Music Review: Blue

I'm reviewing the soundtrack of the Hindi movie Blue after nearly a month of its release because unlike others I believe a musical review needs time and cannot be reviewed in an hour after listening to the songs unlike the movie which could connect to you instantly or if it doesn’t then it means you didn’t like it. Thus there is a delay in the review of this Album.

The Music director of this Album needs no introduction and movie coming from him after nearly six months gap which is long kept everyone interested. AR Rahman had a spurt of movies in a short burst namely Sakkarakatti (Tamil movie), Jaane Tu ya Jaane Na, Yuvvraaj, Ghajini, Slumdog, Delhi-6 in a span of about four months. Of late, he did not have any movies and being a fan of his, I was expecting a bit more from this. The Blue music definitely doesn’t disappoint.







The first song that I liked the most and may be the catchiest song of all is “Chiggy Wiggy”. If you listen to this number the first time, you will be instantly attracted to it than the rest of songs. The English lyrics makes a nice soothing feeling to ears and also the Hindi word coming at the mid of the song adds to its charm. Overall this song is a beautiful one but the Rahman fan always look for his melody and in “Bhoola Tujhe” we have a nice melody song. The song goes very slowly and captivates your heart as you listen to it three or four times. The USP of this song is why the review of this movie comes late as it takes time to both appreciate and enjoy this song. It also has nice visuals when watched in the theater.

The next two songs are fast paced songs in “Blue Theme” and “Fiqrana”. Both these songs are catchy numbers too and the “Blue theme” song has some amazing video to add to it. These songs are also very catchy and you feel, “Hey we are getting our value for money”. The other song “Yaar Mila tha” is actually very good too, but I do not remember seeing it in the Movie, perhaps it was edited out in the last touch.








The title song “Rehnuma” is little unique in its way as it first starts as a slow paced song and gradually picks speed that you could probably relate to this movie storyline which starts sedately to pick speed in the climax. The last song “Aaj Dil” has the AR Rahman written all over it. It’s a very neat song in its lyrics and keeps you reminding that Rahman rules as far as Indian music industry is concerned. The visuals of this song makes elderly people in your home say “we did not have this much shortage of clothes even in our freedom struggle times”.

Overall the Music of this movie is really good. It’s unique with its new techno instruments that we have not heard of before. Those who are still wavering over whether to buy this album or not, please go fast and grab a copy of this album. It’s Goddamn good!

Cricket: Five World cups in last three years

Yes will you believe it, there have been five world cups in last three years and we used to think world cup comes once in four years. There have been five world cups in three years:

1) ICC Champions Trophy 2006
2) ICC Cricket World Cup 2007
3) ICC T20 World Cup 2007
4) ICC T20 World Cup 2009
5) ICC Champions Trophy 2009







ICC has become cash rich body and still it wants to milk the cash cow. Players have become fatigued and there has been same winner (Australia) on three occasions but still ICC wants to conduct T20 every 2 years, champion’s trophy every two years and world cup every four years which gives roughly 5 trophies in one rotation. If you go back little more time, there has been one world cup every year in the period 2002-2004 and 1998-2000.

In the year 1998 when Jagmohan Dalmiya (the clever business magnate) was the ICC president, he introduced this new trophy called champions trophy. The main reason given then was that even though ICC was the main governing body of the cricket game, it did not have any money in its kitty. Thus he gave birth to this idea of champions trophy every two years which would cough up so much money to make ICC self reliant in its methods and help to develop its smaller member countries.






Now when ICC is so rich, do we need to see so many global tournaments at such a fast pace. What it does in short is to take the sheen out of such tournaments and the main source of income (spectators) loses the interest in global tournaments. With the result that India was world champions only 2 years ago but still do not get the deserved attention. The reason why the tournaments of grand scale, be it Olympics, soccer world cup, European championship etc comes once in four years is to keep the general public always glued to such tournaments which in turns gives such tournaments such a huge popularity.

I think it is high time that the Champion’s trophy is scrapped and the T20 world cup gets lesser participating countries (probably six is right). This will give the spectators some open space to think and more importantly gives the winner the necessary attention. Pakistan the present T20 champions will be defending their trophy in nine months time is something totally inconceivable. This makes us to think whether making money is the ICC’s sole objective. Shouldn’t the tournament deserve the much needed respect?

Cricket: How many LOI's do we need?

For those of you who have seen so much of cricket and still don’t know this term LOI, LOI stands for limited over international. It’s been about roughly three years since the first twenty twenty game was played. Since the advent of 20-20 the main question in every cricket lovers mind is whether we need two separate LOI (20-20 and 50-50) or do we need to gradually finish off 50-50. The important point here is 20-20 is still in nascent stages and is yet to fully establish itself but its attraction has been huge. It’s never been common in Indian domestic cricket to attract such huge crowds. Of course the case in point here is that there are so many foreign star in display but still people get to see almost 40% foreign players in action. If India plays say a foreign country in Indian soil it of course attracts huge crowds where we have 50% foreign representation. But the important thing to keep in mind with IPL is the winner is always an Indian team irrespective of who performs.

Anyways coming back to the central point is do we see the end of 50-50 or is it going to coexist with 20-20. Lets do some comparison between the both.

20-20:

Pros: Time, Speed of the game, boundaries, close games, evening out the teams, unpredictability

Cons: Better team need not always win, no comeback chances, too fast, one person can change the game, fielding becomes irrelevant, bowlers getting demoralized

50-50:

Pros: History, comeback chances, Better team always wins, Team game, Fielding important, bowlers get more respect.

Cons: Time, speed is too slow between 15-40 overs, predictability of the game easily, very few many nail biters, fewer boundaries.

As you can see from the list, the main pro for 20-20 game has been its speed. It’s not normal for a cricket game whether test or 50-50 to have the spectator so closely gripped to your TV screens. Yes there have been many close 50 over games but if you look at it as percentage of games played, its very low. Moreover the 50 over game gets interesting only in the last 10 overs or in its initial stages which makes it watchable for say 20% of the time then what do you do with the rest o keep the spectator interested. Spectator likes to see action and 20-20 game brings loads of it and that keeps everyone interested. Also you get lot more close games in 20-20 unlike 50-50.

50-50 has its own advantages of its very long history (including its ancient 60-60 days) but the main advantage of 50-50 over 20-20 which any cricket lover who admires its game very elaborately would be its fairness. By fairness I don’t mean the discipline here but rather the necessity that the team that played better cricket needs to win and that is more or less tru here. You could always argue that a test cricket is more correct cricket than 50-50 but that is a different debate in itself. The main argument here is that in 50-50 if you need to win a game you need to do lots of things correct whereas in 20-20 you need to do say one great innings. You could always play a commanding knock in odi but unless you bowl well you need not win. Also the bowlers get so much more respect that a batsman cannot literally close his eyes and swing its bat and still are called a hero. Well in one line “50-50 is more real cricket than 20-20”.

But we already have another format called Test cricket which will always be the cricket in its purest form and the question is do we need one “middle pure” and one “completely impure cricket”. The thing is 20-20 could never become a fixture in international calendar like 50-50. The reason for it being it’s not possible to always get a fair result. But club 20-20 games would be the most popular form of the game. Looking at the initial interest, it is possible people might show more interest in these country leagues like IPL, Champions league than say a international 50-50 games. But its interest will probably rest with club matches and may be occasional international games (World Cups). The test and 50-50 could be the fixtures in any tour calendar. What will die is probably not the 50-50 game in itself but those meaningless 50-50 tournaments we used to have in Sharjah, Malaysia, Singapore etc and also possibly the champions trophy.

Champions League: The Caribbean Flair

It has been a great champion’s league and one team that has stood out in this campaign has been Trinidad & Tobago. The Caribbean flair has been at its best in this tournament. The way they have played has made people go nostalgic of their supremacy in seventies and eighties. Though twenty -twenty format doesn’t give too much ground to exhibit fast bowling action, the little bit we have seen hasn’t been that attractive and it’s more of their spin bowling that has attracted spectators to their team.

But let’s get back to their batting prowess that has kept everyone of their opposition team stunned. In the initial stages, whether it was the Deccan chargers or Somerset the thing that caught my eye in their batting was relentless hitting even when they lost continuous wickets. In the match against Somerset they were tottering at one stage due to loss of bulk wickets but they kept the run rate going and did not get bogged down at any stage. The important thing in 20-20 is not to lose momentum. Because unlike in ODI or test match where you get at least 3 to 4 comeback points for odi or even more for test matches, the 20-20 gives you none. Once you lose momentum it means the game is out of your hands. One important comparison here would be the semifinals between India and Australia in inaugural 20-20 world cup. Australia were literally cruising at one stage and just one wickets turned the tide in India’s favor and Aussies never got back into the match.

The next stage was even more interesting one when their bowling department which is their weak point was exposed to a great deal. They simply didn’t have any bowlers to restrict rampage from New South Wales openers. They were continuously hitting their way to take T&T out of finals in one innings but they were kept somewhat tight down to a reasonable total of 170. This was the perfect setting to test Windies batting flair versus Aussie bowling machines. The stage was set nicely but the main question in everyone’s mind is will the T&T batting hold its end till the target is achieved. What unfolded was something remarkable. The bloke from Trinidad called Pollard had something we hadn’t seen for long time, at least in the Common Indian Viewers context. He simply destroyed NSW bowling and did something which everyone in the world except Australia of course loves to see, the perfect Aussie demolition. We have seen umpteen batsmen in the world trying to threaten Aussie bowling but what pollard did on that special night was something totally outstanding. He not only made sure T&T won that match but he also made sure there were absolute no hiccups in achieving the target and NSW bowlers were totally stunned at the end of it. This flair just continued in the next match in this second stage against Eagles where we saw the highest score of the tournament. What T&T achieved in these two matches was very enjoyable to watch for any neutral spectator.

The next stage was semifinals and T&T was the only team out of the four teams who qualifies for the semifinal to be unbeaten. Therefore the expectations were as expected huge this time as they had gathered many more fans than their usual T&T fans. But the way they won this match against S.African champions cape cobras was again very pleasant to watch. They chased down this time an even bigger target than the NSW target but the more important point was they did it without using Pollard and Ramdin who had been their stars in other matches. This set them up for a title clash against NSW who have already had a taste of their bitter medicine.

The final was initially completely dominated by T&T bowling which seemed to have cut across the spine of the NSW batting but T&T were in for surprise as Brett Lee adopted T&T tactics of not getting bogged down by flurry of wickets and he continued to show positive intent throughout his innings. This led to a more than respectable total of 159 which they successfully defended too. What let down T&T this stage was too much of hitting and very little sensible batting. Especially Pollard’s wicket where he had just scored couple of sixes and the target was still at some distance and he needed to stay till the end. His hot at that’s stage was inexplicable. Anyways even though T&T did not win the tournament, they had won the hearts of many spectators around the world. Hope there is lot more Caribbean flair in future for us to enjoy.