BedTea.in | Ravi Matah's Blog

Football is opium for the masses and the greatest spectacle of World Cup sport ended Sunday with Spain emerging victorious at Johannesburg Stadium. Netherlands were third time unlucky and Spain was lucky in their 13th attempt in the final. The figure of 13 is unlucky for some, but lucky for Spain. 

South Africa is a proud country now because the country as well as it’s people have shown the world what they are all about. This

World Cup Trophy

 land has managed to prove their critics wrong, by showing them that this magnificent Rain-Bow nation is much more then the usual and have far out-shone world’s expectations on the management of an event of this magnitude. 

There have been no terror threats. Adequate police protection was in place. The Stadiums are superb, the crowd appreciative, the crazy vuvuzelas noisy, enthusiastic people, perfect arrangements, all added to the beauty of the tournament. It won’t be an exaggeration to say that it was South Africa who won the World Cup 2010.  (more…)

India set themselves up for a series victory on Wednesday in the most brutal manner possible, with help from Sachin Tendulkar, who brought up one-day cricket’s first ever double-century. Master blaster Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar created history to became the first ever ODI batsman to make 200 runs in an innings. India made 401 for 3 in the allotted 50 overs and have set a 402-run target for South Africa at the Roop Singh Stadium at Gwalior in the 2nd ODI played between India and South Africa.

Sachin Tendulkar made 200* and rewrote history in Gwalior with 25 fours and 3 sixes. MS Dhoni (68*) also fired on all cylinders to propel India to 401/3. Earlier, India won the toss and elected to bat. Nobody has seen God, but the God of cricket was seen by everyone playing at the Capt. Roop Singh stadium at Gwalior, India, going past the 194 made by Zimbabwe’s Charles Coventry and Pakistan’s Saeed Anwar, and to say that historians of cricket will remain busy so long as Sachin keeps batting.  (more…)

India got the scare of their life but they survived the onslaught of the South African tail and beat them by 1 run on the last ball of the nail-biting 50 over match.  South Africa won the toss and elected to field at the Savai Man Singh Stadium at Jaipur in the First ODI played between them on Sunday. India’s gave a pathetic display of their batting and their top order collapsed due to a bit of hard-luck and lapse of concentration and they lost wickets at regular intervals. 

Suresh Raina was the only batsman who could post a half century for India. Sachin (4) and Sehwag (46) were very unfortunate to be run out. No batsman was able to post a good score and there were hardly any partnerships worth mentioning. (more…)

Four centuries in the first innings by Sehwag, Sachin, Luxman and Dhoni gave India  a formidable 347  run first innings lead over South Africa at the Eden Gardens, Kolkatta.. In the second innings for S.A., it was only Hashim Amla who played a defiant knock of 123 not out. But apart from his performance, none of the other batsmen were able to withstand the jugglery of the spinning duo Harbhajan(5 for 59) and Mishra(3 for 78).

India’s main strike bowler Zaheer Khan was resting with a knee injury sustained yesterday and India were down to three bowlers. They still managed to pull off a miraculous victory with less than two mandatory overs to spare. Harbhajan Singh,bowled exceptionally well and took five wickets in South Africa’s second innings. (more…)

After two weeks of negotiations, a breakthrough has finally been achieved on Friday night at the climate talks being held at Copenhagen, when leaders from the U.S., India, Brazil, South Africa and China came to an agreement to combat global warming.

Manmohan Singh

As per press reports, the United States and countries including India and China, have agreed on a deal which was not legally binding for anyone -neither the U.S. nor developing nations like China. For some members of the summit there was a sense of relief on the agreement on few of the agenda items even though some of the issues were left to be decided in the future.

Actually the developed Western countries were not willing to step up the emission cuts therefore India and China were also reluctant to agree to the same.

When Obama arrived in Copenhagen on Friday morning, Ministers and some Heads of State had been up much of the night attempting to craft a workable agreement without success. (more…)

The IPLT20 is finally over and millions of cricket lovers have not much left to do. Even I am thinking what to do in the evening as there is no match today. Go out or simply sit back and watch a new TV serial. Having spent almost 39 evenings at home watching the matches, there is suddenly a vacuum in our lives after the final match. But what will South Africans do who were directly involved in doing their jobs for the tournament and/or watching the games.

The hotels would be half empty. The employees would be enjoying  themselves after the hard work. Airport staff would be happy. This had been a high flying tournament and after 40 days of hullabaloo and hectic arrangements they would be relaxing in bright sunshine. The Security Staff deputed for this tournament would have gone to quench their thirst after the final. They had earned a well deserved slug after doing a splendid job. They stayed sober during this hi-fi extravaganza to ward of any untoward incident. It is only by the exceptional prowess of the Security Staff that everything went off smoothly. (more…)

IPL T-20 – Two, was scheduled to commence from 10th April 2009 in India but since the dates of the matches clashed with the Indian Elections it was decided to move the tournament outside India. Lalit Modi the Chairman of IPL T-20 flew to Johannesburg and it was announced there that the tournament will be held from 18th Apr 2009 at various venues in South Africa comprising of fifty six round robin matches , two semi-finals and the final.

Ha Ha. The world is enjoying this billion dollar extravaganza. The streets are half empty just before 4.00 PM every evening in India and people are glued to their TV sets impatiently waiting for the first ball to be bowled. I am sure the same would be happening in other parts of the world. How is all this managed? How did Lalit Modi achieve this? (more…)

The advent of television in India approximately 28 years ago has brought out a tremendous change in our lives. Our focus changed on various issues and now our concepts are clearer. I am not mentioning here the lies that also float in the ad industry – the girl will become fairer (gori) in two weeks by using a particular brand of cream or a baldie (tackloo; like me 🙂 ) will grow hair – on the head of course – by applying a specified oil. But concepts in general have become clearer.

More than two decades ago I watched World cup soccer tournament. It was a treat to watch how the top teams in the world vie for a place in the finals and eventually one day hold the trophy. After watching the world cup and Euro cup matches – the Indian soccer league looked like watching a world cup match in slow motion.

I used to think that nobody will watch the local team matches except that sometimes I used to watch the Ranji Trophy final.  Who would have thought that one day Bollywood-glamour-cricket would amalgamate into one beautiful scenario and create a multi million dollar extravaganza that will be watched by a billion people all over the globe?  Even the England’s County cricket matches were not so popular. (more…)