SA - IND series Poisitives

India :
Positives:
Gambhir, he has been lucky or as Borges would say gritty but he has put run on boards facing the deathly spells and new ball bowlers of SA so no small feat
Dhoni, he has also helped laxman and India put runs on board.
The bowling attack: after the first test no one thought we would take 20 wickets, yet we did twice so even if there is a lot of improvement to be made I feel there is a positive as we know we can surely do better. Zaheer was not as effective as he usually is and we are still missing a stable unit but maybe this 13 away tests will be the making or breaking of the Indian bowling attack.
Sreesanth: Good to see him perform like he did, obnoxious brat but a very good natural bowler. If only he had the brains of Zaheer or Kumble!


Negatives:
Sehwag, is it the fast pitches, is it the bounce or his shoulder? We won't really know, hope he rests and comes back with a boom in England I am pretty sure he will fare much better in England
Dravid: Scoring too slowly, losing his wicket to quickly not making any impression on the match.
Pujara: I have been calling him to be in the team for a while but he did not produce much I must admit. I still hope that he gets a few more chances as I really think there is quality in him and he did face some impressive spells.

Overall I am impressed by team India, if they had a few warm up matches I am sure they would have done better in the first test, maybe they would have still lost as the toss in my opinion in that test was very important, but they would have given more of a fight. I also think they should really rest injured players instead of playing them(sehwag). I now put them equal to SA, my worry was can they face the SA bowling attack, of course Laxman and Tendulkar helped a lot, when these two great players go we will be losing a lot.

SA
Positives:
Steyn: but is he really a positive we all know he is a great bowler, the thing is he was in great form and gave all our batsmen huge problems.
Morkel: Steyn must be happy he has Morkel as new ball partner, at 5 wickets per test he is quite valuable! Bowled some deadly spells and like Steyn could easily have finished with more wickets
Tsotsobe: He didn't get many wickets, but got a lot of dropped catches, got plenty of edges and troubled all batsmen, I think SA should persist with him.
Smith's captaincy: I felt that Smith was always very agressive with his field placings maybe he has the bowling for him to do that but he kept India under constant pressure and I must applaud that.

Negatives:
Boucher: not contributing enough with the bat, he could have made the difference in the series.
Harris: 4 Wickets is just not enough, although Indians might have played him too kindly.

SA have two Huge players in Steyn and Kallis, Kallis is a Monster! Kallis will be a big miss for SA when he retires. I think it will be the equivalent of us losing Tendulkar for the SA team. I don't know if they have anyone to back him up.


The four star players in this series are without a doubt : Kallis, Steyn, Tendulkar and Laxman, take one of these players out and the results are different.

I have been lucky to watch a few of the days and must say the bowling by SA was always probing and hard to handle. I am amazed we put up such a fight. Maybe I am exagerating but I haven't seen good bowling like this often. Of course I usually see only ODI's and t20 so that should explain that!

Racism

Is Chris Broad Racist?

I don't think so. I think racism is a word used too lightly and easily, these days everyone is branded racist 'pour un oui ou pour un non' as we French would say.

Does Broad favor white people over colored people? I would tend to think so.

Now is this racist? Not necessarily.

Things are not simply black or white, some studies on human behavior have shown that white colored people will always be more trusted than other complexions.
When you show faces and ask people to associate adjectives to the faces, people will always associate gentler adjectives towards the fairer faces and more negative adjectives or will take more time to attribute gentler adjectives to colored faces.
And these people can come from any ethnical backgroung, if the panel is large enough the results will be similar.

The problem is that the color difference is ingrained in our whole culture and that from childhood we hear stories on fair princes and princess fighting the evil dark people. White has always been a sign of purity and Black of evil.
If you study most children's stories in any culture, you will see that the hero is always of a complexion which is fairer to the others, and that's how he stands out.

There are a few stories of dark people who then become fair(the ugly duckling being a variation of this) but these stories are too little to compensate the other stories and I wonder if they compensate anything. Like in Shrek, no princess Fiona could not stay as a princess she had to become an ugly ogre like shrek because ugliness and beauty should not mix!

Let's take Lord Krishna for example, he is supposed to have been very very dark, as dark as the night, but you will see more pictures of him in a light blue some in blue but rarely will we see pictures of him black(some do exist but they are not common in India(at least in Bengal).

Then there is everyday life, things are changing little by little and i think that the fact that Obama has become president of the United States shows that change is possible, but it is going to take a lot of time before anyone can erase the inequalities which rise from our cultural up bringing.

No continent escapes from this discrimination, be it India, China Japan, Africa, America etc.
I'd even go as far and say that Western Europe is one of the least discriminatory regions int he world, but would agree to say that it is far from satisfactory.

Anyway I'll probably write many more posts on this as I think it's a subject which has to be discussed through many perspectives.

Why a blog Keshto, and what are you going to do about it?

Well I don't really know where to start? So why not with the reason behind a blog.

I think I lack writing skills and of course the only way to develop a skill is to work on it.
I've been reading blogs for quite some time now, mainly cricket blogs which have lead to reading other blogs as well. And I quite like this format, it's quite warm and really personal.

I just hope I won't sound too pedant and will be able to write constructive and pleasant to read posts.

I still don't know where this will go of course, I'll share some of my poetry(mainly written in French), I'll share some of my experiences and I hope I'll share many of my thoughts.

Welcome to Chez Keshto I hope you will enjoy your stay here.