Gilly deserves more

After all the furore surrounding it, the Tri-series has finally come to an end. Although it was a long series, Dhoni and his men shortened it by a match.
This series was filled with some significant events like the "Bhajji-Symonds row", Tendulkar scoring his first ODI century down under, India winning an ODI series on Australian soil after a hiatus of more than 20 years.
But the most memorable one for me will always be Adam Gilchrist's retirement from the game.

Gilly is one of the greatest (if not the greatest) players world cricket has seen. He is the one who revolutionized test cricket, started a trend of scoring at a run rate of 4 plus in test cricket. Everyone knows the statistics and Gilly's strike rate in different forms of the game which truly reflect his greatness. Unfortunately, his farewell from ODI's was a low-key affair. After the final ball had been bowled I sat glued to the PC waiting for the presentation ceremony expecting a grand good-bye for the best wicket keeper. But no such thing happened. Just a short speech by Gilly, that's it. Even today morning i opened TOI with hope of spotting at least 2-3 articles by former cricketers, but TOI (as usual) disappointed me. Not even a single line related to his retirement had been included.

Such a small adios for somebody who has been voted as the "World's Scariest Batsman" in a poll of international bowlers !

Some things are good, some not so good

The time has come. Its hardly 40-50 days more in VJTI hostel. what next ? another place, maybe in mumbai or maybe some another city. But life wont be the same again. Life was never the same 4 years back when i came to this place. I vaguely remember the first speech by kaka (read Prof. Nakhare) in Saraswati Vachanalaya. I remember him referring to hostel as "home away from home". I dont know how many times i have laughed thinking about this phrase. Can there be any place as good as home ?

Looking into the retrospect, these 4 years of hostel life have flown just like the cold wind. Cold wind which feels so good during the summers and stings bitterly during winters. Sometimes you miss it and at other times you hate it. Hostel life has not been much different. I'm still in the hostel, there is still some more time to be spent in this place but i have already started missing it.
For the past 4 years i have been bitching about the poor maintenance of the rooms, bad infrastructure (absence of or broken beds/tables/chairs in some rooms), pathetic condition of the bathrooms and toilets, no proper electricity boards and switches in most of the rooms, the yelling watchmen, the irascible clerk and the rectors, the mess food, and i cant remember how many more things.

On the other hand there are a lot of things this place has taught me;living away from home, living with people from diverse backgrounds, making own decisions, the value of money, sharing your room with people who are as different from you as Bhajji from Symonds, dodging the watchmen after late night movie shows, etc.

There are things about the hostel i'm gonna miss in future, things which i wont get the experience of anywhere else in the world. There are memories which will remind me of the friends i made in hostel, the late night marathon chat sessions, birthday bumps at 12 in the night, the walks on the cricket ground after dinner, the sunday dinners, watching cricket matches in the jam-packed TV room, watching movies together on the PC, one night stands during exams, the non-working ceiling fan above my head...

These are priceless memories which will stay with me forever...bring a smile on my face...a tear in my eye !!!