While the whole article brings up some really interesting points, the conclusions drawn from the statistics are simply fab.

Conclusions:

1: Nothing.
2: If you judge players entirely on double-centuries and 10-wicket hauls, you may not present yourself with an entirely accurate view of their skills.
3: Kallis is an inferior cricketer to both Guy Whittall and Chris Pringle.

• Here’s another quirky one for you: Muralitharan has hit more Test sixes than Graham Gooch, Keith Miller, Martin Crowe or Wally Hammond. (Which possibly explains why Murali was signed by an IPL franchise, but none of the others were. Least of all Hammond, who, admittedly, is past his best, but would have been worth a few dollars in his pomp.)

• And Waqar Younis has a higher winning percentage as a Test captain than any of Clive Lloyd, Mike Brearley or Mark Taylor.

Oh well if now I could just push the stats of this blog as well.

Frankly I did not enjoy the current India-Sri Lanka series at all. The bat dominated a bit too much and it was not bowler’s fault at all. The pitches were so very placid and the boundaries so very short. I absolutely cringed every time Arun Lal said “That’s a monstrous hit” when it actually landed only 73 meters away. Also I can bet Dilshan would not be playing that scoop on a Perth or Durban track.

Here is what Harsha Bhogle has to say on Rajkot’s match

Rajkot was a cricket occasion, not a cricket match. It was a spectacle, not a contest. It wasn’t good for cricket.

He further says

The ball was rendered incapable of throwing up a challenge. At the heart of cricket’s magic, the reason all of us are so enamoured by it, is the fact that every ball is a contest. The bowler conceives the challenge, sets his line, his length, his movement, the placement of fielders, and presents it to the batsman, who must then unravel it and respond.

And then there is another challenge. It is relentless and it must be that way. The moment the delivery of the ball to a batsman is no longer a challenge, the contest ceases. It is no longer cricket. Or maybe it would be to the same extent that boxing would remain a sport if each boxer is allowed three minutes at a punching bag and the winner determined by who hits the bag better.

Many cheered, as they might have in ancient Rome when Christians were thrown to the lions. The hitting of a boundary was no longer an event, no longer a victory for the bat over the ball. It was routine, almost par for the course. Was the bowler thinking of getting a batsman out or was he fearing where he was going to be hit? Was there a sigh of relief at a dot ball? Did submission accompany a bowler back to his mark in place of aggression.

This brings us back to today’s game.  Of course the pitch had variable bounce. A few went to the keeper on second bounce and a few leapt up from length in the same over. But didn’t batsmen play on uncovered pitches earlier without the protective armour. Also suppose, just suppose,  had the bounce been consistent with pronounced movement of the seam, would Arun Lal, Ravi Shastri and even the venerable Sunil Gavaskar called this a good pitch? I doubt. Because now the definition of a good pitch is when the batsman can just plonk his foot and hit through the line without caring for line and length.

I wonder would we see bowling machines instead of bowlers in the team in the future because pretty soon no body would want to be a bowler.

After all, Hirani had earlier directed the Munna Bhai series and Aamir has given us “Taare Zameen Par”. (I am not counting the mindless violence and gore of “Ghajini”, so what if it is one of the highest grosser of all time). Films that have set the benchmark in moralistic story telling without being preachy.  Films that had very taut story line with not a scene out of place.

For a long time, I have been complaining about our education system. We do not allow creativity and independent thinking at all. And here the movie gets it spot on. In its unique sartorial style it brings the deficiency of the education system to the fore. I am sure a lot of people (including me) would actually identify with the character of “Chatur” more than anyone else.  Also the chamatkar/balatkar speech is simply fabulous for the point it makes.

However, certain scenes like the baby delivery sequence  are a bit jarring in the movie. They are improbable and unnecessarily extend the length of the movie, and well effectively, repeat the same point over and over again.

A little bit of scissor wielding and this could have been the Movie of the Decade for me. Sadly it just falls at the finish line.

This being  a lazy Sunday evening, I decided to do some casual number crunching of my own. This was to identify who among the batsmen has the most profound effect in India reaching where it is. And what result this has thrown in.

Any statistical analysis needs to be baselined. Arguably, India reached its cricketing nadir in 1999-2000 series against Australia in Australia. Just mention this series in front of Ajit Agarkar and see him sweat. Nothing went right for India except for Player of the series award to Sachin and that magnificent century by Laxman. Since then India has only gone better.  So lets see how India has fared since that series. In this period, India has played 102 Test matches winning 40 and losing 26 with the highest score being 726 and lowest 76.

I have taken the liberty of adding Virender Sehwag and Yuvraj Singh to the Fab Four. Sehwag is a natural inclusion and with the retirement of Ganguly, Yuvraj is a regular feature in the Indian Side. So here is the overall record

Overall Record

Very good record all round. Now lets see how do these batsmen fare in home and away tests.

Home Series

Away Series

Lets see how these players fare in won and lost matches.

Matches that India Won

Matches that India Lost

In matches that India has won, Dravid averages whopping 7 runs more than the world’s best batsman. Yet, Dravid would always be  the Robin, never the Batman. Its time that we start acknowledging people who just do their job.

• Should be loooong.
• Should have plenty of leg space.
• Should have plenty of seating space for expanding family.
• Should be strong and sturdy.
• Easy maneuverability.
• Rugged so that we can take it to places beyond the usual weekend getaways.

After very careful selection, we have got a winner here. You can read more about this here

Our next "Car"

Imagine how much fun it would be to drive this beauty on the Delhi roads. No need to worry about lunatic Blue line drivers who drive on the right most lane and change lanes without caring for traffic just behind them; those idiot motorcyclist who overtake from the left after you have given a left turn signal; those stupid expensive car drivers who think that it was their forefathers who built the road and hence they can get away with anything.

Imagine,  driving just in front of above mentioned category at an irritating pace of 10 kmph. Any signs of dissent can be crushed by just a gentle movement of that M2 Browning machine gun. Road rage, my foot.

Imagine my horror, when the first users (that is apart from me) complained of aborted checkout errors. Even after specifying the correct server and repository path, TortoiseCVS would throw the following error message

cvs checkout: cannot open CVS/Entries for reading: No such file or directory

Soon everybody started to complain about the same problem. All users had TortoiseCVS on Windows and sure enough when I tried the same on Windows, I got the same error.  After playing around with some settings and blaming Windows, TortoiseCVS, CVSNT in that particular order and then blaming myself for making some mistake while setting up the server, I proceeded to “twiddling thumbs and sulking in a corner” role.

After coming back from work, I casually mentioned this to my wife and immediately she said “Elementary my dear Watson. It must be pruning empty directories and since the repository is currently empty …..”. And sure enough, right in the preference box, this option was staring in my face.  Once I unchecked that, voila the error message disappeared.

Things are working fine now and I think I can add CVS administration to my resume now

Moral of the story: Wives == Sherlock Holmes

On the same note, some days back Shashi Tharoor had also tweeted that all sorts of thoughts are encouraged in Congress. He forgot to mention that in none of these thoughts anybody dares to criticize the Nehru-Gandhi family.  The man who actually resurrected Congress, a certain Mr P.V. Narasimha Rao, is no longer talked about only because

• He did not belong to the “Family”
• Sonia Gandhi was not powerful at that time and Narasimha Rao was not averse to becoming the center of power in Congress.

As for BJP, right now, its a sinking ship. Clueless after losing the by-elections, state elections and now finally the general elections, they have no where to hide. Right now they simply have to  follow RSS. It was not about Anti-Patel that has triggered this, rather it is pro-Jinnah stand that they must oppose. For anti-Jinnah, anti-Pakistan, anti-Muslim and Hindutva is somehow related in their twisted and warped thinking.

So as Sagarika Ghosh summed it up, every body is trying to be more loyal than the king.

Consider the number of people getting employed in this noble venture. After all these poor artisans should do something for their living. Its another thing that they could have been building schools or hospitals as well but then this is like a practice match for them. One day they shall be playing real game. Also consider the number of people employed in the security of these sheets of bronze and stones and marbles. Its another thing that they could have been providing security against the rampant goondaism prevalent in most of the cities in U.P. particularly in Noida and Lucknow.

Just think about the birds. They now have a better place (a particular bronze statue) to drop their missiles. Poor Rahul Bose’s car can be spared. (Remember Jhankar Beats). And think about all those new employment opportunities of cleaning that bird poop.

Three cheers for our great leader. Hip Hip Hurray

In this regard, web sites set up by the National Informatics Center, New Delhi are the biggest culprit. For example see the fine print here, here, here and here. Mind you, this find print does affect the overall working of these sites and these are just some random samples. And these are not exactly earth shattering web sites as well. Why can’t our government body come up with effective browser neutral web sites? Is it because they get most of the work done by interns?

So I visited the Naaz Market, the local IT hub to get a fresh copy . BTW you can get pirated versions of almost all software there. So I asked one vendor if he has any flavour of Linux especially Fedora. He proudly said yes, version Redhat 9.0. That is so stone age (circa 2002). I moved to next shop. Same question from me. The shopkeeper almost whispered another question into my ears. ” Do you want Pirated or Original Fedora CDs”? I was flabbergasted. With a twinkle in my eye I said, I wanted pirated ones.  Still the DVD was costing Rs 200. So I refused.

I finally bought the April copy of PC Quest and installed Debian Lenny that came along with it. Free and Original.