Raghav Awasthi

Please take that hike to remind this British MP that Queen Victoria & Prince Albert were first cousins (both were grandchildren of Francis, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld and got married in 1840. That King George V & Queen Mary of Teck were second cousins (both descendants of King George III) and were married. That King Edward VII & Alexandra of Denmark were cousins (both descended from King George II) and were married. That Queen Elizabeth II & Prince Philip were third cousins (both were great-great-grandchildren of Queen Victoria) and were married. The British MP should first pass a resolution declaring all those marriages illegal in retrospect and declare the monarchy and royalty that descended from it illegitimate.

Javed Miandad said, “Bowlers like Irfan Pathan are found in every street of Pakistan.” Next day Pathan took a first over hat trick against Pakistan in Pakistan.

The Rajputs were the warrior caste of northern and western India, and for approximately seven centuries: from roughly the 7th century CE through to the Mughal period and beyond, they were among the most militarily capable fighting forces on the subcontinent. Their diet was not complicated. Rajput warriors ate meat. Game, specifically. Hunting was not merely recreation in Rajput culture: it was considered fundamental military training and a marker of warrior identity. Wild boar, deer, and birds were consumed regularly. Domesticated animals were also eaten, with less restriction on beef than most accounts of Indian dietary history would suggest, particularly in the earlier period. They drank large quantities of milk. Fresh, fermented as lassi, churned as butter, clarified as ghee. The dairy intake of a Rajput warrior was substantial in a way that would not surprise anyone who has read the preceding pages of this newsletter. The Rajput physical type, described by contemporaries, Mughal miniature painters, and later British military assessors with consistent specificity, was characterised by height, breadth of shoulder, and physical robustness unusual in a largely grain-eating subcontinent. When the British Indian Army recruited in the 19th and early 20th centuries, they classified certain populations as "martial races": people considered to produce superior soldiers. The Rajputs featured prominently on that list. So did the Punjabis, the Gurkhas, the Sikhs. The British military observers who generated these "martial race" classifications were, frankly, doing something racist: constructing a pseudo-biological framework for something that was actually cultural and dietary. But embedded in the racism was an accurate observation: certain populations produced taller, stronger, more physically capable soldiers. Those populations were, consistently, the ones that ate more animal protein. The "martial race" theory attributed this to blood. The actual explanation was food.

🚨 Babar Azam has decided to take a break from cricket on the advice of the management. (Geo News) - Babar will not play in the NT20 Cup. - Babar has started working to revive his old batting technique ahead of the PSL.

You should be thrown out of the commentary box. You talk nonsense all the time.

After watching a lot of Pakistani cricket analysis shows this World cup. My analysis is this: You may have noticed, an open admission by a lot of Pakistani ex-players that India is a much better team, which totally deserved to win. Which may appear gracious, barring few sour pusses like Mohd Amir. This also belies the supremacist delusion a lot of madrasa educated commoners have, it suddenly comes to fore the next time India plays Pakistan. The “Aghaa-ji” jingoism returns. Maybe it’s performative. But it’s there. But the common refrain from TV always is - Pakistani cricket is not run well, there is a direct dig at management & selection. It seems every ex-player wants a job with PCB. Given there is no vacancy at IPL. Every analysis is like a Job application. Then they get those jobs. Pakistan team loses again. Those guys are back on TV hot seats, saying “system kharab hai” Ask Ramiz Raza. Junta both sides get to enjoy 2x matches. One to watch (where your team is playing) and the other to Hate-watch (where your neighbor is playing) The bottomline is - The Talent pool is mediocre. You can try out numerous permutations & combinations, it will still give you mediocre results. It’s a function of investment in cricket. Which is a function of your economy. Sad.

We will rejoice at Indian batters making a mockery of New Zealand bowling forgetting the fact that providing a wicket so perfect for hitting the ICC is making a mockery of the sport itself.