Shrewd leader calls it a day!!!!!

One of the news that took me by shock in the recent days was "sourav (i love to call him as sourav) calling it a day".
I m one of his greatest admirers, he is one of the best cricketing legend and best captain for india, even we can say one of the best captain in world cricket.

when everyone liked sachin, i don’t know the reason why I liked sourav, note the fact i too love sachin’s cricket, sachin is a master/ legend who is incomparable, yet something was special in sourav that made me his diehard fan, more than his cricketing ability i liked his
-> shrewd leadership quality,
-> fearless attitude to fight for the game . . .

sourav is one of the cricketer who has been constantly under the pressure created by media (for performing poor in 3 games out of 10) and by his roles n responsibility (opener, captain), even though under such massive pressure circulating him almost from year 2000 (when he started leading team india) to till date, he has delivered what best he can do. generally even great players failed when they are under pressure (needless to strike examples, we all know many of it).

he is the one of the indian cricketer who has been criticized and speculated more than anyone in the recent times; writing about him has been a business for media and they kept writing abt him. it has become a habit for them and even people like to read the news which often portrays him as bad cricketer and person with worst attitudes. worst part is that he has NOT been praised by the media even when he has done well. .. . his bright side was always kept under the dark.

there are people and players in our life, who gets the unfortunate luck of being criticized for doing ANYTHING wrong and not been praised even when they deliver SOMETHING good, sourav is one of the elite member in this unfortunate club.

selection committee dropped him even for the "REST of the Indian squad" in the irani trophy in early September this year:-
Dada during his press meet to inform us that the current test series will be his last one said "How long would I have played? Maybe, up to 2009. Maybe, seven more Tests. For that I was not prepared to take any more humiliation,"
this statement really moved me . ... one can understand how much it has hit his heart.

And here is what sourav added to the above statement "If a gun is held at your head, how far can you bear it. That too after playing 450 matches. I played badly in only one series. But others are not dropped. I have scored the highest number of runs after comeback,"
he has played 311 ODI and 110 test matches and scored close to 19000 International runs. Player with such caliber and history, was not even eligible for playing in a DOMESTIC match in india? are there players (new or old) who out formed him in the previous series in sri lanka or in Irani trophy???
as sourav said, he has been humiliated . . .

when the speculations over sourav's cricket future were almost dumped, by simply accepting the fact that sourav is no more in indian squad, he made one of the greatest comeback in world cricket ever,
he was included in the Test squad for the away series in South Africa in 2006-2007. He ended as the highest Indian run-scorer in that series and went on to slam back-to-back hundreds against Pakistan at home, the second of which was a glorious 239 in Bangalore.

after his comeback in dec 2006, he is STILL the highest run getter among all other indian test players during this period (dec 2006 to till date).

i would also like to quote few more important things; he was the man behind too many brave strategy changes (in the right way) in our indian ODI format; such as
- shuffling the players position based on the game need
- going with 7 batsmen and 4 bowler strategy.
- changing a regular batsman into wicket keeper batsmen . . . .
(in india, wicket keeper has only kept wicket and batting was his second priority for 30 years of ODI cricket, very few exceptions were present before rahul dravid was assigned a role of wicket keeper).
- who took the brave decisions to have positioned great players like sachin, rahul during the slog overs to score more runs
- and more to list.

all the players had a worst time in their cricket life and it was the case with sourav too . . .
- he also failed at too many ODIs (not ONLY he) and
- has poor foot movements (even he has it till now, although he has improved on lot better than it was originally)
- poor runner btn the wickets

but he is also the guy
- who times the ball next perfect to sachin/lara in the world,
- who squares (cuts) the ball as perfectly as rahul,
- he s one of the best (or rare) left hander’s who outburst at off spinners (generally off spinners has a good edge when bowling to left hander’s)
- fighting with only few players for most no of six hitters in ODI
- who's captain abilities are praised by most of the cricket players in the world

past is past, anyways I am happy with his retirement as I don’t want such a great leader to be humiliated anymore and I m happy to have seen his wonderful innings over these 12 years. More over everyone has a day to quit ... and “all the run machine will stop at one point of time”!!!!

one thing, i just wanted to make a note. .. he is the next best indian batsmen (at least by statistics) after sachin and he is one of the best indian captain so far, he deserves a better farewell (even if not a great one)....

we will miss such a great leader . . . . (I still feel, I have provided only very few facts abt such great leader and player).


Kind note: This Blog might be little (or very) long and might have bored you through its course of journey, I will be sharp and up to the point next time. Comments and criticism are more welcomed as I would also love to see the world from your eyes. :)
See u thro’ my next blog … some time soon.

Choosing the title for Blog

Blogging is one of the activity which i wanted to start long time before. . . . . And Today, Time and my interest joined hands and this blog is created.  While i was creating this blog, i took little more time in choosing the title . . . here are the list of choices before arriving at this tile.

a) Esak's Thoughts

b) World as I experience

c) Will be titled soon . .. 

d) Soon to be titled. . . .

e)  Your world from my eyes

f) When you see the world from my eyes 

Also for the blog name, i too had choices such as

a) esak.blogspot - But this was unavailable

b) esaktalks.blogspot

c) esakblogs.blogspot

and then i finally used the name esakspeaks.blogspot.com

As with the templates, I changed 3 templates before choosing this one. :)

I get confused easily, when i have choices . . .. .  

Anyways, here i m now and i am blogging. 

I have lots of thoughts on people, activities, lifestyle, culture and my interests. I will be letting u all know my perspectives about all of these . . ..  soon through this blog.