The official song of ICC Cricket World Cup 2011, composed by Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy (SEL), was released on Dec 31, 2010. In my opinion, it’s another miss, close on the heels of A.R. Rahman’s official song for the Commonwealth Games.

It’s easy to explain why you love a song or why you hate one, but really hard to describe why you think a song is just “so-so”. Still, here is an attempt:

• Except for the De Ghuma Ke line, Manoj Yadav’s lyrics for the rest of the song feel contrived and do not really roll off the tongue
• Except for the mukhda, the tune isn’t hummable.
• I couldn’t figure out the second singer, other than Shankar Mahadevan, but I think the song might have been better off with someone else.

I think there is a lot of pressure on the public to like this song, specially after the CWG song debacle. Nobody wants to be a spoil-sport, specially one it comes to the work of hugely popular musicians like SEL (I am a big fan myself), and specially when India’s reputation on the global stage is involved. I really wanted to like the song, but I don’t!

Check it yourself and tell me what you think. [Update: The embedded video was removed from Youtube. The official video is being released on Feb 7. Will provide an update in due course.]

PS: And what is it with official ICC website’s lame domain name – http://icc-cricket.yahoo.net/? It took me a while to figure out that it was actually ICC’s official site and not a Yahoo site. Free marketing advice for ICC – The “yahoo.net” domain is diluting your brand. Do yourself a favor and get your own domain name.