Saturday, August 11, 2007

For some people, Kumble can do no right

"Kumble century denies India world record."

That's the front page headline in The Hindu (Chennai edition) after he scored an unbeaten 110 to propel India to 664.

And what is this tremendously important world record that he denied India? The highest Test total that didn't contain a century.

(Incidentally, he did establish another record, of equally dubious significance: the longest gap between Test debut and Test century. He did it in his 151st innings.)

I was hoping that, after he became the first Indian to get 500 test wickets, he would get a bit of respect from our media. But no.

(The online edition of the Hindu has a different headline. Perhaps there were complaints.) The online story is here.

4 comments:

km said...

I have often wondered if that's because his name "visually rhymes" with "tumble".

Rahul Siddharthan said...

I remember Henry Blofeld, after watching a Kumble misfield, repeating "Kumble fumbles" -- mispronouncing first one word, then the other, to make them rhyme...

Abi said...

That was a stupid thing from the Hindu.

There was a lame excuse in today's sports page from none other than the chief editor himself. He has the effing gall to say that the readers missed the irony.

N. "China-can-do-no-wrong" Ram doesn't get it: the real complaint is about why something that deserved to be in the eighth paragraph in a sports-page story was given a front-page-with-headline treatment.

Rahul Siddharthan said...

Yes, one would have liked to see them write such "ironic" headlines about Tendulkar in his prime, for example.

Perhaps he should look up the definition of "irony" in the dictionary.