Thursday, June 30, 2011

Cruel Thirties!

This post is not a cry of getting into my thirties, you don’t cry when you get older, otherwise nobody would be celebrating their birthdays. This is a post about how cruel a Thirty would become, if you are not moved on from what you were doing in your teens and early twenties!!!

Let’s take a shot at it, the influencing characters of my teen ages and twenties. The best offside player of his time, Saurav Ganguly and by far the best bowler in the history of cricket, Shane Warne are no more playing. Michael Jackson is passed away two years back. Genius Indian composer Illayaraja is not composing music as good as he used to do. The legendary contemporary writer Sujatha passed away two years back. No Ronaldo is in football. Bill Gates is doing Charity and enjoying his retirement life. Steve Jobs is still roaring, but his body is tired and weakened unfortunately. Promising Sun is already cherished and Gosling was all over the place and finally joined Google without knowing what exactly he is going to do! Who would have thought the fates of Prabakaran and Sadam would be decided in this manner? And many presumes Java’s beginning of end is already started!!!

This year I am witnessing one of my favourite sportsman’s beginning of the end. He is the man who turned lots of  people watching tennis back again. Tennis was dominated by power hitting players like Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi and I think lots of people in 90s started to enjoy women’s tennis than men’s due to this factor(I may be wrong, the perception based on what I have seen and heard during the time from the kind of people around me). Steffi Graf was rocking the stage more than anybody those daysfederer-slice-bh1.

Roger Federer arrived, in early 2000s, immediately drew the attention by his single backhand slices, which is referred more classical tennis play. He doesn’t show any emotions on the stage, determined and focussed most of the times. He is known for his unforced errors, understandably due to his attacking play maker. 


Then this guy Rafael Nadal came, not a graceful act on the stage, but effective, very effective. His never-say-die approach earned him many grand slams. Obviously I am not a big fan of him but I admire his forehand curve in returns. The rivalry started in Tennis. It made Tennis interesting, and since French and English times have mere 8 hours difference, I had to lose my  sleep to watch all these rivalries. No regrets though.
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A rare emotional outburst in the field, Australian Open Finals 2009!




This year Australian Open was the beginning of end for the magician. Roger lost in the quarter finals and when asked he said wait for six months and then tell its the case. He managed to get into the finals of Rolland Garros, given some hopes to his fans. But yesterday was a disaster! He lost to Tsonga in the Wimbledon 2011 quarter finals, even after winning the first two sets comfortably. He didn’t look convincing, committed or exciting yesterday. I think its a fatigue of playing one too many grand slams and there is no motivation to prove anything to anybody including himself!

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Watching Wimbledon 2011 Live, Fourth round matches in two laptops and iPad!!





He is still ranked world number three, it could be still early to write him off, but I am sure his prime is well past, he is hanging on and unless he finds an incentive to play better, I doubt he will ever get back to his usual groove. He knows better than anybody else on when to hang his boots though!

So there you go, an end of another idol’s power demises!

Checkout this guy Tomic, an eighteen year old Aussie, showed some promises!

Let’s move on!!!

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