Five For Five!

That's right. Straight sets even. Superb, Roger Federer.

Be a sport

Have been in a very satisfied frenzy these past few days. Sporting encounters of all sorts are making one's ho-hum life all the more exciting.
To start with, the baby rebel Indian Cricket League has gripped me by the vitals on account of a certain Lahore Badshahs being part of the arrangement. This team takes one back to the wonder years of Pakistani cricket. Led by the big bear Inzy, coached by Moin Khan, and featuring all former Pak players I love, from Azhar Mahmood, Mushtaq Ahmed, Mohd Sami, Saqlain, Imran Nazir, Naved Rana, Hassan Raza, and so on and so forth. Why these brilliances were left out of the Pak national squad no one will ever know. And Pak's current dismal form is a result. So, the Lahore Badshahs are my favourites and the Lahore Badshahs are undefeated. First semifinal tonight v Kolkata Tigers. Who are going to lose!!!
And then. There's the football that's keeping us entertained. Not the bizarre American travesty where grown men wear body armor and tight pants and carry around a strangely-shaped object that they refer to as the ball. Tell me, whence foot and wherefore ball? What is wrong with those guys? The proper name of the game should be Running-Around-Handling-Leather-Thing. Eww.
Anyway, we're talking about the English Premier League AND the Champion's League. Weekends and weekdays accounted for. Man U sits pretty on top of the Barclay's board - with the even prettier Cristiano Ronaldo creating magic with Rooney. What eye candy. What legs. What fantastic skill. I love them.
Last night's Arsenal-Liverpool match was a ripper. Shame about the 1-1 draw, but Gerrard is really something else. What a game though! PS: Hleb should have been given a penalty, but the referee was really too far off and at a weird angle to see what went down. Hah. Bollocks! He was about ten yards away and had a ringside view, damn him!!! In a fair world, the final scoreline would have read Arsenal 2-1. "Fly Emirates!"
Onwards now. The Bahrain GP action starts tomorrow in the practice sessions. Hope floats on McLaren. Praying certain other teams go RED in the face after retiring/crashing/injuring pit crew and having mechanical problems.;) And that BMW continue their surprising good form. So far it's a McLaren-BMW one-two on the Constructor's. *stands up and applauds German engineering*
A little bit of tennis going on as well. Great Nadal-Blake match last night at the Sony Ericsson Open in Florida. Rafa looked down and out till the middle of the second set and then.... VAMOS! He was back, and took the match decisively in the third. Roddick-Fedex coming up too, though that's almost certainly going Fedex's way (however much people make a fuss about Roger losing his edge, that chink in his armour etc). To put things in perspective, Andy has lost 15 of the 16 times he's played Roger. Also, Serena-Kuznetsova match today. Serena, by the way, annihilated Justine in the quarters. Wha-hey!
Trivial Trivia: Uber-cool Boyd Tinsley of DMB (the violonist, duh) spotted several times at the Open.

Then. What else?
Oh, yes. The domestic sports scene. Since my brother Ozz is done with his II PUC exams, him and me make a formidable twosome as we head to the gym every night in our sports gear. We engage in great duels across a table-tennis table. It has to be said that Usman runs me over, destroys me, dances over my remains every night with cringe-inducing scorelines along the lines of "21 to nothing". That's number of games, not points. I have taken him to deuce only once. And have reached 18 or 19 on occasions I can count on the fingers of one hand. *Blush* Anyway, I don't care about that. "We play the game because we love it!" I mean to say, I really don't mind losing to him. I'm a loser.
On the bright side, you should check out my muscles now. Glutes that would make a sit-up champion envious. Streamlined calf muscles and biceps. Happy ache in tricep area. Working on abs and only time will tell. Love handles are fast disappearing. (And when I inhale deeply and hold my breath, I look quite something!)

And the movies I've been watching! Ruthie is my movie dealer. She has a kickass DVD rental shop near her digs and I go and get the latest movies from there. Plus she has her own sources for getting me unheard-of but very good Korean, Thai and other foreign language films. I'm on to a good thing here.
Acquired The Sea Inside yesterday, which is quite old. Must go watch now. Javier Bardem beckons.

Sania-watch

Got my hopes up again as Sania Mirza is playing well in the initial rounds of the Pacific Life Open at Indian Wells.
Ms Mirza has defeated a very strong Shahar Peer in Round 3 and is through to meet Daniela Hantuchova in Round 4. Will she, won't she? Most probably not. But really well done in any case.

Excerpt from the official Pacific Life website:
"Defending champion Daniela Hantuchova eased to the win on her 'home' court, defeating Jie Zheng 6-4, 6-2 to start off the night session. The Slovak, who won her first Tour title here in 2002, will next play India's Sania Mirza , an upset winner over No. 9 seed Shahar Peer, 6-7(7), 7-5, 6-3.Hantuchova assessed her fourth round opponent: “She's a big hitter. You never know what to expect. It's going to be a tough match, but again, I hope I'll be playing on my court, and there anything can happen. But I know I'm going to enjoy it and I'll see. I will just do my best and see what happens."

Other big names that have got through so far: Davydenko, Canas, Fedex, Hewitt, Youzhny, Davydenko, Stepanek, Sharapova, Kuznetsova, Davenport, Bartoli...


NEWS JUST IN: Hantuchova sailed past Sania 6-1, 7-6. She plays Sharapova in the quarters next.

In the meanwhile....

(Meaning the week and more that I was out of action - interesting news items of interest not in chronological order)
1. Pakistan won the penultimate and utterly useless final ODI, garnering a face-saving 3-2 scoreline. Hah. Big deal.
2. Imran Khan was released.
3. Nandigram became uglier and uglier and now it's par for the course so expect it'll move to Page 8 or 10 of the dailies soon.
4. Synchronised triple blast in UP, some b@$-turds taking innocent lives again for another incomprehensible motive.
5. India wins first test at Kotla easily. Kumble shines as captain, Tendulkar shines as always, Shoaib whines as always. Well, okay, he didn't whine. I'm a pissed fan. I can say anything. I'm waiting for hi to grow up into a captain. And I really think he should eat more. He looks near-death.
6. Saab in Bangalore researches life in Mumbai and readies self for the big Heave-Ho.
7. Pakistan still simmers under Busharraff's dictation.
8. Taslima Onscreen in another silly controversial attack-escape routine.
9. Kolkata sees fire.
10. Darjeeling sees the GNLF spring back into action after a while now.
11. Fedex and Sampras played three exhibition matches around Asia [Seoul, Kuala Lumpur and Macau]. Fedex won the first two - they were pretty tight matches though they were both straight set wins [6-4, 6-3 and 7-6, 7-6]. And then Pistol Pete, balding ever so slowly, took home the third. Another tight match with the first set tie-breaker going to 10-8, and then 6-4. Experts and laymen are all agreed that in current form, Sampras could be in today's top 5 in the men's world rankings. Yayyyyy! Sampras quietly shooed away any hopes of coming back into competitive playing. [Full BBC story on the third match.]
8. Yet another Middle-East peace conference scheduled to be held in Annapolis. Yawn.
9. I had a farewell party thrown in my honour at darling Titla's place o Saturday. There was biryani, there was Cranium, there were friends and there were new friends. I got a super MP3 from a Ryanotaurus, earrings from an Annettie, Fab clothes from Doc Iqbal, jvellries from a Thirtha and a losing place in Cranium on account of some very shite luck. Whatte fun it was! Pics up soon.

And so it ends...

The US Open 2007 cranked down to a nice, smooth close early this morning. [Morning for us here in India anyway. What a very crappy time to have to stay up to watch. I mean, 2:30am for yawning out loud.]

As expected, Mr Ice Cool Fedex took his amazing fourth-in-a-row US Open Trophy [Vaav!] after downing a very deserving runner up, Serbian Novak Djokovic [Very cute by the way, with 'outstanding' hair], in straight sets: 7-6, 7-6, 6-4.
It wasn't one of Federer's best performances by a long shot [oh, look, a pun]. Too many unforced errors on the part of both players, but a little disconcerting to see it from the racquet of Fedex the Faultless. But, ho-hum, he took home the goodies anyways.
I particularly loved a certain feline allusion about the tightness of the match and Federer's response to it: "But leave it to Federer, the cool-handed Swiss, who might constantly look self-assured but, when pushed to the wall, responds like an alley cat."
Hah.
Fuller report here.

In the women's draw, Justine Henin won an easy final against Kuznetsova and I didn't watch the match except in highlights [what a very superlative one-handed backhand she has] so I shall say nothing about it. All I know is, Justine must be in very excellent form because she overcame both the Williams sisters, back-to-back. I did watch Venus' game this Open and I thought she was dandy. Which means Justine is obviously dandier, so well done!

This concludes my annual broadcast on the US Open. Till 2008, then, no more of this.

Sania-watch

Sania climbs up one spot to 28th in the singles' WTA rankings.

In other news, Federer isn't doing too badly either.