Kirket

The best way to get of travelling high to to spend the greater part of a day weaving between tractor-trailers, though there were points of time when you just saw lovely long stretches of empty tarmac stretching out into the dull grey haze. I was driving down to Jaipur to watch the final one-dayer between India and Pakistan, and yes, we lost, but I had a fairly good time none the less, even though flag-waving patriotism really isn't my thing, but what the heck, flags were bought and they were waved. Great deal of good they did! What was also peculiar was that half the crowd wearing gloriously bad fakes (sorry to be snobbish but 'Channel'? For crying out loud?) wanted to see Shah Rukh and Deepika, not to watch the Pakistani batsmen whack our bowlers to various corners of the ground.
That said, the Sawai Man Singh Stadium in Jaipur is lovely little stadium, as against the hell-hole that is Wankhede and the disaster zone called Kotla (though I will like to see the new 'Kotla' during the First Test starting Thursday). While Cricket is a great sport, I think TV has just taken over the 50-over game. The breaks between overs are ridiculously long and you suddenly realise just how much time the advertising takes up. So no matter what the purists think, the reason Twenty20 is becoming popular is not because India pulled off a fluke, but because the game is just so much easier to watch in a stadium.
And don't you really think India needs some other sports to develop really fast? Something fast-paced without a break every four minutes, like football for example. hey, its easier and better to play football on a game console than it is cricket (Have you even tried Yuvraj Singh Cricket on a 360?). But if that oily nut PRDM keeps running the sport, nothing is likely to change anytime soon. Anyway, I think I'll confine myself to Delhi for a couple of weeks.