Random Thoughts of an Eternally Restless Mind

With due respects Mr. Ramiz Raja, you are wrong!

2010-09-01T21:32:00.003+05:30

No sooner did Ramiz Raja express outrage at the spot fixing scandal, did he backtrack on one case and ask sympathy for Mohammad Amir. Geoff Lawson, the ex-Pakistan coach joined soon.

Their strawman defense? Mohammad Amir comes from a poor background and he was 'ensnarled' in the controversy. They couldn't have played a worse card - "he comes from poor background, he wants to buy a generator for his village!" - Oh! they did!

There have been numerous cricketers who have started from the bottom of the pyramid - Irfan Pathan & Yusuf Pathan are top in my list of mind recall. Vinodh Kambli was another such cricketer from a stark background. Sachin Tendulkar, MS Dhoni, Kapil Dev amongst others come from strictly middle class backgrounds. None of them took to spot fixing and receiving money for bowling no-balls or batting maiden overs.

While a certain amount of blame has to be apportoined to the suits running cricket in Pakistan, Amir had the choice to say no and go to the press. He took the path of least resistance - chalta hai and hence is as guilty or innocent as the others. He was happy to receive the cash when it was in the dark and turns on an innocent face as soon as his trick gets public.

The third angle and the most intruiging is that PCB wants to take action only after legal proceedings take place. My dear suits, that is a such a weak defense of your action. The laws of the game is more stringent than that of criminal liabilities. How can anyone prove that the betting was a criminal activity? ACC head feels so. PCB believes it can let the legal recourse meander and when the charges are diluted and the perpetrators go unpunished, absolve themselves of any action against the tainted cricketers. Don't fear for cricket as they will definitely hire a retired judge to give semblence to their pre-determined action.

The suits have it all wrong. Cricket laws are far more stringent than the public court. Else, how many of us face charges or reduction in salaries because we finished our sales presentation in 70 mins instead of 60. How many folks face fines and suspensions because we disagree with our bosses and don't shy away from telling them. Poor Virat Kohli, he should have revered to spot fixing instead of staring an umpire for 15 seconds for a dodgy decision. He would have received lesser punishment. The laws of cricket are very stringent on disrepute to the game.

And Mr. Ramiz Raja knows it. In spite of the same, he wants to present the strawman defense so that they check the reaction for potential let-off of Mohammed Amir. Poor Salman Butt & Asif - they should have been a little younger to have got this special treatment

Media & GoI: Rules are different for Telangana & Mumbai

2010-02-07T10:54:00.005+05:30

When the Shiv Sena and all narrow minded bigots proclaim Mumbai only for Maharastrians, everyone (rightly so!) condemned it unequivocally.

When TRS and all narrow minded bigots proclaim Telangana & Hyderabad only for themselves, the media (Dr Prannoy Roy, i am looking at you!) and GoI are falling head over heels in giving credence to their claims.

The issue of Telangana highlights how removed our ministers & politicians are from realities. I want to compile some WTFs from Telangana interviews.

1. Telangana is required because Telugu Industry has no film hero from Telangana. Seriously! Even if i take his claim in any amount of seriousness, Rayalaseema & not Telangana provides the much wanted, bad guys of Telugu industry. May be Dr. Srinivas Raj is correct, Telugu film industry don't see hero or villan material from Telangana.

2. Hyderabad & Telangana was a wealthy region in 1956 and have become backward after Andhra Pradesh. Another seriously ill-thought talking point. Either the region was traditionally backward or it wasn't. Just because Usmain Ali Khan was declared World's richest man, doesn't make the region wealthy. Else, with the Ambani brothers, Mittal, Premji, India should be the most wealthy country!

3. While Dr. Srinivas Raj states that Industries have been set in Telangana without benefits to Telangana populance, Dr K Jayashankar claims the oppposite. No industries worth mentioning has been set in Telangana. Companies like Dr. Reddy's Lab don't count in his view

4. Telangana leaders see Andhra folks in Hyderabad as tenants. No worry guys, you might have bought property in Hyderabad but we intend to convert the region into a Zimbabwe a few years down the line. You are free to stay till then!

5. Muslims in Telangana region are asking for a seperate state for any of the following reasons. At 20%, they will have a major say in the politics of the region, Andhra Pradesh didn't have a muslim CM. Telangana will give Muslims the right to ask the GoI to impose a Muslim CM.

6. Telangana was a great state under the Nizams. The feudal system in Nizam rule will return. Folks, don't let small matters like facts stand in the way. Telangana was a backward state with the World's richest man ruling it with such a heavy hand that he fought against integration into India. Nostalgia doesn't change facts!

7. Andhra people look at Hi-tech business for job creation while Telangana leaders believe Charminar has magical job generating features (built by the Nizams, do doubt!) that hasn't been leveraged. Seriously! does this point any merits for debate!

8. Muslims want Mulki rule to be implemented. What's the Mulki rule? Mulki rule mandates that any outsider will have to live 14 years in the state to be eligible for equal rights. Bal & Uddav Thackrey, Ashok Chavan, please move. You might made the utmost efforts to win the "Stupid Politician" of the year award. But Telangana leaders win it with ease. Some sense was put into Telangana leaders and now they acknowledge that Mulki might be unconstitutional. Might?

9. KCR claims that Andhras make no more than 5% of Hyderabad's population. Given that everyone agrees that the population of Hyderabad is around 7.5 million, Andhra population is 375,000 as per KCR. Muslim leader Lateef Mohammad Khan claims that 385,000 of the 600,000+ government jobs in Telangana has bee occupied by non-Telangana region people. Putting these 2 stats together, every non Telangana person in Hyderabad is a government employee. If you haven't received your salaries and arrears, contact KCR & LMT.

10. If the region is as backward as their leader's claim, how can a region with 45% area have 43% share of population? How can the backward region provide 60% of revenues for AP? How does that claim make any sense?

11. And there is this site - which spews all incorrect numbers as facts. A few mis-statements.

I know a lot about the Pollavaram project. Even if i didn't, a quick check provides the following information - Pollavaram is a village in West Godavari district. How can someone divert 405 TMC to Andhra after the water have already reached Andhra?
Telangana is hilly & forest area. How can they have 11.25 lakhs areas of lost agricultural land?
65% industries in Telangana is from Andhrites. So? Doesn't that give employment opportunities to Telangana folks?
Ramagundam moved to NTPC and deprive Telangana of electricity. Seriously? NTPC is run by Andhra? Ramagundam power is mostly routed to Tamil Nadu as part of the South India grid. That's the fact
Mumbai, Chennai, Delhi & Kolkata aren't free zones? Seriously, what is a free-zone? When did the Constitution start Free-zones folks?
How can a backward region contribute 74% sales tax? 66% excise duty?
Telangana people were forced to sell land at dirt cheap prices to Andhra people. Or so goes the story ..

In summary, i believe that politicians are being opportunists and trying to create statistics from nothing. We saw linguistics politics in the 50s & 60s, caste politics in 90s and now we are seeing regionalism for this decade. Telangana needs development and that isn't questioned. In fact, Telangana will receive development as subsidiary from Andhra's prosperity.

It is sad that media is also playing a double role in denouncing regionalism in one area and encouraging it in another area.

Travesty in Delhi ...

2009-12-28T15:19:00.003+05:30

Nope, i amn't refering to the Delhi pitch ., though a lot of blame should go there ...

...Nope, i amn't refering to Kumar Sangakkara gesticulating to this teammates to escalate a ridiculous delivery and use it as an excuse to stop the match ... i felt it was childish, but Sanga's loyalty is towards his players and rescuing them from a bad situation ...

... Nope, i am't refering to Arun Jaitley or any of the other politicians who don't have the moral responsibility of a fiasco ... no politician in the recent past across the world has ever realized his shortcoming and owed to it, why sacrifice only Jaitley for it?

... Nope, i am't refering to the 2 teams packing off to their hotels within an hour of leaving the field ... showcasing a lack of respect for paying public will catch up, but not today ...

... The target of my ire is Match Referee AG Hurst. How can he not realize the follies of the pitch before the start of the game? If he had as much knowledge as me on the behaviours of various pitches, he can stay home and i can be the globe-trotting match referee. The second charge against him, how can you allow 23.3 overs to be bowled before you deem the match dangerous? I don't think earlier matches lasted this long. Third, did you see the ball that triggered the complaint - it was pitched in the bowler's side of the wicket. Outside the subcontinent, you would have seen the same reaction. Foruth, please see the various replays (i have seen, thanks to Indian News Channels playing it endlessly) - most of the deliveries that kicked up were from short of the length deliveries and not from length. If the bowlers have to adjust to batting paradise tracks (400 runs tracks), why can't the batsmen fed with some questions? Most of the batsmen getting hit were playing forward to a short of length delivery, not on their backfoot. Fifth, This isn't your first series in India (second actually, the previous one was also the Ind-SL 2005 series), how does this pitch behave differently to a fifth day subcontinent wicket? Sixth, show me one wicket that was from an ackward delivery: Tharanga leaving the gate open, Dilshan fishing outside off, Sanga's lazy uppish drive, Jayasuriya outfoxed with a slider and the Samaraweera's running indecision - none of them can be attributed to the pitch conditions

As like your predecessors, you will hide your imcompetent decision behind ICC's opaqueness. This match shouldn't have been called off. You should asked Sanga & Dhoni to quit whining and asked them to continue with the match. You should have told the captains that the pitches in India & the subcontinent in the 1990s weren't any different and matches were conducted fine, thank you very much.

27th December 2009 should go down in history as a watershed event in Indian cricket. It is the day when ICC rubber-stamped BCCI's move to create batting pitches. ICC & BCCI have sent clear signal to the next generation cricketers. Please become batsmen, don't contemplate about being a bowler. Matches will be called off if we don't see 300+ run ODI wickets ...

The pitch and the various players aren't blameless. However, the match should have gone on.

Was South Africa robbed in the ICC Awards?

2009-10-02T01:09:00.006+05:30

I believed in the afirmative and checked if the cold, hard facts supports the contention.

World Test XI: Gautam Gambhir (India), Andrew Strauss (England), AB de Villiers (South Africa), Sachin Tendulkar (India), Thilan Samaraweera (Sri Lanka), Michael Clarke (Australia), MS Dhoni (India, capt & wk), Shakib Al Hasan (Bangladesh), Mitchell Johnson (Australia), Stuart Broad (England), Dale Steyn (South Africa), Harbhajan Singh (India, 12th man)

I used Cricinfo Statsguru with the following conditions - 600+ runs, 50+ average, 3 or more hundreds. The list shows: Clarke (17/1440/53/5), Strauss (14/1323/60/6), Gambhir (8/1269/84/5), Samaraweera (8/1067/60/3), Tendulkar (9/896/55/3), Dilshan (8/848/71/4), Jayawardena (8/802/57/3), Sarwan (9/782/60/4), Gayle (9/698/53/3), AB de Villiers (8/603/60/3)

That clears the air about South African batsmen not making to this list. Only 1 managed to sneak in from a stats perspective. So, if there were test batsmen who could complain, it should be the Sri Lankans who managed only 1 entry though they had 3 folks in the above said shortlist. The reason is that they played Pakistan (away, 2 matches), Bangladesh (2 matches), Pakistan (home, 3), NZ (home, 1) - not strong opposition.

Test Team Wicketkeeper:

My pick would need at least 300 runs, 40+ average, 10 dismissals, at least 2 50+ scores. I shortlisted 4 candidates after eliminating players who had too many matches & too few dismissals (Matt Prior) or too few matches (Pak, SL & WI WKs). McCullum (10/555/34.68/2h,3f/38-35c+3s), Brad Haddin (16/1028/41/2h,3f/55-54c+1s), Mark Boucher (8/316/28/1h,1f/26-24c+2s), Dhoni (8/554/0h,7f,28-24c+4s).

Once again we can eliminate any claims of anti-SA bias. Dhoni got the vote because he led India to series win in NZ and he displayed some consistent batting. However, i feel for Haddin. He got robbed. Dhoni won on star power than stats power!

Bowlers:

For the bowlers, my criteria was 40 wickets, less than 3.5 RPO, less than 65 SR. 5 made the cut - Johnson (17/80/27/3.12), Siddle (12/49/29/3), Swann (12/48/30/3), Shakib Al Hassan (8/45/23/2.67), Broad (13/40/31/3.3).

Of this list, Hasan, Broad and Johnson made the list. While i understand Johnson & Hasan, i don't get Broad. Steyn missed the list because he had a higher RPO - 3.62 while his remaining stats look good (8/42/27). Bhajji missed the earlier cut because he had 39 wickets (8/39/27/2.5).

Broad should consider himself very lucky. Not only did Swann have better bowling figures, his batting figures weren't bad either - 12/354/35/0h,3f compared to Broad's 13/395/26/0h,2f. I would have had put Bhajji in the team and have Siddle/Swann be the 12th man.

World ODI XI Team: Virender Sehwag (Ind), Chris Gayle (WI), Kevin Pietersen (Eng), Tillakaratne Dilshan (SL), Yuvraj Singh (Ind), Martin Guptill (NZ), MS Dhoni (Ind, captain, WK), Andrew Flintoff (Eng), Nuwan Kulasekara (SL), Ajantha Mendis (SL), Umar Gul (Pak), 12th man: Thilan Thushara (SL)

ODI Batsmen criteria: 400 runs, 40+ ave, 80+ SR, 4 or more fifties. Dhoni (24/967/60/9f/86SR), Yuvraj (24/949/48/4h,3f/106), Gayle (21/942/50/4h,2f,110) and Sehwag (14/782/60/2h,6f,128) are a cut above competition and invited themselves to the party. Guptill (12/448/56/1h,3f/87) made it on superior average. No idea why Dilshan (12/473/47/1h,3f/88) made it over Hussey (18/699/54/0h,7f/87) and Amla (13/549/50/1h,3f/88) - both of them should consider themselves unlucky. The luckiest person on the list isn't Dilshan but Pieterson (16/440/44/1h,2f/93) who wasn't even the best player on the English team. That honor should go to Owain Shah (18/535/44.5/0h,5f/86). These records compare to Taylor (18/591/45.5/1h,4f/81) and AB de Villiers (18/614/44/oh,5f/88). Slight anti-SA bias but not too much for the huge uproar that we can expect.

ODI All-rounder criteria: 200 runs, 10 wickets. 17 players qualify but 3 folks seperated themselves by having Batting Ave above 35 & Bowling ave below 26. Flintoff (14m/304r/38ba.av/23w/20ba.av) seperates himself in this group that includes Duminy (19/476/37/10/25.4) and Shakib Al Hasan (22/665/37/30/25.6) though Hasan would have won any other year.

ODI Bowler's criteria: 25 wickets, Bow Ave less than 35, RPO less than 6. 12 players made the cut. Mendis (22/46/16/4.15), Kulasekara (24/43/19/4.33), Umar Gul (12/26/20/5) blow the opposition away. Outside this batch, there is a lot of close competition between Thushara (22/34/21/4.7), Steyn (16/28/24/5), Muralitharan (22/36/21.6/4.5), Johnson (16/28/24/5). The 12th man spot was a toss-up and i think the panel made a tough choice. I don't think anyone can make a case one way or the other on the 12th man.

In summary - there doesn't seem to be anti-SA bias. SA didn't have a few people contributing while others suffered slumps. Everyone in the team contributed their bit and hence their rise in Team rankings (the other explanation is that the Aussies slipped and hence elevating SA to the top spot!). They shouldn't show outrage for not having more players because they didn't play a lot of tests and there weren't standouts in the tests that they played. In the ODIs, there is a case for inclusion of Amla, but that's about the amount of under-representation from SA in the World teams.

My changes:

Test Team: Haddin replaces Dhoni as WK. Bhajji replaces Broad who goes out completely. Siddle becomes the 12th man. Captaincy to Shakib.
ODI Team: Amla & Hussey replace Dilshan & Pieterson.

Unsolicited advise to Jaganmohan Reddy

2009-09-09T09:06:00.002+05:30

Hi.,

My condolonces to you & your family for this huge loss. While the state has lost it's CM, the loss for your family is huge. In these trying times, i apologize that i need to talk about politics when it might be the farthest in your mind.

The reason why i had to interrupt your mourning is the increasing clamour to make you CM. Believe me, most of them are following the true traditions of the Congress party or trying to take advantage of the situation. A novice CM who is out of place in regional politics isn't their nightmare but their dream come true. It need not be said that your CMship will be one of the most corrupt in state history, not because you want it that way, but because you would have no control over these ravaging lunatics.

You entered politics about 6 months ago. You have been elected MP. Can you state five things you have accomplished in these 4-5 months? Politics, unfortunately, is easier spoken than acted upon. I am not denying your way to the CM post, but asking you to mature beforing seeking it. Remember that this is the last time you will get the CM post handed on a platter, you need to earn it going forward. Are you ready & prepared for it?

Putting myself into your shoes, i would do the following. If you are keen on the CM post, consult with Sonia & Rahul on the path leading to the CM post. Consult Rahul on how he got educated on people's issues. Get a mandate from Sonia that you will succeed Rosiah whenever he is ready to give up the CM post. Ideally, he should occupy the chair for 2 years and hand over to you at mid term. Take these 2 years to tour the state, tracing the same steps as your father. Learn the issues of the farmers, traders, businessmen, salaried class, working women, housewives and all. Once you attain maturity, the post is as good as yours. Remember, politics is like a bank account, you can only draw what you put in. Frankly, my dear, you haven't put in much to date. Start investing and then encash at a latter stage.

It is obvious that the support you have today will dwindle drastically as time flies, but you will be left with your core supporters and that's going to be your first lesson.

Regards

Prakashraj - He deserves it!

2009-09-07T16:48:00.002+05:30

I just read in Rediff that Prakash Raj has won the National Award for Best Actor for his performance in Kanjeevaram. While i didn't see the movie, i don't think there is one actor in the southern states in current times who can challenge PR for his acting skills.

Kudos, sir. I like it that you do a variety of roles - stereotype villans (Anthapuram, Okkadu, Pokiri); side actor sharing/stealing hero's thunder (Athadu); father roles (Bommarilu etc) and in a few rare cases, the role of hero. For those who haven't heard of this actor, he is a gold medalist at National Film Institute and is the Amol Palekar-Nanna Patekar-Amrish Puri mix.

No wonder, famour Southern stars like Chiranjeevi, Rajinikanth, Kamalhassan have praised him often! Enjoy your hour of glory, some lesser talented actor will steal the thunder soon!

PS: To the Rediff Editor. Please check the dictionary for the meaning of "sweep".

Google Maps - Beats Nokia maps hands down!

2009-09-07T14:07:00.005+05:30

My wife recently gifted me a high end Nokia mobile phone. Rest assured, we did quite a bit of research on the available options before settling on our final choice (my wife wanted to buy a blackberry but it didn't make sense for me to pay 800 rs for their GPRS+ services while i could pay only 200 rs for unlimited internet from my TSP).

The phone came installed with a Nokia maps application and 3 month free subscription of GPS service. We wanted to test out and took the phone for our visit to Tirumala (more on it in the next blog!), opening it and making some installations the previous night. Sadly, i missed one major application! Nokia maps is pretty good when it comes to the metros. It has mapped all major Indian cities - Delhi, Mumbai, Bangaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai amongst others. However it has ZERO details of other areas. Some NHs show up in the application but it's coverage is pretty weak. I was surprised (sadly!) that Nokia maps didn't even add a high level map of Tirupati in their application.

I got time to install Google maps after my trip to Tirumala and i was so surprised at their map coverage. It recommended the same path that we took. More so, it has detailed a lot of Tier-2 & Tier-3 cities in India and shows major roads in all these places.

Thumbs down on Nokia maps and astounding thumbs up for Google Maps.

Chennai to Tirumala: A Prime

2009-08-25T12:00:00.000+05:30

Tirumala is about 15o to 180 kms from Chennai. There are many a routes that one can take for this journey.

Chennai-Naidupet-Kalahasti-Tirupati (196 kms): Longest route but one of the fastest as you stay on a 4 lane, seperated highway where average speeds of 100-120 isn't unheard of. The only glitch is that once you get on NH205, you need to be acutely aware of speed breakers that pop up without warning. I advise first time travelers with limited experience in 'real' Indian road experience to take this road. Better RoI on your BP than fuel!
Chennai-Tiruvallur-Thiruttani-Nagari-Puttur-Tirupati (173 kms): The cab driver's favorite route as you spend most of the journey in Tamil nadu rather than in AP. It is also one of the worst road to take as it is riddled with potholes, clumpy bitumen chunks and uneven road. It is any gamer's paradise for 3 hours of driving - just real conditions instead of sitting in front of a PS3! I don't recommend this road at all!
Chennai-Sulurpet-Kalahasti-Tirupati (177 kms): Took this route only once, on the way back from Tirupati. NH5 is a bonus while the rest of the route is quite ordinary
Chennai-Tada-Kalahasti-Tirupati (174 kms): Of all options, i haven't taken this road at all.
Chennai-Red Hills-Periyapalayam-Surutupalli-Puttur-Tirupati: The road that i have been taking quite often these days and carries my recommendation. You stay a lot in AP State Highways than in TN State Highways and that means better road experience. Also, if you are not too anxious to get to Tirumala, there are a lot of not-so-famous but very important & beautiful TTD run temples on the way that falls in this route:

Nagalapuram (Lord worshiped as Matysa avatar - has fins instead of legs and is called Vedanarayana Swamy)
Narayanavanam where it is said that Lord met Ammavaru. The lord is called Kalyana Venkateswara Swamy here.
Tiruchanur (more popularly called Alamelumangapuram’) which has TTD’s second most important temple – the Temple of Padmavati Amavaru. Any trip to Tirumala should include a trip to Tiruchanur. For travelers from Chennai, it is best to organize a trip on the way back.
Srinivasa Mangapuram: While one needs to see Lord as equally beautiful anywhere, I find him at Srinivasamangapuram to be quite special. Only decked in flowers (and without any gold, diamond or any other precious metals & stones!), it is said that the Lord stayed here before he got married.
Tirupati Kodandaramaswamy Temple: Haven’t been there in a long time. Will go there next time.
Tirupati Govindarajaswamy Temple: When you align from your bus or train in Tirupati, this is the closest temple – it is right in the middle of town; yet this isn’t visited often. Pilgrims are in a rush to go to Tirumala and once they are back, too tired to go to this huge temple. Did I say that this temple, consecrated by Ramajunacharya himself, is HUGE? I haven’t visited it in a decade but plan to do so in the next visit.

All-Time India's Test XI

2009-08-04T16:46:00.003+05:30

Cricinfo has started a country specific All-Time Test XI starting with Australia's All-Time Test XI. The process for England's All-Time Test XI is under way. I decided to jumpstart India's All-Time Test XI.

To whittle from the list of 260, i decided to have a minimum stats critieria

Wickets (Min): 150 (Post-1950s); 100 (Pre-1950s)
Runs (Min): 2000 @ Ave (Min): 40 (30% leeway for Pre-1950s)
WK: 100 Dismissals
All Rounder: 75% of Min. Wickets & Runs

There are 6 categories - Openers (2), Middle Order (3), All-Rounder (1), Wicketkeeper (1), Pace (2) & Spin (2)

The following is the list of shortlisted candidates:

Openers: V Merchant, P Roy, S Gavaskar, NS Sidhu, V Sehwag, G Gambhir
Middle-order: V Hazare, P Umrigar, V Manjrekar, C Borde, D Sardesai, MAK Pataudi, G Viswanath, M Amarnath, D Vengsarkar, M Azharuddin, S Tendulkar, R Dravid, SC Ganguly, VVS Laxman,
Wicketkeeper: S Kirmani, F Engineer, K More, MS Dhoni
All-rounder: Vinoo Mankad, Kapil Dev, Ravi Shastri,
Pace: Srinath, Kapil Dev, Z Khan,
Spin: Subhash Gupte, B Chandrasekhar, BS Bedi, A Kumble, H Singh, EAS Prasanna, S Venkataraghavan

The reasons for leaving out some folks - K Srikkanth (Average below 30; Only 2 Test Centuries); CK Nayadu (no Test Centuries), Lala Amarnath (Average below 25), N Contractor (only 1 century), Jaisimha (Average around 30), C Chauhan (no century)

Some folks don't pass the stats but are in the list: Vijay Merchant (brilliant batsman but played only 10 Tests, 7 as opener), P Roy (Pre-Sunny best Opener?)

Analysis & Selection:

Openers: Only 2 stand out as outstanding. Sunny & Sehwag. Roy & Merchant played in an era where India wasn't dominant and known for brilliant individual but inconsistent overall performances. Sidhu was good but weak against pace attack. Gambhir has the potential to challenge Sunny & Sehwag but has a long way to go.

Verdict: Sunil Gavaskar, Virender Sehwag

Middle-order: Look how packed the middle-order is! There are 14 contenders and from them we get it all - class (Ganguly), grace (Laxman, Azhar), endurance (Dravid), technique (Viswanath). In this list, i think only Laxman & Amarnath never captained the side. As tough as the choice seems, the cream has a way of finding itself seperated from the remaining greats.

Verdict: Tendulkar (no reasons required), Dravid (stellar record, match winning performances) and G Viswanath (IMHO, Tendulkar in the pre-Tendulkar era!)

All-Rounders: Indian Test cricket has had only 2 great groups - Middle order batsmen, Spinners. But the all-rounder class is the most barren. Ravi Shastri was good but not great. Pajji was the best we ever had and Mankad has stats pretty similar to Kapil Dev. Mankad was a bit better with the bat & Kapil with the ball.

Verdict: Vinoo Mankad, Kapil Dev (Kapil selected as All-Rounder/Pacer)

Wicketkeeper: While Dhoni might look the parts of the winner, i don't think this is as easy a selection. Primarily because Dhoni hasn't achieved his potential in Test cricket. Otherwise, what explains the fact that Dhoni has only 1 century in 37 test matches. Farookh Engineer has the advantage of being an opening batsman while Kirmani was the best pure Wicketkeeper we had. Dhoni has the potential to take this spot down the road.

Verdict: Farookh Engineer

Pacers: The less said, the better. There are just 3 Indian paces with more than 100 Test wickets - Kapil Dev, Javagal Srinath & Zaheer Khan. I will go with Srinath for now. Khan has the potential to take this spot in a few years.

Verdict: Javagal Srinath

Spinners: Rich crop here as well. Kumble is a shoo-in because of the fact that he won the most matches for India. The fight amongst the rest is pretty intense. My vote for the present is for Bishen Singh Bedi but Bhajji is already on the rear-view mirror. If Bhajji can perform at the highest level over the next 3-5 years, the spot will be his.

Verdict: Anil Kumble, Bishen Singh Bedi

India's Test XI: Sunny, Sehwag, Dravid, Tendulkar, Vishwanath, Mankad, Kapil, Engineer, Srinath, Kumble, Bedi.

Just Missed: Dhoni, Kirmani, EAS Prasanna, B Chandrasekhar, Bhajji, Gupte, Vengsarkar!

Why are we living in 12th Century BC?

2009-07-30T16:09:00.002+05:30

Please tell me why rules like - Women cannot wear trousers, belong to the 21st Century?

Honestly! Do Muslims think that their God has no other work than create dress codes that he approves and doesn't approve for women? If fanatical Muslim men spent 10% of their time that they spend on moral policing, they are sure to find their way to their God.

Shame on you both, Musharaff & Indian Media!

2009-07-30T09:03:00.004+05:30

Recently, Ruler-of-the-Alternate-Universe & I-am-Mr-Right Pervez Musharraf appeared on Karan Thapar's show The Devil's Advocate and talked nonsense about Kargil being a military & diplomatic victory. Nothing better can be expected of this hypocrite. But his response shown how low he can stoop to, a remarkable 'achievement' for him.

The following response caught my attention:

"Because if you are talking about India-Pakistan, Indians had moved all their forces against Kargil and there was as a result weakness elsewhere. So, we knew what the Indian forces are capable of and what we are capable of. The situation was very favourable in Kargil, in Kashmir and on the entire border. We were capable of responding to any Indian action," The Nation quoted Musharraf,as saying

That's quite troubling. What does Musharraf imply here:

Kargil was the bait that he planned to lure India to a larger war?
Since India shifted focus to Kargil, he planned to attack other parts of India?
As Pakistan hadn't developed a nuclear weapon (as admitted by Musharraf himself), the mere rhetoric of using nuclear weapon would send India into a dizzy and make it employ nuclear weapon against Pakistan? He can then go around the world showcasing himself as victim rather than the agressor?
He had disregard for human lives when he was trying to take the subcontinent to the brink of nuclear war?
After Kargil escalates to India-Pak war, China & US will come in support of Pakistan and Russia supporting India could trigger WW III?

Not only does Musharraf prove that he is an idiot but also a dangerous one at that! He has neither statesmanship nor intelligence, neither takes advise nor is humble. He is the stereotype of all dictators - stupid, rigid, grandiose, pompous and did i mention evil?

Blame should also go to Indian Media. They just have to stop cuddling up to the evil idiot. Media attention is like oxygen to Musharraf. He cannot live without it. Ignoring him will destroy him. The second issue with Indian media was no one was willing to analyze his statements and take him & Pakistan to task. How about calling a few Defense experts and quiz them on these lines and showcase to the whole world, esp Pakistan, how evil they have become? Indian media, experts in sensationalizing news, is really poor when it comes to analysis. And that's why it is a shame ...

The biggest myth about the Budget

2009-07-06T20:43:00.004+05:30

Ok, it isn't a myth.

It's more like people's aversion to accept plain truth.

The budget is more a mechanism of rewarding the supporters than anything else. That's one reason why the budget was more focused on the poor than on business. What else can we expect when India's business capital didn't even have time to vote in the recent election?

And to see the kind of bizzare predictions made by respected media outlet - Interest Payment on Home loans increased from Rs 150,000 to 250,000 (Business Standard), a figure that jumped to Rs 300,000 (The Economic Times). Slashing Personal Income Tax from peak 33.99% to 25% (The Hindu) or increasing the Income Tax Exemption from 150,000 for common 'man' (Woman have limit of Rs 180,000) to 200,000 (CII Wish List) or 300,000 (Assocham).

So, lesson to the Rich, Upper-middle class, middle class: Next time you want the Finance Minister to do you favors, go to the voting booth.

Educational Reforms in India - Are they headed the right direction (?)

2009-06-26T11:53:00.008+05:30

Yesterday was a day for Educational news in India.

Kapil Sibal mooted the idea of scrapping 10th board exams
Mayawati wants to re-write rules of passing exams: Pass only 5 subjects instead of six to be declared SUCCESFUL
Anna University (Tamil Nadu) released the rank list for Engineering Admissions.

If Manniya Mayawatiji behenji had her way, you only need to pass 5 subjects to be declared succesful. No doubt, other chief ministers will try and outdo her to gain politicial mileage:

Karunanidhi will declare that the pass mark for OC, BC, MBC, SC and ST in Tamil Nadu has been revised from uniform 35% for all categories to 98%, 30%, 25%, 20% and 10% respectively. To provide equal platform for all, the pass mark for OC will increase by 0.5% every year for the next 3 years while the pass mark for other categories will decrease by 2% every year for the next 3 years.
Laloo & Sharad Yadav will join hands and raise voice to insist that OBCs, SCs and STs be given special status in examinations. They will be given question paper one hour before the exam start.
Muslim leaders will insist that as an oppressed class, they be considered given the SC status and hence be eligible for 10 - 20% quota of SUCCESFUL candidates irrespective of whether the candidates pass or fail.
Christian leaders will insist that they be provided a 20% quota on the total number of schools in the country.
Karnataka & AP politicians will insist that parents be allowed to pay money in lieu of marks for their children. The formula suggested is that the parents pay Rs. 10,000 (OC) per mark in each paper while the amount for BCs, SCs, STs, Muslims and Christians are Rs. 100, Rs. 10, Rs. 1, Rs. 50, Rs. 75 respectively

Okay, joke apart - i want to discuss the Anna University results to showcase how Mayawati & Sibal are headed the wrong direction. In the Tamil Nadu engineering admissions, 125000 students have been declared eligible for approx. 110,000 seats.

I learnt, with shock, from one of the website that there are 44 candidates with a perfect score of 200! Why the shock? The last rank to get into College of Engineering, Guindy's ECE course (the No. 1 course) is 31 (in 2008). That means 13 students will miss getting into this course inspite of getting a perfect score, just because they weren't born earlier or the computer gave them a low "random" number.
There are 5,700+ candidates who have scored 195 & above (97.5%). Based on last year's admissions, 5700 will not get you into ECE course in any Government College. In fact, they won't even make it to ECE in any of the leading private Engg colleges.
The only courses that 5700 can get in Government colleges are these: Agricultural Engg & Mining Engg (College of Engg, Guindy); Rubber & Plastic Tech (Madras Institute of Tech); BioTechnology (GCT, Coimbatore);Fashion Tech, Textile Tech, Metallurgy, Textile (SS) in PSG; Civil, EEE, Mech, Metallurgy (GCT, Salem); Civil, CSE, EEE, Mech (GCT, Tirunalveli); Civil (SS) in Thiagarajan, Madurai; Civil (AC Tech, Karaikudi)

Bottomline: If you don't get 98% and above, you shouldn't dream of studying in a mainstream course in leading Engineeing colleges in Tamil Nadu. And Ms. Mayawati & Mr. Sibal and stating that they want to de-stress kids from the rigors of exam. What is more impossible? Having only one exam in 12th (10th is scrapped) based on which your life ahead is decided or having multiple exams (2 or preferably more!) to ensure that kids gets acclimatized to the enivornment of competition.

Even today, students of Andhra Pradesh state board appear for 3 public exams - 7th Standard, 10th Standard and 12th Standard (called INTER). I think that's a better path than scrapping exams. Have multiple public exams but maybe grade system in 7th & 10th and mark system in 12th. One of the strengths of Indian students seen globally is their basics taught in middle & high school. Where our system lacks is the ability to provide free thinking to the kids and this method isn't going to encourage folks in free thinking. It will only ensure that kids join coaching institute in their 8/9th standard to target 12th exams and thereby missing on the basics. Mr. Sibal - I don't have too much hopes on Behenji. However, i can appeal to your senses. Don't Scrap 10th. Retain it, better still, introduce graded public exams in 7th Standard.

PS: I cannot but take a dig at Reservation system in Tamilnadu. The news release from Tamil Nadu shows that 8 of the 10 Toppers in Engineering Admissions come from "Backward Class". And this isn't an exception. Look back at 2008 & earlier data and you will see that folks from BC community usually have done well. Isn't it time to decrease the quota for BC community and re-classify them as Forward Class. Or is it too much to ask from a political system that works towards taking our society backward everyday?

PPS: Globally, yesterday will be remembered as the day when we lost 2 great artists - Michael Jackson & Farrah Fawcett (Charlie's Angel). For all his flaws, Jackson is the King of Pop and inspiring folks worldwide (hello, Prabhudeva and Lawrence Rahavendra)

MS Gill - Be our Sports Minister, not Cricket Minister

2009-06-22T10:42:00.004+05:30

Dear Mr. Gill.,

A few years back, you retired as Cheif Election Commissioner of India (CEC). Having reached that post, i hope that i can deduct that you are good in beauracratic activities. Lesson 101 of beauracracy states that you need to identify the boundaries of your role.

Saina Nehwal reached heights that no Indian has ever reached. She became the first Indian to win a Super Series Badminton tournament. And i see no congratulation statement from you when you took time to praise Pakistan's T20 World Championship victory.

Pray, Mr. Minister - Can you stop being India's Minister for Cricket Affairs and become India's minister for Sports & Youth Affairs. (and practice what you preach to others - Encourage sports other than cricket)

And by the way, i find it an insult that Saina received a cash prize of Rs 200,000 when each member of the 2007 T20 Championship victory earned Rs. 8,000,000 (apart from Porsche & Mercedes Benz cars), that's 120,000,000 for the 15 member squad - apparently, Cricket is worth 600 times more than Badminton in India.

Will the Minister take some action

Your's Sincerly

A True Sports Fan

Primer: How to transport $130 billion

2009-06-12T11:26:00.003+05:30

The WTF News of the day:

Two Japanese nationals were detained by Italian financial police last week after trying to enter Switzerland with $134 billion worth of undeclared U.S. bonds, mostly Treasury bonds, an Italian daily said Wednesday. According to the report in il Giornale, two unidentified Japanese in their 50s concealed the bonds, including 249 U.S. Treasury bonds each worth $500 million, in a suitcase with a false bottom that was searched by the Italian authorities June 3 when they were in Chiasso, at the border with Switzerland, about 50 kilometers north of Milan.

Wow! They were caught transporting $134 billion ... not 134 billion yen - which would still be a mind boggling $1.37 billion! Would they have been caught if they were using the Gulfstream IV or Gulfstream V? instead of a car?

Folks, $135 billion is so much money that it will wipe most of India's External debt ($140 billion). Only 29 countries in the world have more external debt than the amount captured in the raid. Also, i am wondering if this amount is legal or black money. Does it belong to any bank or does it belong to some mafia gang? Why am i thinking that this news will suddenly die down & we will never hear more about this incident?

Another aspect of the news that surprised me - Italian Financial Police. Do these folks go around Financial institutes dressed in coats & ties? I bet India can do well with one such special force dedicated to fight black money? Mr. Pranab Mukherjee, i hope you are listening.

Casteism & Political play ...

2009-06-03T20:27:00.003+05:30

For long, affirmative activists & apologists have cited the caste system as the bane of Hinduism and the need for reservation for SCs, STs and increasingly for OBCs. Some of the arguments are validated by facts with a lot more, steeped in nothing more than rhetoric. One such instance is the Reservation for Muslims which will remain as one of the most "very-funny-if-it-wasn't-sad" moment in Indian history. Did someone forget that these folks ruled India for over 700 years? Did we forget that these folks murdered millions of Indians, plundered crores of property, forced conversion, all in the name of religion? And tell me again, why does this group needs reservation?

My point isn't not just against reservation for Muslims. My point is highlighting the fact that we now have reservation for BC Muslims. I hope that folks are familiar with the fact that Islam by principle is against castes; Islam states that all men are born equal and there isn't distinction any group of followers. However, that was not how it was followed in India. So, Tamil Nadu government has implemented a 5% reservation for BC Muslims. If this isn't a WTF moment, i don't know what is. Next on the agenda for right-wing Muslims is to get SC status while the politicians are looking for a 5% reservation for BC Christians (an ordinance was passed in 2007 in TN for 3.5% reservation for BC Christians but revoked and sent to National Minorities Commission for it's recommendation a.k.a rubber stamp!)

In one more not-so-funny incident, Encyclopædia Britannica blames Hindus for caste system in South Asian Muslims. Reservation in India is the (politician's) gift that keeps on taking from us ...

Note: I am not against affirmative action. I am against affirmative action for political reasons; economically progressive groups; rewarding backward social measures; States deciding BC communities. I support affirmative action - at primary education level; for SCs & STs; timed-out & measured system with objectives and goals; monitored under the Supreme Court

Unmodernized JEE system...

2009-05-29T13:11:00.002+05:30

I was amazed to find that JEE counselling is an archiac system whose only place in modern India is a museum.

Highlights of their 2009 rules for counselling:

The main purpose of asking the qualified candidates to appear in person for the counselling is to verify their identity
After checking their identity and documents, the candidates will be asked to submit their choice sheets of courses and institutes.
After the qualified candidates have exercised their choices as per the counselling schedule, seat allocation will be done centrally, at a later date on the basis of the AIR-cum-choices exercised by the candidates.

Why is it so difficult to implement an online seat allocation system for JEE? For AIEEE, it might get difficult, but JEE with 15 colleges & 8000 seats, it should be much easier. Let me take a stab at creating a system.

At the time of result announcement, succesful candidates will get the link to register to a website where they can provide their preference institute & course.
The candidate can change his data any number of time till 5 days before commencement of counselling.
3 days before commencement of counselling, the data on candidate preference is published to all succesful candidates, thus enabling them to gain an idea of which course & institute they might get.
On the day of counselling, candidates will gather 2 hours before their allocated time to the center. Their documents are checked and allowed within the "green room"
The "green room" is the location where the allocation is made. The green room will display real time vacancy positions across all open colleges to candidates.
15 minutes each is allocated for every batch of 100 to make their decision and confirm their seat preference. Each candidate will be allowed to bring in 2 people to help him make his decision.
Each candidate will be seated in the green room for at least 30 mins before he has to make the decision. Since he gets visibility of the information for at least 30 mins, he gets adequate time to make the correct decision. Also, the mock excercise before the start of counselling would also enable him to picture a close enough view on his allocation.

I am sure there are much brighter ideas than mine for real-time seat allocation in JEE. The time has come for the JEE committee to open up to the 21st century reality rather than remain in the time wrapped cocoons of seat counselling.

IPL 2009 - Glory to the oldies ...

2009-05-28T14:13:00.004+05:30

As i posted earlier (closer to the midway mark), i made a quick framework to measure batting & bowling success in the IPL.

For batting, i considered: Runs, Average, Strike rate
For bowling, i considered: Wickets, Average, Run per over, Strike rate

I worked around the formulas and finally came across a measure that i felt gave equal weightage to batting & bowling and applied it across IPL 2008 & 2009. I didn't take fielding stats into consideration. Also, i didn't give weightages to 50s, 100s, 4Ws, 5Ws. I shall try and work something out later.

But as it stands today, IPL 2009's best batsmen & bowlers don't play any cricket outside IPL & probably backyard cricket - M Hayden & Anil Kumble. The contrast with which they reached the pinnacle is huge: Hayden, post match 4/5 dominated batting in IPL 2009. Kumble had a great first match and then lagged in the ratings (never dropping out of Top 10 though) and his final performance enabled him to pip RP Singh (who was Top 2 from the time i started tracking)

Some notes:

To me, 40 is the score of a good performer. There were 24 in 2008 & 21 in 2009 with scores above 40. There are six players who scored 40+ in both IPLs: Rohit Sharma, Gilly, Irfan Pathan (that surprised me!), Symonds, Raina, Amit Mishra (another supriser). MS Dhoni just missed it for this year (38.8 compared to 59.4 last year) and Hayden played too few matches (4, i think) last year to get to 40 (he finished with 36 still!)
Last year's top 10 included 5 batsmen, 2 all-rounders (Watson & Yusuf) and 3 bowlers. This year, the tide shifted to the bowlers - 7 bowlers, 1 all-rounder (Rohit Sharma) and 2 batsmen (Hayden & de Villiers)

2009 Top performers:

2008 Top performers:

No country for young men ...

2009-05-25T11:26:00.002+05:30

31% of Indian population is below 15 years. Another 30% is below 40 years. While the representation of the former is not expected in the Union Cabinet, the lack of representation of the latter is really surprising. After the hundreds of hours spent by media and Congress leaders talking about youth, there isn't a single representative below 40 in the list of Cabinet ministers announced on 22nd May. In fact, there isn't one below 50!

Gang of 70s: 77 - SM Krishna, 76 - Manmohan Singh, 74 - BK Handique, 73 - Pranab Mukherjee, 72 - Murli Deora, 71 - Vayalar Ravi
Early retirees (60s): 69 - Veerappa Moily, 68 - Sharad Pawar, AK Anthony, 67 - Jaipal Reddy, Sushilkumar Shinde, 65 - Ambika Soni, 64 - P Chidambaram, Meira Kumar, 62 - Kamal Nath, 60 - Ghulam Nabi Azad, Kapil Sibal
"Young Blood" (50s): 58 - CP Joshi, 56 - Anand Sharma, 54 - Mamta Banerjee

That's a grand total of 3 folks below 60; 11 in the 60s and 6 in the 70s. Congress really needs to search and understand the meaning of youth in the dictionary.

Another interesting analysis reveals the ministry by states and the actual no. of seats received by Congress in these states (LS only): AP - 1 of 33; Assam - 1 of 7; Bihar - 1 of 2; Delhi - 1 of 7; Karnataka - 1 of 6; MP - 1 of 12; Rajasthan - 1 of 20; Tamil Nadu - 1 of 8; WB - 1 of 6. Rest - 0 of 106 including UP (21), Maharastra (17), Kerala (13) and Gujarat (11). In fact, of the 18 Congress ministers (incl PM), 9 come from Rajya Sabha and were not elected by the people in the recent polls. Dr. Singh, Deora, V Ravi, Anthony, Shinde, Soni, Azad, Anand Sharma and Krishna.

So, can the Congress stop harping about "Youth" and "People's mandate". Political parties have very little respect with the general public because of deceptions like this.

The real analysis on Indian Elections 2009

2009-05-21T10:33:00.004+05:30

The TV talking heads have cooled off a bit on their instant analysis of Elections 2009. Several winners were announced by the TV heads and several losers. I intend to spend some time over the next month to analyze if the TV folks got it right or wrong.

But, one person whom they got it all wrong was Nitish Kumar. Nitish Kumar, and God knows how much i like him, didn't lead the NDA in Bihar because of good governance. He swept Bihar because of the split between Congress(I) and RJD. I analyzed the results of each of the 40 seats and this the summary table:

So, if you see this simple analysis - INC & RJD are losers because the monkey ate the cake while the cats fought over it. Even when you take only 80% of translation of INC votes to the RJD combine, the results is at least 2.5 times better than today. There's a lesson for Congress in this result table. Ignore Laloo if you want to write-off any chance of becoming big in Bihar.

Another trend that i noticed and that isn't obvious here, is the fact that BSP is nearing the 50,000 votes in 9 constituencies. That should worry the Congree, RJD and LJP.

In short, what do i recommend for the Congress in Bihar? I ask them to give Laloo a chance of joining Congress and becoming it's party chief in Bihar as well a cabinet minister in the current government. And why shouldn't that happen? Ideology-wise, there isn't a lot that seperates the Congress and RJD and Congress needs to spend more than a decade to become relevant again in Bihar. The easier route is to leverage the current result and add weight in states where it isn't strong. Also, inviting RJD to merge with Congress will also result in reverse-regionalization of political parties. Post-Congress, NCP and SP are the other candidates that will see a clear writing on the wall and they might want to join the re-join Congress. The public has clearly given it's mandate - national parties over regional parties and Congress has the golden opportunity of using this leverage. My sincere advise to Sonia & team - ask Laloo to join Congress before the feel-good feeling from election success evaporates! You won't regret taking my advise.

The dying breed of Television journalist

2009-05-14T18:03:00.005+05:30

Mahesh Vijapurkar, former Deputy Editor of The Hindu wrote a brilliant article; hit the bull's eye with his piece.

The anchor, anyway, is going to have the last word because it is his show. The talking heads alias the spokespersons are merely actors of the moment, seeking to drive the network's TRPs.

While his article was focused on the spokespersons of various political parties, i saw a well-deserved criticism on Television anchors. I have long stopped watching TV channels like CNN-IBN and Headlines Today as they engage in sensationalism.

NDTV had been my favorite channels since my childhood. I remember the days when i used to awake late on weekends to catch, The World this Week by Prannoy and his team. How the mighty have fallen! I was watching a show hosted by Vikram Chandra (CEO of NDTV Networks and one of their main anchors He was also one of my favorites) and was disgusted with the way he carried himself.

Rule no. 1 in journalism is to cover the News and not become the News themselves. And here was Vikram Chandra who was taking pot-shots at Varun Gandhi not once in a while, but every minute of the 40 minutes that i watched. Even Narendra Modi, who is treated by NDTV as Satan himself, did not get as much venom yesterday as Varun did. Varun Gandhi's name was incited & connected to everything on this good earth save Global Warming. Now, don't get me wrong here. I am not a fan of Varun Gandhi & haven't heard his hate-speech. But, isn't that for the courts to decide if he did something wrong. Who is Vikram to judge the actions of Varun Gandhi? Isn't he erring by his actions?

The curious case against Varun Gandhi isn't an exception in NDTV. It is the rule. God have mercy on you, if you fall in the bad books of Prannoy & team. They will indulge in character assasination and won't rest till they wreak the amount of havoc they have decided in punishment. Sad, that Prannoy, one of the best TV journalist India ever produced, has to resort to these unethical, cheap tricks in the name of TRPs.

SRK - Enough fooling around ...

2009-05-12T20:44:00.002+05:30

Hi SRK.,

I know it is your money that you plonked on the table for the Kolkata team. However, what is happening with KKR is of concern to the entire cricketing fraternity. While you have the choice of appointing a candidate of your choice for coach, your current coach has no excuses for his excesses or his behavior. If i said that he has turned your team into Page 2 material, it is charitable at best.

And now, allegations of racism. Will you constitute an enquiry? How can someone say that against your fellow countryman and you remain silent in word and action? Have you forgotten that our independence is less than 62 years old?

Tell me something, why does this team need more coaches that Indian national team. Since you claim that you don't know a lot about Cricket, let me tell you something. Ganguly was not only the best captain India ever had, he is also renowned for his eye for talent & grooming youngsters. Evidence include Zaheer, Yuvraj, Bhajji, Dhoni and M Vijay. In short, he is someone you aspire to have as coach - not Buchanan. Have you heard anything controversial from Gary Kirsten? Have you heard off-the-record comments from him ever? That's the sign of a good coach. Buchanan is repulsed by media as fish is repulsed from water.

Do us a favor and fire Buchanan & his team of 9 coaches. For crying out loud, there are just 11 Indians filling the 7 spots in the team. Don't you think 9 coaches is overkill. You would have heard of this - Too many cooks spoil the broth.

Make the changes today.

Why can't we have events like this in India?

2009-05-11T10:26:00.006+05:30

Obama attended the Whitehouse Correspondent's dinner and gave a wonderful speech - full of self-deprecating humor lines and pulling the legs of his friends and foes alike. However, the star of the day wasn't Obama. The honor goes to Wanda Skyes. I haven't heard much about this lady before, but boy, was she funny! In fact, she went beyond funny, she was amazing. The way she took Dick Cheney to task was brilliant, not only because of the message, but the way she encapsulated it in humour.

And it makes me wonder, imagine an event like this in India - where all our politicians get together for charity and crack jokes at each other. Laloo taking a dig at Mayawati in good humour; Modi chiding Prakash Karat; Karunanidhi going all-out against Advani. Wish that day comes sooner ...

Amazing Blogger

2009-05-08T13:38:00.002+05:30

Trishani Doshi, you are an amazing writer.

Cricinfo - If i were you, i would give Trishani Doshi a multi-year contract after tearing the IPL-only contract.

Sample of what readers get to enjoy:

What we're lacking is a bit of drama. KKR (the top source of drama so far) have sort of slunk into oblivion. Nothing new except the possible sacking of John Buchanan. Yawn. Preits and Shilps haven't got into a catfight, there have been no wardrobe malfunctions, and all that chaddi-buddy camaraderie with the players (very charming at first) now makes me want to vomit. How about a sledge now and then, a slap, something. We need a bit of masala to up the momentum, and a few injured fingers and thunderclouds (albeit dramatically beautiful ones), aren't going to cut it. Mr Modi, please could you orchestrate something? The battle of the cheerleaders, perhaps, or round two of the Bhajji-Sreesanth battle. Maybe even a stream of a thousand Bollywood dancers pouring onto the pitch during a strategic time-out to do an unexpected jhatak to "Jai Ho"? Make it as mad as you possibly can.

Piling on Buchanan

2009-05-07T10:19:00.002+05:30

Let me the 178,453rd critic of John Buchanan.

While i had a lot of respect for him before the IPL started, it has quickly eroded. He was lucky to be where he was, as Aussie national coach lording over immense talent - Waugh twins, Ponting, Gillie, McGrath, Hayden, Martyn, Langer, Gillespie and Clark. Now that he doesn't have a billion-dollar roster, his true colors are out in the open for everyone to see.

Buchanan now wants to increase foreign players from 4 to god-knows how many more! Already, Lalit Modi has shot it down & Dileep Premachandran's (of Cricinfo) criticism has been even more direct - calling Buchanan a "whiner" and right fully so.

The following are the errors in the way of Buchanan. There is an endless list, but this is just a start

Ganguly! The list starts with Ganguly. Ganguly was & is India's best captain, master tactician & has one of the best eye for talent. His latest talent-spot is M Vijay, who stood-in for Gambhir during the Indo-Aus series and has shown top-tier talent in the one match he got. Ganguly is getting up there in age but there is a better way of using him than discarding him like that. He could have been the operational face of the team for a long time (and will still be!) and mentor for Indian players. Instead, by antagonizing him, Buchanan has shown his immaturity.
Ishant Sharma is one of the best bowlers in the business. If Gary Kirsten & Dhoni can get the best out of him, why not you?
Support staff - Remember just one law. Support staff is named so, because they don't get onto the field and face the opposition. There is only so much they can do. They can never supersede players. Never ever!
Shah Rukh Khan: Seriously, how can this team spend $600k on Mortaza. His base price was $50k and would have been available for $150k max. The remaining $450k could have been used on local talent. Remember, 7 players must be Indian; Only 4 foreigners. Spend more on Indian talent
Ajit Agarkar: The biggest underperformer that Indian cricket has ever produced. He always dishes one if not two 'four-balls' every over. His current stat line shows that - 3 wickets @40 average, 10 RPO and 24 SR. Nearly the worst of any specialist bowler

Buchanan, i wouldn't be sorry to see you go. The best thing with your term in IPL is that your halo is burst & ruined. And that's the way it should be ...

IPL - Best Players in 2009 are ...

2009-05-05T18:21:00.010+05:30

Raina, Hayden & Malinga ... the best-player, batsman & bowler of IPL 2008 till date.

I created a Value Index for batting & bowling. Batting VI = Product of (No. of runs, Strike Rate, Average)/20000 & Bowling VI = Product of (Wickets, (40-Average), (12-RPO), (30-SR)). Get in touch with me if you want to debate the formula. LVI indicates the VI for the previous year.

The following is the list of best performing bowlers & batsmen in IPL 2009:

Criteria: Min. of 100 runs. Missing this mark are Sehwag, Gambhir, Pieterson, Flintoff & McCullam.

Malinga has amazing stat line - 11 wickets at average shade below 10, RPO of 4.83 and SR of less than 12. Thus, he takes a wicket once every 2 overs giving less than 10 runs in those overs. Brilliant. If he continues his performance, he will most likely even overshadow the spectacular performance from Sohail Tanveer last year.

Spinners have done well too - Jakati, Ojha, Kumble, Hodge & Raina have done well. Overall, bowler's performance this year is likely to upstage last year. Isn't that expected - South African pitches aren't the featherbeds of the subcontinent.

To compare, find the tables for last year's performance - Shane Watson, Stuart Marsh and Sohail Tanveer were the best player, batsman & bowler from last year's edition.

PS: I edited the formula and hence re-wrote the entire article.

PS II: I changed the formula for batting - increased denominator from 20k to 30k. That bought the batting scores of last year to about par on bowling. Thus, last year's best performer was Sohail Tanveer & not Stuart Marsh, and that's the way it should be.

There is no point in re-doing all the graphs. I shall do another blog once the tournament is over. Will show the revised charts then.

Fake Disappointment - Rediff & IPL Indian Coaches

2009-05-01T15:58:00.001+05:30

Rediff asks this provocative article - Why do all IPL teams have foreign coaches? Why not even one Indian coach. Let's see. I examined the list of most prominent Cricketers who played between 1980 & 2000 (at least 10 Test matches or 40 ODIs) and have retired. This is the classification of their status.

Coaching (6): Venkatesh Prasad, Robin Singh, Pravin Amre, WV Raman, Syed Kirmani, Kharsan Ghavri
TV Career (10): Nikhil Chopra, Saba Karim, Vinod Kambli, Sanjay Manjrekar, Maninder Singh, Arun Lal, Ravi Shastri, Sunil Gavaskar, Navjot Singh Sidhu, Ajay Jadeja
Administration (11): Javagal Srinath (match referee), V Raju (selector), Kiran More (ex-selector), K Srikkanth (selector), Shivlal Yadav (Hyd Team Admin), Yashpal Sharma (selector), Dilip Vengsarkar (ex-selector), Brijesh Patel (ex-selector), G Viswanath (match referee), Chetan Chauhan (Team manager), Narendra Hirwani (selector)
ICL (5): Nayan Mongia, Sandeep Patil, Madan Lal, Roger Binny, Kapil Dev
Politics (2): Mohammad Azharuddin, Chetan Sharma, Kirti Azad
Not Known (4): Narendra Hirwani, Manoj Prabhakar, Surinder Amarnath, Mohinder Amarnath
Business (1): Dilip Doshi.

So, you see that most of the former players don't think Coaching is a great career option. Of these 7, i think at least the following are employed by current IPL coaches in various capacities - Prasad (Bowling Coach - CSK); Robin Singh (fielding coach - HDC); Pravin Amre (co-coach, MI). So, i don't see a reason for too much complaint here. India has a dearth of ex-cricketers who have turned to umpiring & coaching as their focus is mostly on administration.

2 stars of Indian Politics in their own rights

2009-04-30T16:45:00.006+05:30

We are 15-16 days away from a new Parliament term & maybe a new Prime Minister as well. While there are a hundred aspirants to the throne, including the 2 that i am going to write about, only a handful have the credentials to get there. Of the folks who don't make the cut with me -

Deva Gowda (fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on ME!)
Jayalalitha (nope amma, your good English skills & mediocre Hindi skills don't hide your narrow thought process)
Mayawati (She is Jayalalitha Ver 0.0.1)
Prakash Karat (No, Thanks. I don't want to live in the 19th century!)
Sonia Gandhi (too much baggage Ma'am - You fled to Italy during the 1971 Indo-Pak War & your procastination in getting Indian Citizenship till your Cabinet Minister husband are 2 reasons why you should never be India's PM & not your foreign birth!)
Sharad Pawar (What, he wants both ICC Presidency as well India's PM post!)
PA Sangma (what! If your abilities as Lok Sabha Speaker are any good measure, the country will be in chaos during your term!)

On to the 2 gentlemen that i wanted to highlight today. Not because, they are my choice for Prime Minister but because they have skills in certain areas that are much needed. No one could predict that Laloo Yadav will revolutionize Indian Railways. I believe that the same will happen if these 2 folks get anywhere close to the PM Chair.

Drum rolls, for Person 1 - Narendra Modi ...

Let me make the case for Modi. Have anyone see the way Gujarat has jumped up the charts in economy & Human Development Index in spite of the continued marginalization of the Muslims. Do you see how respected Industry leaders sing his praises? Do you see the amazing amount of passion in him to lead his state? Do you see the dwindling rural-urban divide in Gujarat where rural development has been given as much importance as urban growth? Sentiments & party membership aside, does India have any leader who has Modi's "Ready-in-2-minutes-PM" candidature?

Now, for the negatives - his non-apology for post-Godhra riots. I have 2 issues with Modi on this attitude - Marginalization of minorities always leads to radicalization of society and is the first step for downfall of any civilization. For the last 7 years, Muslims have been using 2002 riots as the excuse for nearly every terrorist attack in India. Modi's attitude towards Muslims needs radical shift. While Modi will never fall in love with Muslims, at the very least he needs to show genuine concern for Muslim & other minorities. Else, he is no different than the narrow-minded Mayawati to me. The second issue with Modi on the Godhra incident is that his non-apology has made folks focus on post-Godhra riots and there has been next-to-zero empathy for the victims of the train attacks. Had Modi succeded in avoiding post-Godhra riots, the focus over the last 7 years would have been on the radicalization of Muslims and their inability to join the mainstream. That could have bought shame to right-wing Muslims thereby reducing their numbers. Modi, you did a major dis-service to the nation by not taking action post-Godhra attacks.

The second person that i want to highlight is Mulayam Singh Yadav.

Laugh all you want, but i would take MSY anyday above some of the other leaders in view. His anti-English & anti-computer stance are meaningless populism measures that he himself will abandon post 2009 elections. I recall a Shekar Gupta story on the Sukhoi-30 defense deal. Mulayam worked together with Vajapayee, Jaswant Singh & finished a deal that was started by PV Narasimha Rao & Manmohan Singh. Reason? The deal was good for India. That's the bottom-line. Politics was left outside the door when it came to our strategic interest. Second example, Mulayam Singh was the key reason why the Indo-US Nuclear deal was signed. The UPA goverment was in shambles after the Left Front abandoned them & when APJ Abdul Kalam called Mulayam Singh for a meeting & provided his support for the deal, Mulayam agreed to prop the UPA government. In effect, the anti-US SP provided support to the nuclear deal rather than the pro-US BJP.While some can contend that Mulayam's support was opportunistic (and it might well be the case!), we should acknowledge the fact that Mulayam put India's interest before his own interest. And by the way, Mulayam was all for giving APJ Abdul Kalam a second term as President. In fact, Mulayam was one of the early proponents for Abdul Kalam as India's President in the first place in 2002.

The case against Mulayam has been well documented. His pro-Muslim lean along with anti-Hindu stance is the mirror image of Modi's stance.

The nation will be well-served if we had a 50:50 mix of Modi & Mulayam.

Karunanidhi & fasting ...

2009-04-27T19:05:00.002+05:30

So, we have all heard about Karunanidhi's dramatic attempt at indefinitive fasting in Chennai today which started after breakfast and ended before lunch.

What a noble attempt. Right? Karunanidhi's action speaks for itself

19 July 2008: Karunanidhi doesn't go on fast but senior leaders of his party do. Reason - Protest killing of fishermen by Sri Lankan foreces
1 October 2007: Karunanidhi goes on indefinite fast protesting the dealys in the Sethusamudram project.
December 2003: Karunanidhi ends fast within minutes of starting one protesting the arrest of partyman.
2002: Karunanidhi goes on fast protesting attacks on his MLA office in Chennai.
June 2001: Karunanidhi goes on fast protesting his arrest by the Jayalalitha regime

You make your own judgement. Is Karunanidhi today's version of Mahatma Gandhi or is he a selfish politician?

WTF Moment of the Day - Ram Temple & Secularism

2009-04-27T18:34:00.002+05:30

Sonia Gandhi was in Mumbai & before she reached the rally venue, Ramdas Athavle uttered this WTF sentence:

"Only the UPA (Congress-led United Progressive Alliance) can build a Ram Mandir because we are secular.

I mean - what was that & where did that come from?

I was always under the impression that Secularism meant that Hindus donate away their temples to Muslims & Christians. I was under the impression that those pressing for building the Ram temple (BJP, Shiv Sena) are called communalists. As per your definition, BJP is the most secular party in India. Isn't it so?

If this wasn't the election season, i would have sympathized with this man believing that he was in the midst of suffering a heat stroke. Personally, i am tired of this chalta hai attitude of the public - Politicians can state whatever they want & get away before the elections.

By the way, Mr. Athavle, did you know that this UPA government that you believe will build the Ram temple doesn't even believe Ram ever existed! That's what they told the Supreme Court of India in September 2007 before withdrawing it in the face of widespread protests & condemnation.

IMHO, Congress wants to have the cake & eat it too! They want both Hindus & Muslims to believe that their interests will be addressed only by Congress and that's why we get to hear these WTF statements.

The Big Fight - Sri Lanka

2009-04-27T14:31:00.006+05:30

I watched the Big Fight: Sri Lanka Shadow in Tamil Nadu Politics last saturday. What a fight it was.

There was quite a panel - Jayanti Natarajan (Congress - She escaped by the proverbial skin of the teeth when Rajiv Gandhi was assasinated); AIADMK leader (didn't get his name); L Ganesan (DMK - recently switched back from MDMK); Dr. Subramanian Swamy; Catholic Priest who sympathizes with LTTE; N Ram, Editor - The Hindu; a pro-LTTE mid-30s student leader; Anti-LTTE journalist.

Before analyzing these folks' comments on the show, let me salute to the 2 brave girls & one guy who dressed down the pro-LTTE student leader for his comment that Prabhakaran should be compared to Bhagat Singh & Bose. The 2 girls, in particular, shook down, a vehemently patronizing comment from the stupid LTTE student leader and landed quite a few punches. The power of Youth at it's best & also the reason, why India 20 years down the line will be in much safer hands. Kudos to all 3 of you.

My thoughts on each of the leaders & their party/party position:

1. Jayanthi Natarajan: Had such thin-skin that it was incorrect to get her to come to the show. She had the opportunity to get leverage to Congress in the opening remarks & missed it completly. She couldn't send a strong message that the UPA govt saw the difference between LTTE (for which it has no sympathies) and the Sri Lankan Tamils. However, kudos to her, for slapping down the LTTE student leader when he displayed patronizing behaviour towards the 2 girls.

2. AIADMK Leader: Whatever you drank before the show, from your performance, never drink it again. You cannot call the nation's NSA advisor, a "chaprasi". Shoes might be the rage of the season, but never again call anyone chaprasi if you don't want a mob to beat you up. Moreover, you cannot ask that a secular nation be forced to bifurcate with the demand for "Eelam". Why is Pakistan wrong when asking for seperation of Kashmir while India is correct when calling for Eelam seperation?

3. L Ganesan: You look drunk! Period. And remember that this is 2009 & not 1989. The rights of Sri Lankan Tamils is different that LTTE.

4. Catholic Priest: You got too worked up by SL President and called the current situation a "genocide" & "humanitarian crisis" by the evil Rajapaksa. Never mind that you don't know the definition of genocide (def. not 40 civilian losses a day) and Sri Sri Ravi Shankar called that the relief camps in Sri Lanka were much better than the relief camps in Tamil Nadu for Sri Lankan Tamils or the Kashmiri Pundit relief camps. How can you not comment on the recent photos showing LTTE holding civilians hostage at gun point? You were yet another disaster in the show.

5. Subramanian Swamy: Nice opportunity for you to mention the February lawyer attacks as well as showcase your legal expertise. I don't like you a lot, but am impressed by your knowledge.

6. N Ram: Dignified, calm response in volatile environment. Just what we expect from him everytime

7. Pro-LTTE student leader: Counldn't defend a thing! Uttered rubbish statements like "Prabhakaran is equivalent to Bhagat Singh & Bose". To you - Bhagat Singh & Bose were ready to sacrifice their lives for the needs of their fellow citizens; Prabhakaran has murdered many a Tamil & non-Tamil leaders for his cause; Prabhakaran has abused the political process to get out of tough situation; Prabhakaran has a death sentence warrant against him & never against compare him to great people.

8. Anti-LTTE Journalist: Great summary of LTTE's war crimes against fellow Tamilians.

Vikram Chandra did a great job. He called out people when they uttered non-sense but i felt that he could have been more decisive and pressed the leaders for depth in the topic.

What's my take:

I won't feel sorry when the LTTE is decimated. They don't belong to the present times. They hurt too many Tamilians to generate the sympathy that they have today.
Rajapaksa has the golden opportunity of correcting 60 years of mistakes and prove that he is a World leader rather than a narrow-minded state patriarch. Announce the repeal of "Sinhala Only" Act completely; provide for affirmative action for Tamilians in educational & government for a period of 20 years; provide a federal structure within which the Tamils get enough autonomy to rule the Northern & Eastern states where they dominate; repeal the military constitution and replace with a civilian constitution.
Indian Government: Pressure SL by recalling our ambassador & contemplating firing their envoy if Tamilians don't get political benefit
Indian political parties: Avoid making stupid statements against a soverign nation. You could be booked under NSA.

My Vote is for Sale - 3

2009-04-25T16:14:00.004+05:30

In 2008, we saw history created in United States, when they elected Barack Obama (47). In 2009, India will create history if we elect LK Advani (82) as the Oldest Prime Minister to take office. Manmohan Singh at 78 looks positively young!

I am amazed how developed economies can find fit leaders in their 40s & 50s to lead their countries while we find no such non-dynasty leaders. So, my vote is for the party that will bring a change in Indian politics. No more room for oldies who doze off in cabinet meetings. My vote is for the party that will limit the age of Ministers to 65 and limit the age of MPs to 70.

That means, we will see 35 retirements from the 2004-09 Lok Sabha - the highest number of 70+ MPs that Indian Parliament has ever seen. Maybe half of them will be replaced by their kids, but i am hoping at least the other half to be new blood.

If my rules are followed, we won't see the 80s club - Bagun Sambrui (85), Jalappa (84), Kuppuswamy (83), LK Advani (82), Sis Ram Ola (82), Radhakrishnan Varkala (82), Lakshminarayan Pandey (81), Ripple Kyndiah (81), Bhanwar Singh Dangawas (80), AR Antulay (80), Kailash Joshi (80) and Venkatswamy (80).

The members of the 70s club won't be missed much either: Kalyan Singh (77), Ajit Singh (70), Subrata Bose (77), Deva Gowda (76), Pranab Mukherjee (74) amongst others.

Not funny

2009-04-24T11:00:00.002+05:30

Quick post.

I heard about the Fake IPL Player Blog. The blog cornered space today's edition of The Hindu - in my mind, the most conservative Indian newspaper when it comes to gossips. When i read the blog, i was surprised that it had ZERO humour & was very prosaic.

A few years back, Drew Bledsoe - an above average American footballer (the closest Indian comparison is Saurav Ganguly!) was replaced by a upcoming, young, good looking, Jessica Simpson-dating Tony Romo. A few weeks later, TonyHomo.com came to life that was a fictional first-hand commentary of Drew Bledsoe (who thinks he is God's gift to mankind!) criticize Tony Romo's actions. Great blog, amazing humour & must-read for even non-American Football fans.

So, to the author of Fake IPL Player blog, you can gain some lessons from TonyHomo. Happy surfing.

WTF News of the Day - "Oscar" Child up for adoption (sale!)

2009-04-20T17:59:00.005+05:30

Shock is an understatement when someone hears a story like this. I have a few questions for Mr. Rafiq:

Why should the producers of Slumdog Millionaire pay anything more than what they are contracted for?
Isn't it your duty as the father of the child, to provide her education & appropriate living conditions?
If you cannot fulfill your duties as a father, why have a child?

Rafiq can learn from Rajendra Sonkar - the father of the girl who was showcased in "Smile Pinky". He didn't go around offering his kid for adoption. He wants to ensure that her daughter gets good education. Mr. Sonkar isn't any richer than Rafiq but there is a vast difference in their manners & thought process. I am disgusted with folks like Rafiq who take kindness for weakness. That he wants to reap £200,000 (Rs. 1.4 crores!) for giving away Rubina shows that it isn't anything but a sale.

Rafiq - There is a special place in hell for folks like you.

Biggest theft in Indian History: How Western India has lost!

2009-04-13T19:19:00.007+05:30

Care to guess the most valuable item in independent India?

Gold - Nope. Folks have tons (if not Kgs at home!)

Water - Getting close. But inspite of the perennial Cauvery, Krishna, Ganga water fights, it isn't Water.

Giving up?

The answer: MP seat. Yup. Do you disagree?

When the Lok Sabha was created, the founding fathers divided the kitty to states by their population representation assuming that each of these states will have near-equal status in various parameters like Growth, wealth, HDI etc. And why not? If the Gangetic & Indus plain was good for agriculture, the south had their own Godavari, Krishna & Cauvery basins. States that lacked good agricultural area had natural resources wealth - Jharkhand, Orissa, Rajasthan. However, the last 20 years has shown how there is a huge North-South divide in terms of revenue generation. So, i wonder - why should we still use population as the only criteria for allocating MP seats. Why not use more progressive elements as well - GDP & HDI came to my mind.

So, i did a quick calculation. Let me not bore you with the gory details but the weightage for Population, GDP & HDI were equal. If you need more clarification, revert back to me.

The results are startling. I wasn't expecting what i saw. Check for yourselves.

What was i expecting? Southern states to be the victims of the system while UP & Bihar were the major beneficieries. But, i was astounded to see that Maharastra (16 lost seats), Gujarat (6 seats), Delhi (5 seats) and Harayana (4 seats) have been the losers. The only Southern Indian state that can harbour a grudge - Karnataka (robbed of 3 seats). AP & TN have a long way to catch up on HDI & GDP parameters with the rest of the country.

What's more - UP & Bihar have been the greatest robbers. UP deserves no more than 66 seats while Bihar should receive only 29 seats. That's a reduction of 25 seats or 20.8% of their current quota.

Will our politicians agree to such an excercise, where the MP seats are decided by factors other than plain population? I am not going to hold my breath for that to happen.

Till then, let us enjoy the next episode of "Greatest robbery show"

My vote is for sale - Part 2

2009-04-06T10:38:00.004+05:30

It was quite a coincidence that i wrote a blog & the BJP manifesto (asking for "Swiss black money" to be returned) was released. Let's see if there is any other political party that answers the questions in this blog.

Issue #2: My vote is for the party that will flight "shadow black money system".

Chidambaram came up with a fantastic idea in 1997 - VDIS'97 - Voluntary Disclosure of Income Scheme where unaccounted income could be disclosed & with tax paid on the same, the money would be regularized. If my memory doesn't fail - there was huge publicity and the ads were displayed on TV during Sharjah series cricket matches as well. The end result - the government netted Rs. 10,000 crores on "black assets" of 33,000 crores. The highest payment came from Andhra Pradesh when a gentleman declared black assets of 500+ crores and paid 170 crores. Phew!

I think the time for VDIS II has come. With the real estate boom & the criminalization of politics, it is time for the government to remove black money from the system - estimated at 18 to 20% of GDP ($210 to 234 billion). Thus, putting together the offshore loot & local black money - it's an astounding $1.5 trillion! And to see no politican speak of it ...

.. isn't a surprise. Most politicans are the beneficieries of this ill-gotten wealth. Let me take one example of a recent addition to the political environment. Actor Chiranjeevi -my favorite Telugu actor & the star of Andhra Pradesh.

Chiranjeevi filed his nomination papers for Tirupati MLA seat on 4th April 2009. As part of his papers, he declared assets worth Rs. 88 crores in the name of his wife & himself. No information on assets belonging to his children were released. That seems normal for a film icon whose 30 years in film world has produced more hits than one can count. However, one particular detail caught my attention. Chiranjeevi declared owning a site in Mount Road, Chennai measuring 4,092 sq. yards (36,828 sq feet or 15.345 "grounds" @ ground = 2400 sq ft) worth Rs. 2.046 crores.

The calculation works to Rs 13.33 lakhs per ground for the property! That's a joke. We don't get property for Rs. 13 lakhs, 50 kms outside Chennai forget at the heart of the city. The actual value of the site is worth at least 25 to 50 times the declared rate at the least (Rs. 50 to 75 crores). Assuming the same kind of under-declaration, Chiranjeevi & his wife would be worth at least 300 to 400 crores if not more. And Chiranjeevi is contesting as a champion of middle-class! What travesty!

I am not singling out my movie-idol Chiranjeevi, but this is the trend amongst all politicians in India.

The single largest source of black money in India is in these land-holdings. Let me explain how black money is created & funded. Assume Chiranjeevi wants to sell the land. The government guideline value might be Rs. 4 crores for the 4092 sq. yd land (i have no info on the guideline value in Mount Road). The seller buys stamp paper (11% of sale value - Rs. 44 lakhs) for Rs. 4 crores but the actual sale price might be Rs. 40 crores (assumption). In this case, Rs. 36 crores of black money is either created or routed. The government is also a loser - instead of receiving Rs. 4.4 crores as stamp duty, it receives Rs. 40 lakhs. The modus operandi of Indian politician at it's shameful worst!

My Vote is for sale - Part 1

2009-04-03T09:56:00.002+05:30

I see nothing wrong in putting my vote for sale. In fact, i am thinking of writing an entire series of demands to the person seeking my vote.

The party that goes after money stolen in India and deposited outside gets my vote. So, here is what i want my party to do.

Step 1: Prepare a list of all countries that act as tax havens and publish it publically.

Step 2: Call the envoys/ambassadors of these nations for a meeting and give them an ultimatum. They have 3 months to produce a list of account holders and the amount stored in the banks in their countries.

Step 3: If the countries refuse, we ban these countries - economically & politically. All companies HQed in these tax havens will be refused license to operate in India. Citizens from these countries won't be allowed to travel to India and vice-versa. A complete black-out.

It is rumored that 700,00,00,00,00,000 (70 lakh crores!) - a full 162% of India's GDP of 43 lakh crores - is boarded outside India. Time to bring back the money.

Nationalist apologists!

2009-03-30T14:18:00.003+05:30

Nationalist apologists are people who disregard history and pout nationalist sentiment to question or explain away half-baked truths or full-fledged lies as FACTS. Here is one from New Zealand:

Paul Lewis writing in New Zealand Herald:

Now that the Indian cricket tour is nearing the end, it's time to ask: Why have we been so nice to them?

The answer to your question. You are returing our favour. Plently of teams in India sweat & cry blood when they see a dusty brown track but that hasn't been a problem for New Zealand because BCCI refused to upset the visitors.

New Zealand played 2 series in India over the last 10 years. In 1999, we played a 3 test match series which ended in 1-0 verdict against New Zealand. In fact, we dished a green top where India (the hosts) were bowled for 83 in the first innings. It wasn't our fault that the black caps refused to take advantage as they were bowled for 215. After that, it was all India, as we piled on 505 (2 centurions - Dravid & Tendulkar with fifties from openers Gandhi & Ramesh) and a predictable draw followed. In the second test match, the spinners ruled the roost and picked 16 wickets. NZ spinners didn't do badly - Vettori picked a 6-for. Tendulkar created a personal record in the third test with his first Test match double century. The game meandered into a meaningless draw thereforth.

In the 2003-04 series, we resumed in the same location & by the looks, the same pitch. It was Dravid's turn for a double century and the bowlers found no support from the pitch. In the second test at Mohali, NZ plundered 630 runs and 4 centuries in the first innings after winning the toss. India however saved the Test with VVS Laxman making a century in the first innings and 67* in the second innings to lead India to safety. Guess, who were the last men standing in the match? The same pair of Laxman-Yuvraj as the second test in 2009 series in New Zealand. Is Laxman becoming a pain for New Zealand after being Aussies tormentor for the last 8 years?

Bottomline: 5 test matches with 4 high scoring draws in India isn't bad. New Zealand received batting wickets in India in their last 2 tours. It is wise on their part to return the compliment else they face turners in their next visit to India. Get the point, Mr. Lewis.

Bow to thee - Master Gambhir

2009-03-30T13:13:00.005+05:30

Small quiz: If i were to ask you to name Michael Atherton's best test knock, which would it be?

Wouldn't it be the 185 in Johannesburg - the "Great Escape" / "Great Survival"? Ray Illingworth called it "One of the greatest innings of all time". The basic stats - 185* off 492 balls in 643 minutes. Rest assured, Gambhir's latest 137 off 436 balls in 643 minutes (what a coincidence!) isn't going to be called as one of India's greatest but it does deserve a lot of applause. Gambhir, Sehwag's understudy (unbridled aggression) looked like Dravid's long lost brother or even Gavaskar's nephew!

When i checked Cricinfo Statsguru, Gambhir is in rare company. The list of players who batted 400+ deliveries to save a test or win it is an elite company of 24 innings by 23 players (Andrew Jones from New Zealand achieved this twice!). Gambhir's 643 minutes is the fourth (tied with Atherton) longest & apart from the Gordon Greenidge (226), the other three were match saving innings (following a follow-on declaration). Two have been featured in this blog. Care to know the others - the best was 275 in 878 minutes & 642 balls made by then-South Africa opener & current India coach - Gary Kirsten. The third longest belongs to New Zealand's own Mark Greatbatch who scored 146 in 485 balls and 655 minutes.

Gambhir, don't worry if this innings isn't placed in the same pedestral as Laxman's 281 or Gavaskar's 221 that nearly won the match (the other entries from India in the list of 24!), but your coach & team would know that your innings came very close. In fact, this one deserves to be in Top 10 Indian innings of all time . Also, one more small point - your Delhi teammate & stand-in captain, Virender Sehwag, owes you one. You (with copious help from the seniors) avoided the ugly questions for sehwag post his twin inning collapses against ordinary spin bowling. Encash it now!

PS: I played around the Cricinfo stats tool. To me, "Saving an away test match" is someone batting for over 500 mins (4 session) and 400 balls on foreign soil. That list is even more elite - just 7 "centurion savers"

Sachin & 500 Club

2009-03-20T19:20:00.007+05:30

The last line in the Cricinfo stats article made me think of India's 500 performance. The line was:

Thanks largely to Tendulkar's 160, India managed their first 500-plus score in New Zealand

The question i had in my mind was - what is the relationship between India's overseas 500 run record and Sachin's performance in those matches.

Thanks to Cricinfo stats, i soon could tabularize the performance of all countries abroard. Australia (unsurprisingly!) led the way with 46 scores of 500 & above while England (39) and India (27) trail the Aussies. I was surprised that India was ranked so high. Since India prior to 2000 was known as home tigers, i didn't expect them to post huge overseas scores.

India's record look good. They have scored seven 500s abroad than they allowed their opponents to score at home. Then, i had a hunch when i looked at England (39) and West Indies (26) figures. Maybe, most of these came from pre-1990 era. So, filtering the above table for Sachin era, the result is startling:

Of India's 27 scores of 500+ in Test Cricket, 22 of them came in the last 19 years. What's more - Sachin played in 19 of these matches (Sachin missed in the 2006 WI tour as well as the 2005 Zimbabwe tour where Sourav & Greg clashed!). India (to my surprise!) has the best record with 22 scores of 500+ and allowing only 7 such scores from it's opponent at home. The 22 scores also indicate the golden period of India's Fab Three/Four/Five. All but one came after the debut of Ganguly & Dravid. Post-Sehwag's introduction, the frequency of these mega-scores have increased. The +15 record indicates that India has adopted better to foreign conditions better than opponents have adjusted to Indian conditions.

In the 19 matches, Sachin's record is phenomenal. His record stands as 19 Matches, 26 Innings, 2368 runs, Average of 124.63, 11 Centuries, 5 fifties and only 1 duck. What a stat! I don't have similar figures for Dravid & Sehwag (am sure, Laxman & Ganguly won't have 100+ average) but will try & put that out soon. India lost only one match - the infamous Sydney test match and won 7 times in 19 matches. Interestingly, India has never won a match pre-Sachin era when it scored 500+ abroad. It drew 4 matches & lost 1 (500 scored after being asked to follow-on with a deficit of 386 runs)

Coming back to the Master - Sachin & the Fab-five performance overseas having a direct link to our away record is probably one of the most underappreciated aspect of Indian cricket (the other - Kumble's contribution to Indian test victories)

Edit: Dravid's record in India's 500+ matches abroad: 19 matches, 25 innings, 2277 runs, Average of 103.50 with 9 centuries and 8 fifties & 1 duck. Which one of these 2 is better? That i am not sure. Dravid however has 3 double-centuries - the famous Adelaide Test match, the famous Rawalpindi Test match and the 217 in Oval while Sachin's 248 in Sydney was a drawn match & 248* against minnows Bangladesh. His near-200s - the 193 in Headingley was made on the foundation of Dravid's spectacular 148 & 194* in Multan was a support role to Sehwag's 309. However Tendulkar has one second inning century (against Sri Lanka) while Dravid has none. So, the beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I give Tendulkar's record a slight edge over Dravid.

Sehwag's record isn't Bradmansque. That's mainly because it is more hit-or-miss. There are 3 centuries - his 309 Multan special; whirlwind 180 in WI and the 151 second innings special in Adelaide. Apart from these efforts, there is no other significant effort in his 13 matches, 17 innings, 1135 runs, 66.76 average, 3 centuries and 2 fifties.

As i expected, VVS & Ganguly's records weren't extra-ordinary. VVS played 16 matches, 22 innings, 1162 runs, 58.10 average with 4 centuries, 4 fifties and 1 duck. His 148 in Adelaide followed by 178 in Sydney in the 2003-04 Aussie tour and a century in the ill-fated Sydney test showcases his preference for Aussie attack. Against the rest, he has a century in Zimbabwe and some fifties here & there though in his defense, his role at No. 6 gave his too few opportunities. Ganguly however cannot complain about lack of opportunities. He has the worst record of the Fab-5 in matches overseas where India has scored 500+. His stat line of 15 matches, 19 innings, 982 runs, 51.68 average, 3 centuries, 7 fifties and 1 duck doesn't look great. He started off well - 136 in Nottingham in his debut series & 128 in the match at Headingley where Tendulkar & Dravid collected centuries - both in English environment. His only other century kick-started the Ganguly-Chapell spat (century in Zimbabwe).

Test Cricket Moral Police Force have got their facts wrong!

2009-03-10T18:39:00.005+05:30

Vic Marks, Stephen Brenkley, Martin Johnson amongst others have criticized the lifeless pitches on offer in the Carribean where West Indies hold on to a 1-0 lead. After WI won the first, the second abandoned, the last 3 matches have seen pitches where the batsmen can play blind-folded Cricket. The complaints of these gentlemen above don't talk of disparity between bat & ball. These gentlemen talk about the imminent passing away of the great game called Test Cricket. Everytime there is a dull lifeless draw, critics pounce and declare Test Cricket dead.

Unfortunately, these critics probably failed in their history classes or they are Aamir Khan's long lost brothers from the movie Ghajini - suffering from short-term memory loss.

Test Cricket in the olden days saw worse - slow paced dull draws. Disagree? Since these gentlemen are from England, what better examples than the Indian tours to England in 1990 & 1996. In both these tours, England won the first test match and the remaining 2 matches were boring high-scoring drawn matches. In 1990 series, there were 15 hundreds and 17 fifties in 3 test matches. A total of 4,640 runs were scored in 3 matches for the loss of 82 wickets at an average of 56.58 runs per wicket. The 1996 series was marginally better for the bowlers (mostly English bowlers!) - 8 hundreds and 10 fifties in 3 test matches. A total of 3,214 runs in 3 matches for loss of 93 wickets at 34.45 per wicket. Both these test series, post the first matches were batsmen games and that's the way the host team would have wanted it, to retain the series victory.

My theory is that the pundits have been pampered in the last decade when the win rate for test matches have gone up. Till 1999, there were 1404 test matches played (that didn't involve Zim & Ban) and 864 of these these matches ended in a result (61%). In the last 10 years, 375 matches were played (doesn't include the 2 current matches) and produced results in 269 games (71%). If we were to include Zim & Ban, the rates are 61.4% and 74.8%.

So, in no shape or form, the last decade has dulled Test Cricket. Test Cricket had boring draws a few years back and will continue to have boring draws in the future. Please don't waste time in writing Test Cricket's obituary just yet.

26/11 - Pathetic Paki response

2009-02-13T08:28:00.002+05:30

Interior Ministry chief Rehman Malik: Some part of the conspiracy has taken place in Pakistan. We have lodged an FIR [first information report] into the case

Glad we got that cleared. And i think the Minister or Ministry chief or whatever they call him these days, is correct. Talking to reporters off-the-record, he later confessed that some part of the conspiracy was planned outside Pakistan and gave examples of these:

Who should cook meals during the time spent on Kuber from Karachi to Mumbai
Ring tones for their mobile phones
Dress code during the attacks
The person responsible for inflating the raft

The minister claimed that Pakistan spent $5 million finding these vital clues and hence the same should not be ignored by India.

In other news, Guiness Book of World Records announced that the Pakistani Government representative (Pak President) has created a new record for the time spent by any person with his/her head buried in sand. The feat started in 1947 and has continued as tradition to this very day. President Asif Ali Zardari, earlier known as Mr. 10 or Benezir Butto's husband, dedicated this performance to the relentless efforts of his predecessors. He said, "I shall continue to uphold this tradition of Pakistan Presidents who don't want to see the ground realities and are entrapped in a false world & false respect for their position vis-a-vis India". He also made other statements that weren't heard clearly from the sand patch.

Satyameva jayate - some politicians & businessmen prove it wrong!

2009-02-10T10:51:00.004+05:30

Now that we have had a full month of Satyam Saga - it is wise to walk away from the minefields (controversy on employee head count) and irrational & exuberant statements. My random thoughts:

1. Too juciy an opportunity to let go wasted. The one IT company that trusted itself on all news channels with interviews and quotes was Infosys. Mohan Pai and Narayanamurthy (1, 2)were omnipresent. Thus, it is surprising when Narayanamurthy asks the media to back-off from Satyam. May be he should practice before he preaches. (All you pro-Narayanamurthy fans, i amn't Anti-Murthy, i am stating facts here).

1a. By the way, since Narayanamurthy is a strict practioner of stringent corporate governance standards, should there be a disclaimer when he gives "Exclusive" interviews and sound-bytes to NDTV. Narayanamurthy is a Director on the Board of NDTV. The same should be disclosed by NDTV as viewers need to be aware of the exact relationship between the 2 parties.

1b. Staying with same topic, some disclaimer from me - i work for a competitor of Satyam. I have nothing but admiration for the company, disgust for the man/team who bought 50,000 employees to their knees.

2. I am surprised as to why Satyam - the company hasn't sued Ramalinga Raju, Rama Raju, PwC, CFO, VP-Finance in India and in US. Remember, Satyam as a legal entity is different from Raju. The company might have been founded by Raju but he isn't the company. My 2 cents to Satyam legal - Sue them and sue them for punitive damages.

3. When Enron happened in US, both Enron & Arthur Anderson were dismantled and sold off in parts. Why? The liability wouldn't be passed to the new entity. I think the same needs to be done here. The company will be more valuable in parts and without liability. Suitors (sans-L&T) will see strategic value in parts rather than assuming liability. Aegis BPO has already stated interest only for BPO. Satyam's SAP/ERP practice at 40%+ of FY2008 revenues will look appeasing to Tech Mahindra for diversification. Why can't the company be sold in parts, the money used to settle legal claims (both ways - with investors and against Raju & Co) and the remaining amount distributed amongst investors?

4. When all and sundry are talking of employees, please remember that they can be the fastest to ditch the ship. Why expect them to stay put and tarnish their resume? I am not asking the employees to jump ship, just that i can understand if they do so. I applaud some employees' effort to revive the brand.

5. Benami companies and land acqusition: If what we read is true, Raju has 1200 acres of land in Greater Hyderabad. This is outside the 6000+ acres that Maytas properties holds as land bank. How can the state government claim that they aren't aware of the situation? when someone acquires such large tracks of land, isn't it pretty noticable and trackable? How can we believe that state government officials aren't hand-in-glove with Raju? How come the CM, Revenue Minister never knew that Raju was acquiring such large tracks of land? By the way, i am not going to give even Chandrababu Naidu the benefit of doubt. It is too massive a fraud not to be noticed by the ex-CM. So, i say - Satyam should sue the AP state government for abetting Raju in plunder of Satyam's wealth.

5a. Shame on the state government for trying to shield Raju. Otherwise what explains the inertia for 2 days after the confession letter? What explains the sudden action after Raju receives SEBI notice? Why, stonewall SEBI from interviewing Raju for 3 weeks. This fraud is so complex and spread across multiple jurisdiction that CID cannot handle the complexity of work. If not for saving politicans, why did the CID arrest Raju?

6. Raju is in prison and enjoying star treatment. At least it is better than the stupid Bernard Maddow house arrest. Raju liked shopping - be it 1200 acres of land, 300 belts, 1000 suits, 300 shoes (is that for real? i somehow suspect the numbers), he shopped BIG. So, why not let him enjoy what he went after ala Chiru's Veta style. For non-telugu population, Veta is megastar Chiranjeevi's version of "The Count of Monte Cristo". One of his friends turns traitor in the greed for gold. Chiru extracts revenge by forcing the traitor to eat gold coins. What say, Raju? Ready to eat?

7. And by the way, can we stop refering to Ramalinga Raju as Mr. Raju or in any form of respect. He doesn't deserve it. Once again, taking cue from one of my fav. movie "A few good men"

Col. Jessup: ... Sweet dreams, son

Kaffee: Don't call me son. I'm a lawyer and an officer in the United States Navy. And you're under arrest, you son of a .....

Bottomline. World to Raju: Don't expect any respect from us.

Blame BCCI, not ICC for Tendulkar's ratings

2009-01-17T10:27:00.002+05:30

There has been quite an uproar in India regarding the Test & ODI all-time rankings. What people fail to understand is that the list represents the highest rating ever achieved by a player according to their methodology and as per the list, Sachin's best test & ODI moment have been upstaged by quite a crowd. I have no qualms in the ranking and amused seeing Television commentators looking puffed up and all serious when criticizing anything related to the master. Relax, folks - it is just a ranking. There are better things to channel your anger. Gotcha? (Thanks Palin, this stupid term is the "official" OK in our residence!)

Is the ranking a good reflection of Tendulkar's career. I think so. I feel the following reasons have pulled Tendulkar's rating downwards:

The ranking lays importance to wins and Tendulkar hardly saw any of them during the first 10 years of his career outside India. When i checked with Cricinfo Statguru (quite a good tool, i should say), i noticed that India won 1 TEST MATCH AWAY FROM HOME between 1989 and 1998 in Sri Lanka and Tendulkar scored a century in the second innings of the match. In this period, Tendulkar played 39 matches and scored 11 centuries (including 4 in losing cause)
BCCI - The eternal problem creator, has a hand in Tendulkar's low rating. BCCI doesn't like Test Cricket as it eats into the time available to them for hosting ODI matches. Else, show me one other nation where tours don't have proper practice matches. BCCI would rather have the Indian team lose the first test match rather than lose revenues on 2 meaningless ODI games. The reason why i hold is multiple:

BCCI guilty is lack of arranging 4/5-game series. Tendulkar has played 10 four-match series and 3 five-match series (8 of these four match series and all three five match series have been abroad) in his career. Thanks to BCCI's indifferent attitude, Sachin has played just 2 four-match series in his career. He made 4 centuries in those 13 matches and averages 65+ in these matches. Reasonable to expect that as 4/5 match series provides platform for improvement on adjustment to conditions. In contrast, records of Steve Waugh (16 four-match series, 12 five-match series and 3 six-match series - 12.5% of his matches are in 4 matches+ test series) and Brian Lara (19 four-match series, 11-five match series and 2 six-match series - 24.4% are in 4 matches+ test series) show they played in longer series than Tendulkar (8.3% of career in 4 matches+ test series). BCCI HAS FAILED TENDULKAR BY NOT HOSTING 4 MATCHES+ SERIES IN INDIA MORE OFTEN.

In the common period between 1 Jan 1991 and 2 Jan 2004, when all three players played test cricket, the following is the number of test matches played by each country - Australia (148), England (147), West Indies (124), South Africa (112 from 1992), Sri Lanka (106), Pakistan (105), India (103) and NZ (102). Of the 103, India played just 46 matches at home (44/6%) while England (53.75%). Sri Lanka (52.83%), Australia (51.35%), NZ (50.9%) hosted more home games than away games. Should i say anything more? BCCI HAS FAILED TENDULKAR IN NOT PLAYING TEST MATCHES OFTEN ENOUGH.

Not that i find Tendulkar to be entirely faultless - he made centuries but not huge centuries. 170 - 190 run band was always a problem for him (every other player would have loved to have that problem!). Tendulkar crossed 150 on 17 occasions but made only 4 double-centuries. He never encashed his opportunity against weak teams (something that everyone should learn from the way Sri Lankan players pummel Zimbabwe & Bangladesh regularly these days!) except for one double-century against Bangladesh in 2004.

ODI comparison soon (if at all!)

and it continues ...

2007-04-29T04:21:00.000+05:30

Can the ICC not learn anything? the game was delayed and some stupid rule implementation by the umpires meant that the match ended after darkness set in ....

and now the ICC president gives a long winding speech ... some 8 mins in all and the crowd is booing quite heavily. also, mr. sonn - along with lara and mcgrath, Inzy also retired from cricket. you could have mentioned that.

why the medals to the match referee and the umpires - they don't deserve it for the bungles at the beginning and end of the match.

Nonsensical ...!

2007-04-29T03:49:00.000+05:30

Good riddance World Cup 2007 ... that's what i am thinking as Sri Lanka is forced to play the last 3 overs (more on that later)

It started with the murder of Bob Woolmer and i lost complete interest in the game. The public apathy to a real life loss, exit of India and Pakistan, the high rates for tickets and the stupid rule that disallowed bringing music instruments into the stadium all contributed to terming this as the WORST worldcup ever.

and today was the worst of all ... fittingly for the finals.

(1) Because of rain, the match is reduced to 38 overs. 38 overs for a finals match! comeon - couldn't the WI board and ICC fund floodlights for the finals venue. remember, sydney 1992 and i am sad to see that the cricket administration has not learnt a darn thing. sad., very sad. today should have been a 50 over match or else the match postponed to tomorrow

(2) Not the ICC's fault but what was Set Max officials thinking when they put Mandira bedi in a saree knitted with flags of participating nation. Given the kind of backlash that Sachin Tendulkar had for cutting a cake in the shape of national flag, didn't someone in the production team figure that the saree was bound to create controversy - especially when India flag figured prominently below the knee of Mandira. It was sad to see Mandira come out during the break in a different saree and apologize. The production team needs to owe this 'wardrobe malfunction'.

(3) and the mother of all farcical situations., 3 overs from the end - SL was out of the contest and when the umpires offered light, everyone on Earth and elsewhere thought that the match was over. Except for the 2 people in funny clothes called UMPIRES. They were going to arm-twist everyone by insisting that we comeback tomorrow to play or play in complete darkness. Stupid., maybe the rule book should state that COMMON SENSE should be used by umpires and everyone involved in the game. They shoo-ed off construction workers trying to put together the podium and even when Jayawardane pleaded, they were struck in their bone-headed decision. In less than a year, we have 2 incidents where umpires occupied the wrong place in the match - centerstage. i guess the match referee could have sent a word to the umpires to put the nonsense to rest but he was equal in the task of acting like a ... (never mind)

Congrats Australia, you are deserving champions. Congrats Sri Lanka - there is no shame in losing to a team like the Aussies. Congrats to South Africa and New Zealand for their semi-finals appearance. Congrats to Bangladesh and Ireland for their upsets and unexpected entry into super-8.

Shame to the cricket administrators, team officials (i am looking squarely in your eyes, Greg Chappell) and umpires for lessening the repute of the game. the game would be better served with less interference and 'value-add' from you folks. for not seeing you folks, i am happy that the WC is over ....

BTW., ESPN (US Sports NW, not ESPN India) wrote an article on Bob's murder. Nice read as it gives a perspective of an outsider viewing the game. Click here

our politician's backward thinking!

2007-04-27T19:36:00.000+05:30

Nothing represent India as a society that the current political action to restrict central govt funded institutes' admission to last year numbers. Check here and here.

Let me interpret the message the central government is sending:

To further their political cause, the government forced the institutes to increase capacity and thus ensured that the institutes added 10% capacity (12,000+ over 1.2 lac)
The government puts the interest of 1.2 lac candidates aside to address 'concerns' of 12,000
When the supreme court decided to strike down OBC reservation, the government has withdrawn these 12,000 seats
In case the May 8 judgement does not allow OBC reservations, i am 100% sure that the government is not going to use this to add more general quota or SC/ST quota students to these institutes.
If the supreme court clearance takes time, the government will ask the institutes to freeze any capacity expansion

Thus the bottomline is, the government will let capacity go un-utilized or wasted but will ensure that the general public does not benefit. That's why they are probably called politicians ...!

May 8 is likely to be one of the saddest days for India as a nation ....

With respect to reservation - can the government reveal the number of OBC candidates according to their records who have been selected in the general quota for these 1.2 lac seats. Can the government also give a breakup of the location from which these OBC candidates hail from - rural/urban (ain't that simple - look at their hometown and 'rural' can be town/villages less than 50,000 population). Also, can the government provide stats of the number of rural and urban candidates from NE India? These are the more relevant categories that needs upliftment., not their vote banks ....

lets celebrate 23rd April

2007-04-23T22:10:00.000+05:30

and we should celebrate 23rd April for years to come, for 2 great events occured today that is likely to shape India's future.

India-launched PSLV put a Italian satellite in orbit today and that signals the start of space business for India. The opportunity for product development companies related to spacecraft launch will blossom and India and China are likely to be atleast 50% cheaper than either of US, Russia and EU to launch a satellite. Now we need to cross the next hurdle - GSLV. That will change the entire equation. I also thought it was regreshing that we had an Italian satellite launched thus proving 2 things - we are nearly done with pseudo-secularism atleast in the field of technology and launching a EU satellite is likely to trigger a few sleepless nights out there. it is unlikely we will remain a choice for cost reasons only

The sound that you heard at work today morning was the SC's rap on the Govt's knuckles. Loud and clear was the message of the SC. No reservation till policy is created based on demographic data. Is there any pro-reservation loyalist who can argue against what the court said today? Instead they will cry themselves hoarse on the powers of legislature (occupied by some 'emminent' people as in charge-sheeters etc) and how the SC was violating. There won't be a single person who will argue against the merits of the ruling itself.

I have just one query for pro-reservation guys: Aren't you encouraging communities to remain backward to avail of the benefits of reservation. Please show me one example of how backward-ness of communities was reduced and leading to hugher socio-economic index for communities. If we have examples like that, is there a benchmark that would satisfy the government that a community no longer remains backward and what would that benchmark be? Per se, i am not against reservations for SC and ST but i think none outside these deserve any reservation.

Dude., learn something .. BCCI will never change!

2007-04-20T23:31:00.000+05:30

Man, the rant in this blog is going to hit the roof. BCCI selected teams for Bangladesh Tour. I am very sad that BCCI is such a backward looking organization that there is virtually no hope for Indian cricket sans a few brilliant player. The process, logic and methodology of player selection is so crude that it makes me wonder how at all, are we able to even etch a win outside India

After the World cup debacle, senior players were likely to be axed to assure the Indian fans. Why? Indian fans are the most obnoxious, lazy and illogical fan in cricket. Even when their team has no chance (say against Australia), they want their team to score 600 runs, bowl australia out for 25 runs.

Anywayz, BCCI president wanted 'youth' and what he and we got is nothing close to youth? Some critical examination of the 2 squads.

ODI squad: Gautam Gambhir, Robin Uthappa, Virender Sehwag, Rahul Dravid (capt), Yuvraj Singh, Mahendra Singh Dhoni (wk), Dinesh Karthik, Manoj Tiwary, Dinesh Mongia, Piyush Chawla, Sreesanth, Munaf Patel, Zaheer Khan, RP Singh.

What is Uthappa doing in the squad? His scores in ODI cricket are 86, 12, 0, 70, 28, DNB, 7, 52, 9, 3, 18. The ones underlined are the WI WC 2007 scores. The 5 scores before that happened in the 2007 home series against WI and SL. If you analyze, he made to the WC side on the back of the 70 and has done nothing (as in rested on his laurels). What is he doing in the squad?
Sehwag - Needed captain's reco for WC 2007 Squad. Needed one more to make it to the Ban tour. Now, let us say he scores 3 centuries in ODIs, what do you do? include him in the test squad? I think Sehwag is the right player on the wrong team. more later.
Gautam Gambhir - What is he doing in the squad. Do you know who he is? Lemme help. He is the guy who lost out to Uthappa on the WC ticket. He had nearly booked it till his form failed him in the home series in WI. He has never played ODI outside the sub-continent. Outside India, he averages 20.5 in 8 games with 1 fifty. If say he hits a century, are you going to take him to England?
Dinesh Mongia - So he is youth. got it! You want to know something. Between 2003 WC and 2007 WC, mongia played 12 games and he was recently tried and 'discarded' (as only BCCI can do!) after the SA tour. What is he going to do? You know how 'young' he is? 30 yrs.
RP Singh - Why was he not there in the squad to the WC? How come the selectors thought of him suddenly.

Correct Decisions - Dravid, Dinesh Karthik, Yuvraj Singh, Sreesanth, Munaf, Zaheer, Dhoni
Debuts: Piyush Chawla, Manoj Tiwary
Wrong Decisions: Sehwag, Gambhir, Mongia
Doubtful: RP Singh
'Replacements': Gambhir by Tendulkar/Ganguly. Sehwag & Mongia by 2 middle-order batsmen (What happened to Ambati Rayadu?)

Test squad: Wasim Jaffer, Dinesh Karthik, Rahul Dravid (capt), VVS Laxman, Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, Yuvraj Singh, Mahendra Singh Dhoni (wk), Anil Kumble, Sreesanth, Zaheer Khan, VRV Singh, Ramesh Powar, Rajesh Pawar, Munaf Patel.

The test squad is even funnier:

Wassim Jaffer and Karthik as openers? What happened to Gambhir? What will happen to the England tour in July? If one of these openers hits a century, will you take them to England? Sehwag was the best opener we had on this side of 2000 and we dumped him for ODIs? Why? He had done consistenly well in test cricket (well .. atleast bradmansque in 1st innings!) and has lost form in ODI. So what do the selectors do? dump him for Test and take him for ODI. It happens only in India
What both Sourav and Yuvraj on the team? There is place only for one. You could have avoided sourav here. 'rested' for tests and picked for 'ODIs'
What is VRV singh doing in test squad? why the distribution of caps across tests and odis between the 2 singhs? what good is it going to do for either of them, except to sulk around the dressing room? Whichever of these can expliot seaming pitches will make it to England., right? But you dont get those wickets in Bangladesh, do you?
Ramesh Powar for test cricket. BCCI has sent a strong sign that they will take only kumble for england test tour. Powar, we enjoyed your stay in Bangladesh. thank you very much

Correct: Dravid, Karthik, Dhoni, VVS, Sachin, Yuvraj, Kumble, Sreesanth, Zaheer

Debut: Rajesh Pawar
Wrong Decisions: Gambhir, Ramesh Powar, Ganguly
Replacements: Sehwag for Gambhir, Piyush or powar stays or whosoever - it doesn't matter!, Ganguly - extra opener (gambhir himself) or bowler (piyush/powar) or Kaif/new middle order guy.

Thus we see that BCCI has given a grand total of 3 new caps, has 6 retreads and retained 19 of the previous squad for the tour. This after they promised 'youth'. Neither did they deliver on youth nor did they put together a good team to take to England come july and like every other time, the players have to catch up for the mistakes of the board...

BCCI - The Star Wars Empire

2007-04-08T19:03:00.000+05:30

Senator Amidala to Senator Bail Organa:"So this is how liberty dies - with thunderous applause"

- Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith

And this is how BCCI responds to crisis. With hypocratic self-serving short-sighted populist measures! Recap: Each player cannot endorse more than 3 products. No product can be endorsed by more than 2 players. So where does that leave the endorsement world? The shortest and the simplest answer is that it forces a lot of companies to enter into negotiations with the BCCI. So, we will see an official team TV, tape recorder, milk, cola, socks, shoes, trousers, shirt, t-shirt, car, bike, TV channel and the list is endless. The players will become puppets in the hands of their employers - BCCI and BCCI would reap huge rewards on the name of these players - spoils that will shared by the autocratic regional sarpanches. And since the player has to get the approval of the BCCI for their contract, the conclusion would be that we are in for a lot of court cases when the corrupt in BCCI block player endorsements that don't suit their interests. The rule of players not appearing for events upto 20 days prior to tournaments is equally beneficiary for BCCI - they would be available to promote BCCI sponsors.

I watched an interview of Ajay Jadeja in NDTV where he said that the players are the only people ever held accountable and no beauracrat has ever been held responsible in the history of cricket. I am not against a showcause notice sent against Sachin Tendulkar as long as the stupid VP was also issued one. But the shameless people who run BCCI have concluded that office-bearers should not give interviews. No show-cause notice. I am reasonably confident that the contributions of Sachin Tendulkar to Indian Cricket is much more than the beaurocrat VP. For all potential Indian cricketers, please take note - even Sachin Tendulkar comes second in priority to BCCI's office bearers. Times might have changed, but BCCI attitude does not. It always insults and backstabs its star performers - ask Sachin now, ask Kapil in 1984/85, ask Gundappa in 1970s.

I have no love for Greg Chappell and to see our BCCI fall at his feet is perplexing. The guy is the opposite of professionalism. If you notice, the only way he operates is through the media - silent leaks, SMS-es, e-mails. I am dumbfounded that BCCI did not censure Greg Chappell for the SMS or the NDTV leaks but sent a showcause notice to Sachin Tendulkar. Sorry to say this - 60 years after Independence, the color of the skin does continue to have an impact.

I have a doubt. Is BCCI still stuck in the age of the cold war era? Why is media exposure curtailed for all players? Maybe BCCI wants to continue the culture of media leaks as showcased by NDTV which leaked information from a source close to Chappell. Instead, please do the opposite - all cricketers are open to the media as long as it is non-exclusive and the player receives no money or benefits for talking to the media.

The world cup debacle was the right time for BCCI to interospect about its short-comings. For all those who make their money or spend time in criticizing the Indian players (including you - 'honorable' Greg Chappell) please remember that we went with the team because there were no other options. Chappell favorites like Suresh Raina or Mohammad Kaif don't have a strong case - atleast no stronger than Virender Sehwag. BCCI has taken no steps to address this issue.

At the very least, hats-off to BCCI for turning a bad situation into an opportunity for generating profits. None in the world can milk the cow as much as BCCI does. However, BCCI doesn't realize that the reason for their existence is to promote cricket, not gather cash. The game of cricket, in India is poorer for the autocratic decisions of the board.

Greg's foot in the mouth syndrome

2007-04-02T23:31:00.000+05:30

"The pieces of the jigsaw puzzle have fallen into place in the last few weeks. There is a good balance, good experience and youth in the squad, and a good variety in bowling and batting. That will give us a wide range of options no matter what the condition and no matter what the opposition."

"Even in the last selection meeting, I fought for youth. The senior players fought against it and the chairman went with them out of fear of media, if youth did not perform,"

If these statements were made by the same person before and after the defeat. What does that mean? Greg Chappell is a very respected cricketer and captain and i have all the respect for him as India's coach.

However his now geurilla warfare by using parts of the media to quote him and the rest to speculate, throwing the team and BCCI into a dizzy is becoming a 'signature statement'. I am not going to call for his dismissal, thats for the wise men to decide. But i think Gregg Chappell should be censured and a fine should be levied for these irresponsible statements.

On a deeper note, why can't the BCCI give the Coach, Captain and the Chairman of Selectors complete freedom to air their views. Lack of transparency within BCCI is akin to dark ages in this era of information ...

dunno when BCCI is going to change.

I drafted a long blog on the performance, but after i visited my batchmate's blog - i recommend you read the article (Click here).

And luck deserts ....

2007-03-29T02:41:00.000+05:30

And lady luck deserted Sri Lanka when a thick edge past the first slip resulted in a boundary. They collapsed from 205/5 to 207/9 when Malinga took 4 wickets off 4 balls. The irony was even pronounced when the edge was off Malinga's bowling - Sri Lanka's nearly hero.

Two things could have swung the match for Sri Lanka:

1. Sri Lanka had an equally spectacular collapse when they batted. They collapsed from 206/5 to 209 all out with 5 balls remaining. 4 runs and 5 wickets loses you matches, not win them.

2. The boundary would have been stopped if only there was a second slip

Overall a great match. I wonder who will walk with the Man of the Match Award. "The March Beauty" Malinga or "The Steady" Jacques Kallis. I think it would be great if the award is shared. Both deserve it.

Thriller - SL v/s SA

2007-03-29T02:31:00.001+05:30

What a game it is turning out to be? Sri Lanka collapsed from 207/6 to 209 all out. The same is happening with Malinga taking 4 wickets in 4 balls. SA needs 3 to win and SL needs one wicket. Who will win. Stay tune

Of Peyton Manning and Cricket!

2007-03-27T00:04:00.000+05:30

I love Peyton Manning as much as most Indians love their cricketers at this moment. In short, not much

But his show at the Saturday Night Live, where he was completely open to ridiculing himself was pretty good. Watch it as he pokes fun at himself and at football as well (his joke on his mom would have drawn widespread contempt India in politically correct India, but something tells me that she gave her blessings to him on this one!)

Oh, talking of cricket, i absolutely loved this piece from Mukul Kesavan from Cricinfo. His opening statement is very provocative:
The subcontinental cricket fan is a lazy, pampered know-nothing who thinks he owns the cricket teams that he supports

Read the rest and let me know if you agree.

And the worst thing is the overanalysis from the news channels. i flipped through NDTV, Headlines Today, CNN-IBN, Times-Now, Star News (Hindi), Zee News (Hindi) between 2230 and 2300 and all the channels were mouning India's exit from the world cup. Come on, gimme a break - we lost and life goes on. I want to pray God that we need to show these media people how stressful it is to be in the limelight for every moment of a waking day. Please grant this wish alone.

and please, spare me of linking money, advertisments and cricketers. Do you think that our cricketers are dumb enough not to realise that there is more money in sponsorship than match fees and that sponsorship is directly dependent on the number of wins and big sixes on the cricket ground. Talk of the sterotype Indian cricket fan!

I watched BBC as they showed an clipping of the streets of Dhaka after Bangladesh qualified for the Super-8. Only a heartless person wouldn't have felt happy for the B'deshi guys.

The real reason for loss to Bangladesh

2007-03-25T20:13:00.000+05:30

" .... these minnows have some guts. They have always created upsets and it's foolish for the big teams to overlook them as there might be some surprises ...."

I wrote this without any idea that the world cup upset would be India and Pakistan. I know, India still has a chance but i am not for a backdoor entry. We lost to Sri Lanka and Bangladesh and still entering Super-8 would be anything but shameful.

Lets revert back to the real reason for the loss to Bangladesh. What a lot of folks forget is that India won the toss. What do you do when you win a toss on a overcast day? You bowl. Right? Not so with India for whom the lack of practice from the West Indies match still fresh in their minds. Someone in the management decided that Bangladesh was not a major threat and that the batsmen should get some match practice. If anyone followed Bangladesh recently, they won a couple of big matches - all chasing. If anyone in Indian cricket board (is there someone like a scout who follows opponents and reports to team management on the strengths and weaknesses of opposite side players) paid attention to this, they would have ensured that we won this match before worrying about match practice (Match#2: Bermuda would have been the ideal game for the same)

So, i would like the team management to volunteer the information on the person/committee (seriously! do you think Indian cricket works without committees) who made the decision to bat against Bangladesh. They need to explain their reasoning to the nation and the board and only if we discover something new or a better reasoning, we should continue with them. Lets not punish the entire team for the fault of a few.

100th Post!

2007-03-24T02:37:00.000+05:30

Yipee., i finally made it to 100th post. I was not sure if i could make it to here. Some big time back-slapping. Thank you, Thank you.

Between, some sweet news mixed with some sad ones. On the bright side, in the real and the important world, the 8 accussed of killing Manjunath have been found guilty. Let the verdict in the cases of Priyadarshini Mattoo, Manjunath, Jessica Lall be a reminder to all the criminals that they can buy time but these days, there is no escape from the grip of the Judiciary. Long live Indian judiciary

This is also the week when Cricket lost Bob Woolmer. Frankly, my interest in the Cricket World Cup diminished as soon as i heard the news of his death last week. His loss happened in the real world while India's loss to Bangladesh did not. Please don't insult the Bangladesh cricket team by stating that the Indians played poor, they did not - the Bangladeshi youngsters played out of their skins. They knew not of fear and took the fight to the surprised and startled Indians. As i write now, India has lost to Sri Lanka as well. Once again, only a blind man who hasn't seen the matches would tell that India lost these games, when in reality, it is the superior play of India's opponents that won them the game.

I hope the Indian cricket fans get some maturity and avoid incidents like these.

Oh! Between did someone read my post on the minnows - so prophetic, i know - i am a genius. thank you very much.

Pause in cricketing debates ...

2007-03-16T23:28:00.000+05:30

A loss in real world always hurts and to lose a young cricketer right during the biggest tournament is devastating.

Prayers to the family of Manjural Islam - the youngest test cricketer to pass away. I wish this is one record none break.

Of Minnows., seriously

2007-03-15T22:57:00.000+05:30

I hope everyone is enjoying the Cricket World Cup through now. I liked the Pakistan-West Indies game and i think that this WC will turn out to be a good one as there are a lot of serious games ahead of us. Yeah! just after we are done with the minnows!

Not so fast., these minnows have some guts. They have always created upsets and it's foolish for the big teams to overlook them as there might be some surprises. Lets recap:

1975: None
1979: Sri Lanka defeats India
1983: Zimbabwe defeats Australia
1987: None
1992: Zimbabwe defeats England
1996: Kenya defeats West Indies
1999: Bangladesh defeats Pakistan
2003: Kenya defeats Sri Lanka as well as Zimbabwe; Canada defeats Bangladesh

Dravid has supported minnow participation and so have many a captains over the last few years made at least a cursory experience-will-benefit-them remark! However it is sad to note that the cricket administration has done nothing or near-nothing about getting the associate teams into the main fold. Kenya is no closer to the dream of being a full fledged cricketing nation while we have lost Zimbabwe from the test playing fratenity (or nearly!) and the not so great cricket administration sits in meeting across the world's most expensive hotels to just discuss and very little.

Here's my 2 cent plan for the next 8 years (thru 2015):

All test playing nations to modify their policy that each of their domestic team (or atleast in the Elite division) will have atleast one player from the associate nations and a maximum of 3
Each of the associate members can have a maximum of 2 international cricketers on the team for the world cup subject to the fact that they should play atleast 2 years in the associate nation's domestic cricket
Of the 10 test playing nations, the big-8 (leave BAN & ZIM) will send their top domestic team (or 'A' team) on a tour to atleast one associate nation for 5 ODI series (or 3 tests/ 3 ODIs)
The big-8 will send their national team to tour atleast 1 associate nation for a 5-ODI series, once every 4 years. ICC to plan that it is staggered that there is one tourney every year

I guess my 2 cents above is not too expensive to implement or too radical that the whole cricketing world will feel bad about. So time to stop uttering the sympathy line and time for action.

And that's what i call as a good fight ...

2007-03-13T19:08:00.000+05:30

Sunil Gavaskar is a legend in world cricket. He is a stickler to his priniciples and he hardly backs down from a good fight. Was he not the same batsman who protested the ODI WC with an unbelievable 36* off a zillion balls in 1975. For crying out loud, he scored 700 runs in his debut test series against the West Indies attack and remained as one of the few batsmen that looked the fearsome four in their eyes during the west indies dream run in the 70s and 80s. He heads atleast a few powerful committees in the ICC today and is an influential figure across the globe. After his conquests on the field, war of words would seem like kids play to him.

Why his bio? I admire him more today than ever for standing up to the Aussies and dishing them the same stuff that the Aussies strutted for way too long. It started with his article in India Today where he stated that the Aussies were not 'popular winners' and they left a lot to be desired when it came to on-field etiquettes.

Like a true Aussie, Ricky Ponting did not back-off from a good fight and took a shot at Sunny's career and India's recent test record. He sounded a lot like Leo. F. Drummond from 'The Rainmaker'. In fact Ponting's retort can be equated to the slip in class of the hon. Drummond from the novel.

The Aussies do not take it well when it is dished to them. Did they not incessently complaint when Sourav Ganguly payed back in kind during the 2001 test series? Weren't the Aussies who pushed India's federal minister and Cricket board head - Sharad Pawar off the podium after the recent Championship trophy. Was it not Michael Slater who went after Venkataraghavan like a madman for not allowing a catch in a test match, when replays showed repeatedly that Slater did not make the catch. Ricky, the list is endless.

The best thing in the whole incident is that Sunny has not backed off - an uncommon trait for an Indian. He responded back to Ricky & the Aussies team and hinted to them that the famed WI team of the 70s and 80s did not require classless behavior on the field to win when Aussies incessently indulge in sledging. Because Ricky could not keep off from picking a fight, Sunny - rightly so - did even bring the sad David Hookes incident as an example of Aussie behavior. If Hookes incident does not put senses in Ponting's mind, i don't know what will.

Ricky, Gavaskar is a legend of the sport - listen to what he says. If you disagree, keep it private. As a cricketer, Gavaskar has earned the right to voice his opinion. You are not going to win media battles with him. Focus on the upcoming tournament.

Cricket World Cup - Some Random Thoughts

2007-03-13T01:41:00.000+05:30

What is common between Mohinder Amarnath, Ajay Jadeja and Navjot Singh Sidhu.

They were the 3 debutants that won their first ODI cap in World Cup Matches. In fact can you believe that our World Cup team had such great players like

Sunil Valson (who features as an answer to a great trivia question - Name the only player in the 1983 Cricket squad who never played in the World Cup event / never got an international match in his career)
Subroto Banerjee: 2 Matches in WC'92 & 6 ODI matches in his illustrious career
Salil Ankola: Remembered forever for dropping Arjuna Ranatunga in the Ind-SL group match at Feroz Shah Kotla - his only WC match. He played a grand total of 20 ODIs and 1 test match. Now better known for his roles in Indian movies and television
Aashish Kapoor: My childhood or whatever was left of it was spoilt when i witnessed a portly and slow Aashish Kapoor chasing the ball to the third man fence in the doomed Ind-SL Semifinal WC'96. Or was bowling the rank bad deliveries that the Sri Lankans cherised in the match or his golden duck during the batting collapse.
Amay Khurasiya: Paid rich tributes to his cricketing idol - Sunil Valson, when he did not feature in a single '99 WC match inspite of being in the team.
Nikhil Chopra: Another 'star' performer (not in studio!) of '99 WC squad. Failed to appear in any of the matches (Did we not play Kenya?)
Parthiv Patel: A decent keeper more reputed (or ill-reputed) for appealing for LBW decisions on straight drives (no, i am kidding - but he appealed for everything else!). However he made Sunil Valson proud - made squad of 2003 WC but did not see the cricket field
Ajit Agarkar: Of all the people on the list, this is the biggest surprise. Ajit Agarkar made it to the 2003 WC squad but did not play a single match (No Kenya? No Namibia? No Holland?)

Why did i put out the list? To prove 2 things:

(1): In no world cup did we have contributions from the full squad. In most of the world cups, we had players who did not play a single game or were the season flavors who got gettisoned after the World Cup (as listed above)

(2)It takes only 4-5 decent performances to win a cricket match and not all 11; forget all 15.

Some emperical evidence from last world Cup:

Holland: Sachin - 50+; Mongia - 40+; Srinath & Kumble 4-for
Australia: Lets forget this one. Mulligan
Zimbabwe: Sachin: 50+; Dravid: 40+; Ganguly (yes!) - 3-for; Srinath, Zaheer & Bhajji - 2 for: This game was a real team effort
Namibia: Tendulkar & Ganguly - 100+; Yuvraj: 4-for; Zaheer, Bhajji & Mongia - 2 for
England: Tendulkar & Dravid - 50+; Kaif - 40+; Nehra: 6-for; Srinath: 2-for; Dravid- 3 catches; Sehwag - 3 catches (including a brilliant one of the dangerous Andrew Flintoff)
Pakistan: Zaheer & Nehra - 2 for; Sachin & Yuvraj - 50+; Dravid - 40+
Kenya (Super 6): Srinath & Bhajji - 2 for; Ganguly - 100+; Yuvraj - 50+
Sri Lanka (Super 6): Sachin & Sehwag - 50+; Ganguly - 40+; Srinath & Nehra - 4 for; Zaheer - 2 for
New Zealand (Super 6): Zaheer - 4 for; Bhajji - 2 for; Kaif & Dravid - 50+
Kenya (Semi-Finals): Sachin-50+; Ganguly-100+; Zaheer - 3 for; Sachin & Nehra - 2 for
Australia (Final): Mulligan. Did i already not have one? Forget it. This was a rank bad match for most involved - so lets remove it as well

In Summary: Sachin (7/9); Zaheer (6/9); Ganguly (5/9); Srinath (5/9); Dravid (4/9); Nehra (4/9); Bhajji (4/9); Yuvraj (3/9); Kaif (2/9); Sehwag (2/9); Mongia (2/9); Kumle (1/2)

So as you notice above - we had significant contributions from not more than 7 players in match (England) and if we remove catches - 6 (Zim & Namibia matches). This debunks the theory that we need all 11 players to fire on any given day. Yes! in a match like the finals - under normal circumstances, you need a core that fires and others contribute as opportunities presents itself.

In summary -

I wish that either of Sachin or Dravid be the backbone of the scoring for the indian team and fire consistently
I wish for 5+ good performances (total estimated: 11 = 3 (round) + 6 (Super 8)+ SF + F)from the following: Ganguly, Sachin/Dravid, Zaheer, Ajit Agarkar
I wish for 5 good performances from: Yuvraj, Dhoni, Sehwag, Bhajji,
I wish for 3-4 good performances from: Uthappa, Pathan, Sreesanth, Munaf
Atleast 2 good performances from: Dinesh Karthik, Kumble

Thus - i think if the team plays at it best and gets beaten by a better team (ala WC'03) and not panic (ala WC'96) - i would be smiling at the end of the WC campaign - WC in hand or not!

Why me?

2007-03-05T23:28:00.001+05:30

In the movie Pirates of the Caribbean, Captain Jack Sparrow cusses when towards the end and on the gallows - the soldier reads out "Jack Sparrow ...". He nods in disbelief as to how they could address his incorrectly and offers a correct way of addressal as "Captain Jack Sparrow"

I was reminded of this scene when i was sent an email from an old colleague of mine listing me as a 'Gems of Sairam' in the college's website. The first thought that struck me was - how can misspell my name as CH.V.Kalyan when it is Ch.V.Kalyan. Yes! I am very sensitive about the caps as, to me they are 2 different things. I am planning to write to the principal and see if he can correct it.

Yet another feather in the queer mind of mine!

HSC Exams

2007-03-03T01:22:00.000+05:30

I wanted to write a million blogs in the last 45 days and my performance is akin to the promises made by a election fighting politician - all promise, no delivery!

One of the main issues that i wanted to blog recently was the HSC Exams - commonly known as XII Exams started a couple of days back. I can only imagine the kind of pressure that one goes through for these exams. For not the first time in their lives, the kids are gonna be preached to put in their maximum efforts for a 'rosy and great future' - except that 'that' future never arrives. Welcome guys, to the rat race!

Sankaranthi Trip to Vijayawada - Day 1

2007-01-29T22:20:00.000+05:30

For the Sankranthi holidays, the entire family spent a few days in Vijayawada - the first two days spent in a blur going to various pilgrimage sites and the next two recuperating from these journeys. On the first day it was a trip to Mopidevi temple. Unlike the way the name suggests, the temple is dedicated to Lord Shiva & the serpent king. The temple takes the name of the village.

Next on the radar was a journey to a village called hamasaladeevi - i hope i spelled it right. The village is famous only for 2 things - an old but vibrant temple and that Krishna river joins the Bay of Bengal outside the village.

This is the snap taken on the way from the village to the beach front.

Since we were short of time, we did not take a boat ride from a marked spot to the joining point and instead settled on visiting the beach. The following snap is the long range photo of the spot where River Krishna meets Bay of Bengal

The building in the picture has been built by the Andhra Pradesh government as vantage points to be used by the tourists. However within the 20 days of its inauguration by none less than the governor of Andhra Pradesh, there was none in these guest houses and vandals had already defiled the place.

The following snaps are those of my family. From L to R, my sister-in-law's dad, Dad, Mom, Anna and Vodhina.

You can see me in between Anna & Dad

After the visit to the beach, it was time to go to Machilipatnam to visit my aunt - father's sister where i took a well deserved siesta for all the exertions of the previous few hours. Why not sleep in the cab? The cab had a DVD player and we saw Shankardada MBBS (a remake of the Hindi Superhit Munnabhai MBBS) and Nuvvostanante Nenoddantana (Translation: If you want to come, I won't say NO!). While it could be considered effective utilization of time to watch movies during the journey, it was not enjoyable as we missed on the jokes and general time-pass conversations. For the next day trip, i made up mind not to play DVDs during the journey.

Cricketing Idiosynchrocies ....

2007-01-23T16:50:00.000+05:30

News out now shows the ugly underbelly of the business side of Cricket.

Doordarshan which was out-bid by a long way will get a 'clean feed' after it protested against receiving 'dirty feed'.
Nimbus will give the 'clean feed' with a time-lag of SEVEN minutes. Yes! you read it right., SEVEN minutes. What a joke! That's equivalent of 2 full overs lag.
BCCI is the worst of the culprits as it created the crisis in the first place by encashing on cricket's popularity and punishing the viewing public. What a 'classless' organization. In the last year, we have had cricket shown on DD Sports, Sahara ONE, Set Max and NEO Sports. Why is that BCCI has displayed very little acumen in balancing short term and long term interests of the game. In professional sports across the globe (Football, Basketball, Baseball, American Football), contracts are stable and drawn to established players and not to the rookie-who-outbid-everyone. Case in point is Australia, where the feed has always from Nine Sports and they have signed with ESPN-Star through 2011.
Prasar Barathi - Doordarshan's master are calling Cricket matches as events of "National Interest". How shameful that the country with rich culture has to claim national interest on a sports event. While not willing to shell the going price for cricket matches, they have always taken the negative approach of arm twisting the production companies and forcing them into sharing the feed.
Indian Government is looking to bring an ordinance / bill that makes it mandatory for all cricket matches involving India to be telecast on Doordarshan. There is nothing more ridiculous that the government trying to get involved in deciding which sports events should be showed on national television or not. This is the same government that has procastinated from passing the Whistleblowers Protection Bill and Women's Reservation Bill but has time to come up with ordinances and bills for cricket events. Rest assured, our future generations will laugh at our misplaced priorities.

The overall losers are the viewing public who are gonna be delayed to the extent of seven minutes on television. What's comical is that the Radio feed is going to be live and so is the data on the internet. If you plan to mute the television and hear commentary from the radio, you might re-think the strategy for these 4 matches!

Relook at Divisional Playoff predictions and looking for conference games

2007-01-18T21:41:00.000+05:30

Relook at what i wrote last time around!

Saints v/ Eagles: The most likely match to figure an upset. Do i trust Jim Johnson's blitzes or Payton's play-calling. Tough to decide. I think the key matchup is Brian Westbrook against the Saints defense? I think the playoff experience will help the Eagles and they might just edge out the saints. Prediction - Eagles

Wrong. There is too much karma for the Saints, not to speak of Brees, McAllister and Bush. I still think that the Eagles could have won if McNabb was around. But Eagles have had a good season.

Seahawks V/ Bears: Lovie, do you know that a football game has been previously won without a single pass attempt. Remember that to win this game. If bad-Rex appears, only a cards-like performance will save Bears. I am suspicious of that and think the Bears are gonna thump the Hawks - once more.

While the Bears did win, they did not thump the Seahawks but squeaked by,

Prediction - Bears Baltimore Colts V/ Cleavland Ravens: You read it right. These teams were based out of different cities in their original avatar (Ravens are the original Cleveland Browns!). Key matchup would be Peyton's ability to generate passing yards against a top pass-rush team. I am not too sure that McNair should be used more than a game manager to win the game. If Peyton lights it up in the first half, the ravens can say good-byes and clean locker room at half-time as i am not sure that the Ravens offense can put up 30 points. Prediction: Ravens (unless Manning pretends that these are the Denver Broncos!)

McNair was no more than a game manager but the running game stunk and i can't believe it is all the colts defense. One more strike

Patriots V/ Chargers: While i am less sure of the result of this game - i am sure of one thing: BB will use the previous away playoff 51-10 loss to motivate his team, especially my fav - Rodney Harrison. Did i mention this game was played in 1963! Jokes apart, i am unable to make up my mind on this one. I love LT (i started following him initially because of the uniqueness of his name. In Madden 2006, i traded Correy Dillon, Faulk and a first round pick for LT!), wish MS can win a play-off game (5-12 post-season record in comparison to BB's 12-2!) and adhore their powder blue game uniforms (used once/twice a season!). But my favorite team is the NE Patriots! Prediction: Depends on NE Defense front 7 to stop LT. Still need a team? Depends on ability of NE offensive line to innovate and keep Brady upright for an entire match. Still need a team? Man, my mind says the Chargers while i still wanna go with the Patriots.

The Pats won! The Pats won! Infact, i saw the game today on ESPN and cannot believe how stupid the chargers were. If the Chargers were intent on winning the game, they would have - instead, they wanted to annhilate the opposition and made too many mistakes.

So, for this week's matches:

Colts V/s Patriots: Seriously, if Peyton cannot win this one - the albatross around his next will be secured as the Dan Marino of this generation. Even worse, he would be labelled the choke-master of all times. I dont think the colts defense is legit but i think they will do enough to stop the pats this week.
Prediction: Colts (though i cannot discount the Pats if Belichick has some magic potion for his team)

Saints V/s Bears: I wish the Saints can win this one but their only chance is if Bad Rex appears. Else, it is going to be the Bears representing the NFC in Superbowl.
Prediction: Bears

Superbowl match: Bears V/s Colts

Divisional Round Predictions

2007-01-10T23:32:00.000+05:30

Sankranthi holidays is to be spent in Vijayawada - my native town. With no live telecast in ESPN India of any of the four matches, suspect internet connectivity and to avoid raised eyebrows in my family, i would not have the opportunity to blog or follow the scores live.

However, i am making a few predictions:

Saints v/ Eagles: The most likely match to figure an upset. Do i trust Jim Johnson's blitzes or Payton's play-calling. Tough to decide. I think the key matchup is Brian Westbrook against the Saints defense? I think the playoff experience will help the Eagles and they might just edge out the saints.
Prediction - Eagles

Seahawks V/ Bears: Lovie, do you know that a football game has been previously won without a single pass attempt. Remember that to win this game. If bad-Rex appears, only a cards-like performance will save Bears. I am suspicious of that and think the Bears are gonna thump the Hawks - once more.
Prediction - Bears

Baltimore Colts V/ Cleavland Ravens: You read it right. These teams were based out of different cities in their original avatar (Ravens are the original Cleveland Browns!). Key matchup would be Peyton's ability to generate passing yards against a top pass-rush team. I am not too sure that McNair should be used more than a game manager to win the game. If Peyton lights it up in the first half, the ravens can say good-byes and clean locker room at half-time as i am not sure that the Ravens offense can put up 30 points.
Prediction: Ravens (unless Manning pretends that these are the Denver Broncos!)

Patriots V/ Chargers: While i am less sure of the result of this game - i am sure of one thing: BB will use the previous away playoff 51-10 loss to motivate his team, especially my fav - Rodney Harrison. Did i mention this game was played in 1963!
Jokes apart, i am unable to make up my mind on this one. I love LT (i started following him initially because of the uniqueness of his name. In Madden 2006, i traded Correy Dillon, Faulk and a first round pick for LT!), wish MS can win a play-off game (5-12 post-season record in comparison to BB's 12-2!) and adhore their powder blue game uniforms (used once/twice a season!). But my favorite team is the NE Patriots!
Prediction: Depends on NE Defense front 7 to stop LT. Still need a team? Depends on ability of NE offensive line to innovate and keep Brady upright for an entire match. Still need a team? Man, my mind says the Chargers while i still wanna go with the Patriots.

PS: I am definitely planning on a follow-up blog note to see how stupid i have been made to look with my predictions!

NE Pats V/s NY Jets - Wild Card Playoff Game

2007-01-08T02:01:00.000+05:30

Musings from the NE Pats - NY Jets game:

What did we realize in the DAL-SEA game? Romo is not the second coming of Brady circa 2001. The ghosts of ‘iron leg’ Drew Dledsoe are exhorted forever …
Did i read right in NFL gamecenter - the Pats went “NO HUDDLE” for the second play of the game?
I hope mangini has some master plan as it looks like the “Empire Strikes back” is the show for the afternoon. Disclaimer: They just played ‘Star Wars: A New Hope’ on TV!
And the Jets go "no huddle" .. looks like the defenses might have a long day ... BTW, has there been any game with a significant "no huddle" strategy adopted
across both teams
thats probably the difference between the jets and the pats. Both went "no huddle" - Pats went 4/6 for 50 yds on passing; 4 and 15 yds on the ground with a TD to boot. The jets had a sack, a scramble and an incomplete. but what scares me is, mangini is gonna put together a great team within a couple of seasons and AFC East might turn out like a AFC West (strong teams!)
Oh no! Not the 15 yd penalties again!!!
Great! Ramsey is in! Atleast Chad knew which direction to throw to ...
Purds/93: In this universe, everything that Tom Brady does is right and everything that Peyton does is wrong. I thought you figured that out by now!
In my books, Mangini missed a trick ... I dont think punting from your opponent's 36 yd line will win you games in playoffs. maybe i am wrong, but he did not take a right decision
105/Purds: I said it in humor., since mine is bad - maybe you did not see it. BTW, i am upset that the Pats get a lot of 15 yd penalties but i also think that they are naive to draw attention from the ref (this is the 8th or 9th game where i have noticed a 15 yd penalty and the pats have not been able to adjust to it)
Was that a QB sneak from TB on 3 & 1? Since the Pats use it a lot, why are the opponents falling for it, for so long?
another 3&7 ... will the pats pass defense raise upto the situation?
The Pats are grinding the clock ... current drive started with 7:05 in second quarter and we are already down to 2 min warning .. i guess they will take another minute off the clock
The Pats take 6:54 off the clock for a 15 play drive killing any chances of Jets reply to the Pats score (unless there is a kickoff TD return!)
NE 12-Brady 10th straight playoff game with a TD pass, tying Ken Stabler & Joe Montana for 3rd longest streak in NFL history (Favre 16 and Marino 12). Some of
the stats that don't add much value to any measure
There we go again ... another 15 yd penalty... as much as the pats fans can moan that they are BS calls., the fact that the pats players are being careless means that they are not learning anything ...
Is Asante Samuel in the game? I dont see him on the stats sheet.
C.Pennington to NYJ 46 for -6 yards. Wouldn’t that be a sack?
Wilfork chased down by Mangold .. man, that is two huge people rolling down the field ...
Is there anyone here who agrees with the Jets strategy of going for FGs rather than taking chances when in the redzone? I didnt like the last one and i didnt like this one as well.
Chad Jackson sighting in the game ... alas, only an incomplete
Pennington: 20/31 for 256 & 1 TD; Brady: 20/31 for 202 & 1 TD; pretty remarkable!
How did Asante NOT get picked for Pro-bowl? Qn2: Will NE pats give Asante a huge contract or will they leave him to go as a free-agent?
320/James: Couldn't have said it better. Pats win because they have been before and they have a good running game. The Jets will be here (if they dont disgress in mangini's sophomore year!) with a good running game. Maybe they should move up the draft and grab AP
One final word: The Jets can be proud with the way they were able to stick for three and half quarters with the Patriots - a much superior team. With a few additions - pass rush and running game, they can stay as a force to recokon in the AFC East.

Ind SA - Third Test Grades (Not pretty if you are SRT or RD fan!)

2007-01-07T08:04:00.000+05:30

Oh Man, after the great performance in the first test match, India reverted back to its old habits and lost a test series 2-1 that Sout Africa had no business winning, atleast not the last one.

Wassim Jaffer. Grade: B+
He has a bad habit. He follows a good innings with a bad one. Looks like he is always playing to keep his place in the side. I was disappointed when he lost focus towards the later part of Day 1 and gave away his wicket. That is where the advantage on Day 1 was lost. However, he was the least of India's problems.

KD Karthik. Grade: B
His Batting cannot mask deficiencies behind the stumps. While the official scorecard shows 7 byes, there were a lot more missed keeping chances.

V Sehwag. Grade: D+
Your batting in first innings is in the Lara-Ponting league while the second is more the Afridi league. He single handedly destroyed the coach's great move of having him open with another bone-headed shot

All Dravid/Tendulkar fans to skip this part

Rahul Dravid. Grade: F-
You are officially the first member of F- Club. If someone does not tell you that you singlehandedly lost the game for India, they are lying to you. Also, most of the bowling decisions back-fired and hence this would be one test match, you would like to forget in a hurry. Between, when the runs dry up, why do the Indians not look for singles and twos and rotate the strike.

Sachin Tendulkar. Grade: F-
Second member of the F- club. Who are you? I am sure that you are an imposter trying to ruin the name of ST. 14 runs of 62 balls with 1 four is but a shadow of what ST did in his career.

Maybe the CBI should investigate if ST has been abducted by space alien wanting his batting skills in the inter-gallatic match and replaced him with a poor and shoddy replacement.

On a serious note, i think it is not blasphemy to suggest that Sachin's game has fallen a lot. I don't know why, but someone in the dressing room should tell Sachin that he is but a shadow of the great player that he was. He no longer creates sleepless nights for opposition bowler and has many more bad innings in the last 2 years than the rest of his career combined.

Oh, by the way - i do know he scored a 64 in the first innings.

Sourav Ganguly. Grade: B
I think he made a statement in the overall series on his toughness. Makes me change my mind - i would rather have people with toughness than finesse. I do have to say that he did not help India's cause by exposing the tail in the first innings. How? Ganguly had 7 overs with the tail-enders (Kumble and lower):

Over 1: Kumble faces Pollock the first ball because the batsmen crossed on the Sehwag dismissal. Kumble is dismissed on the 4th delivery
Over 2: Ganguly takes a single on 3rd delivery
Over 3: Ganguly takes a single of the first ball. He also agrees to a single with Zaheer on the last ball. Zaheer is dismissed of the first delivery the next over.
Over 4: Ganguly gets strike of 3rd ball, gets a four and also a single off the last ball
Over 5: Ganguly takes single of 3rd delivery, Sreesanth dismissed with the last delivery
Over 6: Single of 4th delivery
Over 7: Ganguly dismissed of the first delivery.

VVS Laxman. Grade: D-
How can you give up a wicket in such a situation in the second innings. Outside tendulkar and dravid, you too should owe up for this loss.

Kumble: Grade: C
Bad run with the bat. In a long time, i haven't seen you have an off-match. My first reading was that you were trying too much and that you are not suited to bowl around the stumps (like a left arm spinner!)

Sreesanth. Grade: C
Quiet game, with the bat and the ball.

Zaheer: Grade: C+
Had a good game with the ball though the stats did not do justice to his effort, not in the first innings. In the second, he was to support Kumble in running down the opposition - he kept his side of the bargain

MM Patel: Grade:D
I thought India played with 10 players. Nope, MM Patel replaced VRV Singh. What difference did it make? Made no difference in bowling as he was given ONE over in second innings. In terms of batting, the south african bowlers were relieved that they were not going to bowl to a wild VRV.

How can we not ....

2007-01-03T01:03:00.000+05:30

How can we not register a FIR when a child goes missing ...?

The root cause of the Noida massacre (for want of a more violent expression!) which has claimed the lives of 17 people & alleged to include another 5 to 10 more people is the ineptitude shown by the Noida police in not registering the FIR.

I watched a NDTV special trying to question whether there is a class divide in India with respect to Police treatment. The answer, sadly is YES. How? Adobe India President's son was kidnapped in November and here is the link of the first news article. It mentions that an FIR was filed at Sector 20 police station.

However, why had the police not registered a case inspite of repeated and continous missing cases of young childern from a particular locality since October 2005?

Can the Prime Minister ask this question to his police machinery?

BTW, it is heartening to note that not a single lawyer in Noida who was willing to defend Moninder Singh and his servant.

Ind SA Report Card

2006-12-31T00:35:00.000+05:30

Man, that was ugly. Mark Boucher gave enough 'inspiration material' for the Indians to survive 50 overs and all they did was lay a huge egg. From this point on, i thought i would review the performance at the end of each test match, of the entire team and sometimes its management as well.

1. Virendra Sehwag (Grade: F)
His is the story of the great escape. How? I originally intended to give him F-/G. He was that bad. While i agree that he needs to play his natural game, but swinging to the first ball puts you in the Shahid Afridi class (crass) of test cricketers. Take a break! You have not given one reason to earn your place in the next test.

2. Wassim Jaffer (Grade: C-)
I think if this was a home series, Wassim should be dropped. Why? He needs to realise that, in test cricket - starts are precious, especially for a opening batsman. He made 2 starts and gave his wicket away both the times. His second innings shot was completely moronic. Since we are in SA and Sehwag needs to be left out of the side to reset his thought process, by law of elimination - retains his place in the side.

3. Rahul Dravid (Grade: C-)
You are the captain and at the end, victories and defeats should be laid on your doorstep. This is the third time India has collapsed in the 4th innings over the last few years. You avoided F/D because of the rank bad decisions of the umpires during your batting. However, did not lead the team well in the field. SA recovered from 28/3 and 258/8 to post 328 in the first innings.

4. Sachin Tendulkar (Grade: D)
Sorry mate! You are measured at higher standards than everyone else. What were you thinking when you played that shot in the first innings? Late christmas gift for the South Africans. Your dismissal triggered the middle order collapse of the first innings. Less said about the second innings dismissal, the better. Moreso, you made bold statements before the tour, but did not keep up your words on the field.

5. VVS Laxman (Grade: C)
You need to seriously assess your weakness against playing back-and-across. Some tips from Sunil Gavaskar will help

6. Sourav Ganguly (Grade: C-)
Short ball dismissal? Again. Enough said! However while i can understand your first inning dismissal (that was a snorter of a delivery), what were you thinking during the second inning dismissal.

7. MS Dhoni (Grade: B+)
The only reason you missed an "A" grade was because you could have saved the test match on the final day. However you backed your 4th day's comments on the field and hence the high grade. It helps to have had a decent first innings as well

8. Anil Kumble (Grade: B-)
Man! What an average game for India's best bowler ever! Disappointed with the uncharactestic foolhardiness with the bat than anything else

9. Zaheer Khan (Grade: B+)
Good game with the bat and the ball. Not much to fault you except that you could not extract an early wicket in the second innings. Keep up the same level of effort with the bat and people might forget about Irfan Pathan.

10. Sreesanth (Grade: B+)
Same comments as Zaheer with respect to bowling. Batting - for a second, i thought you were gonna knock off the umpire's head in the second innings.

11. VRV Singh (Grade: D)
Why are you in the team? Bowling. Oh I see. That said, i liked the fact that you were bowling full length this test than the previous one. Batting - Man, you are making me not miss Harbhajan. However, you are in the team because of the same reason as Wasim Jaffer - selection by elimination.

Third Test Outlook:
Need solid peformance from the top and middle order batting. Are you listening? Rahul and Sachin

How Embarassing!

2006-12-29T01:35:00.000+05:30

For a month, i postponed accepting the fact that my lovely camera - a Fujifilm S5000 that i lent to a friend a few months back was damaged at some point (not blaming him, he was much more careful with it than i ever was!). While i tried a couple of times to switch it on, the camera refused to budge.I put checking the camera for a long time and today, i was setting a few things right here (nearing the end of year, so closing a lot of unattended items to hit the deadline). I finally decided to open the camera and check out what was wrong with it.

My initial feeling was the battery unit was damaged and i bought a few duracell ultra AA batteries and i tried it and it didn't work. I slowly realized that maybe i was not placing the cells correctly. 3 minutes and 2 combinations later, my camera was up leaving me feeling very embarassed as to how i could forget how to load batteries in a camera which has had more than 4500 snaps in the last 3 years.

Ye Gods!

Salutes to Mamta!

2006-12-29T00:35:00.000+05:30

Fed with their own medicine, the communists complaint of the bitter taste.

The Left group parties in India take enormous pleasure in striking down each and every forward looking measure by any government over the last 15 years. Every major liberalization policy came at the cost of enormous opposition from the left parties. However, when the West Bengal government turned pro-liberalization after endless years of frog-in-the-well approach left the state with one of the least per capita income, they have faced with protests from within their ranks as well as other political parties for their current & previous stances.

But no victory is sweeter than what Mamta Banarjee did to the WB government by going on a 25 day fast against their decision to grant the Tata group, land for a automobile factory. With the president, prime minister and opposition NDA concerned with her health, the WB government has finally agreed to negotiate with her.

How the mighty have fallen!

Make no mistake, i am a pro-liberalization warrior; worship the Tata Group (own a Tata Auto car!), not researched the rights and wrongs of the Singur row and I am not a great fan of Mamta. However, i am happy with the way Mamta taught the Left parties a lesson in their own langauge.

Week 16: 1 PM NFL Sunday Games - Second Half

2006-12-25T02:50:00.000+05:30

I usually stay up every sunday night to follow the New England Patriots games. I usually log on Football Outsiders' game day discussion forum and record my minute-to-minute musings. Summarizing them below:

Man, the IND Run defense has to be bad when you realize that RON DAYNE has 20 carries for 113 yds and 2 TDs.
Did the Pats find out something against the Jags? They seem to be in shotgun on most of the passing situations.
Wow! i complain about Pats lack of 20yd+ plays and they give us 2 in one drive. Both with rookie TE - D. Thomas. Is this the end of the road to Graham?
The pats with a good field position (courtsey the missed FG!). Can we have some points that would take us one step closer to another post-season? (Note: They advanced to 26 yds, got a false start and missed the ensuing 49 yd FG attempt)
looks like a shoot-out in St. Loius. I guess not a lot of people saw that coming? BTW, a question to the WAS mgmt? What will you do with Druckett at the end of the season?
If there is anyone following the cover-your-eyes Tampa-CLE game, Derrick Brooks with a INT returned for TD. Guess he realized that it was the only way to score a TD in this game. A question. Will Brooks get any consideration for HoF? (Note: I was wrong on the offensive TD part. They had one a few plays before!)
Did someone see D Thomas coming? I thought i saw his reference in a couple of games, but today looks like his break-out party
Bush for a punt return TD. Boy, we are gonna see Peter King raving about RB in MMQB tomorrow (Note: TD called back)
Texans still have 3mins to go down 30+ yds for atleast a FG and burn the COLTS. Go TEXANS. Go
Request to FO staff: Can we have an analysis on Pats Defense on 3rd down situations. My perception is that on 3rd & short and/or when the opposition tries a run - they are succesful. I feel they have been burned on 3rd & long/opposition passing on 3rd down situation. Any quick responses
TEXANS WIN. That will mean that the Colts will have to play the wildcard round as well. Doesn't bode well for their defense.
Seems that this week is Bush's coming out party as a running back.
As things stands as of now, i think TB is going to have a good DPAR for the week. Lots of run DPAR points on third downs.
Can someone remember a deeper RB class than the class of 2006? Reggie Bush, LM, Addai, Drew, Deangelo (to a lesser extent), Norwood, Washington(?-Jets), Lundy (?-Texans). All seem to have made a mark in atleast one game.
Pats leaving it a little too close for comfort. With LM & CD, i am hoping that the Pats can run out the clock.
The Jags need 25 - 30 yds to take to FG range. Pats defense need one good play
NE WINS. They have none to blame for leaving it close. In the end, the defense has to make one close play and they made it, with their first sack & turnover of the day.
I think you should attribute the Bills loss to the coach or bad decision by QB. They were on the 25 yd line & within FG range. They should have tried to get as many risk-free yards and kicked a FG. Instead a christmas present to the red hot Titans, who have a realistic chance of post-season.

Week 16: 1 PM Games - First Half

2006-12-25T00:56:00.000+05:30

I usually stay up every sunday night to follow the New England Patriots games. I usually log onto to Football Outsiders' game day discussion forum and record my minute-to-minute musings. Summarizing them below:

Texans score first ... i guess not a lot of us saw that coming!
I know that not a lot of you would be in India, but they are playing some christmas carols with a 10 year kid singing great ... 15 mins to Dec 25 ... merry x'mas to FO, staff and readers
Wow! Texans are up 14 against the colts. I wonder if there is a upset in the works
3 Scrambles/runs for Brady in the first quarter itself. Calm down, big fella - we want you to win the game with your hand not your legs.
Three 20+yd TDs at the same time - IND, BAL and DET
Will the Pats go for it on 4th down and 1?(Note: They draw a false start and that was good because Brady was not going anywhere. They need a 48 yd FG!)
Gostkowski with a 48 yd FG. I think he has come a long way from the beginning of the season when the team was avoiding putting him out for 35+ yd FG attempt.
I was checking the score on the 2 current hot teams - TEN v/ BUF. Scores tied at 10. Seems that these teams have joined MIA as second half beauties. During my school days (academic years are btw june to apr in india), we had a score of kids who flunked quarterly, half yearly exams but buckled up for the annual exams and these kids were termed MARCH BEAUTIES. Guess, the same applies to TEN, BUF, MIA now!
The empire strikes back! Colts have wiped off the 14 point deficit. Wish Manning was in control of the US national deficit control rather than fight deficit against the texans!
3-4-JAC 45 (8:50) (Shotgun) D.Garrard pass incomplete short middle to R.Williams. Pass hit the umpire. That read very funny!
A theory on why the NE Offense is ranked #8 as per DVOA. Disclaimer: I consider that the Pats defense has been pretty ordinary over the season and wrote to Aaron last week on the same. I think DVOA rewards 'success' and most of Brady's pass are for 6-8 yds, thus having a high success rate. the same can be said about their running as well (as i type, Faulk gets 4 yds on a 2-2 situation). Pats might have had the lowest 20+ yd plays in the game, both passing and rushing and that is why the perception that the offense is anaemic! RANT OVER!
TMQ Pleased! Texans ran 11 times in a 14 play, 75 yard TD drive. The drive ate 8 mins in the second half and kept the colts offense a.k.a THE EMPIRE on the sidelines
Raise your hands if you predicted Tom Brady will have the longest rush for the Pats Offense in the first half ..McDaniel, your vote doesn't count!
I even read on some article earlier in the season that all things need to go perfect for Pats to score on any drive. With them, you cannot have a slam dunk 4 plays, 80 yd drive that has happened to some other teams. When you want to clash with teams like san diego in post-season, that is as much a factor as a good defense. (Note: This post was in response to RichConley's comment on my earlier posting on NE offense)

New CJI - remember he is a great judge first, a dalit next!

2006-12-22T20:55:00.000+05:30

I was checking Rediff Website and saw an article that K G Balakrishnan has been appointed as the new Chief Justice of India.

What made this news to the top of the headlines is that he is a dalit and that's where it saddens me. We have had a dalit president, we have a minority prime minister and president, a foreign born leader of ruling alliance and still we want to make it a point to stress the caste and religion of these appointments.

Remember that these appointments came because of the merits of these people (esp. in the case of KG Balakrishnan) in their chosen profession. I am sure that respected Balakrishnan is well regarded in the legal circles and hence there is no need to stress his caste and religious credentials. Also, the country is not making an exception by making a 'dalit' the CJI - he earned his rights to become one. I, for one, believe that we should avoid taking up the caste and religion identity of these appointments and that would be the first step in ensuring that people don't attribute a lot of weightage to these factors.

I would like to see a day India is 'cool' about any of its top public servant, the same way American Football fans are used to seeing black coaches and quarterbacks.

Ganguly as captain? Gimme a break!

2006-12-22T11:55:00.000+05:30

A sense of perspective has never been a quality that India's cricket fraternity has possessed

I liked this sentence and fully agree with the author (Dhileep Premchand's analysis on India's recent test win) on India's passion / obsession called Cricket. I wanted to blog on this over the weekend by trying to find evidence of over-reaction within Indian media after India's splendid test victory in south africa

Alas, i did not have to wait for long because Ajay Jadeja was the first to mouth-off calling for Ganguly to replace Dravid as the captain for the World Cup. This, inspite of what all of us can now see - Ganguly was thrown off the team because he was getting obsessed with Captaincy that he failed to remember that batting contributions was required to be retained in the team. Now that this has finally dawned on him and he is batting as if every innings is his last, we saw a remarkable amount of freedom & responsibility in his batting - something Greg Chappell wanted and has now gotten.

In this situation, why would the Indian board want to hand captaincy to Ganguly? More over, people should realise and accept the fact that Ganguly's days as captain are over and he is on his last days as an international cricketer (maybe a year or so is the maximum left in him). Let us enjoy these days and not want to upset the already tipsy apple cart called Indian Cricket.

More than anyone else, Ganguly deserves it.

Wish i could spin like him (?)

2006-12-21T18:04:00.000+05:30

No. Thank you very much ...

I like Kumble, the way he is. While he can never rip the ball like Shane Warne, he is without doubt the best Indian spinner to have touched the red cherry. Before going up in arms, please note that i think Chandrashekar, Prasanna, Bedi and Venkatraghavan (lesser extent!) were great bowlers - they were not feared a lot outside the subcontinent for LONG STRECHES of time while teams have been wary of Kumble for atleast the last 5 years even outside the subcontinent. Coming to it, Anil Kumble is the BEST BOWLER that India has produced. He has had more matches won than anyone else, more than even Kapil Dev (and coming from someone whose 'day-afters' were based on pajji's performance!).

While a lot of people, especially who are more into entertainment than the pure joy & pleasures of the game would like spinners to turn the ball half way across the pitch, what they don't understand is that the ball needs to turn only a few inches to turn a sure boundary to a dismissal and understanding that was Jumbo's biggest strength.

While Kumble could pay tribute to Shane for spinning the ball, he would have a good haul if he played majority of his tests against the pommies as well (not a slight on Warne - but the lack of great record against the Indians will always be shown against him, the same way overseas record will be shown for Kumble).

Who is the best spinner in the World to date? Martin Crowe might disagree, but Muthiah Muralidharan is the best spinner ever.

Aren't we glad to be in an era that had the best spinners trade their wares (like the 80s & 90s were the seasons for best all-rounders with Kapil, Imran, Botham and 'Sir' Hadlee)!

We have our priorities all right

2006-12-21T17:56:00.000+05:30

We have our priorities all right .. thank you very much!

One more parliament session has passed and there seems to be an orphan left un-heeded on the road. Nope, make it two.

The Whistleblower's protection bill and the Women's Reservation Bill have not been passed. What a country!

A brief History: The Whistleblower's protection bill is the country's reflection, memories and respects to the late Satyendra Dubey - who lost his life due to the stupidity (at best or perverse at worst!) of officers in the PM's office. Three years later, the bill introduced in March '06 has not been passed yet.

It is surprising that the bill was not passed when 20 bills were cleared in the winter session of parliament on a single day!

Women's Reservation Bill was suggested in 1997. 9 years later, the country is still waiting. However, Arjun Singh (while i have worse names for him, you need to contact me to hear them!) had enough time to do a hotch-potch of a study for advancing reservations to OBCs.

While the OBC reservation bill awarded the communities seats in higher education & employment, the women's reservation bill does affect the way the parliament will be structured. No wonder, the male parliamentarians are up in arms to schuttle any of the feeble attempts made by the NDA and the UPA governments.

Now the parliament minister promises women's reservation bill in the budget session!

and we hope that these orphans can survive the harsh delhi winter cold and its muddy politics!

Some 'random' interesting links:
Home minister paying lip service to Women's reservation bill
Left wants it ... does not want it ... sorry, i dont know ... they just cant make up their mind.
Culprit 1A - Laloo (1B being Mulayam) now says that he will consider WRB. Did Rabri force this change, at home?
I am sorry that a person like Manmohan cannot aid us in this. All he can do, is to make promises that he cannot keep
One more Prime Minister - Vajpayee, one more promise. Once again unkept.
And the grand madam of all - her promise.

NFL Week 15 1 PM Game - 2nd Half

2006-12-18T02:36:00.000+05:30

If Taylor does not win the Defensive Player of the year award., we might as well as scrap it!
Taylor has 12.5 sacks, 9 forced fumbles, 1 fumble recoverd for 19 yards, 2 interceptions for 71 yards and 2 TDs.
Yikees! Harrington gives it away with an INT!
In comparison to Taylor, Urlacher has 0 Sacks, 3 INTs for 39 Yards, 1 forced fumble and 1 fumble recovered for 1 yard. He is in with as much a chance as Taylor and that is why these awards should be renamed as popularity awards.
Do we have a R Doyle fumble in the end zone in the script? Sadly., nope
Pacman Jones has a Kickoff return for 70 yds (85 incl. 15 yd face mask!), 1 punt return for 8 yds, 1 INT for TD and 0.5 sack. Some more maturity off the field, he
could be the next champ bailey
Hobbs for 93 yd kickoff TD return! Special teams and Defense winning it for the Patriots
Hester has one more big punt return. Great! he is stamping his ticket to next season's pro-bowl as well
TEN could be the giant playoff hopes killer team in the AFC. give it some thought! NE Pats are there next and i dont think i am confident enough to say that they can beat the TEN hands-down. Also, come next season - TEN can be the Miami of 2005 season
Can the Offense give me a TD atleast now? For crying out loud, you have all of 29 yds to go (Note: NE Pats get a sack and punt. Yikees!)
Garrad with one more defense TD with a INT to Hope. All he used to do was win games. What happened to him?Memo to all Football analysts: Please, please - dont tell "All V Young does is win games". Atleast show some knowledge of the game by acknowledging that the defense does win games (like this match!)
T Brady: Why pass for 3 yards when you need 10? Pls understand., you are better than Carr.
If you remove the 43 yd pass by Brady, he has a stat of 15/21 for 66 yds. Thats 4 yds per catch made. Yee Gods!
Kitna: How bad! You throw a INT and follow it up with a face mask.
Will the NE Pats offense give me a TD! It's all of 5 yards i am asking for!!!!! (Note: NE goes 3 and out and get a FG)
What in the world has happened to the NE Offense? Tom Brady - what is going on
R.Parrish to BUF 2 for -15 yards (D.Pope). How on earth can you lose 15 yds on a punt return!
With an offense like NE Pats, i wonder if they will have success against the likes of the BAL, SD in the playoffs. Atleast for fun, the Pats should try and throw the ball downfield or else Brady might just forgot that such a thing exists
Favre having more fun! (Note: 3 INTs, 1 Fumble lost for the game!)
Saints should acquire A Thomas in the free agency.
DET - How can you not convert from the 12 yd line? I dont think you deserve to win even though BF is handing it to you on a platter. BTW., i think all BF does is 'win games'
how can one have illegal formation on a QB kneel down?
Morency should be cut by the GB Packers with immediate effect. How can he score a TD when he has to step out of bounds at the 1 for BF to do: (a) One more meaningless TD (b) INT in the End zone for increasing the amount of fun he is having.

NFL Sunday 1 PM Match - First Half

2006-12-18T01:01:00.000+05:30

Pac-Man Jones is on fire.
New England has a good running game going while the passing game seems anameic.
Is there anything new?Reality Check: At 4/7 for 21 yds - Tom Brady, your numbers are as good as David Carr. Short passes on checks
Favre sacked, fumbles. Yawn! Anything new around?
Kitna might be the worst game manager in NFL! Sorry, i forgot about Brad Johnson!
I wish the Pats offense shows up one more time before the season ends.
My money says that Favre will be given a chance for passing TD
Carr., Intercepted. Thank the NE Defense
wow! it 10-0 in the superdome? Did the saints leave a lot in their Sunday night match against the dallas last week?
The sad part is that inspite of a great year, Colvin won't make the Probowl. Shawm Merriman, Phillips (Both SD), A THomas (BAL) are right up there in terms of
recall. And they do deserve to be above Colvin
I wish to volunteer myself for the Jaguars. I can be completed trusted to hand-off the ball to the running backs and all i do is win games for you doing it!. PS: Atleast i dont throw interceptions when you ask me to check for wind movements
wow! the pats starting on the 31 yd line. i need a TD on this one. Not a FG
i didnt realize that the JAX-TEN match pitted 2 QBs who 'just win games'.
Brady. DONT RUN! This is the Texans and you are too valuable to risk any injury in this game
NO Saint defense had an intensive training session with the Colts defense. Thank you very much! Now we cant tackle a dummy!
TB starts on CHI 26. Something tells me it is either a missed FG from here or a CHI INT returned for TD (Note: I was wrong. TB did connect on a 45 yd FG!)
3-20 against the NE Pats. Something tell me that they will convert. Isnt it surprising NE pats would rather have 3-1 rather than 3-20 (Note: wrong again. Texans didnt convert., but this is the Texans. Anomoly to every rile)
Wow! That epitomizes how ugly the Texans are. You need 20 yds and you try a short pass!
NE Offense: One advice. MOVE TOWARDS opponent's endzone., not yours
i got a great idea! how about swapping NE & PHI playbooks. That means more short passes in the PHI book and more long passes in the NE book. Round of applause for the genius.i can see someone patting on my back. Nope that is a spider!
1:43 and the ball on NO 2. If Drew Brees gets a TD, i guess the debate for the MVP will be over
i think the def pass interference rule should be modified. DPI should mean that the offense gets 5 yds and automatic first down. Also, you could think of penalizing the defense one member (10 players instead of 11) on the next play.

Cricket - SA Ind Test Day 3 Random Musings

2006-12-17T23:24:00.000+05:30

Some random thoughts during the match today:

I think it is a relief having the commentary after the endless nuisance that was dished out in the name of entertainment during championship trophy when the likes of Rohit Roy, Mandira Bedi and Charu Sharma contributed ZILCH to cricket discussions
Case in point, when Laxman was playing well - Sunny notes that Laxman would be a better batsman if he could get more comfortable going across and playing on the backfoot. That would enable him to counter the likes of Ntini and Nel. Hardly had the sentence been spoken, he goes on the backfoot and edges to the first slip. Providence! But above all good cricket commentary.
If Andre Nel is not bought to books by the match referee, they should scrap the rule.
What a shot! Tailender charging to a fast bowler and hitting for six is priceless!
What a dance! On one level it was pure adrenalin, on a different level, the gyrations made me wince
Why did you have to go for the second! bad decision!!
Liked the cameo of Sreesanth and VRV Singh when it lasted!
First over, first ball and SA is on pressure
Gibbs is GONE! What a ball. I am no more upset at the India's last wicket gift to SA
Superb Catch by Sehwag. Did not realise that he had so much movement on the field
Great bowling performance. SA could be wishing they had Sreesanth and Zaheer instead of Ntini and Nel
Gross! Vikram (or Vishal!) is trying to ape Sony's non-cricket shows and it is bad. ESS should stick to cricket
Sreesanth, you can be aggressive without walking into the batsman
If Sreesanth is not bought to books by the match referee, they should scrap the rule (Amla's dismissal). On second thoughts, Sreesanth will be bought to books and Nel will be let go free
Kumble is being neutralized well by the SA batsmen by sweeping behind square
That is OUT! Harper, how did you miss it? Prince had a thick edge to the keeper
That is OUT! Harper, how did you miss it? Boucher had a thin edge to the keeper. Two bad decisions by Harper in one afternoon
That is end of play. India should be reasonably happy.

Down the memory lane!!!!

2006-12-14T23:20:00.000+05:30

I was driving to office today morning in the usual path, when i saw a ton of school students pour out of the gates of DAV School. I am assuming that the school had to close because of the Left Parties' meaningless call for nationwide strike.

As i stopped and waited for the few minutes that the kids were crossing the road, it took me to memories of Jan 1995 when the schools were forced to close for 5 days because of World Tamil Conference. Half of the 11th standard took full use of these holidays by effectively honing their cricket skills on the open terrace of Karthik's House - a stone throw away from School.

For 5 days & till darkness enveloped us, we might have had a zillion cricket matches with the winners of each match awarded with the Ole trophy. The Ole trophy was conceptualized and made by Mallik from the coconut leaves.

Ole trophy & cricket continued in Karthik's house for another 5 more years - through our school days as well as engineering days.

Boy., weren't those days good!

As far as i remember - Swathi was a good allrounder, Manish had a great leg-spinner, Mallik (for his dimunitive size) had Allan Donald speed, Barani was the technically correct batsman. Me? I had a great straight drive & leg flick, average fielding skills, below average off spin, horrible cut shot and worse of all - horrendous umpiring skills!

A sad day for India!

2006-12-14T23:08:00.000+05:30

A real sad day ....

While the government had no shame in ramming through the OBC Reservation Bill, there is still no word of the Whistleblowers Protection Bill - a fallout of Satyendra Dubey's assasination. More shameful, was that the reservation bill had the full support of all parties. To add insult to the judiciary, the bill does not exclude the 'creamy layer' from the benefits - making it all the more likely that the bill will be highly misused in the end.

Even worse, it was a Red Day - the Left parties (or to be appropriately called - the LOST parties) called for a nationwide strike to protest the central government economic policies when they have no qualms of allowing a Tata Car Factory in their own backyard. I am all for a tata factory, but against the hypocrisy of the Left Parties

To future generations who will criticize us for these mistakes, i offer my apologies.

Sunday Night Football - Random Musings

2006-12-12T15:27:00.000+05:30

Monday morning & Tuesday Morning in my life has become quite an event. With 2 games of american football shown in India, i make sure that all work on these mornings can be postponed beyond 10 AM starts in office.

Yesterday was a game between Cowboys and Saints and i added comments to FO Webpage during the first hald and since i had to switch off the laptop and get going to office, did not put this on the FO website.

Reggie Bush has improved his prospects of a long career in the NFL. Why? I am not going to go ga-ga, that is being done by the football analysts. What captured my attention during the 62 yd screen pass TD is how he used his blockers effectively. He did not try and accelarate through the hole to show-off his speed and get knocked down by the defenders. Instead, he followed his blockers and made a killer move to leave the last 2 defenders gaping at the 10 yd line. Welcome to NFL, you are late by about 12 weeks while others like Maroney, Noriwood and Maurice Jones-Drew figured that out earlier.
After getting rid of the browns curse (to LBC), jeff faine has been pretty good this season. pro-bowl center? nope. Back-up pro-bowl guy? sure, why not.
While discounting Peyton Manning (who, i grudgingly admit is good! - there i said it), there is none in the NFL who can dictate terms to the opposition as much as Drew Brees is doing now. I wish LT & DB both share the NFL MVP
Terell Owens is showing commitment on the field, just like Keyshawn Johnson last year - however he has avoided the middle of the field completely. Is there something wrong with him?
After the cowboys score, there are butterflies in my stomach. Even with a 11 point lead, i think there might be an upset in the air - gosh! look at that pass. Now it is a 18 point lead and the clouds have cleared (literally!, out here). [Post note: after 5 minutes, Drew Brees hooked with Henderson for a 50 yd TD pass and the match was sealed!]
Wow! how many 4th downs with penalties traded all-round? Is this a record?
I wish John Madden & Al Michaels avoid giggling. They are not bumbling teenegers on their first date, for all that is holy on earth.
Whoa, whoa! onside kick when up by 25 points. completely unexpected and great
Bill Parcells is trying to ape Art Shell's sideline poses but doing as bad a job with it as the team's performance today
Sean Payton for Coach of the Year; Drew Brees, the joint MVP and Colston is the Rookie of the year
Letting T.O score a touchdown was not the biggest of the issue with Fred Thomas. It is 4th down and even an interception would leave with a worse-off field position than you would have by simply knocking the ball. Coupled with the fact that you have a thumb injuiry, it is a disaster to try and come down with a INT and his little selfishness costed the TD. But i think he is sufficiently mad at himself that others can back-off.
Maybe Peter King got it right. Bill Parcells will make it to the superbowl sideline. Only in spirit - through his former OC - Sean Payton. That said, i am still worried about the saints. They are very raw on defense and unless they inprove there, it is going to be short of SB41!!

Chatrapathi - Great title song!

2006-12-11T02:32:00.000+05:30

Don't look right now, but I think this is a return of good music to telugu movies. This is very conviniently coincided with a few things:

Better overall movie production (better than recent tamil movies! - so much so, every hit telugu movie is being planned to be re-made into tamil soon)
Movement of telugu cine industry from chennai to hyderabad (is it just coincidence?)
Bigger hits with every movie for chiranjeevi (very little relevance overall, but thought i would add this as well!)

There is going to be a blog later in the week again on telugu movies, but this is the time to rejoice the resurgence. Movies are infintely better - Anand, Aa Laluguru, Godavri, Aathadu, Pokiri, Bommarilu, Aithe are some of the better ones i have seen in a long time. All movies that break the stereotype of telugu movies have done well in the box-office (i have given it away!).

There is one song in the recent times that has captured my amazement. I have heard it close to 25 times and everytime, it was amazing. The actual song is 3 mins and i shall search youtube to find the full version.

There is a high possibility that the tune has been "inspired" by some score elsewhere, but this one is real impressive.

NFL Sunday 1 PM Games - Week 14 First Half Musings

2006-12-11T01:00:00.000+05:30

My First half NFL - Season 14 musings. Right now, they are playing skating on ESPN India and it is as interesting as waiting in a airport!

NE-Mia Game: After the NE fumble there was Roughing the passer, 2 yd run, offensive holding and defensive pass interference. Yikees! We are all professionals here.
Slumberfest games: OAK at CIN
Like Good Rex and Bad Rex, we have the short brady and the 'original' brady. The short brady refuses to pass for anything above 10 yards. just check his current
stats for today.
How Auspicious? NE starts second quarter with a false start.
Yee Gods., that is some cover-your eyes football in MiamiCan MIN please trade the run defense for Joseph Addai. That is required for the post-season
NE is coming up with some bad starting field positions. Last time it was from the 4 yd and this time i think it is the 5 yd line.
J.Garcia scrambles up the middle to WAS 6 for 10 yards (C.Griffin). When i read this on gamecenter, only one thing came to mind - BACK TO THE PAST. Remember Jeff Garcia turned 62!
JAX gained 74 yards on 4 runs against the IND defense. Boy., this looks like a Madden game to me. IND pass TDs and JAX run TDs.
Wonder if Asomugha will make it to the Pro-bowl this year. There seems to be a huge rush right behind Champ Bailey. R Mathais & A Samuels are equally good.This is as close to madness as we know (real madness is watching the CLE offense or IND rush defense 24/7!).
Why take a Time-out at 2:06 when the 2-min warning is coming up. And follow it with a incomplete pass. This is gonna be a long day for the patriots

Cracked.com - Funny Feature

2006-12-07T16:47:00.000+05:30

While i have had my fun with reading articles on parody sites like Onion, Sportspickle and Brushback - the latter two are exclusively focused on sports, they measure between good and downright gross.

Of late, i was refered to Cracked website and while i followed the NFL weekly breakdown, the feature i enjoy the most is the "letters from Bush - US President" series. This features series is all about letter that the US president writes on various issues and are corrected by his proof-reader. The articles are downright funny and very believable - if you picture Bush writing these.

Letter to Iraqi Prime Mister., nope Prime Minister
Thanking Donald Rumsfield for his service as Pentagon Secy, which is not a woman-thing
Please vote ... a note before the elections to the voters
Illegal Aliens., Darth Vader is my least favorite and hence the fence to protect US from him or something like that
Is it a crime to have these? Nope, it is a crime if you don't have these (ask., Iraq!). Letter to N Korea premier
This is how i won (but the real story is how i made the democrats look bad!) - A primer to Rep candidates for mid-term election

Believe me that you are gonna have fun rolling around with the slapstick humour on Bush in these articles.

And in fast developing news ganguly ...

2006-12-05T18:33:00.000+05:30

Breaking news of Sourav Ganguly, ex-Indian captain having a mild coughing session. With increasing interest, the press in south africa awaited his every single move -his arrival in SA, his first practice and patiently waited for more meanigful substance and they were not disappointed - literally.

After his one hour practice, Sourav Ganguly stood aside for a whole one minute and thought of his next action. Being out of the Indian side, he might have lost his touch with the small details of practice - a few real time SG critics/experts across the field agreed amongst themselves. Just when the debate was drawing to a close, Ganguly moved towards the refreshments section and took a bottle of ice-cold aquafina mineral water and drank the contents for well over 15 seconds (as measured by cameraman vikram gautam).

The breaking development happened when he bent down to put down the bottle when he choked on the final few drops and the media was there to capture, in real time, the mild cough session. It started with his face turing slightly red and then he coughed for a minute - starting with a mild bengal tiger purr and finishing with an eccentric high pitch wheeze-like noise.

How this affects India's chances in the first test against South Africa, let us turn to our expert panel - Harsha Bhogle, Sunil Gavaskar, Ravi Shastri, Wasim Akram. Question to you all experts - Is Ganguly justified in coughing and harming India's chances in the upcoming test match or is it his tendencies to draw attention to himself .......

And thus died the sanity of the indian news media in south africa on a sunny summer morning. Dada, welcome back but you would know that i said it first here, that the media is going to make a tamasha of your every single move.

isn't it strange?

2006-12-05T17:58:00.000+05:30

We live in a strange world, where pigs and friendship goes in the same sentence. You heard that right and read that right ... ours is a very strange world.

Disclaimer: To each man (or woman), his indulgences and right to indulgence and i neither condone or encourage it.

Prediction: Bandh Tomorrow followed by PIL

2006-12-05T11:02:00.000+05:30

I can see & forecast future events. I am brilliant. Maybe i should start charging people .....
...
...

Nope., i am but anyone who can predict what is gonna happen, but when you do things like this in India, i know what follows. The "this" incident is the launch of Vijay Mallya's Kingfisher Swimsuit Calendar on the lines of SI Swimsuit calendar.

Why no links to the 2 calendars? Please note that this is a highly respected blog with respectable opinions and respectable people visiting it and more importantly a very respectable person authoring the blog. You get that?

But i do know what is going to happen:

VHP & the right-wing protestants will take offense to this demeanization of Indian culture
Some Mumbai / New Delhi advocate will file a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) in either the high court or supreme court and get his moment of fame with newspapers and news report channels
Fundamentalists will call for a bandh and go on a rampage destroying public property
Womens right group will critize the calendar as an insult to nari-mani.
Men & yes, men would gather to .... never mind ....

Aren't things here very predictable.

Movie Review: Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire - Yuck!

2006-12-04T15:58:00.000+05:30

Ok., you did not read it wrong. I saw the Harry Potter movie - Goblet of Fire at last. I did not hear great reviews and hence did not bother taking time to watch it and boy, was i right. Since there are way too many cribs, i shall try and summarize into 2 sections:

I think I like:

1. Casting of Daniel Radcliffe & Emma Watson. They are tucking themselves nicely into their roles. Lord Voldemort was terrific. Robert Pattinson as Cedric Diggory was perfect.

2. Nice Scene: Harry & Ron discuss their desperation about finding a partner for the ball dance and George fixes up with Angelina Johnson. Throughout the scene, there is Snape supervising their homework and everytime their voices raise - he strikes them in the head but otherwise does not cuss. The whole scene was just too funny.

3. Graphics: OK., some of them were really ludicrous but a few stood out. Eg: The taps scene was great, the first shot of the Quidditch WC stadium was good. The revival of Lord Voldemort & the priori incantatem spell scenes are good.

Hey., i am really stretching myself to find something positive in this movie

I did not like:
1. Deep breath, one two, three., once more: OK., i know that books to movies means that the story is compromised, but ye gods! the basic essence of the whole book is being butchered. Like, the theme in the book was to teach Harry a lesson that you cannot discount anyone when looking for help - even Neville Longbottom. The movie made a mis-mash of it all.

2. Spirit of the roles: Take off from the last point, you could change a few minor details for the movie - but how can you compromise on the basic tenants of the characters of the movie. Prof. Dumbledore through Book 6 is the most calming influence in Hogwarts; No issue seemed to rattle him. But if you were to look at the movie - you would come to an opinion that he was a sad old fart. Same with Prof. McGonnagall. She is authoritarian and never displays silly girly behavior as shown in the movie

An allied point: In Friends there is this episode where Joey is taught that good elocution in acting requires spitting on your colleague. What is the connection? Have you not noticed that anything other than a murmur, the actors usually shout in each other's face in the movie.

3. Cast: Apart from a few like Harry, Hermoinie, Snape and McGonnagall, the rest of the crew seems way out of place. Michael Gambon is completely unimpressive as Dumbledore, Rupert Grint is way too old & arkward looking for Ronald Weasley, Matthew Lewis as Neville is awkward, Stanislav Ianevski as Viktor Krum is not too inspiring. But the worst of all is that of Cho Chang - Katie Leung does not have the IT factor that creates butterflies in Harry's stomach. On the contrary, she looks too bland and ordinary that you are wondering why Harry is even remotely interested in her - when a great looking Hermione is right besides him.

BONUS: What is with the graphics? Can they not leave it subtle. The dragon scene is over-the-top, the insides of the WC stadium (right after the top shot!) is bad, the Dark Lord mark is more funny than bone-chilling, the underwater scene plain and the maze is bland. What happened to all the creatures in the maze? Why did you cut it out?

Overall, if you are a Harry Potter fan - you could well avoid the movie as a purist. From a 2 hour mindless entertainment perspective, i do recommend this movie.

American Football: Week 13 1 PM games - 2nd half

2006-12-04T02:51:00.000+05:30

Second half thoughts as posted in Football Outsiders' game day discussion forum:

Larry Johnson ... may be Herm Edwards does not love you. Why? He has already given you 297 carries and you are on record for 410+ carries for the season. Have you thought about life after football yet?
Packers. You are down by 31 points on your home field in the 3rd quater. Why, in the name of god are you attempting a FG from Jets 15 yd line. This is the moment when TMQ would have written "Game Over" if he already didn't
Wow! What a 1st round draft pick bust. Mike Williams (USC) has ZERO receptions while Josh McCown, the back QB has one.
Goat of the Week: R. Grossman ... 3/10 for 22 yds and 3 INTs ... how gross!
SF 49ers attempt an onside kick and recover. What a sweet play!
Can you believe it: The two 2-9 teams are ahead at this point
Can you believe it (Part 2): Colts are behind at this point. After being behind by 14 points, Atlanta offense has scored 24 points.
Who is this derek anderson? if he is any decent, why is he with the browns?
Does NE have a lousy 3rd passing defense to compensate for its great 3rd down rushing defense?
How can you let two 1-30 situations to be converted? How bad is the NE secondary that you are being stood up by one of the worst team in NFL?
should the pats go for 1 or for 2 if there is a TD now?
Stop the press! E James has atlast got his first 100 yd game and the YPC is also pretty decent
I think it is a great thing from NFL to list major milestones reached during the game. Earlier it was about Hanson and now it is Dillion's 11000 yds
3-11-NO 8 (13:24) (Shotgun) D.Brees pass short right to R.Bush ran ob at SF 18 for 74 yards. 1-10-NO 18; (12:53) D.McAllister left end to SF 14 for 68 yards (B.Moore). I am confused. I am listing this down from NFL's gamecenter. can someone explain
With 4 TDs, Reggie Bush has ensured that Peter King is gonna smooch all over him in tomorrow's MMQB (wait it is 0230 here and so technically, it is today's MMQB)
Wow., INT, fumble and sack-fumble in NE-DET game. And sigh., we are all professionals here.
Was that a 60 yd field goal by the Browns? 60 YARDS (scream! and everyone at home are awake)
Manning is 350 yds on 28 attempts with 1 TD and 2 FGs and still LOSES. Aye god! This one is a mulligan and does not count against him
Browns should just attempt a FG right away!
Can someone explain why the BROWNS ARE RUNNING. Why are they not trying for a FG right away?
The Pats win. Boy, was it ugly?

American Football 1PM matches - First Half Thoughts

2006-12-04T01:08:00.000+05:30

3 & 1: Peyton ., why are you throwing? Hasn't Addai been good to get the yard.
And now V Young is intercepted. Ye gods., we are all professional here
Did anyone had R. Cadwell in their loser league team. He is gonna ruin your day. 3 long passes from T Brady. What a day
Is it only me who sees that L Maroney has not lived up to the hype generated by the experts. As of now, he has 14 yds on 4 carries and seem to me Addai might be the better RB of the first round draft (oh., do i need to tell Reggie Bush is still missing)
Gore: 3 Carries for -1 yds; Drew Brees 3/7 for 30 yds. Some fantasy owners are having a bad start
Pats: 17 plays for 81 yds and a Field Goal. I read somewhere that the Pats offense needs to have it picture perfect to get a TD this season and rank in the bottom half for TDs from outside the red zone - both explainable because of lack of a big time playmaker WR. I have suddenly started believing in that.
LT 51 yds run for Touchdown. And then there are other RBs
Why would you have Chad Scott to cover Williams - one of the top 5 WRs in NFC?
Kewl., the lions are mounting a fight at the Pats. I want to see how NE responds with its offensive tools when we are down by 10.
Whew! Thanks Vrabel. Can the offense please show-up without penalties and sputtering?
I somehow like Wilson (Cardinals) as a probowler than roy williams (5 INTs) for the NFC safety. I think he might be the only probowler from the team
Confession time: Vince Young is good. Vince Young is good. Vince Young is good. Now., i got to write that down 97 more times to ... never mind
Asante Samuels for probowl. On the other hand, what is the chances that the Pats are going to sign him back. That is gonna test their fundamental philosophy on player evaluation
Brady., i am sorry - your offense is not bad., i know ... i erred again ... and also can you please let me know who in the staff handed my earlier comment to you so that i can ....
I want Martybowl back for the second half. Just don't know where LT is gonna finish this year. Trillion yds, billion rushing TDs, million reception yds, thousand receiving TDs and hundred passing TDs. Will not be surprised if he does acheive that.
Reggie Bush - 2TDs. Was he finally picked up from his house in San Diego?

Prices through the cardboard Sheet (yeah., the roof is expensive!)

2006-12-03T01:17:00.000+05:30

I recently received a common mail circulated within HCL - a mass forward that talked about the too-hot-to-handle real estate prices in Chennai. Like any good mass forward mail, it had a ton of spelling mistakes and in a couple of places - was factually incorrect.

However, the mail made me think; Where does this madness end? Today, a 1000 sq. ft flat in my locality would set you back by a whopping 4 million rupees (approx. $85,000) and apartments in the range of 15 million to 25 million ($325K to $550K) are pretty commonly heard in Chennai. Hey, at that rates, you can as well choose between nungambakkam (Chennai) or newton (boston suburb)!I made some calculation - if you take up a loan of 2 million, you would end up paying 20K per month for the next 20 years to just get an medium-small apartment tucked in some corner of the city! While a lot is associated with NRI investment as well as expat returns, there is also a factor of the real estate agents taking advantage of the situation.

I recently read this report on BBC and the future looks bleak for anyone saving to buy a place in India. Reminds me of a dialogue from the movie - Mudalvan "Save throughout your career, after retirement, buy a 1200 sqft land, build a small house with a lawn and sit there and read paper".

Looks to me, like that is a highly unlikely scenario. And while i wrote this blog, i am sure that some realestate agent just hiked the price of the apartments in chennai a notch again.

Dada, remember this: TO

2006-12-02T00:48:00.001+05:30

Dada., now that you have packed the rooshagullas and are catching a flight for South Africa, please hear just 2 words from me: Terrell Owens aka TO

You don't know him - here is a quick primer:

Terrell Owens is an obscenely gifted wide receiver in american football whose self-indulging tendencies has overshadowed his achievements on the field. Sounds very familiar?
Not once but twice has been driven out of town because of his lack of respect for his teammates. Sounds very familiar?
He called his employers & their football organization as 'class-less'. Sounds very familiar?
He suffers from wears-my heart on the sleeve-but-cant-keep-mouth-shut syndrome. Sounds very familiar?
Criticizes the coach as being against him. Sounds very familiar?
In San Francisco, TO cost his coach the job (read John Wright). Sounds very familiar?

Now that you are back in the side, i hope you would only think of aiding India when we have not been having a great tour of SA. I respect your contributions to indian cricket as it's most sucessful captain and would hope you would do nothing to sully your reputation, your coach, your captain, your organization, your country and most importantly YOURSELF.

Rioting - forced or protest!

2006-12-01T19:33:00.000+05:30

What kind of explanation with the political ecosystem provide for destruction of state infrastructure?

if you did not know, miscreants defiled an Ambedkar statue in Uttar Pradesh and the far-off Maharastra saw heavy rioting in protests.

I am appalled that someone even thought of defiling Ambedkar's statue - he definitely ranks up there amongst Gandhi, Nehru and Patel as diverse contributors to the great foundation of the nation.

However, none can justify the destruction of buses, cars and trains because a few ill-minded fellows damaged a stone statue. On last count, there were 3 human casualities - and in my books, three too many. Ambedkar converted to Buddhism and i am sure Buddhism has no place for violence in its religion. True Ambedkar loyalists would not have gone on a rampage and instead would have bought the miscreants to shame with their non-violence. It is sad to see that political and militant organization can stoop to the lowest of levels to attract attention and gain mileage from any small incident.

Makes me wonder, is there any difference between the miscreants and the political organizations - both were vandalizing the state dignity for their myopic pleasures - and that's what would have saddened Ambedkar if he was alive today. As a nation, we failed him today.

PS: I added a link to IE article that explicitly calls out RPI as being involved in the rioting - a charge the party denies.

Anna's Wedding Snaps: Day (-1) Snaps

2006-12-01T15:54:00.000+05:30

Continued from previous post ...

With the sisters

That's amma (left & Fourth) and her sisters - Lakshmi Narasamma (First), Ranganayaki (Second), Tripura Sundari (Third) and Saraswati (Standing - Fifth & Youngest). The kid is Srikar - Sundari aamma's grandson

Mela atmosphere ..

Ok., thats a lot of different people that i could squeeze in one snap - Right in the middle is Savitri Vodhina and her daughter - Sravanti. On my left and towards the right is Sailaja Vodhina, eldest daughter-in-law of ranga aamma and her sons - Rahul (extreme right) and Girish (second from right). Also between Savitri vodhina and anna, is Manasa

Gandhi Pedananna ...

Thats Gandhi Pedananna (Nanna's elder brother) & his wife Aruna Aamma seated with Dad. Pratyuman - their grandson is also seen along with me & anna.

Banu Babai

The snap is with Banu Babai - Dad's younger brother and his wife Nagalakshmi Pinni ...

Santha Atha ...

With Santha Atha - dad's younger sister, santosh mavaiya - her husband and their youngest daughter - Hasita

and finally.,

During the Edurukola function., a snap of anna and vodhina.

Anna's Wedding Snaps - Day -1 Snaps

2006-11-30T17:50:00.000+05:30

We reached Vijayawada for the wedding from Chennai on Saturday morning (18th) with the train getting delayed (as usual!). This snap is right after we reached the venue.

(L to R): Anna, Chalapathi Uncle (Anna's Father-In-Law) and Dad.

Later in the afternoon and through the evening ....

We had a function - Edhurukollam and these snaps were taken by Raventh & Manasa leading to the function.

with dad...

with mom....

with sundari aamma (Amma's 3rd Elder Sister) and Chachu (Amma's younger sister)...

with sisters: Manasa (Pink) and Madhuri (Orange)...

more snaps to follow ...