A bunch of clowns.

Once upon a time, life used to be really, really simple. Including the view from the Wankhede Stadium. Those were the days when I used to take interest in the game of cricket – like aam janata – and Mohinder Amarnath could get away calling the selectors by what came to be known as the most derogatory label in the history of Indian cricket. The true story I’m about to tell happened in 1996. I was a part of the pretentious “bunch of clowns” called ‘We’re Game’. We intended to operate as an independent think tank in order to help India XI win the 1999 World Cup. I have a bunch of papers from those days that actually contain a couple of think notes written by me in the form of articles. They are filed in a blue plastic folder. I found them the other day while cleaning up the storage shelves. The crawly stuff I wrote then sounds weird in sane retrospect. Nauseating stuff like: “Here we may seek enlightenment and insights from our HRD practitioners, social scientists and psychologists. [Yechhh!] We are perhaps in for a close encounter with Group Dynamics, the sociologist’s “work group” (people working on a common task) and the psychologist’s “interactive group” (any get-together of individuals for a common purpose). [Arrrraghhh!] In his book The Corporate Man, Anthony Jay hypothesized that there is a natural primordial size of the “hunting group” (translation: the “team”) no larger than a football team (nine) beyond which success gets much harder if not impossible to achieve.” The cheek of me! I actually presumed that I, who had never graduated beyond ‘terrace cricket’ in my childhood (I must write about that little-known esoteric version of the game some day), had garnered enough wisdom, expertise and knowledge to advise the India XI on how to get out of the “wrest defeat out of the jaws of victory” mode and win the 1999 World Cup. To tell you the truth, I have still not fathomed the aerodynamics of reverse swing. http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/GG/STUDENTS/jfoster/swing.html. Fortunately, the ‘We’re Game’ never got the opportunity to unleash its expertise on the unsuspecting cricketing world. It died unsung and uncelebrated of inertia, inaction and sloth of the intending promoters and also, as I had suspected right from the start, lack of the right connections.

Scalping for fun and profits. Don’t wait till zero hour.

Now that the World Cup fever is on, this tale comes to mind. My friend, Zubin, told me how he managed at the very last moment to attend the 2004 Grand Prix of Canada in Montreal (13 June 2004). For the privilege, he had to pay a global ticket scalper through the nose. In return, though, he managed to click some prize pictures of his idol, Michael Schumacher, and to grab a piece of his frayed tyre as well. The scalper told him that he had lost a packet on the last Cricket World Cup when England and New Zealand dropped out of contention and India cruised to the finals. Scalping is apparently well and thriving in the West. These smart operators use the Internet to do bulk booking well in advance and then rake in the moolah when the fans who didn’t make it to the box office in time to get the entrance tickets clamour for them at the last moment. To read all about the fine art of ticket scalping and the intended remedy, go here: http://www.gothamgazette.com/iotw/tickets/. Read all about the 2004 Grand Prix of Canada, if you feel so inclined, here: http://www.grandprix.ca/anglais/index.html.