and the likes with incessent talking about useless things.
9. interview with kapil dev on all channels if india reaches the final
10. tarrot cards, fortune tellers and all the other voodoo you can think of where ppl are paid to say that india and sachin will do well before evey match.

well this is going to be a fantastic extravaganza can't wait for it to end the IPL to begin. GO INDI COMMANDOS :P

Lessons from South Africa 2010

So this Sunday is the big world cup final, over the last 5 weeks I’ve heard people who haven’t spoken about football before talking about how a 4-4-2 formation is obsolete and how the 3-3-4 ‘diamond’ formation is where world football is headed (I agreed with them coz I don’t really care what formation is being played as long as the football is good). I’m looking for the world cup to end so that these people who claim to know everything about football can finally resume their lives and discuss more trivial matters like what is left to watch on tv (btw this is a genuine concern).

Now taking a cue from these ‘armchair pundits’ (it’s a phrase coined by someone who writes for yahoo, I did not come up with that, although I’d like to think I did) I’m going to list out all what I’ve learnt from this world cup.

·        The England football team is worse than the Indian cricket team when it comes to putting the country’s interest ahead of self.

·         Wayne Rooney is an arrogant lil prick who needs to learn that he’s not god’s gift to football.

·         The French soccer team should have not been ‘hand’ed qualification, Ireland would have been more entertaining.

·         It would have been fun to see the old hags of the Italian team face off against the Germans; it would have been like one of those matches where the parents play against their children and get whipped.

·          Brazil apparently did not play ‘beautiful’ football anymore, they tried to play like the old German teams (so I hear), as far as I know, kaka played like kaka and the kaka hit the fan as far as they were concerned

·         By Germany beating Argentina, they potentially ensured that over 50 million ppl who watch the final don’t see a short fat man running naked and go blind.

·         Netherlands have dived and fouled their way to the final, they surely cannot win the damn thing now, can they?

·         Spain have just scored enough goals to ensure they’ve reached the final, I don’t understand what happened to the flair and all that jazz ppl were talking about, they seem to play more like a machine. (that’s my expert opinion)

·         Ghana was brutally knocked out, but I say kudos to the guy who handled the ball, it was sheer presence of mind.

·         I’m sad to see that Paraguay did not win for all so different reasons ;-)

·         NDTV and IBN invited experts who probably have only watched football all their lives and are no authority to talk on the game. They just sounded like idiots, esp that bald guy, wanted to just throw something at him.

·         ESPNStar had John Dykes and that chick who hosted the ICL hosting the pre and post match shows, simple rating, John dykes A+ for the football knowledge and being entertaining, the random chick C+ for effort but still managing to sound like she was reading from a script. And the Malaysian guy, SHUT IT BITCH!!!

·          Facebook status msg’s revolved around football, some ppl expressed opinions and others just love to comment and talk nonsensical crap.

·         Frank Lampard will be having dreams about a cross-bar for the rest of his life, or atleast till the next time he manages to score a goal. He has also sent a letter to the make a wish foundation stating that before he dies he would like football goal posts to be higher, and that he could kill the linesman from that match.

·         A 20 year old Thomas Muller showed the world how to score goals, and showed England and Argentina how slow their defensive players were.

·         And FIFA successfully managed to change the lives of 20-30 blonde Dutch women, for looking HOT!!!

·         Uruguay was the surprise of the tournament, they were the perennial underdogs but they have played brilliant football.

·         Only a fool would bet against Germany not doing well in 2014, over 90% of the same players are expected to play in 4 yrs time. And I think their average age will still be less than the Italian team that they sent this year.

·         The whole world waited with abated breath for what Paul the octopus had to say, the poor creature is probably going to become soup (literally) if he picks Uruguay over Germany in the third place play-off.

·         Fabio Cappello clearly needs to learn to speak English; it just seems that the players didn’t understand what he was saying.

·         Diego Maradona now has to decide what he’s going to do when messi goes back to spain, who will he hug?

·         The ‘Nike’ curse struck again, Ronaldo – came, saw, dribbled, FAILED!!! Rooney- came, saw, ran and then just kept running all the way home, and Ronaldhnio didn’t even get picked!!!

·         The English team got robbed, had a fan come into the dressing room, and drew a game with Algeria and the US. They also came in second in the worst group of the world cup coz no one from the group went beyond the first knockout stage.

·         Klose has not yet managed to break the record for world cup goals, has one more shot at it though on Saturday.

·         Twitter must have crashed at least once during every game.

·         All the closet non football fans can return knowing that the next time they are out with friends no one is really going to talk abt football anymore (well at least till the EPL starts)

·         The football stadiums are absolutely magnificent and just hope that they are kept that way

·         The vuvezela’s were and the jabulani were the most controversial things this world cup.

·         It’s going to weird but nice to watch a football match without bees buzzing all the time.

To conclude, I have a confession to make, I’ve watched 2 complete matches and in both Germany scored 4 goals and made the opposing team look like fools. My opinions about all other games are based on stuff I’ve read, heard, made up and probably dreamt….