Category: Sports

Formula one – Hamsters running on wheels

Posted on by bach

Formula one, in my opinion, is nothing more than few hamsters running inside a wheelhouse. It’s pointless endeavor and utter waste of time of everyone involved, including money and talent. I can list at least 10 reasons why I still hate it. Go ahead and prove me wrong.

  1. It’s not sports: Don’t call a bunny-turtle race, a sport.if you want it to be a sport you assign the same model of cars to all drivers, and then we’ll talk.
  2. It’s not a race: What kind of race needs one of its competitors to slow down as part of a team strategy ? It’s like Yohan Blake asking Usain Bolt to a slowdown because Jamaica said so.
  3. Crashes: I was told in particular, the crashes are specifically are the most spectacular features of the sport. Apparently, that movies such as Death Race were inspired by these races, including F1. If it is true, then it’s deplorable.
  4. It’s not exciting: Around six blokes always ahead of the game, the rest always behind. I take a nap, take a shower, grab a coffee and browse back to the channel – they will be still racing in the same race at same positions!
  5. It’s a pit race: By the sound of it, races are won at the pit stops rather than tracks. It’s like cricket is won in dugout, not field.
  6. Expensive: Considering you’ll only see the start, finish and one glimpse per lap as an in field audience ! Even 1$ is costly if the deal is to sit there and yawn.
  7. Technology: there is this popular notion that the money generated is being put into noble use of inventions in automobile industry. With investment in the neighbourhood of A $500mil a year for each team since last so many years, and I should have expected at the least an alien car craft being invented ! But our cars still breakdown at the signal.
  8. Rich-men sport: How easy is it for a new team tk make an entry into the circuit ? Suppose they do, how many years do they need to compete and log even a single point on board?
  9. Hype: F1 is nothing more than a Ponzi scheme of the sports world with blown up go-karting. People follow because it is uncool not to follow. It’s a fashion statement.
  10. F1 geeks: They irritate me every day with specifics of turbo engines, RPMs, cylinders and another part which never amused me!
An “Exciting” moment in F1
An “Exciting” moment in F1

This is part 2 of what I had written few years back.

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Update : Due to a lot of good friends of mine objected the wording of #3 on crashes being spectacular,  I have reworded it to have less exaggeration.  But content remains same. I cant believe you never heard about it. One example right away, this author explains the romance between danger and dependency of F1 revenue on it. He writes :

……No one, myself included, wants to see drivers die, but by eliminating the potential for death (as nearly as possible), the danger which led to the popularity of the sport is lost. 
The remaining glamour, without the danger, is empty and superficial—glamour for glamour’s sake—an endless parade of celebrities shuffling up and down the pit lane and drivers throwing their cars into turns knowing the risks have been diminished should they get it wrong.

I still stick to all other points, unless convinced otherwise.

15 reasons on why Cricket is a better game than Football

Posted on by bach

Internet holds a one-sided view on this Cricket vs Football debate, rather disproportionately. This post is my attempt to tilt that scale towards Cricket.

If hundreds of bloggers think they can cherry-pick ten lame reasons in favor of Football, I can certainly pick a fifteen against it, even better ones. To be brutally honest, the ability to host a football match during rains is the only fair argument favoring it, rest of the stuff are really boring and consequential to who is playing it.

Images through Pexels.com

To my American readers, I am referring to Soccer and not American version of Rugby . Also, stop calling it Soccer and call it Football. Call your game something else 🙂

Here you go:

  1. Results and closure: More than 25% of Football games go draw, and about 8% of matches are even goal-less. You can hit me with the numbers if you disagree and you better have a useful reference point to support your claim. If I were to drag myself to a pub and watch a game with the smell of sweat, and fart; I would at least need a result and nothing less. Cricket might offer the same aromas, but It would, most certainly, deliver me a result. Be it win or lose. This is called closure.
  2. Entertainment: In Cricket, there is always exciting stuff happening on my screen; continuously and relentlessly. In Football, I am expected to get excited with ball passes. Did you really buy that HD TV for watching 20 hamsters running on wheels?
  3. Game Spirit: Cricket wins hands-down on this parameter. There are several instances in cricketing history when the team captains chose to ignore the game’s rules and let the rival player continue play. That is just to keep the game’s spirit up! I never heard of this happening in a football match. Hence, Cricket is called the gentlemen’s game. This brings me to my next, the most critical point.
  4. Dishonesty: When was the last time a Cricket player faked a nudge or injury? It would have become a headline immediately, and half the world would have joined in condemning it. Whereas in Football, it seems, every player is allergic to another human or his breath. Even proximity or the scent of them can make them fall like a felled tree. Evidently, this is Business as Usual, and it is not even frowned upon, forget condemning it.
  5. Referee: Blatant mistakes can happen in Football, Cricket has much better umpiring. For instance, even to this date, we debate God’s hand winning the game in 1986. Cricket has the patience to wait for a third umpire decision and has a better review system.
  6. Technology: Cricket adopts newer technologies regularly ensuring course of the games not left for luck or fate to decide. How does Football compare to that?
  7. Flavors: Cricket comes in various sizes and shapes. One favors adrenaline (e.g., T20), one favor talent (e.g., ODI) and the other favors resiliency and endurance (Test). Let me know if there are different formats of Football matches.
  8. Diversity of skills: In Football, you can technically play a team full of Ronaldos against a team whole of Messis. However, you can never play a Cricket game with 11 Virat Kohlis against 11 Jaspreet Bumras. Cricket team consists of players with various “distinctly mutually exclusive” skills, not Football.
  9. Commercial viability: Cricket provides more opportunities for brands to endorse their product. In Football, please wait for half-time. It is a matter of few years before Cricket would overtake both the popularity and revenue generation.
  10. Commentary: Football commentary is boring. It primarily consists of recitations on who passed the ball to whom till something exciting happens.
  11. Fitness vs skills. Football warrants fitness over skills. I am not talking about the common denominator skills; I am referring to specialist skills. Let me take an example, a Chahal can devastate an opposition with his wrist bowling skills. Can that happen in Football?
  12. Inclusion: Can you imagine a differently abled person, say someone with childhood polio with a withered arm can play a Football game. As a matter of fact, in Cricket, some of them have dominated the game for decades and became legends.
  13. Safety injury or death: This comparison is alarming. I gather its around 120 vs 9 deaths throughout the history of both the games. Injury, fatal or otherwise, I think, is even bigger statistics. I do not have numbers handy. Cricket has changed over the last few decades to be safer for its players, but Football remains the same.
  14. Fights: Just like its players, Cricket’s fans as gentlemen too. They clap and sip tea. Except for Pakistani fans breaking TV sets they rarely indulge in fights. I do not need to explain how it works for Football. I have witnessed riot police and helicopters being called for a game in east London.
  15. Football is socialistic and Cricket is capitalistic. Period.

I do not expect my readers who are also football fans, to be nice to me in the comments section. Try to be friendly, else I will understand you are part of #14. 🙂

Badminton, Animal welfare and other hypocrisies

Posted on by bach

Dear Jwala & Ashwini,

I have no intention to take the shine away from the beautiful medals and trophies you earned. I congratulate even to those which you did not win but tried your best. You certainly deserve all the accolades and applauses showed on you. You have inspired thousands of girls pan-India to take up this game and excel in it. Kudos. Well done.

While that, I see you both are brand ambassadors of Peta. That is cool, another feather on your cap. [See what I did there? Feathers? and you play Badminton. No? Okay]. Anyways, I wrote this post with a single intention of calling out your hypocrisy, which you obviously did not sense while joining the Peta.

Ashwini Ponnappa Slams Circus Animal Abuse – Peta India

Before I forget, let me bring this image up. I can see you Jwala ‘bleeding’ as part of your Campaign against Cockfighting! Just Wow! Thanks to you, those villagers (all seven of them) can now have a melodramatic moral epiphany and stop betting on those poor birds. They will eat Daal-fry tonight, instead of those chicken kababs.

Jwala Gutta ‘Bleeds’ in Campaign Against Cockfighting – Peta India

Also, personally, Badminton is probably the only sport I managed to play reasonably well. Now that I learned more about it, I must give it up. In m defense, I had no clue how the Shuttlecock is manufactured all this while. However, you should have known this. You had chosen Badminton as your bread and butter. It is expected of you to be a little more curious about your props than me.

For documentation purpose, let them list all the issues for you.

  1. The Shuttlecock is made from plucked feathers of live ducks and geese. While this process the birds are not killed, not stunned, they remain alive. The poachers and farmers hold the bird down by the neck and pluck a fistful of feathers by force.
  2. They are live birds, and obviously, they will bleed, but not to death. They survive bleeding through the day, only to make next Shuttlecock by growing replacement feathers.
  3. There is science behind the selection of feathers. Only the ones with the right weight and correct angles make the cut (pun?). This also means the most feathers plucked are going to be discarded.

There are few other non-animal-torture related aspects which also begs for your attention.

  1. India cannot supply the feathers to all the 50k+ shuttlecocks it produces annually. So obviously it comes from Bangladesh as smuggled. They escape tax obligation from either of countries.
  2. Also, these plucking factories are known to misuse children. There are reports on how they are being used to pluck or cut the feathers for 10-12 hours earning not more than 50 Rs.
  3. Reports say one-fifth of children in Rajapur, Uluberia, Howrah in West Bengal are employed to manufacture these. They are under the age of 10, do not go to school, undergo frequent industrial accidents. Read through the report.

Did you get it now ? The hypocrisy in it ? When can I see your Campaign against these, please ? When can we expect you shout for ethical treatment animals of your own game?

Thanks, Not a fan. – The Bach