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.

Effort less Ad

What is common between Farookh Engineer, Kishore Kumar, David Beckham, Denis Compton and Mahendra Singh Dhoni? Think hard and if you can recollect that they have all endorsed the product Brylcreem Well Hats off. Are you wondering where this random question came from? I was browsing through the ads and then came across this amazing ad and a video showing how the ad was made. Thought this a good forum to share the same

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