Serious and honest soul searching is required

We lost again with a considerable margin in Boxing Day test against Australia. Getting defeated is not bad but habit of getting defeated is dangerous and I am sad to see that Team India is going in that mode. I still believe the biggest problem with the Indian team is larger than sport image of few Indian players. We (the fan) and Indian media unnecessarily make them hero with a modest performance. For example, in first inning Sachin scored 62 and that was enough for all the media (print and electronics) and fans to praise him heavily and start day dreaming about his performance in 2nd inning of the test to win the match. At the same time, poor chap Phil Jaques scored 2 fifties in two innings and has marvelous career records (till now) but no one knows him. Dada scores a 40+ and everywhere we start talking what a comeback dada? At the same time look at this guy ... Hussey. He almost averages 80 (Sachin and Dravid struggling to reach average of 60 and Dada is below 50 in test average) in test cricket but he doesn’t think he is bigger than game and go to field to just perform to the best. Talks less but perform well. That’s the story of all Australian players. But almost all STAR Indian players have attitude problem. Last Indian coach Greg Chappell has indeed raised this issue but no one gave a serious thought towards this. People started lambasting him and he was shown the door by BCCI. But its fact that the attitude of (STAR) cricketer has been always a problem and because of that team could never performs as a team. Even in today newspaper Indian cricket manager (Lalchand Rajput) accepted that Yuvraj Singh is having an attitude problem. Fortunately Anil Kumble is still not in the same league. Indian captain deserve lot more praise and media attention that some of the other Indian player (if compared) and he doesn’t have attitude problem. Whenever he is in filed, he tries to perform to his best. One more problem with the team is to avoid doing serious soul searching and always be in day dreaming mode. On the eve of 3rd day of Boxing Day test, Harbhajan singh told the media that getting 500 runs (in 4th inning of the test) might not be impossible and difficult for such a great batting lineup of India with so many big names. Poor sardar is also a pampered Indian cricketer who doesn’t know how deep we are in water.

unstable Pakistan

Last week Pakistan again faced a bomb blast and assassination attempt in which Benazir Bhutto died. Bomb blasts and assassination attempts have been now almost daily story in Pakistan and it clearly shows that how the law and order situation has deteriorated in Pakistan. With every terror attacks, hundreds of innocent civilians are dying and looks like Pakistan leadership is not even bothered or not enough strong to curb the terror attacks and networks. Looks like Pakistan is on same path as Afghanistan and Beirut had been earlier. It may lead for civil war. Pakistan's leadership and people have directly or indirectly encouraged the terror elements in last few decades and the side effects are now clearly visible. A highly unstable Pakistan is dangerous for neighboring nations specially India. India doesn’t enforce a VISA policy with Nepal and that’s the route most terror element can enter India without any problem. Anyway last week Rawalpindi attack has given good masala to our news channels and they are trying to repeatedly do unnecessary analysis of every angle related with this attack under different "BREAKING NEWS" headings. Yesterday I saw few channels had called some astrologer and numerologists and were trying to establish an astrology/numerology angle with Benazir Bhutto's assassination and also with future of Pakistan.

well done Aamir

Yesterday I watched "Tare Jameen Par". After watching this movie, I started feeling more and more bad that why did I go to watch a movie like "Om Shanti Om" in same multiplex about a month ago. Anyway coming back to movie, I read lots of movie reviews but I would just like to make a comment that this was a simplest story told in great way so that it kept me interested throughout the movie. This was (I guess) directorial debut for Aamir Khan and he truly has shown that why he always has difference of opinions with his movie directors. Movie direction is not just creating few scenes (in different flavors like music, romance, emotion) and present that to audience but its more than that where the director should first feel that he is not making this movie to fool the audience and then he should tell a story to the audience in his/her own way. "Tare Jameen Par" is a meaningful film which should be watched by every one of us to encourage such kind of movies. The child artiste (Darsheel) has been too good and I felt in some places he is better than Aamir in acting. I heard this movie got good opening and may become a super hit in near future. This will be good for Indian cinema. Aamir's star value also helped this movie to pull the crowd otherwise there has been some honest approach in meaningful cinema by less known names and the movie succumbed and some useless movies (with big star value) became huge hit.

new education trend -- more business less values and education

I started sending my daughter to play school in June 2007. School was reputed and they had good (not extra ordinary) facilities. The fee I was told to pay was INR 23,000 per anum. I felt bit uneasy but then I had no other option because most of the (so called) good schools had their fee in same range. The same school has recently announced the admission for next year (June 2008) batches and last week when I went to school to pick my daughter I was shocked to see on notice board that they have revised their fee from next year. Now parents need to pay INR 33,000 per anum for Play Group, nursery and KG. The fee was hiked more than 40%. I thought to change school for my daughter next year onward but then bouncer came that all of the schools (of same level and facilities) have revised their fee to INR 33,000 per anum. Means it was a collective decision and they may have some association to decide these things. I felt education is now purely a (fast growing) business in India.

At home I sat and did some calculation. Took out the school calendar and found that school only operates for around 200 days per year. Playgroup has just 2 hours timing so you will now pay INR 33,000/400 per hour and that comes INR 82.5 per hour. I completed my Bachelor of Technology from a reputed institute. I was there for 4 years and we had hectic schedule for classes. I paid around INR 9,000 for four years. This is 9 year back story. I am not sure how much my Alma meter charges now for four year B Tech courses. Even if they charge in tune of INR 50,000 per year, that is justified because that includes rich library and book bank setup with lots of lab instruments(hardware and software) and 7 hour per day classes. The school where my daughter goes just has PlayGroup to KG. It is running in a 2 flats setup in Aundh. They have limited set of kids playing facilities. They have around 6 teachers and 4 admin staff. They have some maids (around 8). They have around 50 students. Thus cumulative sum of fee is INR 1150000 per anum. For 3 hour school they won’t be paying a high some to their school staffs. I feel the management makes good some of money. This was all about the initial stage of education. Now I will let you know another story. Someone told me this story. Few months back, one of his college friends (in US) contacted him on chat and requested him to go in person to one of the reputed engineering institute in his city for collecting the admission forms (paid seat) for his sister who was not from that place. He told that he had visited the website of institute and the last date is in next week and it seems the paid seat fee is just around INR 1, 00000 and he can bear the expense. When that person went to institute and enquired, he came to know that for getting a paid seat admission, the candidate needs to pay extra INR 3,00000 (under the table) to the institute management apart from the usual fee (specified on the website and forms).

In India, education is converting rapidly as an industry. Institute has goals to create more profit (sometime white and sometime black) than to provide quality education and create role models for society. Most confusing part is that government is not giving any attention towards this. It is just interested in providing reservations in government/private institutes and taking back the autonomies of some institutes and universities. Government schools at different levels are dying. Either there is no teacher or if the teachers are there they don’t get salaries properly or they are not good enough.

A VIP cricketer and a (by default VIP) politician

Last month we traveled to our native. We took a flight to Delhi from Pune and then went to Patna and took a cab to reach Muzaffarpur. I was happy to see good quality road between Patna to Muzaffarpur. At Pune airport, while standing in security check queue, I observed the CISF officer (security in charge) invited someone who was standing behind me to get his security check done first and that gentleman politely refused and told him that he will come in queue. I was surprised. I was sure that person standing behind me is VIP and thought to find out who this gentleman is. I turned back and I saw he was Sunil Gavaskar. I talked with him a little while we were in queue. I felt happy that he didn’t exploit his VIP status.

While coming back, at Delhi airport, the GoIndiGo flight was late and my 3 year old daughter had lost her patience and started creating problems for me and my wife. We were waiting and then a long queue got formed to board the flight where a final security check was getting done. The queue was moving too slow and my daughter's was almost uncontrollable. All the passengers were getting frustrated and somehow they were waiting for their turn. All of the sudden we observed one airline official with one CISF personnel came with *someone* and bypassed the queue to board the flight. The gentleman was again a VIP. He was a MP from Maharashtra. I started feeling so bad and angry for the entire system. The passengers with small kids and family are suffering but Mr. VIP doesn’t have any problem in taking privilege of his status although he also knew that he has to fly in same plane so boarding first doesn’t make any difference.

I do know that all cricketers might not be like Mr. Gavaskar and also all politicians might not be like Mr. VIP but at least that day I felt like politicians are the most morally uncultured class in this country.

Remembring Sunil Joshi....

Thus the One Day series is over and Australia won it 4-2 and they really deserved it. Yesterday was Kartik’s (Murali) day. He bowled superbly and then batted sensibly to fetch runs from the track where Australian pacers were bowling superbly. Murali Kartik’s performance revived the memories of Sunil Joshi against South Africa (http://content-ind.cricinfo.com/indvaus/engine/match/66242.html). Sunil Joshi was also a left arm orthodox bowler. That was his day but unfortunately in next match, the South Africans took so many runs against his bowling that he could never come out of that psychological pressure. Hope history won’t repeat for Murali Kartik and he will be bowling at his best in coming future. In yesterday match, clearly the pitch was for bowlers. The pacers got the movement in the air and also the spinners had adequate help coming from the track. I believe Australia would not have even scored 160 if the India pacers would have bowled properly. They lacked accuracy and with the helping wickets they were getting all swings converted in wide. On other side, Australian bowlers read the track properly and bowled in right areas to expose the depth of India batting. Coming back to entire series, one thing which MS Dhoni and Indian management could not read was that the Australian bowling attack was almost ineffective against the Indian tail enders. They really didn’t have any plan to get out Harbhajan, Zaheer and Co. Have they (Indian Team Management) known that in 6th game at Nagpur, Uthappa and Dhoni would have charged Australian attack a couple of over early clearly thinking that the players like Zaheer, Harbhajan, Kartik can fetch runs in death overs against Australian attack. Look for the all One Day matches in these series and you will find that Australia always struggled to get out Indian tail Enders. In fact in every match Indian tail Enders had scored consistently. This is a fact which can give some advantage for Indian camp for the test series (in Australia) where usually the tail Enders also gets chance to bat for long.

This One Day series can see the demise of a talented pacer like S Sreesanth. He unnecessarily got himself involved in all useless controversies which affected his state of mind and that negative effect was seen in his bowling. He could never concentrate. Actually Australian team was successful in getting this bowler disturbed himself his rhythm and they did that in a much planned way. I remember an article written by Ponting in TOI during the final phase of 20-20 world cup even before the Australian arrived to India for the One Day cricket series. In his column he targeted Sreesanth and wrote his bowling figures are far better than the quality of his bowling. As I read the column I understood that the right hand Australian batsmen are getting difficulty in playing Sreesath. In fact that was seen in earlier 20-20 match. Ponting understood that this single guy can make difference and so he started targeting him. They used to target Sachin earlier when they thought Sachin plays like a match winner but now as they know that Sachin is not in same touch they pointed out Sreesatnth. Sreesanth had bowled some inspiring spells in earlier test matches where India won against West Indies and England. Ponting felt this guy can make the difference so he and his company started targeting him to disturb his state of mind. In the same way like they do with Kevin Pietersen and Andrew Flintoff knowing that these guys can change the result of ashes series. Dhoni, Sreesanth and Indian cricket management would have understood this tactic much earlier and would have avoided all on and off the field talking tactics. Hope Sreesanth will be back in the same rhythm to bowl well spells in incoming test series in Australia. Else it will be a victory for Ponting and Co in the mind game.

Pune roads in this monsoon

Since 2005, western part of India started recording more rainfall every year in monsoon and so the Pune. It improved the ground water level at Pune but the biggest bad effect of extra rainfall was seen on roads in Pune. In last two years during rainy season, Pune roads were usually full of potholes and were dangerous to ride or drive your vehicle. This year the situation was far improved. Roads were not in that much bad condition. The municipal authorities have "perhaps" taken more care or may be the change in guard at the administration of the municipal commission has done the trick.

Power Of Youth

India is ICC 20-20 world champion. They played some really exciting cricket throughout the tournament. In bits and pieces each member of team contributed in this journey. The one thing noticeable is that team was young, captain was new. The famous trio of Sachin, Saurav, Dravid were not in team. Altogether that helped the team a lot. That helped them in dressing room. That helped the team in field. That helped the team in celebrating the victory with full expression with all media attention on them.

Let’s see how. This is almost the same team which traveled WI for WC 2007 in early this year minus three seasoned (mentally and physically tired, exhausted) cricketers plus few very new young players. But the result is totally different although the coach is missing, captain has zero match leading experience, Indian cricket fans were pessimistic and media had almost no attention. The absence of three famous senior players did the trick. In dressing room almost everyone was young (forget Agarkar he was a lost case in this championship at later part and that was a great decision) and new and was expressing his thoughts freely there was no shadow of heavyweights and their experienced thoughts. In field, the captain was feeling all the freedom to experiment and was able to direct the team as per his plan. In final match against Pakistan, Dhoni sent Yusuf Pathan to open the inning. Imagine if Sachin, Saurav would have been in team, they would have felt bad and forcibly tried to go to open the innings because they think *they* play better as openers (this story has been in news during WC 2007) and it doesn’t matter if team performs bad with that opening combination. Similarly in crunch situation like in last over of final match where Pakistan had to score 13 runs, the poor chap Joginder wouldn’t have got the chance to bowl because Sachin would have thought that he is a better bet in dead overs. Even media would have highlighted this point. Thus the purpose of having a captain would have been defeated every now and then. Imagine Saurav running breathless while going to stop a boundary and Sachin rubbing his knees in slips :) with Dravid chewing his nails. But in absence of these guys Uthappa got a chance to play and he fielded a ball played by Younis khan and broke the stumps of Imran Nazir to get a smart run out. The same guy jumped forward to hold a difficult catch at boundary line which he could not but at least he tried. Similarly Rohit Sharma demonstrated some smart piece of fielding in earlier match to get run outs. Limited over cricket is truly for young and energetic players who are looking for the dawn of their career than for them who should get retired instead of sticking (chipaku) with team like glued with FEVICOL by using their demigod image.

This victory was also a great comeback for player like Irfan Pathan. I feel we should also appreciate behind the scene contribution of last coach Greg Chappell who worked hard to create a pool of pace bowlers to strengthen the bench and thus we have pace bowlers like RP Singh, Sreesanth where even one of them clicks, India performs well. This victory also has an unsung hero in Gautam Gambhir who played well almost in every game but no one talked about him. This victory also indicates that perhaps Indian team knows to play better in absence of a coach. Dhoni took some decison which fortunately clicked but he needs to continue his approach to the game and the team. He has to prove his leadership quality in upcoming Australia series.

Online Rail Ticket booking with IRCTC

I am planning to travel to my native in November and I had to book a rail ticket. I don’t have enough time to spend in endless queues at various Indian Rail reservation counters and so I decided to use IRCTC (http://irctc.co.in) to book my tickets online at my home on broadband internet. I was aware that it was a big risk. I had to prepare a lot to do the successful booking at IRCTC. Tickets for the desired day starts getting booked 60 days in advance (that is today) at 8:00 AM and I was fully prepared. I got up early today and first logged in to net and checked whether everything is fine. I was able to login to IRCTC and it was very fast to use. I was confident that at 8 AM I will surely book my tickets in Rajdhani express.

Booking at IRCTC for festival season tickets is risky, unreliable and Herculean task.

At 7:55 AM I again started a fresh session at IRCTC and logged in. I prepared my query and got ready with all details. At 8 AM I pressed the OK button at IRCTC website and was shocked to see a blank page with "Service unavailable" message displayed. I kept trying many times. I tried with Internet Explorer, I tried with Mozilla firefox. Mostly it was not proceeding a single step after getting logged in to IRCTC website but Sometime I was able to proceed one or two step ahead and then it was displaying "Service unavailable" message or was hanging. I started getting frustrated. I was sure if I cannot book in next 15 minutes or so I cannot get a confirmed status railways reservation. I didn’t loose my heart and kept trying. Till 8:30, I might have logged in and logged out to IRCTC at least 100 times and somehow I could never proceed because of all the different kind of error displayed by IRCTC website. Looked like the server of IRCTC got unresponsive and got chocked due to heavy load at opening time. At 8:30 AM suddenly I could go one more step ahead and I saw status that the tickets are "NOT AVAILABLE". I lost the opportunity to book Rajdhani Express tickets on desired day. This is not the first time I had seen this happening.

All the services provided by Indian Railways are pathetic. Whether it’s catering, seating, security or even ticket booking. Indian Railways NOW claims they are in profit. They should utilize people's money to improve the services instead of going to all business schools to showcase there skills to convert a loss budget in profit budget and patting their own back.

Anyway I have changed my planned departure date and postponed my journey by one day and will be trying my luck at long quesues at Railway reservation counters at 5 or 6 AM tomorrow. Hopefully I will get a ticket.


I (and tens of thousands of railways passengers) usually remember these four lines and try thier luck every day with Indian Railways:

MAN MEIN HAI VISHWAS
PURA HAI VISHWAS
HUM HONGE KAMYAB EK DIN............. !

My Daughter's first day in school

Before she turned two and half year old, my daughter Dhriti started attending school for Playgroup standard. I and my wife were very much excited with the idea of her going school and playing with other kids for hour long or so. We reached school on time and playgroup teacher requested us to stay in school because it’s first day and in case she starts crying they will call us. Dhriti liked the place initially and was playing with toys, wallowing in sand pit and dancing on baby rhymes. I quietly left the place and was waiting outside the school. She was enjoying the music and was dancing. All of the sudden she started looking for me and even when my wife's presence didn’t stopped her crying then there were no other options left. I had to go there and take her back to home. Even in my lap, she was holding me tightly like I should not disappear again. Back at home, the whole day she was bit silent and appeared to us that she is thinking something. We usually never observe her sitting silent and thinking. All of my enthusiasm of sending her school suddenly vanished and I started feeling bad for my little daughter.

I was five year old when I started attending school and I still remember even at that age I was feeling very bad and was feeling like going too far from my parents, family and home. Dhriti is not even three year old and so naturally she is not very mature to digest the concept of school (even for playgroup standard). At this age, putting pressure of a routine of attending school everyday is really not a good idea. But we need to do that to keep her upbringing on good track. When I was a kid, the social structure was not like of now. Families were mostly grouped on combined principles and were bigger in size so the initial learning of kids was very much possible within the family with highest quality and ensured safety. Now the things are very different. Concept of nucleus family has slowly arrived. The family grouping is mostly on tune of the western culture and usually size of families is very small. Now the family just constitutes Wife, Husband and kids. The families in the colony, society usually don’t interact much with each other. But the society is yet not fully transformed and the transition is still happening. In this transition period most suffered lot are the kids. Whole day at home they don’t see enough faces and persons to keep on playing and they get bored. They just interact with parents and don’t get a chance to interact with many people so the learning curve is also not very healthy. That’s the one of the primary reason people started sending little kids to schools at very tender age. The idea is to let them mingle with many kids there and also let them allow learning small things while being in school. The concept of playgroup, nursery and kindergarten in schools are well seen everywhere now and were not easily seen 25 years back in every school.

Bappi Da .... a legend?

Rewind back to 80’s……. my childhood days… everywhere there were songs composed or even sung by Bappi Lahiri. He was riding the success of disco beats. There was no one else to compete with him in that disco zone. Apart from his disco style, he created very few good music scores too. In 90’s, Bappi Lahiri slowly vanished as music composer and then suddenly re surfaced again in music and film industry as a singer to other composers (I know two songs for sure). Now he is seen everywhere…….. on TV shows, in award ceremonies, as judge and sometime as a music expert too. The success of 80’s made Bappi Da think that he is a legend. Most funny part is he himself claims he is legend. In one of the TV reality show where he was a judge, he was repeatedly comparing himself with the genius of R D Burman and was patting his back. Sometime it looks so funny and sometime it irritates you. Matter becomes worst when suddenly here and there he starts singing too. Recently there was a spat between a singer (Abhijit Chatterji) and Bappi Da. The singer lambasted Bappi Da while talking with news reporters and Bappi Da reacted, “That person is 3rd class person and singer. He is talking nonsense about a legend of music industry”. Bappi Da seriously thinks and he himself declares that he is a legend.

Bappi Da it’s true that in 80s, there were only your songs getting hit in music industry and you did every A B and C for disco music but why do you forget that 80s is supposed to be worst music decade in Indian music and film industry. Please don’t compare yourself with greats like R D Burman.

Hope if someone can help Bappi Da to learn some modesty.

Type of Unemployement

A basic definition for employment is work available for an interested worker and unemployment is no work available. When I was in 5th standard in a government middle school in Bihar, we had a subject called civics where I understood that altogether unemployment is of three types:

1. Complete unemployment
2. Half unemployment
3. Hidden unemployment

Complete unemployment is a situation where you don’t have any work to do thru out the day, week, month and year. It’s easy to understand. You wanted to do some work but there is no work for you. Next one is half unemployment. Half unemployment is, if you have some work available for you during some time of year and don’t have any work after that. Best example can be taken from some seasonal farming when a labor gets some employment while doing the paddy farming and sits unemployed after the season is over. This type of unemployment is also easy to understand. Third one is most difficult and confusing. Hidden unemployment is where from the outside, others think that everyone is employed but usually few of them have work to do. For example if n number of labors can do some work in time t but the m (where m>n) labors are employed to do same work in same time t then its hidden employment. Earlier the accurate and real world examples for this type of unemployment were the government departments where more than required number of engineer and helper were employed to do some work which can be completed with less number of worker. Socialist and communist philosophy encourages this type of unemployment. One more example is where a more skilled worker does less skilled work. For example, if a PhD holder is employed to do some work which can be easily done by a diploma holder.

Think positively Mr Prime Minister

Today I read an article in TOI (http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Trim_fat_salaries_of_CEOs_PM/articleshow/2072751.cms) where our beloved Prime Minister has requested India Inc to not give fat salaries. The reasons given by he was that in today’s world, thru media channels the life standard of these highly paid guys is visible in villages and in slums and that can cause social imbalance. Great suggestion Mr. Prime Minister. Keep on doing some more research regarding this and you will take Indian life standard 20 yrs back and that’s what you looks like aiming for. Your plain theory is to squeeze as much as you can and frustrate as much as you can the people who are doing good in life and having good life standards and don’t give that squeezed money to poor’s but fill your pockets. Here are few points I would like to mention here:

1. The same village and slum people also do see the lavish and corrupt life style of our politicians, bureaucrats, thru media channels. Will that not affect the social balance?
2. In your career, altogether you yourselves accumulated a great wealth thru salaries (seems your bank balances goes up in crores as declared to Election Commission of India) by serving to Indian as well as International bodies. Didn’t you think in same way that time and voluntarily received a small salary which will be enough to run your family and expenses?
3. What is the source of income for Mrs. Sonia Gandhi? Will the life standard of Rahul Gandhi have any impact on the slum people? Or there is also a reservation rule applicable and slum people don’t get impacted when they see the lavish life style of you people and also come to know about your fat bank balances?

I had heard a story when I was a kid. There are two lines drawn on board and you need to make the size equal. A constructive approach is to extend the smaller line to the size of bigger line and another destructive approach is to delete some part of longer line to make that look similar to smaller line. Our respected Prime Minister has chosen the destructive path. He wants everyone in India to have a similar (poor) life standard so that everyone will be happy to see the hopeless standards of each other. Seems he has given up to the idea that we should improve the life standards of village and slum people. His comments and thoughts are disappointing and frustrating. May GOD give him some strength to think wisely and intellectually......

Leader Follower paradigm

In this world, everyone is either a leader or follower or in some cases both. Means a leader may be follower for some other leader. Everyone posses both leader and follower instincts in their body and mind. Only the proportion of these instincts depicts their nature as a leader or a follower. This concept is pretty similar with the concept of Male and Female hormone in our body.

Usually leaders are few in numbers compared to followers and decide a path and follower (may be blindly) follows that path. This creates a famous tree kind of structure. Also a follower might have more than one leader (remember the multiple inheritance). Now the question is how the chain gets established? Means how a person who is of follower nature, decides which one person from the leaders community is actually his leader? I did some study, analysis and research in that and I believe its just a simple fact that if a person encounters another person which can do/perform or already performed few of the art which he/she couldn't or cannot, he/she accepts him/her as leader. For example, if a person is very much interested in playing soccer but could never became more than an average soccer player, meets a good above average soccer player in his team. He will surely get influenced and major chances are that he will accept him as his leader. If you will think in this line, you can easily validate several leader follower relationships around you with this concept.

So In case you are leading a team of individuals, first analyze every individual or group of individuals about their interests and passion and just try to demonstrate some good qualities in that fields in front of them which will ensure smooth formation of healthy leader-follower chain for you and your team. This is easy way to achieve "self evolved leadership" which is far better than "force imposed leadership" for a team.

At last, some followers are forcibly made leaders for a group of individual and software industry is good example of that :)

Well Played Greg....

Now when Greg Chappell has resigned, we should not just keep analysing all the negative aspects of his tenure as Indian coach. He was blunt but was professional and serious with his job. With his resignation too, he taught a final lesson of professionalism and responsibility to all Indian Players and BCCI. The way few Indian cricket stars behaved with him was strange. It was like he never played cricket. He was not an ordinary player. His over all records (career statistics http://content-ind.cricinfo.com/india/content/player/4558.html ) are if not better than Saurav, Sachin then not bad too. He was good player and captain.

Today I read in news paper that Sachin was not having good term with him because of his batting position. This again shows Sachin's selfishness and megalomaniac attitude. It is already proved fact that Chappell is a better strategist than Sachin (see Sachin's poor captaincy records) and as a coach had authority to decide the game plan but Sachin was reluctant to open the innings and when coach didnt agree, Sachin became his enemy. Sachin should always know he is not bigger than team. In past once he had expressed his displeasure when captain declared an inning and he was on 195. He was more interested in completing 200 than giving some extra time to Indian bowlers to bowled out the opposition. That shows his "commitments" towards the team. Hope with Chappell's resignation, senior non performing Indian players will learn the basics of commitment and responsibility and will follow the spirit to take back their names from team. One thing is sure that BCCI under politician Sharad Pawar wont do anything good for Indian team. So players need to take initiatives to clean up the system and image.

Sorry DUDE, No one will listen to you

So at last, Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar lost his patience and started blaming Chappell for his and team's poor show in WC 2007. The man who is famous to respond his critics with his bat and scores in cricket field is suddenly taking the path of creating sympathy for him among the Indian cricket lovers. This clearly indicates his inability to perform in field and his desperation to somehow be in Indian team for some more time. He says He is sad and disappointed because India is out of WC. I will say you *really* should be sad and disappointed dude else it will be height of shamelessness. People like Sachin has compelled the Indian Cricket to give importance to personalities over performances. After poor WC show, He is trying to harvest on his clear image for 17 long years in cricket.

Lets assume everything was not great with Chappell in WC, but simple question is, why didn't you do your duty to score runs? Take example of our great individualistic player Saurav Dada Ganguly. He never had good terms with Chappell but he scored few runs against Bangladesh and Bermuda. If you would have scored a simple 30+ (individualistic) score against Bangladesh, India would not have been out of WC. Lets also assume you were too disturbed and not in good mental shape because of coach-player strained relations, then for the benefit of team, why didn't you took your name back from the team and allowed someone else to play on your place. If you would have done that, you would have shown great courage and people would have appreciated that. You didnt do these things. That clearly indicates that now you are not good for international cricket and also somehow you want to be part of the Indian team. I sincerely believe, for you its time to GO. Sorry to say but this is a fact and that fact is clearly coming out from all the record books. There are few so called "cricket experts" here in India who are denying the fact that cricket in Sachin is totally finished and trying to create a hypothetical picture of Sachin playing in next WC. These guys are playing with emotions of Indian cricket fans. Indian cricket fans need to be beware of such kind of useless vocal elements and keep focusing only on performances not the personalities before extending their support. The problem with Indian cricket fan is that they are like a devoted wife of cricket personalities. Whenever a personality dies, they behave like a typical hindi movie widow who doesnt accept that she is widow and keeps wearing bangles and vermilion and takes years to realise that her husband is dead and she is widow. Please wake up and say strongly GOOD BYE SACHIN with all due respect.

a man called Arjun Singh

Since my childhood days, I kept on hearing the name of Arjun Singh thru media. Mostly for some wrong reasons. Earlier it was related to the surrender of dacoits from chambal then churhat lottery scandal then second most powerful person of Congress(I) after Rajeev Gandhi then something called Congress (T) for some small period of time and now for reservations in IIT/IIM. If you closely study his career you will find he was/is an ambitious person who always tried to be at top and hence so in news. Fortunately (for nation) or unfortunately (for him) he could never get the position he thought he deserves and thus at this stage of his life all of his "creative" skills have started converting in destructive skills. This is result of sheer frustration of being an unsuccessfull politician. After Rajeev's assasination, Narsimha Rao took the oppertunity and became PM and poor Arjun Singh missed the chance. Then he started creating problem for Pamulaparthi Venkat Narsimha Rao. In 2004, after Sonia denied taking the post of PM, he again had a golden oppertunity to take over as PM but no one proposed his name and Mr Manmohan Singh became PM. He is in ministry of Human Resources since then and keeps on coming in news sometime when camera catches him sleeping in some important meeting or in some function or for his change in syllabus initiatives or for waking up the reservation monster again and again. News reports has been always circulating in media that he is trying his best to create problems for Mr. Manmohan Singh and the government.

I always believed that PM should assign him some serious work so that he will be busy. Looks like he has ample amount of time because there is a saying in hindi "Khali Dimag Shaitan ka Ghar".

Let's not boycott them..

So somehow Indian team made it possible to come out of WC 2007 even being in a group which had Bermuda and Bangladesh type teams. The Indian team lost to Bangladesh and made them feel like they have really built a world class team. Bangladesh cricket team is feeling full of confidence. Anyway this feeling will soon go away when matches of super 8 will start.

As soon as India was out of WC, print and electronic media started doing "detailed" analysis. These news channels are now behind everyone related with Indian cricket team. They are the guys who first made the players feel like crowned king by reporting every single movements and activities done by any player. I remember once in prime time news hour, one of the news channels happily reported that there are some gossips going around for Dhoni's marriage. They reached Dhoni's house with camera and microphone to interview his parents to get every small details about Dhoni's marriage. Now Dhoni is villain for all of the news channels. Similarly for Greg. When he took over coaching job, they called him Guru Greg and started reporting each steps taken by Greg as something innovative. Now the poor chap is target of almost everyone including Kapil Dev who once coached India to australia tour (in 1999) and secured 3-0 white wash for India team in tests and 4-1 humiliating defeat in One Dayers. Yesterday I read a column http://in.rediff.com/wc2007/2007/mar/26guest.htm on rediff.com and somewhat I do agree with the author. People like Kapil Dev, Sunil Gavaskar never did anything right for Indian cricket after retirement. They just kept on cribbing on everything from management to players to performances. I do remember Kapil's "splendid" performances for almost 6 years during 1988-1993. I do agree everyone in Indian team performed really very bad in WC and this is a fact. No one can escape. Not even Saurav, because everyone knows that he was the person who was in form. He scored few runs in group matches but this is also true that he slowed down the pace of scoring rate and set the rythm for team to score with an average of 4 runs per over. We can say same things for Zaheer, Munaf. They performed reasonably well but their performances were never threatning to opposition. In cricket even a single bowler can change the direction of match. For team like Bangladesh, score of 192 was defendable, if fast bowlers had taken 4-5 wickets in first 20 overs or so. Thus not only batsmen but bowlers too failed. So what should we do to show our anger to Indian Cricket Team. Should we pelt stones on them? Should we raise some slogans on streets? No. Not at all. We should not boycott them but we should boycott the products they endorse. Like if someone from Indian cricket team endorses one soft drink, we should start using another brand. Anyway there is not much difference in taste of different soft drinks. Similarly for all other products. Let’s boycott all the products endorsed by any one of Indian cricket team. Let’s boycott all the fashion shows (even on TVs) where they walk on ramp. Let’s boycott all the movies where they go for muhurat and all. I thought that will be the best way to express our anger. I was shocked to hear on a TV news channel that representatives of these companies influence the selectors to select the player who endorses their products. So we need to boycott the products than the players. Don’t boycott Indian cricket. Don’t boycott Indian cricket team. Boycott the products they endorse.......

Positive Imaging

Recently my wife has developed some interest in reading and started reading a book "Positive Imaging" by Norman Pincent Peale. The author is a western writer. I just asked my wife what is Imaging and whatever she explained me that looked pretty similar to the our old Indian theory about "Buri Najar Lagna", "aah lagna" (in negative sense) and similar old existing sayings in positive sense too like "aapaki dua". Basically its about seriously wishing some one with good wishes or with bad wishes. The author claims that if you start imaging something to happen and if you do that very seriously then that will happen. For example if you start imaging that you will successfully complete some work on time and will get promoted in near future and will do that imaging very seriously then that will happen. Talking about negative imaging, I do remember when I was a kid I have heard my mother, grand mother talking sometime that "koi aankh na laga de". Here the term "aankh laga dena" indicates that someone is jealous with something of yours and so he/she will start imaging some thing negative about you and that will happen. Most common observations were with the babies. They look cute and mothers think that there should not be any evil eye on her baby. One good point is that our culture has a self claimed solution also for this negative imaging and that is putting black kajal on head of the baby :) .

I always thought these concepts useless in this modern scientific days but seems I need to think about these things a bit seriously. These kind of theories are difficult tobe proved or denied scientifically. I can write lot more about this.... mainly in our culture but this blog will get stretched to appear a boring blog :)

controversy related to Woolmer's death

Yesterday late evening I was watching India TV (a news channel in India) and was shocked to know the allegations from former Pakistan pacer Sarfaraz Nawaz that the caoch Bob Woolmer was murdered by the match fixing mafia. He accused almost everyone (from ICC to PCB to Pakistan's players) to be involved in this match fixing scandals. Sarfaraz Nawaz is famous for his big mouth but on the same news channel, Abdul Kadir was also indirectly supporting his allegations. Lets assume everything he said is not correct but then suspicion arises because of unexpected loss of Pakistan to Ireland and India to Bangladesh. As we know that Dravid's decision to bat first on that Port-of-Spain pitch was surprising for almost everyone who knows even A-B-C of cricket. One thing is sure that the cricket governing bodies are not serious about tackling match fixing scandals in world cricket. The indian players who got accused for match fixing in past are now again getting feliciated by BCCI and even Indian Media is inviting them for "expert" comments and analysis during the several ongoing cricket match. I guess we all cricket fans should bycott them.

India in WC 2007

India won its 2nd match against low ranked Bermuda. After the Bangladesh defeat, fans like me were bit nervous to watch this match too. But it was a cool win with loads of sixes all over the ground.

After India lost first match against Bangladesh, there were lots of discussions and columns in media. My opinion was bit different for the blames the experts of cricket were putting on individuals. I always felt that the over cautious and slow batting of sachin and Ganguly for 3rd wicket took away the match from India. They were not rotating strike and so the confidence of bangladesh bowlers and fielders were getting boosted ball by ball. See the stat. Sachin played 26 balls for his 7 runs and that also with a boundary. That means he socred only 3 runs in ones and twos in 25 balls.