Alive….

Just in case anybody cares, the Pondit is alive and well – but swamped with stuff to be blogging regularly. Which is a shame given that India’s early exit from the World Cup provides an ideal opportunity for rants, armchair punditry and such.

But I would really be adding to the general noise, so I point you to some excellent analysis on other blogs. There is sort of a point-counterpoint argument about the sense ‘entitlement’ of Indian cricket fans between Amit Varma and our good friend Confused (Confused also points out some real grievances of Indian cricket supporters and bit of journalistic hypocrisy). While the overwhelming feeling might be that drastic changes are necessary, Vivek digs up some statistics indicating that "[t]here has been no fundamental change in Indian batting in the last few years". He also argues that other countries have made improvements in leaps and bounds [pun intended] especially in fielding. Meanwhile, Dipanjan notes that expectations about India were a bit high to begin with (and he provides an Excel spreadsheet to make his point, I suspect this dude is a MBA ;- )  ) – but even then the loss against Bangladesh was a bit hard to swallow. Greatbong makes a good case against the coach, Greg Chappell, and why should be held more responsible.

Finally, even as there the shadow of Bob Woolmer’s murder hangs over the World Cup,  here is an interesting article by Shashi Tharoor about cricket and Americans [link fixed - thanks Puneet - but reguistration required]. 

Back to the grind.