Rock On !! Spot on!!!

I always liked the albums that tells a short story in 4-5 minutes with a cool music or song in the background and often wondered why it gets over so soon. Today, I came across a 140 min album with a nice story of four friends who felt they could create magic with music - but as usual the good things are always delayed and this one was no exception and it had to wait for 10 years - the story is all about why and how, with a touchy feel.
Great music - Shankar Ehsaan Loy trio rocked as usual , crisp story telling and smart casting were highlights of this musical magic. The makers got everything spot on in making this Rock On!!! For me it had an interesting quote which will stay with me for ever -

Rock On!! Zindagi milegi naa dubaaraaa

Mahi Way

Mahendra Singh Dhoni , not so favorite name for me since he threw the seniors out of the ODI team, but cannot resist myself from writing this post. The player who failed to manage an average of 10 in the world cup last year in spite of entering the tournament as one of the top3 ODI bastmen impressed one and all by regaining his No1 ODI bastman position last week after his performance in the Emerald Isle.

It should be appreciated that as soon as he became captain he made an effort to inculcate the good points of his predecessor, Rahul Dravid - who always lead the team by setting up an example through his master batting. Once known as the swashbuckling hard hitting symbol of Indian cricket, now bats with a purpose and responsibility and controlled aggression slipping into the shoes of his previous captain. (Strike rate as captain is 83.23 compared to 96.26 before being captain of Indian team). He has mastered the art of shifting gears - His batting might not look pretty and neat but it ends up being effective. Cool head has always been a plus point over his predecessor. As a captain over the last one year he averages close to 55 in 36 ODIs which by no means can be belittled and called as fluke as it was done when he saved the Lords Test last year.

Now everything is not over - just like Yuvraj, Kaif and Dhoni were groomed by batting around Dravid ... time has come for Dhoni to take up that role as well to allow young players like Rohit Sharma, Raina and Badrinath to blossom, batting alongside him. It is definitely a great role to be taken up by this young dynamite but then I am sure for a player who had found answer to the mysterious carrom-bowling even with lack of so-called technique, it will be just another challenge and he will find a Mahi way to it!!!

Discounting Toss

India won their first bilateral ODI series in Srilanka, it is heartening that this was achieved with an incomplete team - no Sachin and Sehwag. But if we look at the tour - what we actually did was won the toss 4 times in a row. Nothing to take away from excellent performance of Zaheer, Dhoni and company. But the results were rather sealed as soon as the toss happened- this should be agreed atleast for Premadasa.

This reminded me of some of other grounds where you more or less know whats going to happen as soon as the toss is done - atleast the match is not unbiassed anymore. Let us look at results of day-night matches from some of the grounds during various timeframes in the last decade and a half.

Ground	Time Period	Matches Played	Won batting first	Won batting second
Newlands, Capetown	1992-08	24	19	5
Premadasa, Colombo	2000-08	40	26	11
Kingsmead, Durban	2003-08	14	6	3
PCA,Mohali	1996-07	14	9	5
Gaddafi, Lahore	2007-08	8	8	0
Eden Gardens	1993-03	9	7	2

These results are mainly affected by dew that either helps the bowlers get some swing under the lights and trouble the batsmen. When we have the data to support the argument that the toss plays a very important role in deciding the result of the match is it fair to still play under these conditions.

Of course there are some grounds where the results are just reverse as the weather is relatively dry and dew only results in spin bowlers not being able to find the grip of the ball under lights and the batsmen makes the most out of it

Ground	Time Period	Matches Played	Won batting first	Won batting second
Motera,Ahmedabad	2003-08	7	2	5
SMS, Jaipur	2006-08	7	2	5

A couple of options come to my mind at this point which I think would make these games competitive.

Option1: Each team would play 50 0vers in two splits such that each split is at least for 15 overs. Also there is at least one power play of 5 overs in each split. A vs B goes some thing like this -

The team winning the toss would decide what they want to do and the team batting first say A would declare when they want to split, then team B bats and declares when they want to split so that the team A can continue their innings and complete it following which team B would chase the target.

Option 2: This one flows from the huge success of 20 cricket. A couple of innings of 20/25 overs each where the team winning toss would either choose to bat or bowl in the first innings and team losing toss would decide what they want to do in second innings.

The options sounds crazy is it - but let us wait and watch!!!

43434343

This is one of the most familiar numbers these days in Hyderabad ... yes you guessed it rite - Radio Cabs, a concept that was non-existent in the city before the new international airport came up six months ago. The old airport was mainly served by autos, taxis and cabs. But the ultra modern airport has limited itself to radio cabs and call taxis as there was need to generate some revenue out of this business opportunity. GMR, the partner of the country's second PPP airport is now leaving no stone unturned to generate revenues - and the commission from radio cabs seems to be one of the options before the firm.

There are number of players who ventured into this business with a total of close to 2500 radio cabs between them and some of them are still waiting to enter the market. The government regulations exist even in this business ensuring that there is an entry barrier - read minimum of 100 cabs are required to enter the business and at the same time there is no monopoly - the number of cabs for any player is restricted to 1000. The sudden surge is largely helped by three factors - the distance of the airport from the city , lack of convenient commutation options and of course the increase in the disposable income . However, this wave has not been a smooth one - it has its own issues, major one being lack of supply of quality drivers. What it meant was another business opportunity to some of the driving schools and also the training schools to teach some etiquette to the drivers so that they present themselves well before the customers.

The radio cab companies are coming up with an lucrative salary and incentives to attract the limited pool of drivers. Now some of them have taken a step further and this is what has interested me and thats why the post - They have announced a scheme that any driver who drives a cab for a period of 7-10 years can own the car. This gives them various advantages - firstly the drivers can be retained, secondly the drivers will be careful after all it is their car in future and lastly it will become easy for the companies to dispose off the cars in future and may be they can gain some tax advantage utilizing the appropriate accounting mechanisms. Smart way to think - Isn't it?

Bouncing thoughts

This is the title of the mail that I received last week from one of my colleague and mentor at Wilco. The summary of the mail is to explore an option of developing low cost applications (may be at INR 1000) for SME's and use of rural IT talent to develop these simple tools using simple mySQL and VB. This mail definitely sounded very interesting and wanted to put in some efforts to have a closer look into this.

The rural entrepreneurs are enthusiastic to embrace the IT products if they are convinced about the benefits and of course ROI. Now who will help them out in creating such a solution - a new venture? Quick economics shows that it would take not less than INR6000 to create such a product- and how many takers are there for such kind of products at that price? It is very difficult for such a venture to sustain in long run and at the same time these applications needs to be priced lower so that the enthusiasm is converted into business . This is the reason to invite big Indian IT houses to cross subsidize these products and empower the rural entrepreneur with technology.

Typically the kind of applications needed by SMEs are simple work flow applications and may be some billing and inventory monitoring solutions. These can be comfortably designed by any software engineer with 2-3 year experience and these can be developed by any software literate with basic guidance. There is huge talent that is being wasted on bench in all the big IT firms and it would be a good idea for them to use this bench strength to tap this opportunity. Even if not there are engineering graduates and students in every nook and corner of the peninsula (True at least in case of Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu) - the companies could use them to develop these applications after giving appropriate training - which in turn would also make them employable in future.

In the wake of weakening dollar IT companies are facing severe pressure to maintain the margins. The US Economy and the turmoil in the financial and banking sectors across the globe is only adding to the problem and would make it tough for the IT companies to find new outsourcing assignments. (Please note that BFSI sector forms 40% of the total IT-ITES exports) It is the time for Indian IT companies to check out the opportunities lying inside the nation in parallel. Agreed that they are not as lucrative as the existing ones in terms of margins but they are definitely challenging and moreover it would help them develop the nation overall. Promote the rural entrepreneur help him grow big and get a bigger business from them.

More over it makes sense for the companies to spend money on these kind of opportunities which would lead to an inclusive growth of the nation - if an entrepreneur becomes efficient the whole nation would be benefited, rather than just donating huge chunks to an unknown entity in the name of CSR where you don't even know where the money is reaching to. The government has provided the required conditions for the sector to grow over the last two decades, of course it was done in the larger interest of the nation - but this is time for the sector to pay back to the nation.

300

Yes I have crossed the 300 hurdle last weekend in the game of free cell after losing the very first game of the season - over taking my second best streak of 276 - but this post is not about that and yes this is not a review of the movie 300 either.

India scored a comfortable win against Sri Lanka to secure a spot in Asia Cup final (not sure about the viewer ship of this tournament) and has a chance to go at the title and win the fifth cup playing against the same opponents that they defeated today who also have three titles to their name. In the course of victory India had scored above 300 which is the 300th occurrence in the history of the One Day Internationals.

Way back in 1975 when the ODIs used be a 60 overs a side affair England scored first 300 plus score against India. However West Indies was the first team to achieve the feat in a 50 over game against Australia three years later in 1978. India took the longest time to join the league - in fact it was the last of the top 8 cricket playing teams in the world to do so - in 1996 against the arch rivals Pakistan at Sharjah. From then on in the last ten years India crossed the magic figure 47 times winning 39 of them.

First twenty years i.e, the period between 1975 and 1994 witnessed only 31 instances of 300 plus scores where as last ten years i.e, from July 7 th 1998 to July 4th 2008 the game had 235 such instances. We already have 20 such scores in this year and it is just the half way mark of the calendar year.

Australia has surpassed the score more times(53) than any other team and India has been on the receiving end on most occasions(42). The details are shown in the graph below.

The game also had 43 games so far ( just two games before the 96 world cup) where both the teams playing the match achieved the 300 plus score India tops the list figuring in 18 such games and winning ten of them. More than 25 sides have lost matches after scoring 300 plus in the last four years or so and looking at the trend we might see more such matches and 300 is not a safe total anymore.

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BrylCreem Ad

Making of the Ad

Indeed it was a tremendous effort and hope you liked it

PS: Click on the links to view the videos

My Experience with Dreams

Dreams are known to be manifestations of the suppressed thoughts and ideas which are lying in the sub conscious mind. If you dream more does it mean that you are an introvert who does not speak out the thoughts? Well I cannot answer this but my gut feel says that it has nothing to do with whether it is an introvert or an extrovert as introvert might complete the thought process but just does not express them. Wait!!! This is not something I want you guys to read ... let us talk about the dreams.

My experience with dreams is that when ever a dream is good or happens to be something of my liking the sleep gets disturbed or alarm blows off or something else happens to make sure that the dream is not completed and even if I get back to the bed immediately within a few seconds - stopping the alarm - the dream does not continue and in a very short while I even forget what it was. Where as when a dream is bad or happens to be something which I don't like even if I forcibly break out of the sleep and try to sleep after a short break of a couple of minutes the dream tends to continue.

One such thing happened to me last night and I cannot recollect what it was? But I can recollect a couple of dreams where I could sense what was coming my way- one such instance that I can quote is - 10 days prior to CAT 2004 - I saw a paper in my dream with 123 questions with different marks for different questions. I told my friend about it - we laughed over the fact that CAT was taking a large toll out of us. And come the exam - we see exactly 123 questions in the paper with variable marking although not as random as I had seen in my dream but the number was a stunner and I was amazed for a couple of minutes during which I recollected Joseph Murphy's words that says - if you want something to happen let your subconscious mind know about it and it will make sure that you go through a path to achieve the goal. The stronger you think the greater the chances of occurring - I cannot tell you how much water can this argument hold but surely at that moment I wanted to read the book that had this argument - The power of Subconscious mind - which happens to be one of the my favorite books. It says a lot of things on how you could use your subconscious mind and Oops wait again is this what I want you guys to read ... Not at all... I think ... Let me take a break...

Over dosage?

Today was India Pakistan final in a Tri-series and at least from the campus I found that there were very few who were following it and definitely there has been a notable drop in the passion of the viewers. There is a view point saying that there is an over dosage of cricket between these two nations. Lets see how much weight can be given to this view point.

The nations have restored their sporting ties in 2003 after a 3 year break. Since then the nations played 30 ODIs each winning exactly half of them. The following table gives data of number of matches played by India against various oppositions in the last five years.

Team	Played	Won
Pakistan	30	15
Australia	29	7
Srilanka	24	12
England	18	11
South Africa	14	5
West Indies	14	7
New Zealand	12	5
Small Nations	26	24
Total	167	86

No doubt we have played more cricket against them but its just 6 matches per year and if we look back we have played each other 44 times in the last 5 years of the previous decade. Each and every ball was savored by the spectators. So why is the case different today?

Is it the lack of big names - Sachin, Saurav, Rahul, Inzamam, Akthar? Common they cannot play for ever.

One could argue that there is a generation gap between the viewers of 90s to that of todays - the interests and passions are different and may be for this generation the number of matches is over dosage and if that is the case the fact that we have about 7 - 8 matches lined up against each other this year is not a good sign. Wait but then ... less than an year back the whole nation celebrated the success of the India over the arch rivals in the T20 world cup. So is it the beginning of slide down of interest in 50 over cricket after the huge success of the latest 20 -20 format? Time can only tell us that.

It is also important to note that India - Australia encounters are evoking more interest in the nation. Has the Indian team graduated to a new level leaving Pakistan behind and have a clash with the world champions? Not really I guess - we just won one series against Aussies - Thanks to Sachin Tendulkar and the young bowlers.

Any ways it is sad to see one of the greatest encounters of the game losing its charm.

How I met my friend?

Disclaimer: If you do not have an idea of Delhi this post might not make much sense still a good leisure read

I was on a short break at Delhi and hence wanted to meet one of my old colleague from Wilco who happened to be working at Noida. I left my uncle's place at around 10AM in the morning and gave him a call and it so happened that he was on a city tour with his relatives and that point of time he was at Rajghat. I thought I can catch up with them somewhere on their tour and I asked him for his itenary. He told me that they were going to ISCKON temple - I had asked a couple of dozen people on where ISCKON temple was and none of them knew about it and hence I told my friend that I cannot meet him at ISCKON but can meet him at the next destination - he told me that it would be Laxmi Narayan temple - some how it got registered in me as Swami Narayan Temple. Took a metro from Uttam Nagar to Indraprastha and got down at Pragathi Maidan - took an auto and reached Swami Narayan temple at around 11:30 AM - gave a call to my friend just to find out the blunder I made while listening and told him that I would meet up with him before the end of the day - but this was a good mistake to make - I was glad to visit one of the architectural marvels - Akshardham in Delhi - my second one to a Swami Narayan Temple - the first one being at London four years ago. Visited the huge temple and had my lunch at the food court and moved on to meet my friend again - they were planning to reach the Laxmi Narayan temple in an hour from then may be after their lunch. On my way back I thought I will visit India Gate - a recommended place by one of my friends - on the way I found that Raj ghat was pretty close to Pragathi Maidan and could have met my friend at Rajghat well in the morning- reached India gate and had a long walk from India Gate to Central Secretariat and gave a call to my friend just to realise that they finished their lunch and were moving out of AP Bhavan which happened to be pretty close to where I was standing then and I was just kicking myself for not having asked him where they were having lunch then instead I was loitering on the roads of Delhi around the India Gate. Then I took a metro to Rajiv Chowk while my friend and finally at around 3:30PM I met him at the Laxmi Narayan Temple. I just managed to reach the temple while they were getting out of the temple. Visited the temple and got to spend some time with him and later in the day moved back home with a sense of accomplishment - Met my friend and saw a good number of places in Delhi and more importantly used public transport for most of my travel.

Delhi Metro - Second to None

End of Summers - Planned to stay a couple of days in Delhi before going back to campus. Completed the last day presentations and other formalities at Feedback and had to go to my uncles place at Janakpuri. Had a cab drop from Gurgaon office to Dwarka and from there to Janakpuri had an option of either taking an auto or try Delhi Metro. Went for the second option ... Metro is not an unfamiliar concept to me ... had seen London Metro and Tokyo Metro before ... but was curious to see how the Desi version of it looks like. My first metro from Dwarka to Uttam Nagar.

The stations were clean and marvelous. Thanks to the prohibition of food and beverages in the station area and the train. I think this was a good and bold step towards maintaining the cleanliness of the facility. The revenues from selling food and beverages are foregone for the sake of cleanliness and also may be the maintenance costs justify the decision - not aware of the economics involved. The security measures taken were adequate.

The ticketing system is fool proof very much like that in Tokyo Metro with very minor changes. Firstly tickets were reusable coins - no paper wastage as in other metro tickets. The charge correction facility at the destination exists which is a desired feature. However the ticket vending and charge correction activities are manual, it would be good to explore the possibility of having a vending machine - again having a look at the costs.

The station has route maps painted beside the counter so that the person can make a decision on which lines to take and where to change. However it would have been good to mark 3-4 popular places to visit at each station or in other words nearest station for each popular place. Example - For India Gate get down near Central Secretariat ... some thing on those lines would have been beneficial.

The platforms display the train time and the trains are prompt. On the platform you can see people standing everywhere and this was the case in London also here I would mention about one thing I liked in Tokyo - there are marks drawn on the platform where the doors are expected to open and passengers used to stand in a line there waiting for the train. This is easily implementable and would help avoid the last minute anxiety among the passengers. The stopping time is decent and speed or smoothness of travel is excellent. The coaches are clean and spacious. The distance between stations is adequate again.

The connectivity to the stations is ensured by feeder bus same as those at MMTS stations in Hyderabad - I read about the concept however have not seen them as I had not travelled by MMTS. The stations have parking lots similar as to MMTS stations again.

Overall the experience has been fantastic and with many cities like Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Mumbai going for a mass public transport in metro - it would not only save cities from traffic and ensure a fast, smooth and pollution free commutation but also would encourage the sale of ipods, ishuffles or mp3 playes and books/magazines improving the reading habits of the nation in the long run.

Free Time bole to Free cell

Its been close to seven years that the winning streak of 1628 games was broken. It used to be one of my favorite pass times along with NFS, Cricket, Pinball and Minesweeper during my engineering days at MS Ramaiah and from then I might have hardly played about a dozen games of Freecell all these years. Now I think its time to rediscover the game-definitely not to emulate the winning streak but lets see how far it goes.

Ab sey free time bole to Free cell

Life after IPL

Today it feels like a calm after a storm. The storm called IPL which has become a part of my routine for the last two months. Today when I switched on TV at 8PM as I do every day, some dreadful movie is being screened at the same channel which telecasted the first edition of this mega event for the last fifty odd days. Even in the wildest of his dreams Mr. Lalit Modi - the man behind the concept would not have thought that it would become such a huge hit. Some thought it was an overdose of cricket but it was definitely not for me. Almost daily you have a cliffhanger- Close to 50 percent of the matches were close finishes what else would I want as a spectator? But Yes - it might have got way too hectic for the players and support staff.

Irrespective of who won the tournament we have seen a good number of emerging players like Niraj Patel, Abhishek Nayyar, Sidharth Trivedi, Manpreet Gony, Yousuf Pathan, Wridhiman Saha, Swapnil Asnodkar, Ashok Dinda, Shikar Dhawan, Amit Mishra, Vijay kumar Yo Mahesh and Virat Kohli.

It was good to see young guns like Gautam Gambhir, Rohit Sharma, Suresh Raina, Piyush Chawla along with the current Indian players like Mahendra Dhoni , Irfan Pathan, Sreeshanth and Virender Sehwag shoulder responsibility for their respective leagues.

It would be incomplete if I don't mention that Saurav Ganguly played with as much zeal as "an youngster performing to find a place in the national team". Another big gun Rahul Dravid seemed to have discovered his lost strokes and shots - it was a heartening effort from him to adjust to a format of game which many thought would least suit his style.

Then we saw some great performances from foreign youngsters and current players like Shaun Marsh, Luke Pommersbach, David Hussey, Shane Watson, Sohail Tanvir and Dale Steyn along with veterans Shane Warne, Sanath Jayasuriya , Muthaiah Muralitharan and Adam Gilchrist.

More importantly we have a good option for a future coach in Shane Warne.

The last few lines might have seemed like a vote of thanks ... but then I think it was a good tournament and the players deserved to be listed by name in this post ... such was the entertainment provided by them during this summer.

Four Cities in a Week

Exactly last Wednesday I left the campus at Ahmedabad after completing my exams and had spent the long weekend at my home at Hyderabad. Moved on to Delhi for my summer internship and from today I will be at Mumbai for my summer project for the next 8-9 weeks. I cannot recollect any other occasion in my life where I was at so many cities on a purpose and not on a holiday tour. By the way this is my first visit to Delhi and Mumbai.