Batting for luck

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The battle for the World Cup has begun in full swing and while millions of fans chant special prayers, position their TV sets in a particular way and even get set to wear their lucky gear, just to ensure that the Men In Blue bring the Cup back home, vaastu and feng shui experts have a lot of other things to point out. According to them,

factors like the location of the stadium, what surrounds it, the direction in which the pitch faces and more have an impact on the team’s performance.
Says vaastu shastra expert Pandit Mohan Narayan, “In any competitive game, what holds the key is a whole lot of deciding factors — right from the captain’s birth star to the alignment of the planets on the day they play. Other important factors are the vaastu of the stadium and the way the fielders are positioned. A batsman’s performance also depends on the direction that he’s facing. For instance, facing towards the west which is governed by Varuna, the God of the wind, will help a person gain physical strength. So this is recommended for someone who is not very sure of his physical fitness. This direction will be beneficial for those like Sachin Tendulkar or Zaheer Khan who have been dealing with fitness issues for sometime now.”
Another important aspect of vaastu shastra and stadiums is the location of the playing arena. “The land or property must always smell good and emit positive vibes,” says numerologist and vaastu consultant Shiv Karann Chabbria, “This is why there should not be a foul-smelling water body or even a dumpyard nearby. Another very important aspect is that there shouldn’t be a cremation ground in its vicinity because this hampers the positive vibes. Also, any property or stadium that’s built out of a dispute or where construction work has constantly been met with problems is something that’s inauspicious. A case in point is the Eden Gardens in Kolkata that’s always had dispute surrounding it — the India vs Sri Lanka match during the 1996 World Cup was stopped due to violence and recently, the stadium’s preparedness for the current tournament too came under scrutiny. All this leads to the venue becoming ‘unlucky’ for the players.”
Experts add that other aspects like the shape of the plot, the colour of the land/soil and more play a role in determining if a stadium is lucky or unlucky.
That’s about bad luck; and when it comes to attracting fortune and victory on the field, experts say that it’s the little things that matter. “The colour and quality of the soil is indicative of success — like the stadium in Nagpur is very lucky for the Indian team because of the fertile, red soil that attracts progress. Similarly, the Chinnaswamy stadium in Bengaluru, which is surrounded by lush greenery, has the power to swing fortunes the home team’s way. This was clearly evident during the 1996 World Cup quarter-final played here where local lad Venkatesh Prasad emerged the hero,” explains Anitha Rajkumar, a vaastu and feng shui expert.
Apart from these two venues, another lucky one is the stadium in Mohali, adds Pandit Mohan. “Any place where a competition is happening must not have tall buildings around its boundary. Often tall floodlights tend to block the flow of positive energy. However, at this particular stadium since the airport is nearby instead of a few huge floodlights there are smaller ones but more of them. This helps to attract good luck and the bowler that faces the southeast always has a good performance,” he says.