Is it a pre-qualification that you’ve to be born in Madras, that is Chennai to see things clearly and thus call it out - perhaps to be slammed later?
Nasser Hussain the former England Cricket captain while commenting on live TV spoke of 1 or 2 fielders in the Indian team who aren’t good enough. Unfortunately he used the term ‘donkeys’ to describe their fielding (in)ability.
Not to be outdone, another former English Cricket captain Michael Vaughan tweeted that he can see at least 4 Indian fielders, who have to be considered ‘donkey’ fielders.
To be fair, I think both of them used the term ‘donkey’ as an Adjective and not as a Noun, while most of us in India have understood it to be a noun.
It was unfortunate that the Indian co-commentators did not quickly point out this fact, this difference in usage of a word, as a noun or as an adjective, immediately or soon after and clear up the air.
Instead they too have jumped on to the bandwagon of the injured.
The injury bandwagon now includes, apart from the Indian Cricket Board, a Member of Parliament (and former cricketer) Azharuddin, a Bollywood Actor and Parthiv Patel’s father. It was right after Parthiv dropped a skier, Hussain made the comment.
So do you want to know what has it to do with my count, facts and Madras born?
Nasser Hussain the former England Cricket captain while commenting on live TV spoke of 1 or 2 fielders in the Indian team who aren’t good enough. Unfortunately he used the term ‘donkeys’ to describe their fielding (in)ability.
Not to be outdone, another former English Cricket captain Michael Vaughan tweeted that he can see at least 4 Indian fielders, who have to be considered ‘donkey’ fielders.
To be fair, I think both of them used the term ‘donkey’ as an Adjective and not as a Noun, while most of us in India have understood it to be a noun.
It was unfortunate that the Indian co-commentators did not quickly point out this fact, this difference in usage of a word, as a noun or as an adjective, immediately or soon after and clear up the air.
Instead they too have jumped on to the bandwagon of the injured.
The injury bandwagon now includes, apart from the Indian Cricket Board, a Member of Parliament (and former cricketer) Azharuddin, a Bollywood Actor and Parthiv Patel’s father. It was right after Parthiv dropped a skier, Hussain made the comment.
So do you want to know what has it to do with my count, facts and Madras born?
- Well, like me, Nasser Hussain is Chennai born and so there is the Madras connection.
- Quite apart from the difference between a noun and an adjective, there is another word called ‘fact’.
- The fact is that there are many Indian fielders who have been described as ‘lame horses’ (लंगड़ा घोडा) to me by a lot of my Hindi speaking friends and donkey is just the English way of speech.
- In the middle of the ICC Cricket World Cup 2011, this is what I wrote - the fielding is pathetic, with 6 players to be ‘hidden’ at any time (Mar 2011)
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