IPL vs IPL

I am quite sure that there is one man who will lose his sleep after seeing those three alphabets (IPL) on my blog, no prizes for guessing as it’s obvious who’s that chap. Since neither I had paid any royalties nor did I sponsor any team in the IPL so it won’t be a surprise if I receive a notice from BCCI that how dare I use this term without their permission. This term has become a rage in our country, I bet you ask any Tom, Dick and Harry and they will be able to tell you what IPL is.? Don’t get surprised if soon you get IPL featured as a Noun in a Webster’s or Oxford dictionary. For years three letter words like IITs and IIMs has been a craze amongst student, but nowadays when the IPL season is on everything else takes a backseat. Now I understand this is the reason why we have World Cup every four years, otherwise students would have dismal marks every year on their report cards (Actually it’s one of the primary reasons why I got pathetic scores every fourth year).

The best part this year is that we are witnessing two IPLs; most of you must doubt that it’s a typo, but my dear friends you are wrong. I am talking about the two biggest reality shows running concurrently (The Indian Premier League and The Indian Political League). Yes they are no less than reality shows; you have thrill, excitement, fun, conspiracy, drama, back-biting, abuse. The last two words are highlighted as they are prerequisite for any good TRP raking show these days. This year both the leagues had their share of controversies and media coverage, I feel, the media companies must be cribbing that why these two events are scheduled at the same time. (They don’t have anything new to write these days, as most media companies are just cooking up news to fill pages/slots). When we have two most popular leagues at the same time, one can very well expect some fireworks when they both clash for supremacy. It all started when BCCI and Government of India locked horns over the IPL schedule, with Central Government not taking the onus and leaving it on the individual states to decide, everything looked in a limbo. For few days it seemed that we won’t be having the biggest money spinning event of the year (I won’t call it biggest sporting event as I still consider Olympics as the pinnacle of sports, and in my view there is a much bigger sporting event coming up i.e. Commonwealth Games 2010 scheduled in New Delhi).

As we all know India is a land of ‘Jugaad’ and ‘Jugaadus’, so the organizers managed to pull off things in the last minute. With so many corporate juggernauts and Bollywood celebrities involved, they couldn’t afford to cancel it in its second season. The Indian cricket lovers will be a bit disappointed with the IPL moving outside India, but they must be happy to see the action on the televisions at least. With some big signings this year the matches will certainly be more intense, also the bouncy pitches at South Africa will produce a fair contest between the bat and the ball. With no Bajrang Dals and VHPs there (Most of them will be busy campaigning for various other parties in another IPL) we can expect the eye candies grooving to the tunes after every fours and sixes hit outside the park. The organizers will ensure that if the cricketing skill fails to catch the eyeballs for the advertisers, skin show will at least do that. The IPL season 2 finally kick-started in South Africa; though certain flanks raised their concern on weather conditions there. The organizing committee initially said that there is a chance of rain in England during that time but it seems exactly the opposite, when couple of matches got washed out in the first week itself. South Africa was chosen the destination may be because their board shared a greater percentage of revenue with BCCI, after all in these recessionary times “It’s all about money, honey”.

Both these league garnered quite a lot of buzz in their pre season build up. On one side we had teams declaring their latest line up; taking about their expensive player signings at prices equivalent to the GDP of poor countries; bollywood celebrities joining the league; news on sacked captains; and best of the lot (Multiple Captaincy Theory). On the other side we had election manifestos to lure voters; bollywood celebrities campaigning for different parties; new coalitions and emergence of third front, every other politician projecting themselves as the next PM and same old caste and religion based agendas. It’s ironical to see all these politicians spitting venom at each other, because we know once the election results are out this same lot will be seen shaking hands and posing for photographs when they will be forming a coalition government. There is one interesting trend that has emerged during this election, after the shoe throw incidence on Ex US President it seemed that all our politicians are paying people to throw shoes/chappals at them. I wonder why till date no shoe/chappal thrown haven’t hit the target, because that ways they show that they are still alert enough to run our country.

One thing that gives me immense pleasure is that internet as a medium is contributing in a huge way in both the IPLs (Why shouldn’t I feel so, being in the same industry makes me proud). We have seen some great social initiatives like “Jago Re” which is actually promoting the voting culture amongst youth. Many political parties also rolled out their websites, and are spending huge money to promote themselves. One such party actually flooded almost every website on internet with their banners showcasing picture of an 80 plus year old man projecting himself as a fearless leader capable of providing proper governance. (I actually doubt that person as after looking at his face he himself doesn’t seem to survive next five years, how will he make his party run the government for five years). The IPL franchisees also joined the Web 2.0 bandwagon and rolled out their interactive websites, I wonder how much that will help in creating fan following. I personally feel performance is what ultimately decides fan base and not the PR by the franchisee. But this time the showstopper was one blog that claimed to give the insider story and bringing up news behind the scene. Though nobody is sure about the authenticity of the source but the blog has achieved a cult status overnight, Appam C and Vinnie D are now commonly used lingo among cricket lovers (This also shows the power of web, and its implications that how devastating it can be for any individual/institution, if it is used negatively).

Looking at the level of craziness among Indians for these two different IPLs I think I should contact Mr. Laathi Maroo (Yes, that name is apt for him as he implemented “Danda Raaj” in the cricketing world, where money speaks louder than cricketing acumen) to include some new teams in the competition. Why not have an IPL team full of politicians; it would be twice the fun if we combine Politics with Cricket (Anyways cricket has lots of politics in it and politics has lot of cricketing action, I still remember that UP assembly chaos). Some of you must doubt “politician playing cricket” how can that be possible? My answer is why not! If we have such dirty politics doing rounds within the cricket ground why can’t we have people in the team who are actually masters in doing that work. After looking at the performance of few teams who are placed at the bottom of the league, I can bet it’s not the cricketing skills which make franchisees. Who cares if that team win or lose, anyways there can only be four teams for the semifinal spot, at least that team will be good enough in off the field action; like post match press conferences where they will blame external factors (read opposition XI) for their dismal performance (They are good at blame games).

I don’t know whether I will see such a team or not but I personally feel that the best team should win both the leagues. After all it’s about our country and its people, while one league runs the country, the other runs the emotion of this cricket crazy nation where people might not be unhappy if they don’t get full meal everyday but they are unhappy if Sachin misses a century.

SR

It’s Better Late Then Never!!!

Ever since www fever struck me seven years back, there was a small desire inside me to do something on the web of my interest. Time passed on; and slowly I started learning new things. It all started on one fine evening (24 Sep’ 2001 being precise) when I made my first Email ID. That too with a lot of help from my friend Sharad. The 64kbps connections sucked big time those days. I had to pay the net charges and also for the patties and coffee which was an additional Ghoose for helping me out for doing one of the biggest thing in my life.

Immediately it felt like I was somebody big and recognizable may be of the ranks of Bill Gates. Owning an Email ID was like having a bank account or a real estate for me at that time. Immediately after that I started making IDs like a freak Yahoo, Rediff, Indiatimes and so on I made email ID on almost every portal. At one time I had more then 50 email IDs with me one each for communicating with a certain group. Though slowly I realized the importance of a single ID Currently in love with Yahoo Mail.

Chatting was one of the hot properties that time, and it was not late that I was infected with the virus. Occasional 2-3 hours soon turned into 5-7 hours a day; classes, hostel, friends became secondary things in my life. Sometimes I even skipped my lunch and dinner for chatting. Bloody skipping, actually didn’t had money for that, after spending 6-7 hrs at cafe that too at an hourly rate of Rs. 10, were the hell one would expect money. But overall had a great time and made some very good friends especially some hot chicks from abroad. Played some memorable pranks on my friends (Gaurav will kill me for this). Explored almost each and every facet of chat world and searched almost every nook and corner of chat rooms, even the 18+ ones, after all It was legal for me in 2001. The best ones were the chat rooms filled with all boys pretending to be a female via some raunchy alias name. Everybody in the room simply licked their lips to get a personalized IM window ping from that so called She.

Though regular surfing of porn continued. After all the entire WWW system is there because of this intrinsic human need. I discovered many great sites during those days which are still my best friend during my most intimate moments.

During the fall winter of the year 2002, I suddenly got an opportunity to design the website of my institute. That great project was an effort from Dhanno (Dhananjay) and GB (Gaurav). I don’t know how I became a part of the project, but once I was there, I was there 100 %. Dhanno handled the technicalities of the website after all he was the best brain amongst us, mind it only in terms of studies, Gaurav handled content management and project coordination He still handles the same profile of coordination and gyan sessions, and lastly me I handled graphic designing and overall look and feel of the website everybody had believe on my creativity. That single website changed our fortunes and we were among the heroes of the batch. Not Dhanno as he was already Rank 1 in the class. We got our separate cabin of Webmaster and a Compaq system to work on. Actually that website also gave me my most cherished word in life First “GOOD” from my father. Thereafter it was a web designer inside me for the next one year; I designed few more. Deep inside my heart there was still a small dream of making my own homepage.

City changed and things change accordingly, with a new institute my life took a different turn. Due to the pressure of studies and placement the web designer got lost somewhere. Actually there was no pressure as such, it was that I was not getting enough time for my passion NFS, Quake, UT, Doom……and also prerequisite 10 hr of sleep. Your body needs quite a bit of rest if you drive a Mc Laren F1 at 375 kmph or fire 200 shots on a rail gun for 3-4 hours. Ask Schumacher or somebody from SWAT. Internet usage got restricted to Google and other similar search engines. As most of the time (not really) I was searching some good white paper, so that I can copy them and can get some good grades, which eventually I was deprived of during my MBA. Infact during those two years I realized that MBA is not about Kotler’s 4 Ps or Porter’s 5 forces model, its actually about 3 Cs (Ctrl+A, Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V). Probably I should patent this term.

I encountered one innovative application and that was P-2-P software. What a smart thing to download your favorite videos, thank god it was better than those B-2-B and B-2-C in marketing classes. As we got separate net connection in every room, we utilized even the last kilobyte of bandwidth to download and share stuff, mostly ‘X’ rated.

It was destined that I will land up in some Dot Come, and same happened. Though initial years were somewhat turbulent as I was selling the concept which was not at all popular and was new to Indian market, though today they make big business sense, and every media giant is opening a property portal.

Many good things come in life a bit late but they do make a lot of difference. Social networking sites were one of them. They actually took the market by storm, and it was not very late that I got back all my lost contacts and old friends. The impact was so huge that in no time it was the first thing that I opened every morning even before my Microsoft Outlook.

One job to another and one media house to another. I feel proud to be associated with a media company because sometimes those press stickers at the back of your vehicle save you from cops and give you entry in certain VIP sections. I again landed on a Dot Com company. Here I was infected with a new viruses of Blogging (Not that new to me as I was familiar with them courtesy Ramit), Ajax pages, Web 2.0 etc. The web designer inside me reincarnated and I again started dreaming of my own web page.

That’s why I started with some free web pages at Google pages and thought having my own Blog. Thanks to Larry Page and Sergey Brin for incorporating such a great company, hats off to you guys. I have started this blog by the name MypikC which means My+Pick+See i.e. I will pick the topics which are HOT and will give information, insight and views (Discussion and criticism most welcome) about them. Hope so my concept will work and soon this blog will be a place for information seeker.

In a nutshell that was something about my interaction with www for the past few years, and now I am striving to get my own URL and @myname Email ID soon.

Check out this space for some interesting stuff….

SR