India's Tour of England - First Test review

After a tantalising fight, India was finally able to save the match courtesy some gutsy batting by MS Dhoni and the Rain God. Had it not rained for the last 3 hours of the match India would have surely lost this match. Today's papers are full of reasons of Indian teams sorry state in this match. My own analysis is not very different from them. We bowled really bad on day 1 of the match and that was the major difference between the 2 sides. After that India was always catching up with England.

One thing that surprises me these days about the Indian cricket is the way we play spinners. Gone are the days when we used to treat the spinners with disdain. Shane Warne's performance against India is pathetic. Muralitharan's average against India is worst when compared against other countries. Performance of spinners from other countries against India in past is not even worth mentioning. So it is very surprising when one sees Tendulkar, Dravid and Ganguly giving respect to spinners from Bangladesh and then again to Monty Panesar, both when he toured India and now when India is touring.

I don't know what has caused these changes in the playing tactics of Indian batsmen against spinners, but we continue to play this way then one thing is for sure that we are going to loose out on what is our strength. In our continuous pursuit to improve our performance against the quickies it seems that we are forgetting the art of playing against the spinners. And this is not going to take Indian cricket forward. Nobody ever improves by forgetting ones strengths while removing the weaknesses.

India's Tour to England -- Pre tour thoughts

The Indian Cricket team starts its tour to England tomorrow with a Test Match at the Lords Ground. The newspapers have been carrying articles on the past tours of Indian Cricket team to England. The one consistent feature of all the tours barring the 1986 tour is that we have lost the first Test always. Even in the famous last tour where we almost one the series had it not rained in the last Test, we lost the first Test quite easily, with only Ajit Agarkar saving grace with a cherished hundred at the Mecca of Cricket.

This time around, my patriotic self, would like to see that we repeat the 1986 tour, winning quite comfortably. But my realistic self, says that given the Indian performance in the tour matches till now and the still undecided batting order, we may land up in a familiar situation. This is the last chance for the famous trio of Indian batting, Sachin, Saurav and Rahul to leave a lasting impression. Sachin has already shown his intents in the tour match with a match saving knock of 177 against the England Lions team. Saurav, though lacklustre till now, have in the recent times shown a penchant of staying on the crease for longish periods in both versions of the game, so he can be counted on for at least staying on the crease and wasting time if not on scoring runs. This may be helpful for us in case we have to save a Test. Rahul have always been reliable and had been India's best bat overseas. He is sure to come up trumps this time around too.
Of the other players I have great expectations from Dinesh Karthik. He has shown a lot of improvement in recent times and I would place my bets on him.

In the bowling department, the Indian pace attack, though dependent on Zaheer Khan, I would trust Sreesanth to get wickets and along with the ever reliable Anil Kumble could be the match winner. I don't have much faith in the other bowlers. But to win a match, it is the bowling that has to come good. Lets hope it comes good this time around, like it did in the first Test in the latest series against South Africa.
And lets also hope that the Indian team does not let go the initial advantage like it did in South Africa.

Best of Luck India!!

Eldeco update - Power woes

The residents of Eldeco Ananda have had some meetings with the Eldeco officials in the last few months. One of the issue raised by us was the need of a UPS backup for the EPABX system that has been installed at Ananda.
In the first of such meetings in June Eldeco readily agreed to get this done. The residents have yet to see the UPS working. There was another meeting between the residents and the Eldeco officials on Saturday June 14, 2007, where Eldeco said that the UPS has been commissioned. However at the time of writing this post, there is no electricity in the complex for the last 4 minutes and I tried to check out if the EPABX was working or not and guess what it was NOT working. I wonder where did the UPS go. Seems like it too failed along with the generators for power back up.
While the power was down at Ananda, I couldn't help notice that the lights of the building next door, Kesar Garden Apartments, didn't even blink. I wonder what was the talk about uninterrupted power supply mentioned by Eldeco in their marketing brochure for Ananda. It still seems a distant dream.

Freakonomics Blog » The False Altruism of Alumni Giving

Mellisa Lafsky in her posting The False Altruism of Alumni Giving on the Freakonomics blog mentions an interesting study about how the alumni donation are correlated with the child's age and likelihood of applying to the school. My take on this:

there could be another reason for the increase in alumni contribution which is that as the child's age increase so does the alumnus' too and so does his/her income. Which can directly result in higher disposable incomes which in turn would lead to higher contributions to any charity including donations to college.

My personal thinking in this matter is that I would not donate to my college if I think that could have an impact on my kid's chances of getting an admission. It would be unfair on my part to think so and it would be even more unfair on the part of the college to consider the amount of my donations as helping the cause of my kid. I would like my college to take the best students no matter what their pedigree is and no matter what their parent's contributed to the college.

Sleep Your Way to Better Fitness - lifehack.org

Recently read this interesting article on fitnees at lifehack.org: Sleep Your Way to Better Fitness - lifehack.org
This makes an interesting read for especially a person like me who is not into a fitness program, regular or irregular, but I do give a lot of stress on sleeping and eating right. Maybe that is the reason why I have been able to maintain my weight at nearly the same levels for the past 5 years. I think a weight of around 66-70 kgs is good for a body of 5' 5".

But that is not to say that exercise is not to be done. At times I do feel that some exercise is required for the body so that the muscles do not become hard.

Indian Cricket -- then and now

Read this interesting article on cricinfo about India's first Test match ever, against England in 1932. It was all praise about the Indian team and how they had England in trouble during the match on atleast two occassions in the match.
My observations from the article about the state of Indian Cricket then and now is that it has not changed, few quotes from the article show that:
1. "they play the game in the most attractive manner" it was true then and it is true even now.
2. "Their batting depends on too few men" it was true then and it is true even now. We still depend on 3-4 batsmen to take us through. All others are there to make numbers.

And then as it says that we had the english team in trouble but it was we who lost. How often this story has been repeated in Indian cricket history, I can't remember. It was the story then and it is the story now. Seems we don't learn from our history and moreso the Indian cricketers.

Good luck to them on their English tour this monsoon.

From Freakonomics Blog

Recently read this post on Freakonomics blog No Price Discrimination at Northwest Airlines.
My own experiences about the service provided by the airlines are similar. The crew at most times gets confused about how to react when they are faced with a situation that is probably not mentioned in their handbook.

So is the quality of air crew going down or is that the passengers are getting more demanding these days?