FIFA Confederations Cup ‘09 Review

At the end of it all, it was the ever-so-familiar sight of the yellow-clad Brazilians celebrate. They beat the USA 3-2 in a superb match to retain their Confederations Cup title. What is it about these men in canary-yellow jerseys, that makes them so ruthless in major competitons?

After breezing through the group stages, where they beat USA 3-0, Italy 3-0 and Egypt 4-3,  they met hosts South Africa in the semis. The team from the Rainbow Nation held them for 88 minutes before Dani Alves put Brazil through to the finals.

The USA, however, had a tough group stage. They came through ahead of Italy on goal-difference. In the semis, they met Spain, and shocked the world. 2-0 against a team which hadn’t lost in the 35 matches they’ve played since November’06 and was on a 15 match winning streak. Out of those 35 matches, Spain kept 25 clean sheets.

In the final, they seemed to be presenting the world an even bigger shock. At half-time, they were leading 2-0! As play resumed in the second half, Luis Fabiano scored immidiately to make it 2-1, and he scored again in the 70th minute to equalize. Brazil now had all the momentum, and Lucio used it to crush USA hearts in the 84th minute, when he put his header past Howard into the net.

Kaka got the Golden Ball (Best Player), Fabiano got the Golden Boot (Top Scorer) and Tim Howard (USA) got the Golden Gloves (Best Keeper).

A star fades away…

Micheal Jackson. MJ. King of Pop.

These names felt familiar to all of us throughout the 80s and 90s. The name meant energy. The name meant extravagance. The named meant Dance. The name meant Music. The name was the equivalent of Elvis Presley and The Beatles in this era. Everyone loved the name. This was the era of Micheal Jackson. The new millenium dealt a sad blow to this name. The stories of child-molestation and bankrupcy started to spread. The image and the goodwill started coming down and it plummeted so low that there were a large number of people who used to hate tim to the core… and probably, a lot of them had danced to “Thriller” and “Beat It” till a few years ago. Then came the failed plastic surgery… and things couldn’t get any worse.

This July, he was scheduled to make THE comeback. 10th July would see him go back on stage. Everyone was excited to see him again. 25th of June, he got a heart-attack… and in a few hours, it was all over. Probably the most charismatic superstar of this generation died.

R.I.P. Micheal Jackson, your music will play on forever.

England colored green

The Pakistan cricket team made sure they got back at the cricketing fraternity for the isolation of their terror-struck nation by winning the ICC World T20 title in quite an amazing fashion. Kudos to them for the way they played and kept their spirits up even after being thrashed by India in the warm-up games and England in the group stages.

In between all the IPL and fatigue excuses, drunken brawls, frenzied media hype et al, in came a man who didn’t play serious cricket for about 12 months and changed the fortunes of this team. The name is Abdul Razzaq. The veteran Pakistani all-rounder was away from the national recognition for 2 years due to his participation in the Indian Cricket League. He has to credit BCCI for loosening their rigidity on the rebel league, as that helped him make a comeback. The second big factor was Shahid Afridi (Man of the tournament in the previous edition in 2007). His bowling had improved vastly in the last few months and his batting came good in the semis and finals.

It was a keenly contested tournament with some hyped teams like India and Australia doing poorly and some less-fancied teams like the West Indies playing well.

I think Steve Waugh summed it up well for India when he said

The honeymoon period for MS Dhoni is over. His real test begins now.

Finally

Well, the WordPress bug for me has finally given in. I was having some weird problems with my wordpress account for the last 30 days, resulting in missing out on quite a lot of important updates and reviews.

Anyways.. since the problem is finally resolved, we will have some new posts now.

CBSE Class X 2009 Results – part I

The CBSE Class X 2009 results for Chennai, Ajmer and Panchkula region were announced today at 10 a.m. Click here to check your results. The results for Delhi, Guwahati and Allahabad regions are going to be announced on 22nd May, i.e. day after tomorrow, at the same time. Best of luck to all those awaiting their results.