A bad omen for Damien!

Many say Damien Martyn has been made the scapegoat for the recent debacle in aussie cricket. Let us investigate this claim. We shall look deep into the numbers for possible answers.For the last 2 years Martyns stats look like this , as opposed to his career stats. I am looking at things from the Tour of India late 2003,where Aus didnt fare too well by their own exalted standards,till the recently ended Ashes series.

             Mat  I NO  Runs HS1  HS2  HS3   Ave  100  50   0

Career       61  98 12  4125 165  161  142  47.96  12  22   7
Since 11/03  26  44  3  2040 165  161  142  49.75   7   8   1

a cursory glance tells us that this 26 match period if anything has been arguably the best slice of his career. In his last 44 innings he has notched his 3 highest scores in test cricket. Is averaging more than his career average , and now scores a hundred every other time he gets to a fifty; An improvement from 1 in 3 fifties. Let us examine the details a little bit further. Looking into his induvidual hundreds.

42 (no4) caught 1 W 1st Test v SL in SL 2003/04 at Galle [1685]
110 (no4)caught 3
1 (no4)lbw 1 W 2nd Test v SL in SL 2003/04 at Kandy [1688]
161 (no4)stumped 3

Hundreds 1 & 2 : In SL these 2 centuries helped immensely in Aus seal their first series victory in SL in many years. Both were crucial knocks when Australia batted Second.


26 (no4)caught 1 D 2nd Test v Ind in Ind 2004/05 at Chennai [1714]
104 (no5)caught 3
114 (no4)caught 1 W 3rd Test v Ind in Ind 2004/05 at Nagpur [1718]
97 (no4)caught wk 3 ( MOM )

Hundreds 3 & 4 (and the 97 in the 2nd inng) : In India these 2 centuries & the 97 took australia to an unbeatable 2-0 lead against india, helping Aus seal their first series victory in India in 35 years. Both were crucial knocks when Australia batted Second. He was adjudged player of the series.

1 (no4)caught wk 1 W 1st Test v Pak in Aus 2004/05 at Perth [1726]
100* (no4)not out 3

142 (no4)lbw 2 W 2nd Test v Pak in Aus 2004/05 at Melbourne [1729]
DNB - - 4

Hundreds 5 & 6 : Against an attack of Shoaib, sami and the likes in arguably some of the fastest bounciest pitches. Aus won the series and Martyn was man of the series.


165 (no4)caught wk 1 D 2nd Test v NZ in NZ 2004/05 at Wellington [1742]

Hundred 7 : His highest test score . Didnt get the MOM award because Adam Gilchrist scored a 162 & kept brilliantly.

Some points to ponder,

- He has 4 hundreds and a 97 while batting for the second time.
- Most often when he has scored a hundred Australia have gone one to win.
- 5 of the 7 hundreds have been overseas .
- 4 of those in hostile & Alien spinning conditions against the best
spinners in the world (outside of shane warne), viz. Murali, Kumble and
harbhajan.

And in this period before the Ashes he has averaged a whopping 58.18 runs since the India tour. So here are the numbers again.

                       Mat I  NO  Runs HS1  HS2  HS3  Ave  100 50 0

Career                 61  98 12  4125 165  161  142  47.96 12 22 7
Since 11/03            26  44  3  2040 165  161  142  49.75  7  8 1
Since 11/03 sans ashes 21  35  3  1862 165  161  142  58.18  7  7 1

So, in the last 5 tests , Damien Martyn has scored just one 50, averaged 20 runs per innings. For this he finds himself out of the team and possibly at the very end of this classy career. If all this doesnt read scapegoat , i dont know what does.

Nowhere man

He’s a real Nowhere Man,
Sitting in his Nowhere Land,
Making all his Nowhere plans for nobody.
Doesn’t have a point of view,
Knows not where he’s going to,
Isn’t he a bit like you and me?


Is this song about me ? or is it what i am running away from !! Is this wht i'm afraid of becoming or am i already the nowhere man. Am i running away from nowhere land , or am i crashing straight into it ... It just feels like i'm in an empty space, a space of nothingness . I'm not sure whether this nothingness is filled with just me, or i am filled with this nothingness. I'm feeling numb , worthless , its almost like i dont even exist !!

My Outdoors

*sigh*

oh Nano!

Ladies and gentlemen , give it up for the iPod Nano ... The coolest , mean, lean , music playing machine !!!
A 4 GB, flash memory based , color screened beauty ! This my friends is the modern apple from the garden of enchantment. If it werent for my extreme penury .. i could never resist this temptation !

Forgetting birthdays , can i be any more self absorbed !!!

Well ... today was a very good friend, and roommate's birthday ! Mustang is the man ..he turned over another year!! I forgot to wish him...and of all things that i forget , and believe me ..this is a loooong list, forgetting b'days is what i hate the most. Makes me fill pretty small.

In my day i remembered b'day of every single classmate of mine , and was prompt to participate in their joy. Well needless to say ..i lost most of that enthu . My list was now shortlisted to the close friends. The ones who never forget to remind me when i'm older !

Nowadays im so self involved , wallowing in my daily routine of laziness , self-doubt , self-pity. The new me .. i dont particularly like this guy.

..... Thankfully another friend saved me the ignominy, by calling up and i got to wish the birthday boy !!

My brush with thoughtlessness

Today for the first time i had a brush with thoughlessness. In one of my sporadic , if thats the word i'm looking for, sessions of meditation it happened !

One might say ,hmm... thoughtlessness , i experience it all the time!! No , think about it , oops ,there i go ...thinking about it is the problem. Without us realizing , we do think a lot. In meditation it is noise, and we are encouraged to ignore it and it slowly goes away. A silent mind is the environment we want to achieve. But thoughts are hard to ignore, because the mind is a store of random memory , you never know what can pop up ! In spite of this , today , after multiple trials in the past i came to a state where i seemed completely thoughtless , the state was unique , i felt ethereal ! But then i started thinking about this state ..and i violated its rules , dang !
Lesson learnt : When in a state of thoughlessness ,try not to think abt it !!!

About History and its heroes !

I had been wanting to express my opinions on the rebellion of 1857 , after i saw the movie " Mangal Pandey ,The Rising" . An extremely poor movie , nevertheless got me thinking on the events of 1857 . Notice, i can't call it the "First war of Independance" because i dont think thats what it was. I've always believed it was an attempt to give the nation identity and create heroes. I stumbled upon this excellent article by Rudrangshu Mukherjee . A fantastic read !

Poverty ?? in the richest country in the world ?

Poverty ? in the US of America? You must be joking. Hey ! i come from a third world country where the average salary is a few hundred dollars per year. Does this qualify as poverty ?

After following the Katrina aftermath for the last few days , i believe this is Poverty. Poverty seems to be a very relative thing. Where in some countries, lack of basic food or shelter may be a fitting description, it may have a slightly different defenition here, in the USA. It really depends on the context. The fact that they have no car, no money and no means of protecting themselves from disaster renders them poor. Poor enough to be exposed to the vagaries of nature and government alike and unable to fend for themselves. This is the story of poor people all over the world. They are the first to face the wrath of nature and the neglect of government. Be it the Tsunami, torrential rains in bombay, Earthquakes or Hurricanes.

Makes me introspect about how economics seem to be such an important part of our lives today. Every single decision is driven by economy . Even in this situation people were worried about oil & gas prices than the lives of people . Even "god" in our temples seem to be more accessible to the more priveleged. One wonders if the invention of money at some fateful point in time has sent the human race down such a spiral .

Did the evil in man bring out money , or does money bring out the evil in man ? One can't really tell.

The katrina catastrophe

I cant understand which is a bigger catastrophe , the hurricane katrina or the george bush administration. Are more people suffering or dying because of the hurricane , or because of Bush's apathy. I dont even know how to put my outrage in words. The daily news is carrying a headline "Shame on U.S" , pretty accurate !

The most recent such large scale catastrophe was the Tsunami in south east asia. It is only natural to benchmark this one against it, and surprisingly the 3rd world disaster relief scores way better than the "greatest country in the world" has been able to manage.

The tsunami was sprung on Asia, no warning. But Katrina was a hurricane , which was forecast days , even weeks before. Why the delay ?? Relief supplies arrived on Day 5 ! Where was the planning, does the Govt of the USA not care for its poorer citizens. I saw tsunami relief first hand . Food, water and medicine quickly followed rescue efforts. Here there was rescue , but that just led to a slow painful couple of days with no food, water and inhuman living conditions. This resulted in just a more miserable slower death . A natural disaster like this just exposes the supposed preparedness in such situations. So where was homeland security taking a nap. Is all the money in homeland security allocated for the activities of OBL's thugs !!! what about everything else ? Doesnt it look like the government is worried more about the terrorists than the people ?

The government in the past days has been busy worrying about gas prices , releasing oil from reserves, requesting the international Energy agency to release oil etc , what about the people who are dying NOW! arent they the top priority ?? While these economics were being worked out people were dying .

George bush is hugging ppl in missisippi , and still has his swagger and smirk on his face. Saying things coyly such as "The response is good, the results can be better". I cannot put in words how much this boils my blood.

This is the USA , not some underpriveleged third world country looking towards the rest of the world for help . Why is there no Army ? Maybe bcos its all in the process of "Reconstructing " Iraq and Afghanistan. Where is help for the american citizens from their government.

Doesnt this represent the ultimate failure for this institution which their erstwhile leader famous proclaimed , is of the people, by the people and for the people. This is a day that we have to remind this country and ourselves that life is still fundamentally about Food, water and shelter.