a day phising at espncricinfo.com

It has been long time since I put an article here, but blame is on my lethargy to write and inability to write quality. But now today, on a chilly Saturday morning when I have nothing to do but to follow an intriguing contest between Australia and England on WACA and wait for a more one-sided contest between India and South Africa to start. One thing I like most about two contests going on simultaneously in different parts of the world is you can keep a watch on these and can be busy whole day but given the precarious performance of both the teams my heart was favoring, I decided to do something else. This something else comes up with its own set of problems and biggest one is what can this something else be. I decided to scan espncricinfo.com archival and go through early times in cricket. My journey with history of cricket started with some astonishing stats. I got to know that there were men on earth who scored more than 50000 runs in first class cricket. I looked at the profile of WG Grace, who played top level cricket for a whopping 44 years. It may sound intimidating to people who start calling for head of a player when he is reaches wrong side of 30’s that he played even after he had seen 60 summers of his life. He was a dominating man who hanged his boots in 1908 only after piling 54000 runs and having 2800 scalps to his name.

               More stats came from India as I scanned about the Man on whose name Indian states play a trophy every year, Maharaja Ranjit Singhji most accomplished batsman of 19^th century who averaged more than 55 in first class cricket. Later on his nephew Duleep Singh followed suit and got Duleep trophy after his name after excelling in England domestic. After these I read about Nawab of Patudi Senior, father of more popular Nawab junior who captained India in 70’s and grand father of modern style icon Saif Ali Khan. He played both for India and England. But what astonished me most was that there are 10 Indians in top fifteen batsmen with highest average in the history of first class cricket. Of course the list is topped by that batsman from Adelaide. Among these ten Indians, one young promising talent has been given chance as one of thirty probables for world cup. He is A Rahane who currently averages 67 from 46 first class matches, fourth among all players who have batted for at least 50 innings. Others include The Greatest we ever had along with his childhood friend, two young guns who are constantly knocking on the doors of Indian middle order and one who had knocked that door for many years.

               Other things I read about were Bodyline strategy of England which even contained Bradman for one series in which he just averaged 55 and golden ages of cricket when cricket produced many players who will go on either to score 50000 runs or take more than 3000 wickets. Among these bowlers one man Wilfred Rhodes stood out who ended up taking 4200 wickets in 1110 matches.

In between SA started its innings and continued their thrashing of below par Indian bowling. And I saw people connecting it even with Einstein’s theory of relativity. No doubt someone quickly pointed out that his name was PK Tunn and maybe he actually was Pee Kay Tunn

karnataka fiasco who is responsible??

I am writing this article after long gap. This may be attributed to the busy schedule at DMS.  This is a new excuse as I can’t complain of what to write. This is because many a things happened during past one month that include cricket series between Indian and Australia, Commonwealth games and historic decision by Allahabad High Court on ownership of land on which Babri Masjid once stood. But there was one more very important incident which was not in the headlines as much as the other ones. Political Fiasco in Karnataka is a result of long overdue change in laws for appointment of governor and election of Assembly speakers. Indians have seen similar kind of situation in the past in Goa, Jharkhand and Bihar. Much has been said about the incident and constitutional and legal complications involving them. We have seen more such incidents in last six years than these years’ share. I will not say that this all is due to proactiveness of governors only as speakers are also politically more active than what they should be. But they always have been. And in present scenario its only the governor’s who have increased political activities as evident by the action of Hansraaj Bhardwaj when he asked Karnataka speaker of maintaining status quo in the state assembly which nowhere lies in his authority. And by saying this I am not at all justifying action of speaker to disqualify MLAs. But as I am more concerned about governors, I will talk more about them. Then, Hansraaj Bhardwaj can’t be blamed for his action as he always have been a congress loyal and it is unfair to expect him to turn neutral  at this point in his life. It is the agency who appoints them who is at fault. But in the Indian setup you are not supposed to criticize so called honorable president even when it can be seen that she doesn’t match the expectation people had from president’s office because of previous incumbent’s stature and activities. Coming back to the point, it is not only the president but also or only union govt. which have a say in appointment of governors. And they have not been fair in the appointment. One of the darkest actions was to call back 4-5 governors with change in guard at the central level in 2004. Also the person they have been appointing to the prestigious post don’t have clean image. One example is Mr. Tiwari. But the Govt. is only following traditional policy of rewarding your old loyalists with a place at Raj Bhawan. Then, who is responsible for generating so many of state Govt./Speaker and Governor clashes. No doubt malpractices of Govt./Speaker are responsible but attitude of governor to still be loyal to centre Govt. or the party they once belong to is the bigger culprit. They have to recall that constitutionally they are neutral head of the state rather than agent of central Govt. to the state. Also central Govt. can be wiser while appointment. Instead of rewarding old political stalwarts who are controversial, they should go for uncontroversial and loved person. They may be bureaucrats, defense person or some other person. Successful stint of Dr. Kalam at the highest office is the best example what clean people who are loved by public can do. What I am sure is that we don’t lack this kind of people at least.

Growth paradox

First of all, I want to take the opportunity to thank you all for the compliments about the beginning. As you all advised I am continuing with my efforts with this new thought.

               Lecture on Organization management is going on. I am feeling sleepy as I do in most of lectures but as sleeping in VG’S class can be really dangerous, so writing comes to rescue. Writing something needs thinking. This time, my thought took me to an uncharted territory about human development and growth paradox of life.

               Development is base of any form of life. Any form of life which doesn’t develop ceases to exist. It is all about survival and growth. This phenomenon is equally applicable to all forms of life. Each and every organism lives primarily to survive and grow. Taking an example to emphasize on the point (I am going to make), a virus which lives in body of some other organism, first tries to survive by fighting with WBC’c and then after surviving it tries to grow and multiply. This growth is internal as well as external to host (Vomiting, loose motion, cough are example of external growth in which virus tries to find other host and move to his body). But in the process it causes some pain to host. This pain is sometimes so much that it became unsustainable for host to live. And this is the end of host in the form of death which in turn eliminates the virus too. Similarly Human being first fought to survive and when survival became easier they tried growing. But now the growth is reaching an unsustainable level.  So will earth now die and so will humans? That is the biggest question to answer. And according to nature which is mostly symmetrical what applies to virus should apply to human as well. My analysis says that it is natural for every organism to grow and die (with its habitat) or move over to another habitat to make that die too. That is also we humans are trying to do by exploring space. So naturally earth and human should die together when natural growth causes them to.

               But my analysis has some basic flaws. One of them is that earth is not a living system as a host was in virus analogy. But this can be countered as it is not the earth which is playing the host but the ecosystem, which is based on living organisms and they can certainly die. Another flaw is human intelligence. This makes a difference between virus and human. A human can understand the phenomenon of growth leading to death. Now, the responsibility of saving human and earth from human urge to grow lies on human intelligence. For this intelligence has to overcome natural tendency to grow. And in this way human have to be unnatural for saving the nature. Isn’t it sounds like a paradox? For me it does.

My first Write up

This is my first blog. I have been thinking of writing a blog from long. But it didn’t materialize as I was not serious and confident enough to write something. But now I think is the right time to go and use this platform to share my thoughts with the World. In the process I will improve my writing skills or at least get some confidence to write.

But now when I have decided to write a blog, a big problem is haunting me, what to write. There is not a better way to start then GOD. But being an agnostic my mind didn’t allowed me to write about supernatural GOD. But an human GOD is there, about whom I can write endlessly. It is now imperative that I am talking about Sachin Tendulker. At present when Champions League is around the corner and Match Fixing allegation has stormed the cricketing world, discussing about someone like Sachin is quite relevant. As once again he is going to be most prolific player of a tournament. So what makes him keep going after 20 most satisfying years of international cricket, I am not going to dwell on that as a lot has already been written on that by people certainly more competent then me. What I am going to discuss here is that it is his humility which makes him icon of billions in the world. Talent is certainly there but success is not only because of talent. It is combination of talent and his ability to handle it which makes him Sachin. So group of current talented players who need to learn a lot from him should try and emulate his humility. As they will like to be Sachin rather than to become millionaire from money generated by match fixing.

As it is first attempt I will keep it short. It’s raining outside and time for dinner in mess. So I will stop myself for now. Guys please do comment so that I can improve myself and feel encouraged to write again.