It Just Isn’t Cricket!
The Modi-Tharoor spat has opened a can of worms writes ERVELL E. MENEZES
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The Indian Premier League plods on now for over a month, the cricketers are sweating it out in the long hot summer and after an initial spurt of popularity this maha -jamboree is making news for the wrong reasons, with IPL commissioner Lalit Modi becoming the centre of controversy after his spat with Minister of State for External Affairs Shashi Tharoor.
It is over the Kochi team franchise involving Rendezvous Sports World, partly owned by Dubai-based socialite Sunanda Pushkar who has been romantically linked with him.
Tharoor has accused Modi of “breaching all propriety” in his effort to discredit the Kochi franchise and take it away from them for his corporate friends. Tharoor has denied any romantic involvement with Ms Pushkar, but is still not out of the woods as the sweat equity accorded to Ms Pushkar is more than the amount permitted. Both parties are on a sticky wicket and the curtain is yet to descend on the show.
The spat however, has opened a can of worms with allegations flying right, left and centre, most of them targeting the suave but arrogant Modi who has apparently been treading on a number of toes.
Modi is believed to have told certain bidders how much to quote and he wanted Rendezvous Sports World to withdraw its bid. But it is Modi’s nepotistic dealings which has further queered the pitch. They say his son-in-law Gaurav Burman of Global Cricket Ventures, holds the digital and mobile rights for the Championship Trophy until 2017. Then Suresh Chelaram, Modi’s sister-in-law’s husband based in Nigeria, holds most of the shares in Rajasthan Royals. All these connections were not known at the time of auctioning the franchises.
Digging further into his past, it was revealed that in 1985 when studying at Duke University, Durham, Modi was booked for robbery of 10,000 dollars along with three other students.
All this mud-raking puts Modi in an embarrassing position. To add to his troubles the Income-Tax Department has also visited his offices in Mumbai to look into money-laundering and hawala transactions.
Bureaucrat Sanjay Dixit. the man who crafted his entry into the Rajasthan Cricket Association and then assured his exit, has his tweet gates open, posing embarrassing questions about his one-time friend and bad-mouthing him by bringing up some contentious issues. But it is demeaning to see how seasoned cricketers like Sunil Gavaskar and Ravi Shastri are kow-towing to Modi to say nothing of the bimbos like Mandira Bedi, Shilpa Shetty and Preity Zinta who are of glamour/nuisance value.
The IPL seems to be dragging its feet too long. It is sure to have an adverse effect on the ICC World Cup with too much of cricket. The crowds are there. A good percentage is in on freebies against ads and other sorts of promotion, but there is not as much enthusiasm as when it began. But these gala events have the knack of getting more than their share of adverse press coverage. Like the Sania-Shoaib affair which made the lead story in most dailies.
Sania Mirza has always been a creation of the press. In the first place her body is not built for speed. Secondly, she guilty of the foot-mouth disease and a victim of what I refer to as ‘the Kambli effect’. It refers to Sachin Tendulkar’s schoolboy cricketer colleague Vinod Kambli who could not handle the sudden power and money – it ruined him psychologically and socially like so many world soccer stars who were propelled into sudden stardom.
Give me Saina Newhal any day. She is a performer and her racket speaks for herself. Shobhaa De, an expert on everything under the sun and maybe few even over it, wrote a piece the other day advising the tennis player how to capitalize on her brand name. Yes, today it is all about brand names and celebrity issues. But how do they reach that stature?
Then there is the “paid news syndrome” which is the new phenomenon with newspapers and TV channels selling news on page one and time on TV. In the old days the chief-sub-editor would compare the page one news items with the other newspapers to see if the stories tallied. If he missed even one important story, he could have been pulled up. Today each newspaper has its own home-made lead. This has been a cause for concern among the top brass of journalists for whom the authenticity and ethics of news coverage is paramount. Recently the Commonwealth Journalists Association, India Chapter, collaborated with Jan Prasar, a voluntary organization of the India International Centre, to discuss the prickly issue of “paid news syndrome” – the growing trend in the media and TV time being sold for a price.
Forming the background to the panel discussion was a debate in the Rajya Sabha last month when Information & Broadcasting Minister Ambika Soni termed the trend as “serious.” Asserting the government’s commitment to end the “malpractice,” she said the Press Council of India (PCI) had constituted a sub-committee to look into the matter.
Ms Soni said the government had been receiving proposals from time to time from the PCI and the Editors’ Guild of India (EGI) and a similar proposal received late last year, was under consideration. Now these panels are known to sleep over the work at hand. They must be put on the fast track, because the marketing and public relations lobbies are quite strong.
To touch briefly on the home front, the Planning Commission has increased its share to Goa by some Rs 470 crores. And this includes Rs35 crores for the National Games. Chief Minister Digambar Kamat has a smile on his face on a front page picture with Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia who was pleased with the performance of social sector industries.
Kamat promised Ahluwalia more security guards on the beach in the interests of safety for tourists and the commencement of cruise services from Mumbai to Goa.
The State also plans to set up a Mineral Development Fund with a corpus of Rs 500 crores. Wonder what the powerful mining lobby feels about it?
Ahluwalia wanted the private sector to be involved in development and infrastructure and suggested their participation in the modernization of the IT and Transport sectors. But don’t we know how appalling our performance is in these sectors? Kamat made some promises, something he is very good at. Whether anything positive will ensue is another matter. At least he can smile for the time being with the G-7 also in limbo waiting for an audience with Sonia.
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Cat Scan
By Marc de Souza
Observation is one of the best forms of education. If this is true, my cat should make a great cook. Whenever I am in the kitchen, he watches every move. As I am slicing, stirring, measuring or mixing, his eyes never leave my hands. He keeps hoping against hope that I will stretch out my hand in friendship and drop something delicious.
At the chopping board, I get tired of the constant feeling that ‘big brother’ cat is watching me. So I hold out a piece of what I have been dicing. He races over to take a sniff, only to discover that I am offering him a piece of onion. With disgust, he saunters back to his napping spot and goes flat on the ground.
Even after being offered green pepper, carrots, beans and other food ingredients he considers obnoxious, he is never discouraged. Every time I hold out a morsel, he hurries over, just in case I might have finally decided to cook something worthwhile – like liver or fish. In spite of what he considers my strange taste in foods, he still wants to be my friend. No matter how many times I fail him, he never gives up. My mellow yellow cat might not have a very high IQ or a college degree, but he sure has the right idea about never giving up. His character is so specialized and stable in contrast with our dog Toto. Friends love him, children even more. He adores them.
The fog comes in on little cat fur. And so does sunrise, sunset, nighttime, noontime and anytime at my house, these days. Since the weather changed, he has been leaving a trail of yellow fur wherever he goes – so now anybody could find the way to my house.
Leopards can’t change their spots, But this cat has sure been changing his coat, and leaving pieces of it all over the neighbourhood. I guess it’s natural for someone who had been wearing a fat yellow fur coat to feel the need to shed it at least once a year.
I’m glad there is a change of weather explanation for his change of fur. Otherwise, I might be expected to take him to a cat psychologist to find out why he is acting this way.
Recently I read about a woman who consulted a pet psychologist to find out why her usually well-behaved cat had suddenly started leaving things in her house that were even worse than yellow fur. The expert told the woman she had been spending too much time away from home, so her cat felt deprived and was misbehaving to get attention. She was told the only cure is to spend more ‘quality time’ with her cat. In today’s world, apparently ‘quality time’ is a cure-all for many problems.
Our cat scratches maddeningly on the bedroom door every morning. He is famous for his stealthiness and cunning. He goes out does his business, returns soon and demands, to be fed by me. He once found the shredded skin of a snake and placed it on our front doorstep.
I hurriedly got the broom and hastily swept it away. I am quite superstitious of an unsuspecting snake stepping out of a piece of its life, shedding a shell of what it used to be, leaving behind a thin transparent slip of a former reality.
Our cat lies across my belly while I am trying to read, and if I put it the wrong way, it snarls or scratches, sometimes does both and then runs off to eat some more and sulk.
For some reason, it has fixed most of its attention on me. It hates my son, barely tolerates my wife and daughter and loathes strangers. I suspect that it takes one to know one.
