Never Give Up!!

It was very heartening to see the World No.1 Indian test side bouncing back from the bottom and squaring the ongoing series against hosts South Africa. After the humiliating innings loss at Centurion in the first test, where the only positive was perhaps Sachin Tendulkar’s 50^th Test century (Yes, I really doubt if people are aware that Rahul Dravid becoming only the third player in Test History to cross the milestone of 12000 runs in the same match); after India lost the toss in Kingsmead Durban; with injuries grappling the team at the critical moments, it was very easy to write the Indians off.

But that was not to be the case. In what I had suspected and what could have very well been the shortest test match played ever, Indians emerged victorious by 87 runs. Being bowled out for a little above 200 in the first innings, and bowling to a strong South African batting line up which had amassed 600 plus runs in the first match losing only 4 wickets, it was easy to give up. But that was not to be. Hardly did anyone believe that the same batting line up will crumple for 131 runs in the first innings. Disciplined bowling aided by apt support from the fielders helped Indians restrict the mighty South Africans.

The second innings was studded with one and only one diamond and that was VVS Laxman. What a man, what an innings. I am just curious to know how many matches this man has won for India and how many matches he has saved for India. It would be really great if someone can compile and compare what percentage of his total Test runs have come in innings which have been of some consequence to the Indian team (either winning the match or helping salvage a draw from the jaws of defeat) vis-à-vis that for other “great” batsmen India has seen.

The bowlers delivered the final punch and it was heartening to see the quickies make good use of the conditions. The best dismissal of the day according to me was of Kallis unable to read a quicker short ball, something which has traditionally been our weakness. Zaheer setting up Steyn’s dismissal was also heartening to see. Of course, there were some umpiring errors too which fortunately favored us, but let us not take the credit away from the bowlers and their disciplined effort. Whatever it is, a test match is always won by bowlers. You need to get 20 wickets in order to emerge victorious.

Over the years, it has been great to see this Indian team evolve as a thinking unit. A great part of this transformation should go to captain Dhoni and coach Kirsten. I can vividly remember Dhoni demonstrating similar tactics during the finals of IPL 3 last May to get rid of Kieron Pollard which had locked the doors for Mumbai Indians.

In another venue Melbourne, on the same Boxing Day however, the much hyped Australian team took on the in-form England. Again, on a test match battled over just three and a half days, it was England written all over the match right from the word go. What was missing, from the once invincible Australian team perhaps, was the commitment and the will power. After being bowled out for 98 in the first innings and after failing to take any English wicket on the first day, it seemed as if they just gave up. This is in stark contrast to the reaction that the Indian team gave in much a similar situation.

It is indeed great for the Indians to finish the year with a bang. Let us hope that they take the momentum forward into the World Cup and into the coming year where as a friend pointed out, much stronger challenges like the tours of England and Australia lie ahead.

Commonwealth Games - All the best

As I write this, the inauguration ceremony of the XIX Commonwealth Games starts off in Delhi. I can only hope that everything goes on well for the next 12 days. Looking at the controversies that have marred the Games over the last few months, the entire episode is expected to be a rocky affair. The entire world has its eyes on Delhi, thanks to the publicity given to the happenings by the media. What remains to be seen is how things will be executed over the next two weeks.

The Games, being held in India for the first time in history, has given us an opportunity to showcase our strengths as an upcoming superpower of the world. As a developing nation, with an economy growing sustainably over the last few days, the success of the games will lead to a lot of significant decisions being made in the international circles over the next few months. If we are able to pull off the games successfully, we can expect a rise in foreign investments in the country over the next few years, a rise in employment levels which can in turn lead to a rise in the standard of living of the people of the country.

So much of hue and cry has been raised about the misappropriation of funds by the Organizing Committee. Media started putting it up on the world scene and what was known about the Indian system about corruption only to us, was made known to the entire world. What would have otherwise simply passed on as just another event, has now caught the attention of the whole world. I am in no way trying to appreciate the actions of the OC. I agree that the media had to play a role in making getting these things to the attention of the people. But in doing so, and in the competitive world that everyone is playing today, they perhaps failed to realize that their actions could make more harm to the reputation of the country.

What happened? As and when participants started arriving, the Games Village and infrastructure provided became the central point of attraction. The media still had not learnt the lessons. They again started broadcasting the poor conditions at the village and perhaps made things look much worse than they actually were. Again, I am in no way supporting the poor construction done and the collapse of an overbridge outside one of the venues. The result? A lot of athletes and well known participants pulled out of the event, which obviously doesn’t augur well for the country.

What was shown was probably the bottom 5% of the whole work in terms of quality. How many newspapers have shown photographs of the fantastic infrastructure that has been laid in place in different parts of Delhi for the Games? How many news channels have telecasted the good thing about the Games? How many media houses have actually brought the positive comments of athletes about the Games Village, especially in comparison with the Beijing Olympics to the public’s notice? Why do we always attack the negative side of things and fail to appreciate the positives? Till I received a mail, which had photographs of the other side of the story, even I was ignorant.

There was another group of people who were totally opposing the conducting of games in the country. They say that the same amount if spent on people and the poor, would have led to different results. What these people fail to realize is that these games have actually done a lot more to the infrastructure of Delhi, which otherwise would not have been possible. Flyovers, underpasses, grade separators, multilevel parking lots, drainage systems and lot more. This would help in decongestion of traffic on the roads of Delhi for the years to come. This would have led to the displacement of a lot of people from the centre of the city. But this was bound to happen sooner than later. So it’s rather good that it happened today.

Opposing the games on the ground of poverty in the country is actually stupid considering the fact that the very games would in turn bring in investments which would perhaps help us get rid of the same poverty. In fact, not many would have forgotten the intense lobbying done by Tony Blair and Jaques Chiraq for successfully bidding to conduct the Olympics in 2012, which London successfully won. When developed countries can go to such an extent, one can understand what exactly is at stake.

Another issue is the mountain made of a mole hill of the comment by the OC Secretary about the difference in standards of hygiene between foreign countries and in India. But hey, wait!! Isn’t that true? What is the condition of toilets in our Govt. offices, airports, railway stations and bus terminals? Again, that is not any excuse to any shoddy work done in any case. But who are these people to raise fingers against that when the pride of the nation is held at ransom?

For all that we know, the Games may just end without any major hurdles. It might just be one of the most successful sporting events India has ever hosted. Pray that nothing serious happens in the next 12 days and we all stand up in pride, as citizens of a proud nation. But let us not forget what happened in the background. The guilty need to be punished. And proper steps need to be taken to ensure that such things are not repeated in the future. But on the other end, the media also needs to know where to draw a line. There is a fine line of difference between being the first to report and holding national pride at stake.

Signing off with the hope and prayers that the games would be a grand success.

Gandhi

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. This was the same man who I hated from the bottom of my heart when I was in school. Every year, every subject all we had to do was to study about him. Every language had lessons on him, history classes always used to praise him and to add to the misery, we had to watch movies made on him by each and every producer on every Gandhi Jayanti – which meant a national holiday sacrificed to learn more about a person, we already knew enough about!

But wait. Did we really know enough about him? Do we still? Honestly, as a kid, I always used to wonder why Gandhi was given so much of credit for the freedom of India. I was of the opinion that, he in fact delayed the freedom for India and it was he who was responsible for the partition of India. I strongly used to believe that either Subhash Chandra Bose or maybe the revolutionaries in Bhagat Singh, Rajguru, Chandrashekar Azad, if they had their way, would have given us freedom much earlier.

But as I have grown up, perspectives have changed. If not for anything, today I salute Gandhiji for his ability to organize people. His sheer capacity to gather people in a matter of no time was perhaps his greatest strength. People were willing to do whatever he asked them to, without questioning him. And he led by example. He had no two faces like most of the politicians of today do. He was a man of simple living and high thinking. That he was hated by many and made a few enemies in the process is immaterial. What needs to be remembered is that he was strong enough to mobilize an entire nation with his thoughts and vision for the country. Even though the freedom might have come a bit late than it could have, what great have we achieved in the last 60 odd years of freedom? Everyone comes with a set of positives and negatives. It’s best when we can leverage the positives and make the negatives redundant to as much an extent as possible.

Salute to the great man on his 141^st birth anniversary.

Delhi - 2010

No. This isn’t going to be about the XIX Commonwealth Games to be conducted at Delhi. Twenty six and a half odd years since I was born was what it took for me to visit the Indian capital for the first time. A trip that lasted 2 nights and 3 days was indeed a very memorable one. I had the opportunity to attend the first ever India Today Youth Summit with the people who I have been closest to in the past year and a half. This post is going to be about all these.

Intentionally preferring the Rajdhani Express from Mumbai over flights to Delhi, so that we as a team could get enough time to discuss things among ourselves, we set out one fine morning from Pune. Ever since I was a child, long train journeys have always fascinated me, and given a choice, I would any day prefer a train journey over a flight journey.

Murphy’s Law always works!! Some wiring faults led to the power connection in only our bogie to be tripped for close to 40 minutes and that meant staying inside the coach without the AC. Other than this, there was no major hiccup anywhere and the train was infact ahead of schedule at all its scheduled stops including the destination New Delhi.

I had an opportunity to travel by the Delhi Metro as soon as reached Delhi. Impressed was I to say the least. Metro in fact has to be the best thing to have happened to Delhi in the recent past. Kudos to E Sreedharan and his team for executing such a complicated project in record time, which has benefitted people in a huge way. Metro perhaps has helped decongest the roads of Delhi to a large extent. It is connected to literally every part of the city now and even places like Gurgaon, Noida and Faridabad which is an icing on the cake. So much is the convenience of the Metro that I hardly travelled by road in Delhi during my 3 days in the city.

An impressive thing to be noted here is the way Metro is being maintained. I was surprised to note the cleanliness in every Metro station that I visited and every Metro coach that I travelled. No stains of paan were to be seen anywhere, nor were any waste papers, bottles or anything for that matter. All the infrastructure, seat cushions, gliders, advertising hoardings were really clean. At a minimum fare of Rs. 8, the services are quite expensive compared to the other modes of transport. But that doesn’t hinder people from using it. I have seen people from all classes of the society travel in the Metro.

That brings me to the crucial point here. It’s not the implementation of discipline that’s a problem. Rather it’s the willingness that needs to be there. It’s more or less the same demography of people who are present in every other major city in India. But can we think of a clean local train in Mumbai? Can we think of everyone travelling in Mumbai locals by paying the right fare always? I have nothing against Mumbai, in fact I love Mumbai, but this question struck me when I was travelling to and fro in the Metro lot of times.

The Youth Summit went on very well. It was very professionally organized. I had the opportunity to listen to my idol Nandan Nilekani among a lot of other speakers. Believe me, I was thrilled to listen to him and he was indeed very inspiring. Viswanathan Anand, Pranav Mistry, Saurav Ganguly, Katrina Kaif, Sachin Pilot, Chhavi Rajawat, Sanjeev Sanyal, Mukul Deora, Jaideep Sahni were among the prominent speakers of the day. One thing that was common between all the speakers was the simplicity that they appeared with and the modesty that they portrayed. In spite of being so successful in their life, each of them was down to earth and interacted with the 600 strong audience.

At the end of the day, I was one proud person having been fortunate enough to have got an opportunity to attend the summit. I would personally like to attend Youth Summits in the future, atleast for the next 5 years or so. Who knows, after that I might just be one of the speakers :P

Murphy’s Law struck once again during the return journey, this time with the engine of the Rajdhani Express. The train started half an hour late and arrived at Bombay Central an hour behind schedule. All said and done, it was a really memorable trip. Gobbling food all through the onward the return journeys, card games till late at nights – which actually can be good teachers of business strategy, teasing each other on loads of issues, some serious discussions on important issues and all this marked my first trip to Delhi. Would love to be there again soon, in a relaxed mode, with ample time at hand and enjoy watching the actual reasons why Delhi is famous for!!

Capital Punishment for Terrorists – Is it sufficient??

The special court set up to hear the Mumbai attacks of 26/11 has finally come out with the verdict. Kasab, the lone terrorist caught alive, has been convicted on various counts and has been sentenced to death. This is a commendable achievement by the Indian Judiciary, to announce its verdict in around 18 months considering that loads of other cases have been pending in the Indian courts since decades.

But the point to be debated is whether capital punishment or death penalty is a solution to prevent terrorism? A simple point to be understood is that a terrorist or a suicide bomber who is fully armed and on a mission, is definitely not bothered about being killed. Death doesn’t deter him at all. He is fully prepared to die the moment he takes up the mission and once done, it’s only a bonus if he returns back alive.

With that background in mind, how does a capital punishment help?? These people are supposedly very strong willed, and that in itself is a big challenge. But how many of such terrorists can be sentenced to death?? And just sentencing them to death doesn’t solve the matter at all. The decision has to be mandatorily ratified by the High Court. The convict also has the option of going to the Supreme Court and even to the President with a petition for clemency. And to add to the facts, there are 300 odd people waiting to be hanged to death in India, the wait being attributed to various reasons some political, some social etc..

In fact, Kasab will become a hero back home. He will be taken as an example for selflessness and commitment in future terrorist training camps. More people will be brainwashed and coerced into the act.

A terrorist should not be killed, nor should he be left to live peacefully. He should be tortured endlessly. He must feel the pain, which the families of the victims are going to live with for the rest of their lives. He must not be allowed to sleep when he wants. The treatment should make him crave for death and death should not come to him easily. The punishment has to be such that it should make someone planning a terrorist attack, think a hundred times before doing it.

Of course there will be hypocrites all over the country who will oppose this in the name of human rights violations. But it’s high time to act tough. We cannot just let these things happen again and again, and react to it later on. Hundreds of innocent lives will be lost (which would be forgotten eventually) and the damage will already be done. The terrorists will have succeeded in accomplishing their objectives. It’s time to be proactive and do something that uproots the evils of terrorism.

Death of 'The Bowler'

“International Cricket will not have bowlers anymore”. This was announced by International Cricket Council (ICC) chief Mr Michael Bevan at Lords today after the historic Ashes showdown. He said that over the years, there has been nobody who wants to master the art of bowling and it’s very unfortunate that we will no longer get to see the likes of the great Shane Warne, Mutaiah Muralidaran, Curtley Ambrose, Michael Holding and so on. When asked about how cricket is going to be played in such a case, he said that they will be using Bowling Machines which can throw balls at high and variable speeds. They would be highly programmable in real time and can be controlled from the Dressing Room. It will be mainly based on Random Logic and the predictability of every successive ball will be very difficult. “With this, we expect to see the beginning of a new era in the way the game is played”, he said.

- The Wisden, January 2029

I am sure this is going to be the fate of cricket in not too distant future. The reason – cricket has over the decades become a game that increasingly favors batsmen. The entity called Bowler has literally been killed over the years. Murder would be an apt word, and it has been done very skillfully and artistically. Ask any kid who is interested in cricket, who he wants to be like and you are more likely to get a Sachin Tendulkar or a Virender Sehwag as an answer rather than a Harbhajan Singh or a Zaheer Khan. The reasons are obvious!

Gone are the days when bowlers were a feared lot. Those days, cricket was played over 5 days and more often than not ended without any result. That longer format of the game required the teams to get the opposition out twice, in order to forge a result. And to get the opposition out, you needed good bowlers, who could take 20 wickets in the stipulated time.

Then came the Limited Overs match which was played over a day. Initially it was a 60 overs-a-side affair, which was later revised to 50 overs-a-side. With the advent of this version of the game, the onus was on scoring runs to win the match and not on picking wickets. There was also a limit on the maximum number of overs that a bowler could bowl, thereby putting restrictions on the bowlers. But there were no restrictions on the maximum number of runs that a batsman could score in a match. 50 overs was still long enough and there have been enough instances in history when teams have bowled out the oppositions well before the stipulated number of overs.

Over the years, emphasis has always been laid on the batsmen. I do not remember any bowler getting the accolades or the praise that he deserves. For a simple example, take the case of India itself. How many batsmen have won the Arjuna award and how many bowlers have? It is not that we have not had bowlers of international repute. Kapil Dev held the record for the maximum number of wickets in Test Cricket for a long time. Anil Kumble, till he retired last year, was one of the most feared spinners on the International Arena. Harbhajan Singh also, can be very dangerous on his given day.

What is lacking though is the support from the game itself. This is partly because, it is more entertaining to watch the batsmen hit fours and sixes rather than watching bowlers pick wickets. The rules are very harsh on the bowlers. Earlier, the fielding restrictions were for 15 overs in the beginning. Then came the concept of power plays which made it 10 plus 5 plus 5, thereby giving the batsmen 5 more overs to go after the bowling. Later these rules were modified as to include a bowling power play and a batting power play where the batting team would choose which stretch of 5 overs they would like to go after the bowling. In short, there is no relief for the bowlers. The new concept of ‘free hit’ offered for a line no ball is another punishment for the bowlers. They are not allowed to bowl more than 2 bouncers in an over and bouncers over the head are immediately declared as wide. In short, bowling has become a thankless job. The boundaries have become smaller and smaller. Compare this to the restrictions on the batsmen – practically nothing. There have been a lot of innovations made in the bat in terms of the grips, size and shape, location of the sweet spots and so on but compare this to the ones made on the ball. Can we boast of a ball which could be swung the way one wanted? Is there a ball designed so that the bounce can be unpredictable for the batsman? Can there be a ball which could spin either way?

With the advent of an even shorter version of the game, the T20, it has virtually given a license to the batsmen to bludgeon the bowlers. There were days when 240s and 250s were considered a good score in Tests. Today, there have been instances where 200s have been comfortably chased down in a 20 over game. The pitches for the ODIs or the T20s have been so designed so that it helps only bowlers. And whenever there have been instances of pitches playing unpredictable, and suiting the bowlers, the match has been abandoned with ‘unfavorable playing conditions’ being cited as the reasons. That shows how helpless, bowlers have been.

Of course there have been instances where bowlers have shone in a batsmen’s game. What is important is to ensure that such performances are encouraged. It is important to make sure that the morale of bowlers as a community is down let down. A very recent example is the performance of Doug Bollinger of CSK in the recent T20 match against RR. He managed to return with figures of 17 for 1 off his stipulated 4 overs in a match where the opposition scored 223 in 20 overs. Such a performance should have won the MoM award. What’s the point of felicitating a batsman who has done well because all the factors are heavily loaded in his favor? It would rather make a lot of sense to honor a bowler who does exceptionally well when conditions are adverse.

Perhaps it is high time that suitable actions are taken now to ensure that the game is a level playing field for all the entities involved in the game. This may necessarily mean reviewing the way the game is played; change some rules with an attempt to facilitate equal opportunities for all. Or else, the hypothetical news excerpt may very well come true.

Ignore English at your own peril

English is increasingly becoming the most preferred language of communication in the corporate world today. Over the last couple of days, I have been trying to evaluate the consequences of such a development.

English as a language has been learnt and taught in India ever since the British ruled us. So there is roughly a history of 400 years to this, though more formally, education in English would have started only in the last century. But the rate at which English education has grown in India is very poor. Today, only 11% of the population in India are English literate (know to read and write in English). With the world becoming flatter and opportunities opening up everywhere in the world, it becomes very important for us Indians to know English and be competent enough to converse well in the language in order to cash in on the opportunities. One advantage we Indians have today over the Chinese is that we can better communicate in English than the Chinese (Remember that China and India are the fastest growing economies in the world today). We need to ensure that we leverage this to the maximum.

If the trends of people getting admissions into the elite management or engineering institutes across the country are followed, a clear pattern of a majority of people hailing from the metros can be derived. Barring the four metros and some state capitals, there is hardly anybody from the Tier 2 or Tier 3 cities. This is not because there is dearth of talent in the rural pockets in India. Dhirubhai Ambani, one of the finest entrepreneurs of our times never went to a B School. Any Ramappa from an interior village in Karnataka may be brilliant in his management skills, yet loses out only because he cannot communicate properly in English.

It is wrong to blame the people for the poor English literacy rate in India. In the current scenario, it is very difficult for people to think in English. Also the thoughts are most effectively communicated when they are expressed in the language one thinks. And more often than not, this happens to be the mother tongue of the person. Moreover, there are examples from history like Atal Behari Vajpayee’s speech in Hindi in the UN General Assembly, where he would never have been as effective, had he spoken the same in English.

But the point that remains is that we should not lose out on emerging opportunities to others just because we are not conversant with English. English has become the order of the day. The times are changing and we need to change with time. Today, we depend a lot on the whole world and we have markets for our products and services across the seven continents. So in order to use these effectively, we need to be able to communicate effectively in that language which is most frequently used in the corporate world.

So, the necessity in the current context is to equip the youth of the country, with English as an important tool to success. I strongly feel that the primary and secondary education system in the country should be designed such that thousands of such deserving Ramappa’s do not miss out getting the best opportunities, just because they did not have access to the language in which the world speaks today.

I do agree that at a micro level, English may not be a priority for a country that’s struggling to achieve a good literacy record. But we should not wait for literacy to shoot up and then focus on English. The attempt has to start parallely, so that we do not lose out on these wonderful years where we are going to be the drivers of the world economy. Let us hope that Kapil Sibal and Ministry of HRD comes up with some policy to this effect.