Calypso Trippin' and Chinese Luck

It's a diverse world we happen to live in. It is inhabited, almost always unabashedly, by a variety of creatures, great, small and spiteful. Now, a surprisingly high percentage of human beings tend to believe we are evolving with the passage of time. It is usually a subset of this same population that also believes that good times last forever. And unfortunately for those of us who are labeled disbelievers, these good times usually bring with them fanatical name calling activities and other nonsensical tirade indulgences,apart from, needless to say, a remarkable 50 percent winning rate in a pivotal 2 Match Series. (Riggs, feel free to refer www.evolutionisdead.com) It is this writer's pragmatic stand that Captain Bumble is enjoying what can only be considered an elongated version of a run of dumb luck(albeit the run is generously interspursed with such flashes of good old reality as 100 all out in Test Number 100 and Sehwag willing his gracious self to perform once every 8 matches, just in case Mr More sort of notices he isn't quite in form.)

But speaking of dumb luck, thousands of years ago, a fine young lady daintily held in her hand, a cup of hot tea as she stood under a Mulberry tree in her father's sprawling garden. A silkworm (not that it was called that at the time) cocoon fell right into her tea cup, effectively ruining her evening of leisure. But when she attempted to pick the cocoon out of the cup, the young lady experienced what was the original serendipity - the discovery of silk. Now, Mr Bengaluru is no Chinese beauty, and I imagine he is far more familiar with Mixed Fruit Jam than with Mulberry Bushes, but he does seem to be bestowed with Captaincy at a strangely convenient time:

First, there is a coach under close scrutiny, far more likely to be held culpable for serious mistakes than the Captain himself.
Second, he succeeds an unfortunate cricketer, who became as much a victim of his connections as of the sheer thanklessness of his job. Ganguly's style of captaincy has now almost completely vanished from public memory, leaving a vacuum that would eagerly deify the daftest of replacements (Case in point: Riggs' appetite for outstanding humility in on-camera life)
Third, the Brits for some inexplicable reason, agree to spend the Indian Summer parading around the hottest cities of the subcontinent with a half-strength team.
And now, he heads to the Carribeans to face a team in- to use what is now a much abused phrase- absolute diasarray. While half the players are fighting over contracts, the same half is also contending for Captaincy-- The other half, no one's ever heard of.

Speaking of the islands but no longer about serendipity of any sort, Jimi Hendrix might have been on LSD, but our pal Riggs apparently suffers in a multi-colored haze of his own smugness. But let the Calypso spirit engulf our cynicism. Perhaps the sun and the sand will witness a fortuitious stretch of the rubber band that is now the best metaphor for RD's dream run. But then again, it was in the West Indies not many summers ago that a certain Indian demi-god called Sachin Tendulkar fumbled his way out of his good-as-new captaincy, innit? Brings us to semi-original serendipity that is Indian Cricket. We are quick to identify our Heroes and even quicker to bury them in our all-encompassing desires for the good times to last. If I were a creature named Riggs, I wouldn't be counting on the Steak House Trip. Unless I were paying, of course.

Bart