Chepauk 2008!

It would have been completely unfair if I didn’t post something on my blog today. After all the Tendulkar-bashing (3 blog posts out of 9 completely dedicated to why Sachin is not a match-winner) I have done in the past, it’s my duty to give credit to, as Kevin Pieterson said, “the best cricket script-writer ever!” . He always wrote great scripts, just with very very sad endings in the past but he chose Chepauk 2008 to completely turn it around!!

I have been forced the change my stance on Sachin, but for some reason I thought it was going to happen today. Like millions of other people, I SMSed a friend of mine the “will Sachin fire today question”, with the feeling that- he was not going to waste what Sehwag had done the previous day. He was determined to succeed, be it for whatever reason – the terrorist attacks in Mumbai or the memory of Chepauk 1999 or just to prove a point to critics like me (which btw amounts to exactly 1 person!)

Now, I am trying to figure out why he never did something like this in the past! He always did have the determination right? Ofcourse he did. Infact, you could see it on his face while doing his regular adjustments and taking a stance! So, it’s not the determination that was missing! But amongst all that determination, you also saw a tinge of fear. He was “over-determined” if you can call it that, and the fear of failure haunted him! But this time at that wonderful afternoon at Chepauk, you saw a calm and composed Sachin. He didn’t waste time from 90 to 100, he didn’t “adjust” the already correct stance, and he didn’t look over-determined. Infact- I could see a tinge of the calmness that Mahendra Singh Dhoni shows whether he’s winning or losing or handling interviews!

I am sure Sachin is a great learner, but in the past he didn’t have anyone to pick up the “Dhoni-trait” from. All other Indian captains from the past – never had the courage to accept defeat with the style with which Dhoni does. Ganguly had a tinge of it- but he was never someone people could learn from. But Dhoni is changing that. He’s forcing people like Sachin, Yuvraj, and Gambhir to learn from him. He stays calm under pressure, and he’s ensuring his team does too.

Let’s all hope we see more performances like this from Sachin and Team India, and the “Dhoni-trait” rubs off on everyone!

A confused supporter

I am totally confused on which team I should support in today's IPL game between chennai super kings and Kolkotta Knightriders.

Point no. 1 – I think 'dada' is and will be India's greatest captain ever. Irrespective of what Dhoni has done in the 20-20 WC and in Australia, I think he is over-rated, even if he is not, I just hate him for dropping the senior players from the ODI team. He's no. 2 on my hate list after Yuvraj Singh. 1-0 in favor of Kolkotta.

Point no. 2 – Matt Hayden plays for chennai. Isn't it a sin to support any team that has the “Maa Kee” in it ?

2-0 to Kolkotta

Point no. 3 – Sharukh Khan-Dada vs Srinivasan-Dhoni: I am really not a great fan of sharukh(even if I were, I am not going to accept that openly), but I think he's a very smart self-made actor and entrepreneur. Ganguly is my no. 1 cricketer – for the flamboyance with which he talked back to Steve Waugh, for how he came back after what happened with Greg Chappell and for his strategic skills to make Sharukh pay Ishanth Sharma a little less than a million dollars. Srinivasan is probably as smart, I know he's very very rich and rides in a Bentley to these IPL games. (the less said about Dhoni, the better). Actually, I don't even know why I brought up this point, but for some reason, I am a big fan of the sharukh-ganguly duo. so 3-0 to Kolkotta.

Having said all this - in every argument I have ever had , I have supported the side that has something to do with chennai. I prefer Ayutha Ezuthu over Yuva; I think Big B comes no where close to Rajinikanth; I know that Chennai has the most knowledgeable cricket supporters in India(as opposed to the jokers at eden gardens) ; and most importantly chennai is by far the best city in the world to live in !!!!

so Go Chennai Super Kings.

India’s key men against SL

I have decided to write one blog post before every Indian game in this World Cup. These are the men in blue, who’ll decide if I have to post more than once!

Sourav Ganguly: India needs a couple if things from dada.
Continue to play his solid sheet anchor role at the top of the order.
India needs to do what Ganguly did after he was dropped. Ganguly realized that there was lot more to life than just cricket. He came back – in style – to showcase one of the best comebacks in the history of Indian cricket. India needs to do the same, they need to get over that fear of losing, that fear of thinking that cricket is everything and they’ll do well. They should understand that it’s ok to lose and that’ll take India to victory. Someone has to show these guys the way, I pick dada.

Dravid: As captain, he’s got to make some tough decisions. I say bat first (if we have that option). I know that India failed against Bangladesh batting first. But it’s going to be really difficult to chase anything more than 220 against Sanath Jayasurya & co. The skiddy left arm spin is going to screw India. Murli is going to screw Yuvraj. So, again- bat first if possible.
Pick KD Karthik. Its going to be tough coming into a knock out world cup game. But that also means he wasn’t responsible for India’s failure against Bangladesh. There’s no pressure on him and he has the talent- on the field and with the bat.
As batsman, Dravid is India’s best. But he needs to raise his hands and say-yup I am here. It’s been a while.
Pick Irfan Pathan- For God’s sake, Agarkar is not an all-rounder.

Yuvraj: I have no idea how he’s going to handle Murlidharan. But, he better find a way. India doesn’t have a choice.

Sachin: I hate Sachin. “Sachin took us to victory” is never going to happen. Trust me.
But, “If you take Sachin’s innings out of the equation, India might not have won” needs to happen. He has done that a number of times. Remember that innings against Pakistan in the 2003 WC, we need something similar.

Bowlers: Munaf, Irfan, Kumble, Zaheer, Sachin, Yuvraj, Sehwag. Everyone has to do well…it’s not like batting where a couple of people can save the team. Munaf needs to lead the way. Kumble needs to play the "wise man" for these bowlers.

Greg Chappell, Dravid, Me, Vengsarkar, whoever: Teach these people to pick singles. If I were Greg Chappell, I would spend the next 3 days picking singles. That helps you to score more than 0.5 runs an over when you loose wickets
I should probably kick Dravid out of this list- because he probably doesn’t know.

Will India go through? Like the godfather says "difficult, but not impossible".

Even if you dont like what I have to say..lets all hope I come up with 8 more posts...

Sometimes being right is wrong.

No one else knows this better than Darrel Hair. In 1996, he was the first umpire in the world to actually call a bowler with around 200 test wickets for “throwing”. The whole of Asia called him racist. The Sri Lankan’s wanted to make sure he didn’t umpire in any of their future matches. Basically, Hair was considered a villain in Asia and an idiot in other parts of the cricketing world.

But, ask anyone in their sane mind with decent knowledge of cricket rules, and you’ll know why Darrel Hair was right. Murlidharan did “chuck” under the old rules of throwing. Then ICC actually decided to modify the throwing rule to accommodate people like Murli who actually had a deformed arm. But Darrel Hair was still the villain. I would say Darrell Hair’s decision has reduced the number of chuckers in international cricket. Nowadays, other umpires have the courage to report suspect actions; the ICC takes chucking seriously and punishes players who throw. Is it not fair to say that Darrell Hair started this whole trend? Ofcourse a Brett Lee here and a Shahid Afridi there get away scot-free for obvious reasons.


Now , Hair has moved on to his next controversy - ball tampering. Everyone knows ball tampering always happened in international cricket. Everyone knows who started this whole trend. But not a single umpire actually had the courage to punish a team for ball tampering. Darrell Hair suspected some cheating in the Pak Vs Eng test and penalized Pak five runs. Irrespective of whether Pak tampered with the ball or not, Inzamam ul-Haq diverted attention away from the actual issue by forfeiting the match. Why is Pak so obsessed with postponing the hearing? If they are that confident they didn’t tamper with the ball, why not confidently go through the hearing immediately? Hair might have ended his umpiring career with this strong reaction to some half-baked assumption that Pakistan tampered with the ball. But this incident is definitely going to reduce the amount of ball tampering that happens in international cricket. We have already seen that "just-a-talk with the captain" hasn't made any difference.

But will Darrell Hair continue to be the villain just because he used Murli and Pakistan as opposed to Bret Lee and England to make his point? Or is ICC going to amend the rules again to accommodate teams/cricketers that cheat?

Darrell Hair is never going to get the support of the media or the ICC or any of the cricketing boards, but all that is fine. The sad part is none of the umpires are coming out in front and supporting him. After all, Hair was right in Murli’s case and we still don't know if he is right or wrong in Pakistan's case. But is the ICC even trying hard enough to find that out...

Reservations:

The whole of India is talking about reservations. NDTV, CNN-IBN and a whole lot of bloggers come up with exactly the same reasons as to why they all oppose reservations. No one’s thinking differently , the topic at hand by itself is quite old and beaten to death, I thought it wouldn’t be a bad idea to discuss a totally clichéd topic in a slightly different way.

Alright, so here goes it:

Now let’s take the 2 options we got at hand.

Option 1 – No reservations. What happens? India’s population is currently around 1,000,000,000. Out of this around 50% is effectively illiterate (this is different from actual illiteracy). If there are no reservations (assuming that the rate at which illiterates and literates contribute to our population growth is exactly equal), this percentage will remain the same (if not, illiteracy will increase). It’s not wrong to assume that 70% of the parents who are literate will educate their children properly, and 70% of the parents who are illiterate will NOT educate their children properly. In the remaining 30%, people like Rahul Mahajan and Sunil Bharathi Mittal will balance out. Educated folks like Rahul will effectively be illiterate (as they don’t behave like educated people anyway) and smart people like Mittal will be very literate even though they didn’t go through any formal education.

So, if we chose option 1 – India will continue to be the same. 50 % illiteracy will continue , the economic divide will keep expanding, and we all should sit back and hope that we’ll have more and more Sunil Mittals and Dirubhai Ambanis and fewer Rahul Mahajans.

Let’s take option 2. Say we have about 25% reservations. Let’s say 80% of the people who use this 25% reservation, are actually backward (the other 20% are people who buy OBC certificates - thanks to NDTV). These people will move into the literate category. Out of these people, let’s say 80% are effectively literate, we have 16% more people who are literate. Hope you guys got the complicated math here (0.8*0.8*0.25*100). If this were a case interview, I would have said: This sounds too high, let’s make it 10%.

So, what do we have now? 10% of the people would have moved from the illiterate to the literate category. Because of reservations, is there a chance that some people can move from the educated to the non-educated category? Nopes, no way. People, who planned to study medicine, might miss out studying medicine because of the reservations but they could always study something else. Maybe they could become a journalist and join NDTV and fight against the reservations. Basically, there’s no chance that someone who would have been in the educated category will become an illiterate because of reservations. Correct?

So, approx 10% of the people move from the non-educated side to the educated side (if our politicians implemented this whole thing properly- now that’s a whole new ball game). So, if we have to make a decision keeping in mind the overall growth of India, option 2 doesn’t sound too bad.

I know a lot has been said about how illiteracy should be corrected at the grassroots level and how the government should find ways to educate kids at the middle-school and high-school levels and not use reservations as a method to achieve whatever growth they are talking about. This is a point well-made, and a lot of organizations are working towards this. But thinking very carefully, reservations if implemented properly might not be a bad thing. Changes at the basic school level should happen in tandem with reservations.

There are a lot of other questions that need to be addressed. Is 25% an optimal number? We’ll be sacrificing some Sabeer Bhatia’s to gain a decent number of BPO engineers, but that’s the trade-off we’ll have to consider. There’s obviously more thought that needs to go into picking the right % for reservations, but the idea itself is not bad. The sad part is, no one – not anyone from NDTV, not anyone from Congress, not anyone from IIT/IIM has come up with some analysis on what this number should be, why it should be so etc. etc. There’s just blind opposition or support for/against reservations and that’s just very sad to know.

Update(from the comments section): Just so that more people can understand this point of view better:

Just wanted to add to that. I am not arguing for the sake of arguing here(Like in most other cases). I am just trying to assess the situation from a different angle.Take for example our class at SVCE. Say we had some 6 people from SC/ST ( rightly deserved SC/ST ) , I am pretty sure they are doing quite decently for themselves right now. Maybe SVCE helped them be in a position they are right now. Now, since those 6 people got into SVCE, some FC people went to SRM, Hindustan etc. Had they taken 7 people into SC/ST, then Murari ( who was the last person to get into EE Payment at SVCE) would have missed out and gone to SRM. Murari would have done fine anyway. He might have even gone to Stanford had he gone to SRM. But, the 7th SC/ST person might have needed SVCE's placement help to actually get the same job. Though this was added to get some comedy into the picture, hope you get my point !

Madras University Exams

I have heard a lot of University of Madras engineering students claiming that the semester exam correction is totally random and you could do really well and still get only a 45 on 100 or you could do really badly and still manage an eighty or a ninety.

Actually thinking carefully, that’s not true in most cases. Over the years, the people you expect to do well – do well, and the people you expect to just pass – just pass. So, what’s the problem with the grading? Of course, some mistakes do happen and that’s solely because of an insanely large number of students appearing for these exams every time.

Maybe its just fashion to complain about the grading system, maybe its just like how people keep saying that the world’s largest software company Microsoft creates stupid products (then why does everybody buy them), maybe it spices up conversations, maybe the person who is talking has been affected by it (that’s acceptable, in that case, according to me, the CBSE grading sucks), I don’t know.

But the point is: There’s not much that is wrong with the grading in Madras University. Guess, it’s easier to make this statement once you know for sure, you are never going back to that place again! If I knew that there’s the minutest of chances that I’ll go back to Madras University, I would never make this statement, and that’s what is wrong with the grading! The way they conduct things, it doesn’t give you the confidence that they are doing things right.

Recruiting Information – why don’t tech schools advertise them?

Check out www.ece.utexas.edu and www.ece.cmu.edu

Also, check out www.mccombs.utexas.edu and www.isb.edu

One glaring difference you can see is that “Placement and Recruiting” is advertised like crazy in b-school websites. The ECE departments have a simple link to their career services website and don’t even have information on which companies usually come on campus to recruit.

Even between b-schools, there’s a lot of difference. ISB and IIMs even go to the extent of naming their top-salaried students. US B-schools do give out numbers but don’t divulge personal information.

Is there a specific reason for all this? I am not sure, but let me come up with some

1) B-Schools have nothing else important to post on their website. Faculty and research info isn’t enough to attract top students.
2) It is assumed that – money and placements shouldn’t be reasons why you should stay tech, if you are interested only in the money, just go to b-school
3) The main reason to go to b-schools is the job and the money as opposed to the “knowledge” you gain at tech/engineering schools :-P
4) Engineering/tech smart asses can figure out where they will get to work themselves as opposed to b-school folks who need to be told what their options are…

Ok…guess it time to cut the crap. The only sane reason I can think of is probably, some b-school started publishing placement information and figured out that this attracted the best-possible set of students, so everybody else followed suit.

On the other hand, maybe tech schools didn’t want to change their winning combination and believed that just information about research and faculty got them the kind of student population they wanted. In general though, I think it’s definitely a good idea for tech schools to start publishing recruiting information, just so that incoming students can plan their careers better.

Lok Paritran Returns

After all the opposition I got for my “opinions” on Lok Paritran, I was just thinking about this.

Lok Paritran’s website has some crap about ideology and strategy. If (a big IF, its painfully, excruciatingly, tortuously boring) you read it carefully, it’s a combination of some philosophical stuff which is completely abstract. The bottom line according to them is “Knowing the problem is knowing the solution”. Well, don’t you think “implementing the solution” is the key? They have nothing in their website or press releases that talks about what exactly they are planning to do.

The other point I noticed was…they seem to be targeting the educated class, the middle class that usually doesn’t vote. But, the educated middle-class is actually quite satisfied with the current political system. Lot of people still keep complaining, but whatever said and done the Indian economy has grown quite handsomely over the past few years. So, there’s no reason to be unhappy with the current political system, when actually, the educated middle class have risen a notch to give the upper class a run for their money.
If at all, anyone has to be unhappy with the current political system, it’s the people below the poverty line. “Lok Paritran” wants to do something for them, but its asking for votes from the educated group. Weird.

I have a question for them. It’s totally cool they want to get into politics and change the system top-down. But, why not, atleast on the side, do something concrete for the people below the poverty line? This will also help them get some votes.

I am not trying to say these guys aren’t doing anything useful, but I feel they could do much more than just talk. If they are going to do just that, might as well stick to the known folks who are atleast not doing a bad job(atleast as far as the educated group is concerned)

Now, I had a question for myself? Would I go out there and do something like these guys? I don’t think so, NO. But then why keep criticizing folks who atleast are trying to do something?

Well, the answer to that is, criticism is fair if there’s some valid reasoning associated with it. If every cricket journalist were a cricketer, then we wouldn’t read any cricket-related articles.

Lok Paritran

A bunch of highly qualified economists and ex-IITans have started this political party – “Lok Paritran”. They are contesting the Tamil Nadu elections this time and it’ll be interesting to see what happens. Here’s some analysis on Lok Paritran, the people who have started this party and what I think about their strategy to date.

The people:

A lot has been written about how these highly qualified, US educated guys have “sacrificed” top notch jobs to work for “our” nation. Frankly, I don’t think they have sacrificed anything. What they are doing is very similar to doing a start-up. After their high-quality education they have seen this opportunity to do a start-up in politics. They have this idea and the idea is to form a political party for the “educated Indians” and they want to see how things go. It’s definitely a very good idea. There is no question about it. If the start-up works out, great, India can look forward to some sensible educated leaders. If it doesn’t work out, these guys can always get back to some pretty good jobs.

Their Strategy- the positives:

They have chosen the right constituencies to contest the elections. If at all anybody is going to vote for them, it’s the educated class. The highest % of the educated dudes in TN live in: Mylapore, T.Nagar, Anna Nagar, Thousand Light, Park Town, Saidapet, and Rasipuram. Mylapore especially will be interesting because Vasudev (Lok Paritran’s chief advisor) is fighting against SV Sekar and Napoleon. 70 % of Mylapore usually doesn’t vote. Let’s see if economist Vasudev can change this trend.

All these guys have a good background in economics, so they really know, at least theoretically, what it takes to build on a nation’s economy and what developing and developed economies mean.

They have also got their basics right. These guys are getting full-time into politics. This is not their part(y)-time job. They seem pretty committed to their ideals and principles. And, it seems like if their start-up fails, they wouldn’t modify their ideals just to be successful.

The negatives:

Dude, remember you are contesting an election in Tamil Nadu. Half the people there can’t pronounce “Lok Paritran” even after loads of help. It doesn’t take a New York University economist to figure this out.

Marketing: They haven’t done the right things as far as marketing goes. I know a huge bunch of people who would definitely vote for them, who have no clue these guys exist.


It’s wonderful someone decided to implement Mani Ratnam’s idea. But to be a successful start-up, it takes more than just high quality education. Their performance in Mylapore, T.Nagar and Annanagar will give us a good indication of how well these guys started off.

Innovation ?

I am certainly not an expert in innovation or startegy and all that good stuff, but one observation I have made over the last few years of following a bunch of american and indian firms is that .... Innovation is not necessarily about creating new things and generating new ideas, but more about using some existing ideas in various contexts and creating things which appear to be new as far as the target audience is concerned.

Sony Entertainment India didn't take too long to figure out that the Indian counter part of American Idol will definitely be extremely sucessful in India. They quickly signed some agreements with the creaters of American Idol, and stole the idea into Indian homes. Today , Indian Idol is second only to Kaun Banega Crorepathi (which has its roots in one more american TV show) in TRP ratings.

Jim Cramer called rediff.com the Indian Google. Rediff is trying to do exactly that and they are doing pretty well. They have the "rediff sponsored links" , the "rediff news hound" , all aping various concepts google came up with.

Google themselves have created finance.google.com which makes some minor but effective modifications to finance.yahoo.com. Google, now synonymous with internet search, actually came into the search engine business after yahoo and maybe even msn did , but just did it better.

We can, quite easily, pick umpteen other cases of "innovative ideas" which are actually just a modified version of what someone else has already done. The key, obviously is to make sure that the customer group that you are targeting finds it as innovative as you do. With the world economy doing quite well recently, we might actually see a lot more cash-rich companies comming out with some interesting products based on already existing products. It might not be long before IBM "innovates" with a next-generation mp3 player thats better than ipod or Taj Indian hotels comes up with a "Idly-Vada-Tikka" chain that competes with Mcdonalds.