Pak India cricket in Germany

A few days back we were invited to play in a cricket match between Pakistani and Indian students in Heidelberg, Germany. This is the city where Allama Iqbal lived for some time and learned the German language. Match was played on universit's football ground with coordination from the university of Heidelberg. There was even a trophy for the winning team. Players were collected from cities around the region and most of them met for the first time to form a team. Indian players were supposed to wear white shirts and Pakistanis wore black shirts. Match started after national anthems were played. Indian captain won the toss and invited us to bat first. Our start was very bad with wickets continuously falling with less runs, After half the overs, we picked up pace and started scoring to get about 125 runs in 15 overs. At that moment it was drizzling. As soon as first half ended, it started rainging cats and dogs. We ran to find refuge in university buildings. After more than half an hour, the Indian team started batting, They kept their wickets but could only score half of the runs.


After we won, the Indian team chanted a loud, "Three cheers for Pakistan, hip hip hurray, hip hip hurray, hip hip hurray" that surprised us all. That was an sxcellent gesture shown by them even after losing from their archrivals. We couldn't help but utter that though Pakistan won the match, the Indian team won the event. Credit goes to the chief organizer, Atif, a pakistani student at Heidelberg university. See photos here.

Tsunami and earth quake in Indonesia

A tsunami occured in Indonesia on Monday. So far 525 people have died with 273 people missing, More than 35,000 people have been displaced and hundreds of buildings were destroyed. (CNN)

Today an earth quake struck Indonesian capital Jakarta. Reports are coming in of damages. Our brothers in Indonesia need us just like our brothers in Pakistan earlier. Try to donate as much or as little as possible. Even a single euro would help.

In my opinion, it is best to donate to Islamic Relief. You can easily donate to them using your bank account. Just do an Uberweisung to:

Islamic Relief
bei der Sparkassen KölnBonn,
Kontonumer: 12 20 20 99
BLZ: 370 501 98

For refernce: Islamic Relief de

Other relief agencies worldwide: CNN List

Jazak'Allah

It's a bird, it's a plane...

Look! it's an islamic terrorist, it's a taleban, it's an al-qaeda member...
No, it's just an israeli soldier.

(Pic courtesy: CNN)

Upsets of the world cup 2006

Although the Germans didn't expect their team to even reach the second round of the world cup, hopes raised of it grabbing the cup after it defeated Argentina (1:0). That was probably the first major upset of the tournament. Germans did good in containing Argentina and stopping them from scoring. Argentina was considered one of the favorites, scoring highest number of goals in this worldcup (against Serbia and Montenegro 6:0). Their game with Germany went into extra time but still undecided. So it was to be decided through a method which everybody hates: panelty shoots. There Germany was stronger since it has never lost a panelty shoot-out ever in the world cup history. But they lost to Italy (0:2). Italy played better but couldn't score until the last minutes of the game. Italy were desperate to stop the game from going to panelty shoots given the fact that they have never won a panelty shoot-out in worldcup history.

A minor upset was Portugal defeating Holland (1:0). It looked more like a wrestling match than football. Portugal started the foul play and Holland responded. Especially in the second half the game was very brutal. Both teams ended up getting the most foul cards in the world cup history: 16 yellow and 4 red cards.

And finally the biggest upset was the defeat of Brazil from France (0:1). It was said that Brazil wanted to take revenge of the final of 1998 where France defeated Brazil 3:0 to claim the cup. But now Brazil has to take two revenges. Brazil was the hot favorite of many from the very start. Even most of the Germans had a Brazilian flag alongside a German one on their cars and houses. Ronaldinho of Brazil was perhaps the most renowned player of the tournament from the start, but he also couldn't do much. Ronaldo performed much better than expected. Zidane took his team to the final which will be the last match of his career. It was interesting to know that Zidane is an Algerian Muslim.

I don't have much interest in football. But its true that you get excited being in a football-excited country. I didn't know who was playing before the cup began. Now thanks to m friends, i am following the game excitingly.My favorites were Argentina (without any reason), but they are out. The sorrow was somewhat relieved when Brazil got out as well :)