Malinga and the so called Patriotism.

"Yes, Lasith Malinga, a former Indian fast bowler saw you playing cricket with a tennis ball, like all the other Indian kids, in an Indian town, and brought you to the Indian Cricket team, where you played cricket for India, and became famous among Indians who cheered at every wicket of yours and believed in you when you failed to deliver. Stay there, and don't EVER come back here"

An extract from a Facebook status about Malinga!

Before starting what I want to make sure is this wont be another blog where I am gonna bash Malinga for not taking up the contract!! Here I am just gonna discuss my views about this Malinga situation in a non sarcastic manner!!

Let me start the blog by introducing the ‘No need to introduce’ Malinga!! He is arguably the second best fast bowler Sri Lanka had ever produced (No one surpasses Vassey the great, Not even the Slinga himself), at least in the shorter formats of the sport! He has the pace, he has the accuracy, he has the temperament and he has it all to become a great fast bowler!! No one in the current cricketing world could bowl those Yorkers at will in that pace. Best death over bowler in the world. Period. All this time I have never seen some one taking Malingas bowling apart consistently (Barring Kohli, Seriously How the hell he did that to Malinga in Hobart).

But in life (or in that case even in the myths) all the gifts and powers do come with an Achilles heel. For Malinga it came in the version of ‘Fragile body’. If you say it in the local way this guy has a ‘Papadam’ body (A food item which crumbles easily)!! Fast bowler with a unique slingy action and a fragile body is always a dangerous combination!! But he has to cope-up with that all the way through his career!!

I am not going to blabber on about Malinga for another 2 pages, if you don’t know anything about Malinga, Sorry bro this article is not for you!! (We can always meet in the next blog)

And the problem is Sri Lankan cricket board offered Malinga a contract for the year 2012. Since he doesn’t play test cricket anymore, SL cricket board didn’t include him in the elite group of the contracted players and so the money offered to him didn’t amuse Malinga enough!  So he denied the contract but assured that he would go on to play Sri Lankan team without a contract!!

Malinga chose money over country!!

That is the major accusation thrown against Malinga!! And my question is what the hell is wrong in his decision! Let’s think with honesty (which itself is a rare commodity these days). What would we do if you have to make the same decision as him! Would we forego all the fortune of IPL for the so called patriotism! No one gets the better of both the worlds! You can’t be a good guy for all the people, you could choose money so you could live the rest of your life in luxury and you can keep your family in a position where you don’t have to worry about the money!! But you will have to put up with all the bashes from the ‘Patriots’!! Or you could always choose your country and you may live like a normal player (No one will praise you for not choosing money over country, for example look at Sangakkara and Mahela (That’s the normal mental attitude of the people, they would not remember you unless you do something against their ideologies)) with modest money (which you will get after an year). Which one would you choose!! If you are going to say that you would choose IPL two words for you, “Get Real”!!

 

Patriotism is one of the most overrated things in our country!! And we base all our decisions and ideas on this so called patriotism. Stop picking those stones to throw at me for saying it!! What I am saying is patriotism is an important thing in our life. After all our country spent a lot of money and lot of human hours on every single citizen of our country. But we need to understand, not everyone would make their decisions based on patriotism!! And we should not judge them for not making patriotism based decisions!

 

Biggest irony of this Malinga situation is that most of these Malinga bashers would always prefer private sector to the government sector!! If you guys are all hardcore patriots, why don’t you all go and work for the government sector! Salary from the government sector may not be high enough, but screw the money, who wants it, we all are patriots and for us country comes before money and all other shit!  Most wouldn’t do that, because private sector offers more money and money dictated the terms for those! So are those private sector employees are less patriotic than the government employees!! 

And we should not deny the fact that Mumbai Indians helped Malinga when he was out of the team for one and a half year due to an injury! And the fact that Mumbai Indians bowling Coach Shaun Pollock played a big part in fine tuning Malinga’s game!!

He is not the first player to deny the contract and nor he won’t be the last!! Chris Gayle, Dwayne Bravo and Kieron Pollard are those other players who have denied the contract in the past! But in their situation, they don’t play for their countries anyway. They play for a unified cricket union. So their patriotism went un-questioned!! And they play more or less like a free lance cricketers!!

But Malinga does only play in IPL!! He denied all the offers he got from Big Bash, BBL and South African T20 league, about which I am pretty sure most of you people would be unaware of!! He made that decision so he could play for his country! I don’t blame you people; No one remembers the good deeds done by the opposite person!
Cricket is a young man’s game! You have to make full use of it when you can! With that ‘Papadum’ body he could not play the game at the highest level for many years! Sooner or later his career will come to an end because of an injury! There is nothing wrong in making money when he can do it!

He chose money and family before country! So What??

 

But he chose money over the country! There is nothing wrong in it! But at the same time you can’t pin all of our hopes on a guy who doesn’t want to commit for his country! We should find some other pace bowling talents and should nurture it!! Right now our bowling attack relies a lot in a person who doesn’t want to commit for the team! It is his decision to deny the contract, let’s respect it and get over it!

 

Time to find another Malinga!!

 

Conqueror Sutharman arrives!

Hello Blogging World!!
I always wanted to start my very own blog for more than an year!! In other words I have been planning this entry to the blogging world for the past 10 months!! I always wanted my entry to blogging to be a grand stand opening (Rajni style opening)!! What I found out in the recent past is there is no such thing called Rajni style opening( Unless of course if you are  Rajni ) . So I made an oath that no matter the no of followers I am just gonna write until you get some followers and gonna write more for those followers after getting them!

I will start it off with introducing myself to you all!! I am Paskaran Sutharman from the emerald country (Seriously why do they call us emerald country?) Sri Lanka!! And I am following an engineering degree in the University of Moratuwa! Those who know about that university skip the next line! University of Moratuwa is the best university in the whole country when it comes to the higher studies (Atleast that’s what they said to us in the orientation program of the university). And I did my high schooling in Royal College, And if  you don’t know anything about Royal College skip the whole blog and hang yourself in a tree!! After hanging yourself come to your laptop and google about Royal College and learn that this is the best school in the Island!

I am a tamil guy from SriLanka. It is a minority race if you are defining the term minority from pre Mahinda era and it is a majority race if the parameter for your decision is from Mahinda era!! (You have to be a Srilankan to get that, if you are not a Srilankan Don’t try hard that isn’t that great anyways) . And I live in the capital city of the country and I am a great cricket and movie fanatic! (you people are forewarned, escape when you can)! And I might become a football fan also in the recent future! My friends are literally forcing me to watch Football and will inform you people just after a deciding a club to support! And from the fact that it took me 10 months  to start this blog you might’ve decided already that I am a lazy guy! And you guys are spot on!! I am lazy and I have no idea how I am gonna continue blogging for long periods! Have to find a way to overcome that!!

Enough for the Personal bragging and for the part where I am gonna say why I started blogging!

And I can hear some saying that is the very question they have in their mind!

As I have said earlier I am a lazy guy and I also have the tendency to get bored easily!! I daresay that is a dangerous combination to have!! And now I am free after finishing my first semester exams and have nothing to do but watching movies and playing cricket!! You may watch any no of movies or play any amount of cricket but boredom will catch you at the end and it will have the final say!! So I thought blogging would be a great way to chase off boredom!!
And 10 months before all the university entrants were willingly going to an army camp to learn the leadership qualities!!(OK I accept!! Government forced us to go there and I may have lied in that ‘willingly’ part). And I wrote an article about our experiences in that camp as a note and I published it in FB and it was a massive success (got 39 likes, guess I can say it as a massive success) and many a people (2 guys) asked me to write a blog!! And for those people Here Sutharman has arrived!!

And most importantly I have to thank my sister, Kantheepan, Arunothayan, Nishanth and all other friends for motivating me to start a blog!! Dedicated to you guys!!

Writing does not come naturally to me! And that’s not my problem it is your problem and you have to deal with it (please don’t leave the blog)!! During my school times I always used to get 8 or 9 marks for the English and Tamil essays!! (Note that marks aren’t given out of 10 but 20)! But what is the point in doing something that comes naturally to you!! So I said “Challenge Accepted” and started this blog!!
This is just an introduction filled with my personal bragging (If you can call it that)and some boring  insider information about me!! But the real blogging will start from the next article!!

And I know it is going to be Legen… wait for it ...dary!! It is gonna be Legendary guys!! (Did I say that I am a huge Barney Stinson fan??)
And most importantly I have to thank my sister, Kantheepan, Arunothayan, Nishanth and all other friends for motivating me to start a blog!! Dedicated to you guys!!