Nisadas

The glorious thing about the internet is that even non-experts like myself can plough on and put forward silly notions on any variety of subjects. Therefore, allow me to present my proposal for future ODI visits by the Indian cricket team to Sri Lanka:

In future, there will be no need to fly in all the members of the Indian team. Instead, the captain of the team can be flown in with a bunch of tourist-journalists. The journos will be given full access to the rest of the country so that they can write about stuff the rest of the world doesn’t know much about.

On the day alloted for the match, M&M (M. Dhoni and Mahela, not our beloved spin-twins Murali and Mendis) will be escorted to the ground. After the usual talk about the pitch and the conditions, they will have the toss. Unlike any other occasions, we will have conch-blowing, drummers and even lighting of the oil lamp to herald this magnificent moment.

Once the toss has been called, the winner will have his hand shaken by the rest of the congregation. The man of the match will be chosen from a couple of names shuffled about in a cricketer’s helmet and the cheques for winning the match and other awards will be handed over as part of the ceremony.

This in turn will result in such low overhead that Small and Medium businesses can afford to sponsor the series, perhaps on a match-by-match basis. I haven’t figured out how the exposure can be fully utilised without the willow and the leather in play, but I’m sure the talents of the creators of Sri Lanka’s Dancing Stars can be put to good use. By saving over six hours per day of people’s time, productivity will increase, while there will also be a significant saving in terms of bandwidth due to lower usage of Cricinfo‘s live scorecard facility. Families will be happier for their fathers/sons/brothers/husbands being home earlier instead of dallying by the big screens at Abans/Singer showrooms on their way home.

Why do I say this? A brief look at the results of the last two series in Sri Lanka:

What about that aberration where India won a toss and Sri Lanka won? Well, that’s because MSD didn’t know that batting first works at RPS, not at the Rangiri Dambulla stadium. Let’s look at the matches by who bats first:

But seriously, have we forgotten that barely two years ago our boys were in the world cup final with Australia? Well, apparently so. This is in no small part due to the fact that the team that made it into the finals in 2007 displayed a lot more courage, intensity and overall flair than what most of us cricket-mad Sri Lankans saw in the recent past. It hurts to be beaten on home turf.

I can only hope that the itinerary for the rest of 2009 proves to be more fruitful for our team.

The tables in this post are my first in a blog post and are thanks to the tutorial at Web Design from Scratch.

January 12th saw the launch of Bharthi Airtel in Sri Lanka. That tune which was so familiar on Dialog TV (ironic, I guess) began to feature on the local TV channels as well, with Sharuk Khan greeting Sri Lankans with a cheerful “Hello Sri Lanka”.

It was not long after this that another ad did the rounds – it features our very own Kumar Sangakkara talking about being shushed all throughout his life and now wondering why complicated mobile plans should stop him. Then those words (Unicode Sinhala required):

?? Airtel ??? ???? ????. ?? ???? Simple plan ????.

(Translation: I switched to Airtel. It’s a very simple plan). This was apparently considered by many as a betrayal, since Kumar had been prominently featured on the hoardings, advertisements of Hutch – one of the smaller players in the mobile telecommunications market.

Soon afterwards, my inbox received emails which features Sanga’s face and various products and that infamous tagline;

?? Nestomalt ??? ???? ????. ?? ???? Simple plan ????.

(Translation: I switched to Nestomalt. It’s a very simple plan). This played on Sanga’s present status of appearing in ads endorsing the malt drink “Viva” (which led not so long ago to the whole “??? ????? ??????????  Viva” fiasco) and the fact that Nestomalt is the competing brand.

?? Eva ??? ???? ????. ?? ???? Simple pad ????.

Translation:I switched to Eva (sanitary pads). It’s a very simple pad.  Some wordplay involved here.

Then there was the email about Sanga switching to being vegetarian and how that’s a simple plan, while there also were various photoshopped images of him pondering the Dialog logo on his T-shirt during the match.

In addition to this sudden influx of anti-Sanga sentiment was our own office colleague who quipped (after hearing that Sanga had lost his wicket);

?? Pavilion ??? ???? ????. ?? ???? Simple place ????.

Translation: I switched to the pavilion. It’s a very simple place.

Ah… poor Sangakkara.

What seems to have gotten the goat (goats?) of some of Sri Lanka’s netizens is not so much the fact that the guy switched his endorsements from one provider to another, but the fact that he had the cheek to actually say so on national television. After hailing the guy for his forthrightness, I think it’s pretty unfair to criticise him for being forthright about changing his endorsements. After all, endorsements are surely a major source of income for professional cricketers in Sri Lanka.

That said, this has caused some negative publicity for both Sangakkara (for switching sides, so to speak) and Airtel (for poaching Sangakkara).

I just hope that this undue criticism has had nothing to do with his recent performance at Dambulla.

On a completely different note, this is my first post to include Sinhala. Although it makes me cringe to see the kombuwa follow letters in unicode Sinhala, it was the easiest way to express these sentiments online (plus, my limited requirement didn’t involve much opportunity for the attack on Sinhala). Hat tip to Shaakunthala for having the Real Time Font converter from UCSC and the Local Language Resource Portal links on his blog, without which this post wouldn’t have been possible.

UPDATE: Sangakkara has a short and sweet reply on this issue at this blog, here. (thanks Don!)