Cricket musings

Looking at the current World Cup, and looking at the semis, one thing struck me: out of the four semi finalists, three of them - Aus, SL and SA were in a pretty bad way around mid-late 2005.

Aus had just come off losing the Ashes, and it hurt them pretty bad. SL had gotten a major hammering in ODI's and tests from India around end-2005. SA were definitely on an upward incline, but not doing extremely well.

The fourth semi finalist - New Zealand has pretty much been consistent in 2005, but had endured a 'relatively' bad 2004.

It wouldnt take a major leap of faith to assume that these teams had to reassess and recalibrate their strategies and planning around those times. And it is no surprise that these teams that have done the best in this tournament.

Makes me wonder: given how intense international cricket has become, with the volume of games and the fitness levels required, is a 2 year period pretty much all a team has before it needs to periodically reassess itself completely?

Validation blues

An interesting point of view by Amit Varma on India Uncut.

Its almost a national phenomenon, to seek validation from outside. I dont know about it just being the West though. It seems to me that Indians love to get validation from anywhere and everywhere. It makes us needlessly sensitive to criticism as well.

Many possible reasons exist for this, although I seriously doubt a legacy of colonialism is one of them. It could stem from this: most of us perhaps live out frameworks and paradigms that have been defined by others, especially the middle class ? Or is it a legacy of caste and culture, which basically means that the definitions for everything are in the hands of someone or something else?