Of course, like most avid cricket fans, I am a big fan of Sachin Tendulkar, Yuvraj Singh, and even Zaheer Khan. I even enjoy the IPL, and very aware that the Indian team is at least as good as the Sri Lankan team, regardless of who wins on Saturday. It’s a tight call, hence no prediction this time. The India-Pak game was far easier to predict.

To be fair, the Indian team deserves to win the World Cup though because of their consistency in overseas and home tours in 2010. However, there are some negative unintended consequences to a victory by Indians on Saturday, April 2nd, in Mumbai’s Wankhede stadium.

Cricket Capitalism will become larger, to the extent that it may even threaten cricket as we know it. For starters, the IPL will have vindicated itself not only for the commerce it generates, but also for generating the next generation of Indian cricketers.

The powers-that-be will deem the IPL to be a good filter for Ranji players to prove their shot-making and temperament. They will be on the lookout for more Suresh Rainas, Yusuf Pathans, and Munaf Patels.

Given that is has vindicated itself for its ability to generate commerce, advertising revenues, and so forth – the IPL will only feed off an Indian World Cup triumph, and become bigger. There will be more franchices, more teams, more foreign players, more games, more celebrity ownership, and more Bollywoodization.

In the IPL, since Indian players predominate, the “Indian style” of cricket will catch on more and more. In the bowling department, this will simply mean the death of traditonal fast bowling (And no Brett Lee’s success in all forms of the game is not a rule, it’s an exception).

Or to sound less polemical, it will mean that fast bowling will never be what it was, for those of who grew up watching the West Indian, Australian, Pakistani and even English pace bowling in the 80s and 90s.

Think back to what made Zaheer Khan such a potent weapon throughout the 2011 Cricket World Cup. Zaheer does not rely on pace, bounce, and the ability to instil fear in batsmen. He moves the ball for sure, but the reason why he is successful is because of his unpredictability. It is the same reason why Shahid Afridi has been successful. Zaheer is a master at changes of pace, variation of length, sometimes line, angle of delivery, and so forth.

These are of course tremendously useful traits but not necessarily the main ingredients of successful fast bowling as he had known it in the 80s and 90s. This is the sort of bowling that causes doubt in the mind of the batsman, chokes him, cuts off runs, and lures him into a false shot.

These are the ingredients of bowling that continue the blur the line between an Afridi and a Zaheer, and this to my mind, is an inevitable consequence of the success of the Indian Premier League and T-20 Cricket at large. Is this a negative change? Well that’s up for debate depending on your flavor of choice.

There is also a less obvious angle. If you look at the ongoing 2011 World Cup, for the first two-thirds of this tournament, teams were either scoring freely and notching up 300-plus scores, or failing to reach the 225 mark. If you look long and hard at the team totals in the group stages, especially the first two-thirds, you’ll see that this is the case.

Of course, as the tournament wore on, many teams realized this I think and took a harder look at the pacing of their innings. The Indian team is a case in point, although the match wasn’t as attractive to watch.

Moreover, further down the road, Ranji will become big money as the corportization of cricket continues. I wouldn’t be surprised if India produced a 50-over version of the Indian Premier League, wherein foreign players would come in and play for different states.

The outcome would be that the financial and professional pinnacle for international cricketers would constitute going to India where the money in, and getting to play for Punjab or Bengal or Delhi.

So what’s wrong with that, you ask? Well imagine if all Latin American and Continental Europeans only played for the English Premier League (EPL) and only the EPL. What would it do to the style and technique of Brazilians, Argenitians, and Spaniards then, and how easy would it be then for their players to gel as a team at the international stage?

As it is, foodball critics know well the effect of playing in European leagues and the detrimental effect it has had on international football. Cricket, as we have known it, used to largely be a sport between nations, wherein lay its charm. The increasing importance of highly lucrative leagues, therefore, is bound to be disruptive for international cricket.

Growing up in the 80s and 90s, when every team had its distinct bowler and batsman wit its distinct style, when the cricket economy was smaller and it was still a gentleman’s game, I can’t help but think it was also more exciting.

And of course, there are other perils to an aggressive cricket capitalism, and the inevitability of a black economy.

But it was predictable.  I wrote how India was expected to outclass Pakistan although I didn’t imagine it would be such a poor game of cricket.

To be sure, Pakistan was unlucky on account of dropped catches. But they also witnessed a one-off inspired bowling performance from Riaz, who surpassed all expectations. And it is one thing to blame luck for dropped chances, but another when the team in question does it too often.

India looks good. They may win the contest. But I am afraid this team is not the all-round force of nature one has come to expect from the best teams in the world – as was the case with the last two World Cup winning Aussie teams.

All said and done, India, may the force be with you.

Shahid Afridi’s “green storm” (as some Pak bloggers have called it) will come short. There is no way – I have argued in this piece that Pakistan’s mix of Afridi’s fast-ish leg breaks, Ajmal’s skill, or Gul’s guile – will enjoy the sort of success they have against more brittle opposition (with only Sri Lanka being the exception).

The batters up the India order can play pace as well as anyone else on Indian tracks. The middle order is in fine nick and can milk any spinner – and a man like Dhoni is not down for too long – so expect him to fire if needed.

Then there of course, is the wiley Zaheer, whose pace pales in comparison to his Pakistani counterparts, but has more than his share of astuteness.

To not ignore the Pak batters, the Akmals are handy and will contribute on Wednesday, as may either Misbah or Yunus, and certainly Razzak. But in the overall scheme of things, they will not be able to bat their way to victory.

This, of course, is all in fun. If I eat my words on Wednesday – at least we will have a contest on our hands!

Wanderer, idolater, worshiper of fire,
Come even though you have broken your vows a thousand times,
Come, and come yet again.
Ours is not a caravan of despair.
~Rumi

I am very excited about this.  Daniel Day-Lewis and Al Pacino to star in a Muzaffar Ali (of Umrao Jaan fame) biopic on the Great Master. Read here.

I didn’t realize this, but there was a point when I think I used to judge people by the size of their apartments. I wasn’t particularly aware of such bigotry, so it went unexamined. It wasn’t until I stepped into that Sinclair apartment that I realized my prejudice, and more importantly, how quickly it could be overpowered.

That said, the apartment was really tiny. The distance between the rather basic but tidy kitchen and the living room was less than three feet. It could’ve even been about a foot and a six inches. The living room itself was sparse. There was a clutter of images on the right wall. They appeared to be European paintings, possibly Victorian. Miniatures mostly, and mounted. Almost all of them had a grayish background and were melancholic.

I caught a glimpse of a portrait of a young caucasian girl in a hat. My friend later told me that when she was little, she used to feel some sort of aesthetic connection with the girl in that painting. I remember smiling back, feeling slightly intrigued and indulgent.

I was intrigued at her ability to connect aesthetically with a blond caucasian girl, and wondering what the basis was for such a self-image. Growing up fair-skinned and light-eyed in South Asia, I suppose, and being brought up by a mother who spoke mostly English and played the piano. Well, sort of played the piano.

The furniture and furnishings were minimal. Strikingly minimal, considering, if what my friend had said were true, their family had bought her a 200, 000 USD worth apartment not so long ago a year after her marriage.

Aside from a few basic paintings, that must’ve been as old as her family’s stay in that apartment, there was a picture of a Saint her community revered (maybe worshipped, not sure), a clock, a personalized M. F. Hussain doodle, some souvenirs (a plate from Israel had caught my attention), and a very basic coffee table.

In fact, now as I write this, I wonder about this whole minimalism deal. There was certainly a lot to this, in the way she and her family chose to do many things. Take her fridge for instance. The fridge usually had as much food as was left over after the day’s meals. In one of the cabinets, there were chocolates, but they were never eaten. Perhaps this was understandable given that the father was a cardiac patient, the mother ostensibly not a foodie, while she herself was determindely anoerexic to “preserve the shape she was in since she was 15″. That last bit was almost verbatim, as you may have guessed, because of the ferocity with which it was declared to me more than once. A side-order of guilt for my role in making her fall out of her exercise schedule.

But despite all that, it still didn’t make sense to me why none of the chocolates, and some of them were good stuff I have to say, never got eaten. I couldn’t help but think that the chocolates didn’t get eaten because they were being saved. Maybe for a rainy day. When all their food would run out. Or more likely, for guests. Maybe if the guests had children. Whatever the more rational reasons were, I couldn’t help but think that there was a basic minimalism and maybe even miserliness that explained why all that good chocolate never got eaten.

I stole them once in a while, when everybody would sleep. Of course, I wasn’t always careful disposing with the wrappers, and no doubt, they were aware that their chocolates were getting stolen. I don’t think they liked it much. Which, in turn, troubled me for some reason.

Another fond memory I have of the chocolates is my ration of one a day that I was officially allowed. I appreciated the concern for my health, and I have to say, it was one of the good things about getting to know her. There were many good things, but her occasional concern was certainly very nice. Although, I can’t help but feel sometimes that I give her too much credit because the affection was always laced with expectation. An expectaton of an impatient kind that became more turgid with time.

Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmedinijad might well be, although this is a hard one, the dumbest statesman in the Muslim World.

He and Musharraf form quite the two sides of a coin. While Mushy is trying level best to appease the West, Mahmoud is trying to antagonize. While Mushy is going on tours to America, regaling John Stewart, Wolf Blitzer, and trying to sell copies of his James Bondesque autobiography (it climbed to number THREE on Amazon’s bestseller list) – Mahmoud is idiotically organizing conferences to deny the Holocaust.

Why on freakin’ earth would you organize this conference? Who in his right God-forsaken mind would actually deny the Holocaust?

Moreover, this was a conference well-attended by ACADEMICS.

WTH.

And embarassingly for those of us that take our craft seriously, HISTORIANS attended this ridiculous conference. (And people wonder why I claim to be a political scientist/anthropologist these days; THIS IS WHY).

See, revisionism is an extremely helpful and at the same time, a perverted desire that perhaps inhabits us all. It may make you believe messed up things. To give you the mother of random examples, it makes you blame your inadequacies on your parents. I know people with perfectly happy childhoods and perfectly unhappy personalities who blame their problems on their “childhood.” I disclaimed already this would be a random example.

But of course, counter intuition must have its place in the free-market of ideas. But counter intuitive thinking can also lead to perverted conclusions.

Victims of abuse demonstrate counter intuitive tendencies that help them justify their life. Idiots also demonstrate this. Idiocy, you may have heard me say earlier, if I am comfortable enough sharing my cliches with you, is seldom about knowledge, but a state of mind.

Since very few things about the Muslim world bring glad tidings these days, I was pleasantly surprised to read this well-argued article by one American Mussalman, Sheikh Hamza Yusuf, entitled “Holocaust Denial Undermines Islam.” This was carried by Tikkun, which, as you may know, is a leading mouthpiece for reform jews.

Of course the title is meant to be polemical. HY must not intend to claim that morality and truth-telling are a monopoly of Muslims. His attack on Mahmoud would give the lie to such an arrogant position.

The epistemological tendency inherent in Holocaust denial that may undermine epistemological approaches to Muslim traditions:

Read the whole thing here. I don’t always like the populist stuff HY and his crew of Zaytuna fame, churn out. But this article I thought was reasonable and timely.

I was once shooting the shit with a Professor of Islamic History and he pointed to me, how political Islam has had an uneasy relationship with both Iranian and Bengali society. Perhaps.

I suppose the presence of long secular cultures, very productive in the arts and literature, true for both Bengal and Persia, might create problems for certain kinds of Islamisms. Of course, the history of political Islam in any Muslim country is nothing if its not inconsistent and checkered. So it’s hard to generalize.

Another interesting analogy between Bangladeshi and Persian societies is the central role Dhaka and Tehran University have played in defining their states’ religio-political cultures.

Dhaka University, founded soon after the first Partition of Bengal, to uplift the Muslim masses of East Bengal, went from strength to strength and played a pivotal role in nationalist politics leading up to 1947. After 1947, the university changed character dramatically, as many Hindu Bengalis vacated faculty positions and were replaced by an expanding Bengali Muslim intelligentsia. An intelligentsia that was increasingly secular in the way it imagined a raison d’etre for East Pakistan, and if not that, at least culturally very proudly Bengali. In 1952, the University became a central hub of demonstrations against the Pakistani State. Again, in the ’60s, throwing their weight behind an increasingly outspoken Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the University students and faculty came under the radar of the Pakistani State. Little wonder then that many of the Pak Army’s worst atrocities were carried out on the campus during Operation Search Light.

Tehran University was founded roughly sixty years before Dhaka University. The University was formed by integrating various independent faculties and schools. Initially, heavily influenced by French curricula, after WWII, it tried to Americanize its system more. Tehran University also became a battleground on which various religious and political skirmishes were fought by those struggling for state power. Of course the students have been more than pawns in these great games – they have played a central role in them.

In 1979, when the world watched a revolution as momentous as the French or Russian, a lot of impetus to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s anti-Reza Shah rhetoric came after mass-atrocities on the TU campus. The campus fell under the control of anti-state guerrillas who made weapons and Molotov cocktails . Of course, the agitation had deeper roots. The leftist, liberal Tehran University elements also witnessed the 2,500 year-old celebration of the Persian Empire as Reza Shah threw a party to end all parties. Pro-American, anti-leftist, anti-Islamist, Reza Shah alienated many, and as draughts raged in Baluchistan and Sistan, he had two hundred chefs flown in from Paris, served a ton of caviar and spent between $50 to a $100 million dollars for lots of corporate guests, both Western and Iranian. Students of Tehran University weren’t very impressed.

Of course, the students of both Dhaka and Tehran University continue to be politically active. Although politically conscientious voices are fast disappearing on the DU campus, as Shibir cadres are increasingly ensconcing themselves there. Still DU remains a hot-bed of anti-state politics. As does TU, witnessed by the violent protests against against the closing of the reform-minded newspaper, Salam, and more recently against Mr. Ahmadenijad.

Academically, both universities are formidable with a former alumnus/a in each case, bagging a Noble Peace Prize recently: Shirin Ebadi in 2003 and Muhammad Yunus in 2006.