Chuffed With Kabaddi
I have a complicated equation with cricket. A longstanding reader of cricket writing, I am also quite a hardboiled cynic about most things concerning this game, including the recent Bharat Ratna award to Tendulkar. And after year after year of IPL excesses (and the recent charade of a 5 match test series in England), the kick-start of the Kabaddi league has ... bowled me over.
Almost everything about the new show called pro-Kabaddi is an improvement over IPL. And this improvemt is nowhere more apparent than in the names of teams. 'Jaipur Pink Panthers', 'Puneri Paltan' etc. are absolutely refreshing compared to the IPL banalities. Even 'Youuuu Mumbaaa!' shares some of the real primal appeal of the game of kabaddi itself, a fairly uncomplicated contest of athleticism and teamwork.
An eminent Kerala intellectual had once remarked: "We are still stuck with a feudal mindset. Just look at the names of IPL teams - Royals, Kings Eleven, Super Kings,.... silly anachronisms!"
Sir, you missed the daftest of the lot: 'Kolkata Knight Riders'. What the hell can that phrase possibly mean? An allusion to a long-forgotten American TV serial? Give us a break! To most moderately sensible knowers of English, 'knight riders' makes sense only when applied to damsels, not to male sportsmen - just like 'lady killer' or 'lady-killer' does not really refer to a lady ('Night Rider' too makes a similar kind of effed-up sense, In Racist American slang)!
And just in case someone would counter the above objection by drawing parallels between 'knight rider' and 'knight-errant' or 'knight templar', well, to anyone who knows his basic history, representatives of Kolkata referring or deferring to *anything* to do with knights must be pure anathema - for this is the city of the greatest knighthood-spurner of them all, a certain Rabindranath.
And I am equally chuffed to see ace-spiker Tom Joseph finally land the Arjuna Award. Considering the nonsense done to him last year by Ravi Shastri et al, it is a bit of an atonement for desi cricket that the Committee that decided on the award was headed by Kapil Dev.
Thanks Vishnu - and thanks Bacardi!
Almost everything about the new show called pro-Kabaddi is an improvement over IPL. And this improvemt is nowhere more apparent than in the names of teams. 'Jaipur Pink Panthers', 'Puneri Paltan' etc. are absolutely refreshing compared to the IPL banalities. Even 'Youuuu Mumbaaa!' shares some of the real primal appeal of the game of kabaddi itself, a fairly uncomplicated contest of athleticism and teamwork.
An eminent Kerala intellectual had once remarked: "We are still stuck with a feudal mindset. Just look at the names of IPL teams - Royals, Kings Eleven, Super Kings,.... silly anachronisms!"
Sir, you missed the daftest of the lot: 'Kolkata Knight Riders'. What the hell can that phrase possibly mean? An allusion to a long-forgotten American TV serial? Give us a break! To most moderately sensible knowers of English, 'knight riders' makes sense only when applied to damsels, not to male sportsmen - just like 'lady killer' or 'lady-killer' does not really refer to a lady ('Night Rider' too makes a similar kind of effed-up sense, In Racist American slang)!
And just in case someone would counter the above objection by drawing parallels between 'knight rider' and 'knight-errant' or 'knight templar', well, to anyone who knows his basic history, representatives of Kolkata referring or deferring to *anything* to do with knights must be pure anathema - for this is the city of the greatest knighthood-spurner of them all, a certain Rabindranath.
And I am equally chuffed to see ace-spiker Tom Joseph finally land the Arjuna Award. Considering the nonsense done to him last year by Ravi Shastri et al, it is a bit of an atonement for desi cricket that the Committee that decided on the award was headed by Kapil Dev.
Thanks Vishnu - and thanks Bacardi!
posted by R.Nandakumar @ 10:40 AM
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