Third class words; First class games.....हेडन साहेबाचे जग अणि वक्तव्य .......

I have been, actually, thinking , about the world. (Despite various people hinting at my inability to do so).

I know.

So have George Bush, Obama, G-8,G-20, and some (un)sporty types in the Southern Hemisphere.

Thanks to a French economist called Alfred Sauvy, who used the words "Tiers Monde" (a third or one third), and NOT "Troisieme Monde" (third in rank), while defining the First, Second and Third worlds, based on his understanding of the French revolution hierarchy of priests, nobles and commoners, we now have a great situation, where George Bush, Michael Hayden, Sarah Palin et al, belong to the First World; I , along with the entire Indian Cricket team, belong to the Third World; and Obama stands out as uncategorized because he is a genetically 50% Third world president of a First world nation. And remember, there used to be a Second world, but it collapsed beginning with the Berlin Wall.

Thanks to Obama, and the current economic crisis where First world Types did mistakes of Third world proportions, today, the lines between the worlds , in some situations are getting blurred. Information Technology is one such sector, Novelists writing in English is another, and before we forget, there is Cricket.

Cricket started out , they say, in England somewhere in the 13-15th century, played by children in farmlands across Kent and Essex . That was its purest form. Somewhere around the beginning of the 17th century, adults kind of took over , and it slowly became the game it is today. However, there has been considerable research to show that the game was played in then Punjab region of India as far back as the 7th century , according to a (First World) Researcher, Derek Birley, writing in the Social History of English Cricket. By and by The First world types colonized all over the world, sometimes Third and sometimes First, (world, that is), and the natives of the Third world , one might say, renewed their cricketing proclivities.

What is interesting to note is that the first Australian team to tour England, in 1867, was made up of indigenous Australian players. From then till now, has been a huge leap forward for Cricket, with different types of cricket, the setting up of Cricket Control bodies, and well as the exceptional exposure that cricket got and continues to receive , thanks to the communication wonders like television.

So it is with a sense of despair that i wonder about certain folks like M. Hayden Esq.

Inviting a Third world team for a series, putting English words in their mouth despite knowing that they speak different languages and swear in different languages, orchestrating a crisis at odds with the spirit of the game, and then calling someone from the opposing team an obnoxious weed, and having an evil First World laugh over it during a radio interview , is simply not done. Not in any world; Third, First , or even half.

Then he comes to the same Third World country, to play in something called the Indian Premier league, under an Indian captain, all for a huge payment, huge in First world terms, paid by the Third world types. Its then all about getting to know the (Third World) culture, befriending the "natives", being surprised that they are actually decent blokes, and going back to Australia , pockets jingling.

A year later he is back, the main support of their batting lineup for tests. It so happens, that they do not have their best bowlers who have retired. Happens to all teams. The First world team is beaten 2-0 in the Test series.

Back goes Mr M Hayden Esq. Seething. Blaming animals and weeds doesn't work. So he gives an interview saying they played in Third World conditions. Like what ? Human beings used to move sight screens which were causing problems. Batsmen taking their time to face the ball. And never mind the 5-star accommodations, outstanding hospitality, stupendous local welcomes, good transportation everywhere.

Hello . The game has umpires. Some Australian players even "instruct" umpires about catches as happened in Sydney. Slow over rates are something that the game penalizes, whenever the umpires so indicate. If the batsmen from the Third World were deliberately taking time to face up to the bowling, the umpires besides being from neutral countries (some of them, First World), were certainly not blind.

Purely, as a phenomenon, I wonder why M. Hayden Esq. does this. There were 10 other members in the team. But other than the captain who chewed gum, spat it on to his hand ,then rubbed those hands before flinging the ball to the bowler, and who, in an effort to save his match fee, lost the last game, and said the usual things post-match, no one else had anything to say.

So I did some research.

The Name Hayden has some Welsh Origin, from the Celtic word Aidan, meaning fire. Definitely hot. Temper, I should think. Figures.

An 1880 graph of Haydens in various occupations shows them to be majorly in the land owning farmer variety and not the slogging worker variety. So First-Worldish.

The English origins of the name Hayden, indicate that it has something to do with "hedging-in a valley or being hedged in by a hill.

Its possible that his ancestors could have come from the US after doing the civil war.

Then I found that , in the US, the name ranked in the Top 1,000 most popular boys' names intermittently through the last two decades of the 19th century, consistently through the first three decades of the 20th century and then intermittently until the mid 1980s. In 1986, the name returned to the Top 1,000 most popular boy's names for good. In the 21st century, the name ranked in the Top 1,000 most popular boys' names every year from 2000 (128th) through 2006 (73rd). (All this isn't important, but just tells you Haydenian statistics)

But surprise surprise. In 2007, the popularity of the boy’s name Hayden ranked 44th in Australia. The highest rank for Hayden worldwide.

Just goes to show why Hayden plays for Australia, why he instigates so many fighting episodes.

Just think. here was a person, a real First World type, chaps working for him in the fields , he was named after fire, obviously after seeing his temper, and then he feels hedged in .

By a 2-0 loss.?

P. S. On my way to research Gilchrist now.......