Birthday celebrations ~ remembering Tagore and .. an insensitive tweet by Bangla Tigers

This post is all about an insensitive tweet made by : Bangladesh Cricket @BCBtigers  

Tributes to any person remembering their great deeds on their Birth day is understandable but why do people celebrate birthdays of people who are no more! – there cannot be a better inspiration for keeping a beard than .. ..

Today, 7^th May 2021, marked the 160^th  birth anniversary of India's pride, Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore. He was a poet, writer, playwright, composer, philosopher, social reformer, painter and most importantly, an inspiration for generations to come.  A real polymath. 

Rabindranath Tagore  was born this day 160 years ago – in 1861 and breathed his last on 7^th August 1941.   He reshaped Bengali literature and music, as well as Indian art with Contextual Modernism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Author of the "profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse" of Gitanjali, he became in 1913 the first non-European as well as the first lyricist to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.  The Bard of Bengali was a Bengali Brahmin from Calcutta with ancestral gentry roots in Burdwan district and Jessore, Tagore wrote poetry as an eight-year-old.  At the age of sixteen, he released his first substantial poems under the pseudonym Bhānusiṃha ("Sun Lion"), which were seized upon by literary authorities as long-lost classics. By 1877 he graduated to his first short stories and dramas, published under his real name.  He  founded, Visva-Bharati University.   His compositions were chosen by two nations as national anthems: India's "Jana Gana Mana" and Bangladesh's "Amar Shonar Bangla". The Sri Lankan national anthem too  was inspired by his work. 

During this pandemic, Cricket is still on at Harare.  Centuries from Abid Ali and Azhar Ali put Pakistan in firm command of the second Test at stumps in Harare. The pair combined for a 236-run second wicket partnership - a record at this venue - which spanned nearly the entirety of the day. The visitors opted to bat after winning the toss, with the most striking bit of news the decision to hand a debut to 36-year old Tabish Khan. The reasons for excluding Faheem Ashraf, entering perhaps the most promising phase of a young Test career, weren't quite satisfactorily explained, and the omission meant Pakistan's tail was somewhat extended.

One is reminded of Dilip Doshi who made his debut at 32 – having been unable to break the era of famous quartet – Bishan Bedi, Erapalli Prasanna, Bhagwat Chandrasekhar and Srinivasan Venkatraghavan.  Some like Dhiraj Parsanna, Rakesh Shukla  & Raghuram Bhatt got a couple of chances while some highly successful Ranji Cricketers like Padmakar Shivalkar, Rajinder Hans, Rajinder Singh Goel, Vijaykrishna, Ramnarayan .. .. never got a chance to play for the Nation. Tabish Khan has 598 first class wickets, the most by any player before a Test debut for an Asian Team.   The previous highest was 558 wickets by Malinda Pushpakumara before making his Test debut for Sri Lanka in 2017 against India. Tim Murtagh had 712 first-class wickets before Ireland's Test debut in 2018.

After Varun Chakravarthi’s and Sandeep Warrier’s  positive turned off the IPL – more cases have been reported.  New Zealand wicketkeeper-batter Tim Seifert, who was part of the Kolkata Knight Riders squad at the curtailed 2021 edition of the IPL, has tested positive for Covid-19. As a result, he will not be on the charter flight with other members of the New Zealand contingent at the IPL. Instead, he will stay in isolation in Ahmedabad as he awaits transfer to Chennai, where he will be treated at a private hospital. Seifert failed both his pre-departure PCR tests, according to a New Zealand Cricket (NZC) press release issued on Saturday, and "is experiencing moderate symptoms". The statement said that Seifert had returned seven negative tests in the ten days leading up to his pre-departure protocols.   Seifert had joined the Knight Riders as a replacement for the injured USA bowler Ali Khan during IPL 2020. He was retained ahead of the auction in February this year but did not get a game in IPL 2021.

India Women batter Veda Krishnamurthy, whose mother died of Covid-19 on April 23, has been bereaved a second time in a fortnight with her elder sister succumbing to complications caused by the virus on Wednesday. Krishnamurthy's sister, Vatsala Shivakumar, who was admitted in a hospital in Chikmagalur, around 245 kilometres from Bengaluru, is understood to have shown decided signs of improvement earlier this week, but she breathed her last around 5.45pm on Wednesday. Former Rajasthan spinner, Vivek Yadav, passed away recently  due to COVID-19. He was 36. 

Deaths are bad .. .. that too when young people are snatched away – earlier it used to be accidents but now it is the cruel Covid.  Dhruv Mahender Pandove  made his first-class debut at the age of 13 and was considered to be an "exceptionally gifted batsman" and a "prodigy".  He became the youngest Indian and one of the youngest players in the world to score a century in first-class cricket, with his 137 against Jammu and Kashmir in 1988 coming at the age of 14 years and 294 days.  He was the youngest player to reach the 1000-run mark in Ranji Trophy, reaching the milestone at the age of 17 years and 341 days. But at 18 years of age – in  1992, Pandove was killed in a road accident in Ambala.

May 4^th happened to the birthday of Manjural Islam Rana   who played six Tests and 25 One Day Internationals for Bangladesh.   Rana played his first Test against Zimbabwe in 2003. On 16 March 2007, he died of severe head injuries sustained in a road traffic accident at the age of 22. The ill-worded tweet of BCBtigers   @BCBtigers read :  Happy Birthday to Manjural Rana, youngest Test Cricketer to die at the age of 22 years and 316 days. 

With regards – S. Sampathkumar
7^th May 2021.