Cracker of a Diwali!

It was the first Diwali of my 4 years of college that I spent back here and not at home. Many reasons for that, but this would have all the makings of a great day. I woke up with a sore knee from previous morning's game against the tribals. Woke up anticipating a difficult game against a rejuvenated MIT team, in the finals of Golden Jubilee Cup. We were conducting this extra home tournament this year, and even though competition from the local teams isn't anything worthy of a mention, there was pressure to win. We had lost Dasara, which we had been winning from when I can remember. We were just not in that free flowing zone that we were in by this time last year. We needed the win. Come 5 o clock in the evening, we went in to the game with a funny line up. A gamble to start our freshman center payed off. The gamble of going in to the game with not much height and presence inside, which again payed off. We shot the ball like never before this year. 'I knew after the first shot, that we were winning this easily' said Captain Blok. That's the feeling we all got. 40 minutes and a dirty game hence, we won. We won by 9, much easier than we thought. After being robbed off the best player award to many worthy candidates, we celebrated the festival of light and our victory with a team dinner. Little bit of DSP, and we took 3 hours to answer one simple question the above mentioned freshman posed. All in all it rounded up a great day, possibly the greatest of my final year so far. Happy with my game, Happy with the team's, Happy that we're such a nice unit, Happy that Diwali away from home would end up being such a great day, Happy that I've got to go pick up our brand new red jerseys in a few minutes - Oops, Gotta Run. Happy Diwali, everyone :D

Dream team of our generation

While I've grown up watching the beautiful game, I have often wondered, who are the greatest set of players that I have been priviliged to grow up watching. If there was ever a dream team of the greatest players of our generation, who would it be. Here's my list. Opinions and refutations are mot welcome.

Goal Keeper - Iker Casillas - He's my favourite. He's won so many titles in so few years, when he's so young. And in my opinion the number 1 shot blocker in the game. Buffon's better in some aspects, but Casillas is the overall package for me.

Right Back - Cafu - What a joy he was to watch spring up and down that right wing. A great champion, a great man, and also a great football player. Probably one of the greatest ever to play the position, barring Garrincha. He's an automatic choice in this team.

Centre Backs - Alesandro Nesta and Paolo Maldini - Nesta is one of the modern day greats and Italians have always led the way in showing how one defends. Maldini, is one of the game's elites, possibly the greatest defender. These two would make a killer twosome at the centre of the defence.

Left Back - Roberto Carlos - Complementing Cafu on the right, Carlos would be an awesome add to the left side. One of the best long range shooters ever to have played the game, he was a terror on the wing in his days, and is almost an automatic choice for this position

Right Wing - Luis Figo - What a winger, multiple winner of the World and European player of the year awards and a menace down the wing in his days, has scored plenty of wonderful goals and almost carried the Portugal team when he led it.

Centre Midfielders - Claude Makelele and Pavel Nedved - Makelele is the best ever DM that I have seen. Pre Galactico era, Madrid were that stable because of him, and Galactico and post that, they weren't because of the same guy. Rock in front of the defense, is actually a pleasure to watch even if he is the DM. Nedved, although plays for my most hated team Juve, takes this place mainly because of one performance against Real where he scored a hat-trick to send us out of the CL. What a class performer, truly deserves the spot on this team.

Left Wing - Zinedine Zidane - My footballing god, the greatest player to have ever touched a football, the scorer of the most beautiful goal, I cannot stop talking about this guy. If there's one person I miss in the Real team and the world of football its my beloved Zizou. So versatile, so classy, nothing more needs to be told I suppose.

Forwards - Thierry Henry and Ronaldo - Henry, I personally do not like him that much, but his records stand out. He will always be one step below the greats because of his money minded move to Barca, but he is a classy striker he is on the pitch. Fatty Ronaldo, who is the greatest striker of our generation, is well, a shame to a young fan, but his talent was undeniable. Those stepovers, those quick dashes, and not to mention, the great finishing skills make him truly deserve this spot.

PS - Near Misses : Del Piero, Giggs, Pirlo, Ferdinand

PPS - Far Misses : Kaka, Messi, Iniesta, CR9? They have to achieve lots more before being considered for this.

Comment away people.

Criminal Financial Dealings

About a year back, I wrote an entry on this blog about how Marca sells newspapers by publishing false football rumours. Some of these news items materialise into deals, and most don't. While the earlier article talks about the hype rumours create, this one is for the hype, the actual transfers that come through, create.

Yes, Yes everybody knows Real Madrid splashed out 65m Euro for Kaka and 93m for Ronaldo. That's a hell of a lot of money. Now it would be a legitimate question if people ask, why Madrid overpay for their transfers. A possible explanation to that is that, teams know Madrid will pay close to whatever they demand, so they just inflate the transfer fee. This does have its bad effects on the transfer market, yes. What I find ridiculous is, not just fans or players or managers, but the management of several clubs are criticising the Madrid transfer system.

Some facts before you start jumping at me. Clubs in Spain are not owned by individuals, like the case is in England. You have Oil tycoons, Arab Sheikhs, American finance big shots and many more funding the English clubs, whereas in Spain, specifically Real Madrid, no single owner exists. There is a president who is the authority on the business dealings, and Perez being the shrewd businessman that he is, has pulled off some amazing deals. Our money, Our dealings, anything wrong with that?

People often complain, why do Madrid buy superstars of every club, why can't they grow or develop talent like some of the other clubs. The answer to that is pretty complicated. Madrid is a club where patience is unheard of, fans want success all the time. Such is their history and they have every right to be that way. It is not as if they do not produce good kids at all. They don't use them properly, but that's a different issue altogether. People who know the Spanish game will know that Negredo, Granero, Mata, Diego Lopez, all of whom are product of the Real Madrid Castilla, are superstars in the making at lower clubs. Coming back to the point, one way, and the right way in my opinion, to look at the transfers is this. A club X develops a player from its youth system, and his value increases. They do well with him, but after a point, he seeks newer challenges and better avenues for success/money whatever. This is where Real come into the picture. They pay a lavish sum and all parties are happy. X has not much more it can offer to the player, and also end up making a profit on the sale. This is how most transfers to Madrid work. Now your non Madrid big shot clubs, cannot afford such lavish sums, what do they do instead? Steal other clubs' youth talent for dirt cheap sums and 'develop them'. Such is the case with the top 3 players in the world at the moment. Ronaldo was nicked off a Portuguese club, Kaka similarly from a Brazilian club, both at around 18 years of age. Messi, the third was stolen at 12! 12- the kid would not be knowing percentages by then, but Barca recruit him and now call him one of their own. Now which policy is more criminal? You tell me.

Inci Bball Review

It's that time of the year again. When everything that you looked forward to in the year is over. You are terribly bugged and experiencing a hangover of sorts. You tend to look back and think of how you got to where you got. You tend to look at what you wanted to achieve and whether you did. You think about whether you justified all the work that you put in. You finally boil down to whether you are happy with what happened or not. Before you think I'm getting really philosophical, all I'm thinking of is just reviewing how Inci went from the viewpoint of my team.

People said our team wouldn't be any good. Every now and then we heard 'Oh - What will your team do without him?', 'NITK team is not that strong this year right?' etc. We wanted to set and end to all that. The way we trained changed, the way we played changed. And the results showed just that. We've made a few friends, a few enemies as well in the course of the year. But all that seemed worth it. Until last year we were known as a team that plays fairly well at home, a team that has some great shooters and not much else. A bit of that changed when we went to PESIT this year, and all of it was about to change during Inci.

We were a little apprehensive while making fixtures this year. Because the standard of the tournament was going to be so high, we had to take on a semi-decent team in the quarterfinal league itself. After lots of speculation and arguments we decided to put PESIT and MVJCE in our group. Our debut game was against PESIT. Although we beat them by 20ish we had a big team talk after the game because clearly we could have played a lot better, and wouldn't get away with the tougher teams if we played like that. Next day our previous captain arrived with the idea of helping us in the form of a coach. Apart from that we went out with the intention of seeing to it that we did not make the same mistakes as we did the previous night. Also, we had no idea how MVJCE were and usually not knowing the opponent has always worked to our favour. A nearly perfect game was played that night by us, resulting in another 20 point win. Now for the hurdle of semi-finals that we hadn't cleared ever in the previous five years of our home tournament. RNSIT did us a favour by beating Ramaiah, Jain and Josephs would meet in the other semis as we had planned it out earlier. The prospect of playing RNS was scary, yet comforting. Scary because they had 2 huge 6 foot 5 giants and a good defence. Comforting because they are a poor offensive team and we are one of the best defences in the tournament. Come Saturday evening, we had a good chance to finally break the jinx and reach Inci finals for the first time. The first semi between the two powerhouses Jain and Josephs was a humdinger of a game. A buzzer beater three pointer to settle it says it all. That was followed by arguably the best dunk contest performance ever seen live for us here in college. A little tension was in the air, but that had to be gotten rid of. Smart play and some sweet shooting by our star shooter made sure of another 20 point win. Finally, we were there. A hurdle for all these years had been passed. There was so much joy that it felt as if we were content enough to have got this far. But we wouldn't let that ruin a golden opportunity. We could feel the nerves even before the game began. A tough game, after which a little inexperience probably showed but a lot of character was also shown when we lost to Jain, Basketball royalty in the state just by five, thus bringing to a close, by far the most successful year for our college's basketball team.

As, I reflect back upon these memories, I only wonder of what's to come next year. As of now, I'm just sitting, wishing and waiting.

Inci Preview!

SlamDunk was first added to Inci 6 years ago. What was once a small time tournament has now become one of the biggest college level tournaments in the state. A total of 20 guys teams and 10 girls team meet in this exhibition of professional basketball every year to produce some great matches. And boy, do we have some awesome teams coming this year to contest for the prestigious title and cash prize.

The guys tournament has always witnessed some of the closest, some of the most fast paced, some of the most tactically played out games you can see. The best teams from Bangalore, a certain team from Kerala and local teams along with us round up the participant pool for the tournament. This is what we have been waiting for the entire year and here is a preview of what you can expect from the basketball court during Inci.

Let's have a look at the teams. In no particular order, a jist of some of the favourties.

· Jain - Defending Champions, surely this year too a frontrunner for the title.

Star Players : Kaushal, John, Puneeth

Strengths : Scoring machine with tremendous experience in tournaments.

· Ramaiah - Always strong contenders in any tournament, known for their game intensity, they are always a force to be reckoned with.

Star Players : Abhishek, Chandy

Strengths : Intensity. They have a chant that goes 1-2-3 Team and that is the essence they play with.

· Nehru - The second most popular team among the NITK Crowd after the home team, who give us the match of the tournament year after year.

Star Players : Rahul, Mahesh

Strengths : Tremendously fast paced game with incredible ball movement.

· NITK - Home team. Home Ring. Great shooters. Makes for an almost perfect recipe.

Star Players : Alok, Ewin

Strengths : As mentioned earlier home team and crowd support coupled with the fact that shooting is very accurate especially on own ring.

· RNSIT - A very beautiful team to watch, on their day can beat any of the other strong teams.

Star Players : Krupesh, Pradeep

Strength : Excellent team game and a pleasure to watch.

· Josephs - They have the most superior record in Bangalore tournaments this year and will be looking to add to that.

Star Players : Markesh, Sood, Chimpu

Strength : Superb team game, Superb accuracy, Superb speed, arguibly the best team when put on court.

· MVIT – A team that has grown over the years and have a reputation to be very motivated during important games.

Star Players : Abhishek
Strength : The above mentioned player can at times single handedly turn around games and lift up the entire team’s spirits in no time.

Potential Surprise Packages : PESIT, NIT Trichy, BMS, Surana, Dayanand Sagar, MVJCE, NITTE, PA College, Aloysius, RV, NHCE, BMS, Father Muller and NITK-B

With added attractions like the Dunk Contest, a record high of 10 girls teams, and a debutant planned for this year – A three point shootout, SlamDunk promises to truly live up to Inci’s punchline – BEYOND EXPRESSION.

Gods at play.

Tennis : A game that is played with rackets and a light elastic ball by two players or pairs of players on a level court divided by a low net.

God : A being believed to have more than natural attributes, The supreme or ultimate reality.

Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal : Gods of Tennis.

That brings us to the question that is unanswerable to a few people, but fairly easily answerable to most others one way or another. Which one of them is better? Statistics say Rafa owns Federer based on head to head. Tournament records say Federer is close to being the greatest ever. Of late, especially after the Aussie open finals, it was pretty evident that maybe it is time for people to admit that Nadal is well and truly the king. On the other hand, Federer is playing some of the most patchy tennis of his life. On some days and off the other, Unforced errors like never before in his career. People say he is in bad form. But as Murray pointed out- He has reached 3 grand slam finals in a row and won one of them, and you say he is in bad form? Such is the high standards he has set. These two men have given us some of the greatest tennis matches we have ever seen. Surely there is more to come this year. Will Federer win his first one at Roland Garos? Or Will Nadal beat the king of grass on grass? Who's going to have the final say in the US Open? These questions will be answered in a few months. The other question is the tricky one. My answer- Nadal may beat Federer, but he can never be Federer.

Endurance Running

It was the usual Friday evening when we had collected on court for practise. After a tiring 2 hour work out, with exercises with and without the ball, someone thought aloud, asking what it is that we would be doing the next morning in our first proper morning practise session. First proper in the sense that it was the first holiday that we would wake up in the morning, and do something productive. Immediately, almost as if it came naturally, the think tank of our team suggested an idea. We would aptly name it Endurance running. Now, for an average sportsman what we do may not be termed as endurance running, but then again we are students who play, not players who study like the ones who are regular favourites at tournaments. That said, for an average student in our college, what we do is of quite some magnitude. Endurance running, if we were professionals would have probably been a run that lasted say 10 rounds around the football field. That would be 10*700 metres = 7 kilometres. But as always we do things with a twist, a twist that makes getting tired so much fun, you don't stop even if its completely exhausting. What the aforementioned think tank suggested was a really nice break up of running. First a warm up for 4 rounds, not the usual rounds around the field but again with a twist. The twist being everyone runs in a straight line and at every turn, the last guy in the line overtakes the first guy. This can be really hard, but also is fun. I suck at it, but then that's a different story altogether. Right, so that was warm-up. Then there is the best part. To put it simply it was five 100 metre sprints. Then four 200 metre sprints. Three 300 metre strides. Two 400 metre strides and a final round the pitch 700 metre jog again. Doing the math, it comes up to 6.5 kilometres of running, subtract a little for laziness and cutting of the track, also some inconsistencies. 6 kilometres of running could never be made this interesting. As we finished, we were barely able to walk and carry our arses back to the block. Thankfully as some sort of reprieve, Captain Camel Calcutta and the aforementioned think tank decided to treat us breakfast. Benefits of hard work you could say. That rounded up a week that was never short of anything - morning practises, evening games, 2 people quitting the team and eventually coming back realising that the pros of staying in would always outweigh the cons if you stayed out. Oh, did I forget to mention, I love this game, and this team.