Whew.....what a cliffhanger of a match it was yesterday, though I am not really surprised that Pak won. Because once Sachin and Dravid were gone, the Indian batting, predictably, just fell apart. What was really funny was when Nehra -- the last Indian batsman came in -- with something like 21 runs to make off 13 balls and the stats they put up show that Nehra has played 46 ODIs and made a TOTAL of 61 runs in all of them combined. The bookies must have been having a field day ;)

All the same, sometimes I really miss the excitement of the cricket field. In all my years as a sports journo, I don't think I watched a single match from the press box. I used to be either in the dressing room pavilion or as close to the boundary as I could get, convinced that the readers no longer went to newspapers for a ball-by-ball account of the match -- you had that on TV already -- so it was my job to collect to collect all the off-beat stories. And was it fun!!!!!! Miss those days, and all the friends I made in that circle...Nikhil, Rajesh, Salil, Jatin, Kambli, Srinath....cricket was just so much more fun when these people were out there on the field.

Anyway, now I guess its our turn to do something for the newly found Indo-Pak friendship, with the announcement of the first Indo-Pak vintage car rally, to be held in December this year. For all those who are interested, the press conference is tomorrow at Hotel Westend, at 2000 hours. If you can't make it there, watch this space for further details.