By Sanjay Jha I joined Grindlays Bank (which in Delhi our hard-core Punjabi security guard would pronounce as Grand-Lay Baank with patriotic fervor on the telephone ) as a Management Trainee in the mid-1980s. We were put up at The President hotel, Mumbai for a comprehensive course in banking operations (a three-week paid holiday). Some of my studious looking colleagues pretended as if they were born there, below those glittering chandeliers and noiseless elevators. Frankly, I had no such … [Read more...]
MAY 21st 1991: NIGHT OF THE STORM
May 21, 2010 By 1 Comment
By Sanjay Jha I was working in the NRI Division of ANZ Grindlays Bank at 10 E Connaught Place in New Delhi in 1991. It was a regular day at the office, business as usual, men at work. Outside, the mercury rose with a determined resolve. But by afternoon, the weather outside had suddenly begun to change. Quite dramatically. The scorching summer sun had given way to one of Delhi’s typical dust-storms which enveloped the city in a thick smog-like cloud. By late evening , we were suddenly … [Read more...]
EXTRACT FROM “ 11: TRIUMPHS,TRIALS AND TURBULENCE ( INDIAN CRICKET 2003-10)” by Sanjay Jha
May 19, 2010 By Leave a Comment
WHAT A START? MATCH-FIXING TAKES GUARD. It was a sultry hot summer evening of April when we landed in Dhaka, the entire contingent of the new born cricket portal CricketNext.com. As the Indian Airlines flight descended in awkward jerks from a cloudless sky, I reminisced with a peculiar sense of disbelief that fateful afternoon at the Oberoi hotel in Mumbai just a few weeks ago. Pallavi ( my wife ) and I had gone all prepared , with a heavily worked out business plan capturing projected … [Read more...]
WHAT REALLY HAPPENED IN NAGPUR TEST 2004?
May 8, 2010 By Leave a Comment
- By Sanjay Jha Year: 2004 Place: Nagpur Occasion: Third Test match between Australia and India Series Status: ( 4 Test series) : India trailing 0 - 1 It was a hugely controversial Test match that several believe was to change erstwhile skipper Sourav Ganguly’s professional career forever. Give him a tag of a whimpering loser, a spoilt brat looking for first among equals status because of his prestigious position, who finally dropped out of the playing 11 because of a massive … [Read more...]
Summer of 2010
May 6, 2010 By 1 Comment
By Sanjay Jha (As Published in The Sunday Pioneer on Sunday, May 2nd 2010) The IPL scam is symbolic of a larger, deeper, terminal enervation of India, feels Sanjay Jha as he pitches for a drastic overhaul to rejuvenate the tarnished brand We are a maverick freakish nation, forever skating on thin ice, circumspectly maneuvring Maoism one day, food price escalation the other, extraditing David Headley at one end but ultimately crashing headlong into a slippery subject called … [Read more...]
WILL WE HAVE AN IPL 4 ? A WAY-OUT
May 6, 2010 By Leave a Comment
By Sanjay Jha The new IPL Commissioner Chirayu Amin has so far at least been a pleasant surprise to me .For two reasons. Firstly , because I had never heard of him before and better still because he does not seem to try hard to get heard. Its what we perhaps needed after the I Me Myself Me-Only traits of his more illustrious contrasting predecessor. Secondly, I discovered that he makes that delicious cough syrup Glycodin that as a perpetually cold-prone kid I drank with greater relish than my … [Read more...]
DEATH OF INNOCENCE
May 1, 2010 By 1 Comment
(Published in Indian Express on April 30th 2010 under title of Indian Tamasha League) By Sanjay Jha Dad, I know who is going to win the finals today, said my daughter , her countenance betraying some apparent hidden knowledge far beyond what her thirteen years could potentially possess. No you don’t , I said, dismissing her with the same casual flourish with which the IPL Commissioner promised to swat the erstwhile Minister of State for External Affairs Shashi Tharoor. She was … [Read more...]
