'Media'cre reporting....

Here are some excerpts from a heartwarming news piece I read in The Hindu.

"..it was heartening to see India's top order batsmen play so fluently. Sourav Ganguly exuded confidence with his masterly display of stroke-play, while Yuvraj Singh and Rahul Dravid were pleasant to watch.
Virender Sehwag, who had looked a bit troubled against the rising balls to his ribcage, pummelled Ranadeb Bose twice with savage power.
The nearly two-hour session was fully utilised by the coaching staff to put the boys through drills to fine-tune many aspects concerning the game.
Watched by fielding coach Robin Singh, the players spend almost 40 minutes practising pick-up and throws at a single stump, while bowling coach B.K. Venkatesh Prasad put the boys through high catches and ground fielding.
There the boys had a batting session for almost 90 minutes before coming out to play in the centre pitch.
With Prasad watching, almost all the top-ranking bowlers were pushed into bowling to the top-notch batsmen of the country..."

Indian cricketers had one off day in their WC match against the lowly Bangladesh team and were thrown out of the WC. The pitch was nowhere near the standards of an International game. It was a shocker to see such a turning track in an important phase of a World Cup. India, like any other top teams, had never been exposed to such subversive slow pitches. Our poor batsmen, whose minds were already plagued by the thoughts of the measly match fees they get from the BCCI, were in no position to tackle such horrible deliveries and predictably got out. Then our pace bowlers who were accustomed to intimidate batsmen with scorching bouncers were all at sea when bowling to a bunch of kids who were only an inch taller than the stumps. So even an attempt to bowl a yorker went above the heads of the Bangladeshi batsman which resulted in the umpire calling them as wides (as the balls soared above the heads of the batsmen) and all the batsmen had to do was make sure they did not get out and the match was over with the extras being the top scorer.

The point is Indians were surprised: slow pitch, short opposition batsmen, low match fees and poor scheduling that did not ensure a safe passage to the next stage.
But that is passé. Now our batsmen are wiser from their experience. Judging from the above report, all our worries are over now. Ganguly is back with his flourishing drives, which he unleashed against the club bowlers. Sachin has got more fitter and can now play for ten more years. Sehwag has got back his touch by flogging the bowlers who bowled at him in the nets. Our bowling is now under the careful tutelage of Prasad, who in his hey days bowled out the batsmen with his fiery yorkers delivered at 100mph. By asking the club bowlers to intimidate the batsmen by bowling to their weaknesses, he has also brought the batsmen out of their comfort zone and made them play shots, thereby increasing their confidence levels. And prasad who was an electrifying fielder in his times, had also taken upon himself the responsibility of giving fielding drills to old sluggards like yuvraj singh, dinesh karthick amongst others. The BCCI after 'years' of mindless travesty have also finally yielded to the justified claims of our national heroes and decided to hike their match fees. So our poor cricketers no longer to need to worry about how their families will survive in their absence and can concentrate on matches now. And to make sure the cricketers are not distracted by any off field issues like contracts or advertisements we now have them do yoga. Anyways only a couple of people in the entire squad endorse products. The other team members have declined lucrative offers for advertisements, as in their own words it 'conflicts with their bigger interest of playing for the country'.

Now we are going to tour Bangladesh and will rightly prove to those minnows as well as to the world, that their pipe dreams are over. We will thrash them in all games and show them that their success against a team whose guards were down was just an aberration.Australia who had a smooth sail to the finals primarily due to the absence of India as an opposition, will now feel the heat with as much as 21 matches to be played between the two teams in this year.

Meanwhile, sports savvy reporters like the Special Correspondent from The Hindu will keep us updated with the developments in the Indian team, by fairly reporting their day to day activities without any traces of mindless hero worshiping. They will elaborate to us about the team's practice sessions sans any awe in their tones, thereby laying the foundation stones for the future generations of reporting, which will lay emphasis on truthful reporting and critical analysis. The future reporters will take cue from such examples of thoughtful reporting and will only report news that are really worth reporting, instead of wasting the print space, ink and papers for useless bits of writing.
Ah! The future of the fourth estate is in good hands.