Don't blame Ashwin, He played really well!!!

Day before yesterday we saw scintillating form of REAL cricket. In a cricket crazy country, we are as always not happy with the draw test match. It was really mind boggling to see when two teams play nearly 350 Overs of cricket and still end up in tie. This happen in life also when we see something unexpected but why do we get so upset with the things which we cannot control.

Like the cricket match between India and West Indies, where two teams played the highest form of the cricket that is to offer. WI as expected had put a superb fight, as they were down and out in first two test matches. Even after lead of 100 runs in the first inning they gave up the match by collapsing in the next inning. India as usual played their best cricket in the second inning. Second match almost got ended in the first inning itself when WI collapsed in dramatic circumstances but they gave the fight in the next inning. But all that gone in vain as lead was too much to handle.

First two matches surely set the tone for third test in wankhede. We all were expecting the collapse from Carrebian cricketers, as they also did not had the services of India Harassing Shivanarayan Chanderpaul in their ranks. Contrary to the script they had put nearly 600 score on the pitch, which was seemed as dead pitch. India looked uninterested in the match result but in. Sachin did not disappointed them and almost wrote the perfect script by crossing 90 runs but rush of blood my maestro got him out.

After that Indians were on the way of WI Collapse, the just married man showed his newly wedded wife that she has married to an all-rounder and not to just an off spinner. R. Ashwin scored a surprising hundred and did not disappoint the crowd which gathered to see Sachin's Ton. He also avoided the embarrassing follow-on and gave respectability to India’s Total.

India bowlers who toiled very hard in the first inning showed that how menacing could be the 5th day pitch and wrapped the WI’s inning in 140+ score. This gave a real hope to the Indians that they could still get the clean sweep and they did state in that fashion. Everyone wanted Sachin’s batting to click but WI kept on coming with discipline line and length. India kept on loosing wickets in regular intervals and thus the hope of winning the match.

It did looked like India winning the match even after losing 8 wickets and 3 runs need of 6 balls but Aron threw few dots and Ashwin assured that India wont loose the match. The accuracy of Fidel Edwards played off and Match was tied on the last ball as Ashwin did not go for 2nd run which was never there.
On that evening even though India did not lose the match, the scenes on the ground and outside looked contrary to it. Everyone was blaming R. ashwin for the loss, but they forget about the top 7 batsmen in the Indian team. No one played the inning which was needed where Ashwin showed the courage to stick to the wicket and made sure that India do not end up on losing side.

This test match was surely will be remembered by the tie achieved on the last ball but for me it was the performance of the spinners which stood apart. After a long time, I saw the 2 spinners bowling in tandem and playing havoc in the other teams ranks. R. Ashwin truly deserved the man of the match. I am now assured that Harbhajan singh's days are over and I really want that way. I have been really frustrated by the Bhajji's third rated bowling and really want to not to see him.

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Chain se sona hai to channel change karo..

You will ask me "What type of title is this?"  but you will soon come to know why. The common belief that there is nothing like a good disaster to get viewers back. Natural calamities, terrorist attacks or wars push up viewership of news channels. That happened in 2008 when the growth of viewership was primarily spurred by the coverage of the Mumbai terror attacks and the political crisis in India over the Indo-US nuclear deal. In 2009 and 2010, for instance, there wasn't any major event that could shake the entire nation for days or weeks except for the IPL.

In the last few years, news channels have moved from a feature-led format to solely a breaking news format, which has minimized the stickiness on the channels (evident from the drop in time spent). A senior media observer says, "Viewers come in when news breaks and move out equally fast." The fierce competition amongst the news channels to get that extra share of revenue and get ahead in the race for GRPs has led to an increase of sensationalism. The line between news and entertainment channels is increasingly getting blurred.

I want to tell a real incidence where these 3rd grade channels have spread the miss information. It was last year when there was an incident where Fearing end of world by CERN experiment, girl commits suicide in, September 2008. That girl wasn't the only person who got terrified by these news, even my parent got terrified. They informed me that all the people in my home town are just shocked to watch the same news again and again. They were doing everything to increase there viewership and spread the mis-information. They will tell you something, even create a complete show on something but will never substantiate. The normal people who don't know much about language like Hindi, will not fully understand what is going on.

Same thing happened in where there was pandemic in India especially in Pune where I used to stay. There were continuous counts of casualty of the people because of Swine Flu infection, rather than providing the right information. This went on for many days, as this was first real pan India pandemic in recent time but to cash in on it was shameless act.

Smaller, non-network channels that have their own set of audiences and advertisers tend to get into 'masala news' in search of more eyeballs. But such sensationalism also puts off viewers. News today is available all through the day and because all channels exhibits sameness, audiences are not worried of missing out on any news occurrence. This has affected appointment viewing drastically.

They seem to be lacking in innovative news programmes, which could be of interest to a larger set of TV viewing people, rather than just their core TG.  Then, how are regional channels doing better?
First, the viewers who usually watched Hindi news moved to the regional news channels because of an affinity for their mother tongue. One reason could be the biased nature of Hindi news channel, as they look after getting the TRP in the Hindi Heartland and do not focus on the real issue.  Second could as there are many states in India where the primary language preference is not Hindi or English.

As the number of regional channels continues to grow, the shift from Hindi and English to regional is a natural phenomenon. Also, localisation of news is the biggest strength of regional news channels.
Local news channels has been the strength of southern media as they exploit the current condition but at least they are not doing propaganda work which Hindi media seems to be doing. As per the little research I have done in this regard, it is the south-based channels that have led the growth in the regional space. Currently, there are 16 Telugu news channels (24-hour) in Andhra Pradesh and more are expected to be launched soon.

The reason of the Hindi news channels can be traced back to the literacy rate in that reason as many people are uneducated, these silly news sells there. In fact sometimes I don’t call them the news channel as they tend to show comedy shows more than the actual news. As they
I think the issue plaguing all of our media and entertainment today is nothing else but a lack of content. News channels today do precious little other than bringing irrelevant news, highlighting trivial information, Bollywood gossip and poorly moderated debates into our living rooms. Its high time somebody pulled the plug on this charade and brought real, researched, thought-provoking and useful news, discussion’s and investigative stories to us- something which we left behind when DD used to be the only channel and news were restricted to only 20 minutes capsules in Hindi and English each. The 24x7 mode which news channels have adopted, as pointed aptly in the story above, does nothing other than allowing unnecessary information to be beamed right through to every household. It might bring you short term revenues through advertising, but penny wise is surely bound to be pound foolish.

In a such a vast country with wide variety of issues there is a real need of new news channels, where we will see the real India and there problem. Not those English news channels who are centered around cities, Hindi News channels showing Comedy shows and Local news channels owned by politicians. I will never advocate for any regulations on the News Content of the channels but if you see some of these Hindi news channels showing rubbish news, then I would surely like to change my mind. I am really a critic of Hindi news channel, not because they are from north but they are showing something which is watched in whole of India.

Lets hope there will be positive change in the content of these channels or there will a bill from the government soon. Not sure they will be able to pass, as we know how incompetent they are but there is real need of the right content to liberate people....

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