Personal glory given precedence over team

MUMBAI: It was a short series, as Test cricket goes, yet it, meant so much to both sides. India may have won it by virtue of their immense back-breaking effort of chasing close to 400 runs in the last innings at Chennai. But England were not the least disgraced.

Considering the circumstances under which the England team came back after returning home, made everyone proud and in the end, it can rightly be said that it was the game of cricket that triumphed.

There were so many positives that came out of the series for both sides and the manner in which the matches were played, it was a fitting tribute to honor 75 years of Test cricket in India. After all the great work done especially by a resurgent Indian team under M.S. Dhoni, one cannot help but comment on the rather strange approach of the team on the last two days of the second Test at Mohali.It was completely out of tune with what one had come to expect from this side.

For the first time, since Dhoni took over the leadership, one witnessed an element of negativity in the tactics employed. For all the wealth of talent it possesses, the side’s batting suddenly lacked enterprise. Even attacking batsmen became unnecessarily defensive.

As things stood in the mid-afternoon of the fourth day, India had to go for quick runs, which surprisingly, they did not. Worse was on the final day when a declaration should have been first thing on the mind.

The batsmen carried on in a lackluster manner. It was strange to see the innings being extended beyond the lunch-break to enable Gautam Gambhir and Yuvraj Singh to complete their centuries. The attempt of both batsmen to manufacture a century, instead of getting it in the natural course of play, failed.

For once, it was felt that personal glory of players was given precedence over the prime interest of the team. Also, a feeling was inescapable that Dhoni had set his mind on playing out a draw instead of going for a win.

One only hopes that this is only a one-off switch to the defensive and that Dhoni does not, on the advice of some people, change what has so far been his trademark wholesome approach that has brought so much freshness of thought into the Indian team.

Freida & fame

That’s because Freida, along with the rest of the cast and crew of Slumdog Millionaire, the Danny Boyle-directed movie, are the latest darlings of the international film festival circuit. Danny, the director of movies like Trainspotting, chose Mumbai as the setting for Slumdog Millionaire, the story of a boy who enters Kaun Banega Crorepati to find his ladylove. Freida plays the part of the beloved.

She’d been doing a travel show for a while, and “nothing was happening” when the casting director for Slumdog came to India and Frieda learnt that they were auditioning for the movie. “I just couldn’t believe it,” she says. “I mean, it was so big – I’d studied one of Danny’s films back in college at St Xavier’s (Mumbai)!” She had to audition for six months till, to her disbelief, she got the role. “I was ecstatic. I was screaming and jumping around, and my mom came and saw me and said that she wouldn’t stop me. ‘Go ahead and jump,’ she said, ‘You deserve it.’ At that time, no one could fathom how big the opportunity was.”

That she did, and it paid off – she says that when she started touring internationally with Dev, the response they got as Indian actors was phenomenal. “In Toronto, the film got a standing ovation. It’s true that people have discovered Mumbai through the film. It’s changed the perception that it’s a poor city. They’ve seen it in the film as a big metropolitan city, the financial capital, a power centre... The film’s put Mumbai on the map, and it’s making a mark for itself,” she says.

Freida was in LA when she heard of the terror attack in Mumbai. “My heart goes out to all those who lost their lives or loved ones in the attack,” she says.

A couple of days after the attack, Freida was rushing off to London again. She’s been so busy touring the world for Slumdog, she says, that she hasn’t had time to consider other offers yet. “It’s so funny. I can sit in a rickshaw in Mumbai and no one will recognise me, but in LA, they can tell who I am now,” she giggles.