Media Rant #0983098

When the media talks irresponsible nonsense about some serious stuff like Foreign Policy, or half-as-serious stuff like b school rankings, they tend to get away with it.
When they serve up their regular tosh about cricket, they get easily found out.
Spot the difference.
Simple: The average man's intelligence with respect to cricket is pretty good.The same cannot be said about his/her knowledge about "worldly" topics. Of course the wiser among us are able to ridicule some of the things that come from the media. But that is a miniscule minority.
I guess the media would defend themselves by claiming that they are only doing their job of "encouraging debate". Well. They are correct on that front. They are encouraging debate. The issue is only in the way they are trying to. Which is disputable imo. The average cricketing fan knows the difference between a srikanth's opinion and a boycott's. But he/she may not be able to distinguish opinions with similar effectiveness in other topics. For instance, you and me are not experts to figure out whether outlook's or business today's methodology for ranking b schools is better. Of course, over a period of time we would be able to do it better than now. But, until a critical mass of people have that threshold level of intelligence, I am afraid that a large number of people would get misguided.

Funda #87309

Funda #87309:
When there is space available to ask questions and seek more information, then ask!

Something I ve observed in people is that people tend to use their existing knowledge base as a tool to get the missing information. I agree its a good method, but to be put to use when u dont have other methods to get the same information, like, asking questions. When you take into consideration that any person's knowledge base can be incomplete, you have a popular source for "errors in communication".

Peeping into the rivals' camp

Does Arsenal signing Diarra from Chelsea signify that 4 3 3 is gonna replace the 4 4 2 as the most commonly used system in the League?

A bit of cricket for a change

Here s my two pence on Sachin vs Lara:

When Lara debuted for WI, cricket was a major sport in the Caribbean. When he retired, looks like things are a far cry from those days.
When Sachin debuted for India, well, cricket was the only sport that had any semblance of mass following in India. It still is the same. Just that the size of the mass has grown considerably.

When cricket started declining in WI, there were other sports to take over. like basketball.
In India, the moment it seemed like it was on a decline, they d go and win a test in Australia ('03), reach the WC final, or more recently, win a test series in England. which would mean that the fickle masses would be back.

Whatever u make of the above factors, and the impact of ganguly, dravid and kumble on Indian cricket, Sachin is the man who took this mass madness up atleast a couple of levels higher. If not for sachin, none of the other cricketers would be earning as much from endorsements as they do now.

And Sachin played with a shit team during a large percentage of his peak years.
Lara played with a shit team during the latter part of his career.

As far as ponting is concerned. I hate him. Like i hate all aussies except gilchrist and gillespie.

And here s one way i can express it: Ponting is having his best years when Sachin looks past it and when Lara is about to retire.