Cricket with Harsha Bhogale - Ek aur daalega kya?

Congrats to team India for a fabulous victory in Perth test. Rubbishing talks of Australian all pace attack, bouncy pitch and 170 kmph Shaun Tait; they came up with splendid performance to beat a 16 match winning streak. After the Sydney fiasco, this victory will bring joys to Indian cricket fans for sure.

The joy of India winning the match gets doubled when you are watching the match on Star Cricket. They have the best team of commentators and high quality broadcasting. The commentator team consists of great batsmen like Sunil Gavaskar and Ian Chappel; ever young duo of Shaz and Waz; funny characters like Harsha and Gautam.

Gavaskar and Chappel provide you detailed information about every shot offered by batsmen. What is wrong in every shot and how the batsmen should have played it. Both being former test captains, they tell what should be captain's move in every situation. Shaz and Zaz provide the same information about bowling. Harsha and Gautam make sure that you are not bored. If enough action is not happening on field, then they fill in the gap with their remarks and off-field action.

Like today they showed how Ishant Sharma bowled the over in which he got Ponting's wicket. They captured the on-field conversation between Ishant, Kumble and Sehwag. Ishant had bowled 7 overs on traut troubling Ponting almost every ball. When he seemed to finish his spell and gave way to RP, Sehwag comes and tells Kumble that in domestic Ishant bowls long spell. Kumble asks Ishant - "Ek aur daalega kya?". Ishant says yes and they got ponting two balls later. I can see this dialogue becoming headlines of tomorrow's newspapers. Only because these guys noticed it.

The quality of broadcasting this team does makes you feel that you are actually playing the match. Compare it with Neo sports where they skip last ball of the over to squeeze more ads. Wake up BCCI!

(Image from Cricinfo)

Where are you from?

In one of the scenes from last year's hit movie Chak De India, SRK asks the girls in his team to introduce themselves. Everyone come forward and starts saying their names and states they are from. SRK gets angry with this and kicks them out of team. His point is to make everyone feel that they are representing India and he does not care about the state they come from.
I get the same feeling whenever anyone asks me this question. Whenever I join a new team or meet new people, second or third question of my intro is - Where are you from?
In my introduction, I always skip the 'place' part. Because I believe it does not matter if I come from Maharashtra or Kerala. There the only thing which matters is your qualification, skills and experience. This is particularly true at workplace.
India has a diverse social background with different languages and cultures followed in every state. The moment you tell anyone about your place, people start making judgements about you. They have a vague idea about personality of people from a specific region, (This comes mostly from somone they have met from same region) and they start behaving with you based on that. This definitely affects the concept of teamwork and gives rise to groups within a team. This really struck me when I worked in Trivandrum for a month and I am more determined to break my regional mindset.