India Tour of Austrailia 07-08: 3rd Test review

Siddhartha Vaidyanathan's pre-match article on the 3rd test match between India and Australia had an interesting comment:

"Despite all the portents India can take heart from one fact: they've recently pulled off surprises in bowler-friendly conditions abroad. Like in Headingley in 2002, Kingston or even Wanderers in 2006 and Nottingham last year, they have stood up and taken on the challenge."

When I had read this I I had hoped if there could be a repeat at Perth.
Post match it appears that India are on there way to win the pace battles in near future. And given the unpredictable nature of Indian team, I am now beginning to doubt there capabilities to win on pitches which are expected to help them. Look at what happened at Sydney and Melbourne earlier. Both places where India had a chance. But post Perth, one thing that I am confident about is that Indian pace battery is there to stay and has the potential to become world beaters in future.

At Penang, Malaysia, 02/12/2006

Working alone on a Saturday afternoon in the cold hall at Intel's Penang Development Center waiting for the compiles to get over. Random net surfing, watching live score of ashes and that too is over now, so what to do?

Do a long pending wish, write a blog. So here it is: my first entry.

Its been 2 days since I arrived at Penang on an official trip. The task ahead was critical and required extra effort and hearing stories from my collegues already there at Penang, I was very apprehensive if I would be able to turn things around. On top of that leaving Nandini and Sonal at home after such a long time was not an easy thing to do. So I was not very upbeat about the journey.

The trip wasn't finalized till the last minute and that made things even worse. Nevertheless work had to be done and some one had to go, so here I am at Penang reluctantly or otherwise.

The first impression of Penang was good. The view of the airport from the plane reminded me of San Francisco. Though the differnce was in size. But the similarities were striking. An airport surrounded by hills on one side and by the sea on the other. Lush green hills made the view very pleasent. The temperature was pleasent, but humidity little bit on the higher side, which was understandable. After all Penang is an island.

After arrival at the airport, my first task was to quickly check-in at the hotel and reach office as soon as possible. And ever since I have been here in the office, understanding the setup and how things work and what do I need to do to move to the next level.

Now that my collegues have left for home back in India, I am alone, trying to manage on my own, so the wait time is more prononuced. Earlier we used to have a small gupp session and discussed life and musings, but with me alone, I thought its a good idea to start my blog.

Lets see till how long I manage to write.