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Chaitu's blogDecember 28 Cricket: World's Best Test XI - 2008As 2008 is coming to a close, Sydney Morning Herald threw up its current best World Test XI team. I dont know whether I would agree with the list completely and so does this gentleman at cricinfo blog. I've followed cricked for a good part of this year and so I'd like to think I can come up with a better list than these two guys with out being too partisan to any particular team. Here's my list.
1. Virender Sehwag - Sehwag had a fantastic year which was in complete contrast to last year where he lost his place in both ODI and test squads. He came back with a vengeance and seems to be batting with great freedom. If his 150 at Adelaide was a match-saving effort where he curbed his natural instinct to play any shot for almost a session, his double-century against Srilanka against world-class spin bowling and the triple-century against SA at Chennai were breath-taking. And the icing on the cake would be his scintillating 4th innings effort at Chennai which setup the game for India. 2. Graeme Smith - Smith had wonderful year of 2008 as he was the highest scoring batsman and more so did it on crucial occasions. Especially the 4th innings centuries he brought up at Edgebaston and Perth were both match-winning ones for South Africa. He also lead the team quite admirably although he is not the captain of my team. Having a left hander at the top is always at handy and with the kind of form Smith is in, he walks into my team.
3. Kevin Pietersen - KP scored 5 centuries in 12 games and 20 innings this year at an average of 50 per innings. He's an extremely aggressive player well suited to come in at No.3 who can up the tempo set by Smith and Sehwag. He's also a great player of spin particularly effective with his switch/reverse hit that he often played in the recent game against India. Being a match-winner he is definitely a great asset to any test team.
PS: I had considered Amla and Gambhir but ruled in favor of KP as Amla's 3 centuries were scored in relatively easy conditions 2-against Bangladesh and 1-against India on a belter of a pitch at Chennai. While Gambhir despite having a great season only played in the latter half of the season and is still untested in non-subcontintent conditions as an opener.
4. Sachin Tendulkar - Sachin has been absolutely solid this year except for a minor blip in Srilanka. He was treat to watch in Australia earlier this year where he looked set for a hundred everytime he came in to bat. He seemed to have matured very well with age and is playing according to his current strengths. His 4th innings at England was a great testimony of how he is prepared to play a solid waiting game than being flamboyant. With the top-3 being very attacking players, he gives solidity to this lineup.
5. AB Devilliers - AB has come of age as a batsman this year. He has scored runs all around the world double-century at Ahmedabad where he set the game up for SA to beat India and 174 against England at Leeds and the recent epic effort at the WACA that helped SA to chase down 414 the 2nd highest 4th innings total in the history of the game. With the kind of form he is in both batting and fielding - his slip catching has been of the highest quality. He would be my ideal #5.
6. Michael Clarke - Clarke had a very good year scoring runs against all oppositions he was put against. He came out with flying colors whenever he was put under tough conditions whether it was in Adelaide or in Delhi when India setup a huge 1st innings totals or against SA in the recently happening series. He has always performed when his team needed and to me he will be my crisis man who can bat with the lower order if needed to save the game. Added to this his handy left-arm spin that won the controversial game at Sydney and his out-fielding are great assets.
7. MS Dhoni - Dhoni did not put a single wrong step this year. After taking over captaincy from Kumble he rallied his troops to trump the Aussies. His positive approach, man-managment skills and more importantly his situational awareness that helps him to not let the game slip away makes him my captain. His glove work has been very good and he is the sort of a batsman who can come in at No. 7 and change the complexion of the game in a few minutes. He is my captain and wicket keeper.
8. Harbhajan Singh - Harbhajan topped the bowling charts this year picking up 63 wickets in 13 tests. His confidence has been very high and it has been flowing into has batting as well where he turned up with useful performances at Sydney, Adelaide and Bangalore tests that helped the team's causes immensely. I was particularly impressed with his bowling in Australia where he kept on taking the wicket of Ponting in almost every innings.
PS : I've considered Harbhajan ahead of Murali and Mendis as they have not played enough tests this year playing only 6 and 3 respectively. While Mendis only played 3 tests in Srilanka ruling him out, I was almost tempted to pick Murali ahead of Harbhajan, Bhajji's batting form helped him to be slightly ahead of Murali.
9. Dale Steyn - Steyn has been arguably the most effective bowler this year picking up 69 wickets at an average of 20. Those figures are outstanding, he runs in fast and is easily the fastest bowler on scene. He has taken wickets on all surfaces and all teams which make him an ideal opening fast bowler to be taken into the side. Added to that his recent batting form where he scored his first test half century at the MCG is not going bad either.
10. Mitchell Johnson - Jhonson has had a great year picking up wickets against all opposition teams. He adds variety and balance to the attack being a left-arm fast bowler. The thing that I most I like about Jhonson is his committment on the field. He is the kind of a bowler a captain would love to have, any time ready to give 100% whatever may be the match situation. His recent 8-wicket haul at the WACA is a testimony to the hard work he has put into his bowling.
PS: I picked MJ ahead of Ntini and Zaheer. I would have picked Ntini as he also had a great year, but MJ being a left-armer added more balance. While Zaheer did not play for a major part of the 1st half of the year that only restricted him to bowl in the sub-continent.
11. Ishant Sharma - Yes, my #11 is the most promising young kid on the block. There has been nobody else that impressed me more than Ishant. His willingness to learn and to adjust to the various conditions and the speed with which he has improved has made the world sit up and notice. It was only 12 months ago that he was making his debut against the Aussies, but the way he is bowling right now it gives you the impression that he's been bowling for 3-4 years. With 39 wickets to his name, Ishant completes my bowling team.
And Ricky Ponting is my 12th man - someone who can fill the shoes if any of my batsman got injured and also a terrific fielder.
December 24 The meaning of life I had been pondering over this for the past many days, months and perhaps a few years. Life's mysterious questions had always intrigued me from my childhood. I always had questions about morality, conscience, spirituality, God, relationships, civilizations, societies and mostly the "Why" part of all this. Over the past few days I started getting some clarity of some of these issues and would like to write them down for myself and anyone else who's interested. And the Art of Living course that I took few weeks ago also gave me some great personal experiences on this. It became clear for me that to understand this mysterious question "what's the meaning of life ?", a logical answer would always be incomplete and unsatisfactory. I was seldom satisfied about any logical answer to this question until I had some personal more deeper experience thankfully I got through the meditation exercises that were taught in the course. A couple of years ago I got introduced to the various western schools of thought related to existentialism. It was through 20th century french philosopher Albert Camus that I got to know about "Absurdism" or should I say "Paradox of the Absurd" as Camus never truly subscribed to all the nuances of Absurd philosophy. In his essays Camus presneted the reader about the dualities in life - happiness and sadness, darkness and light, life and death etc. His main aim was to emphasize that happiness is a fleeting feeling and that human condition is one that of mortality. He did not do this to be morbid but to truly appreciate life. Often times we value our life and existence so deeply even knowing that one day we would certainly die, thus making all our endeavours in effect meaningless. We can live with the dualism ( when we're going thru' sadness, we know we will be happy when times change) but not with the paradox that "our life is of great importance and at the same time meaningless". Camus did not subscribe to the nihilistic school of thought that completely overruled any meaning in life and talks about the nothingness of anything in the world. Instead, he was interested in how we humans we experience this "Absurd", this paradox and live with it. What still had meaning for Camus is that despite humans being subjects in an indifferent and absurd universe, in which meaning is challenged by the fact that we all die, meaning can be created, however provisionally and unstably, by our own decisions and interpretations. For Camus, the beauty that people encounter in life makes it worth living and that's exactly what I had experienced with the Art of Living. In my interpretation, life is like a journey that I used to love to take in trains in India no matter where I was going, because I just loved traveling in a train as a young kid, but then again I make it interesting and thus invent meaning to it by setting myself goals and challenges for me to accomplish along the way. But since this is an invented meaning, I need to be careful to always maintain an ironic distance. Camus calls this idea "acceptance without resignation" that you accept the absurdity in life but don't resign from living. In a world devoid of higher meaning, man becomes absolutely free and it is through this freedom that a man can revolt against "regrets about his past and worries about his future" and achieves the ability to live in the present with passion. Living in the present is something that all eastern spiritual gurus teach and it is the core and ultimate aim of any meditation practice. But for me Camus' philosophy is incomplete, because any philosophy that is taught in words and works at the logical level of explaining the meaning of life would not achieve its purpose completely. That is where I think Indians and spiritual gurus of India right from Buddha are ahead of their western counterparts as they discovered practical techniques like yoga, meditation to actually experience the answer to this question. December 14 One Man Dating EmpireMarcus Frind a tall, geeky looking man is the owner of the most of popular dating web site in North America. And his is a success story that completely disproves all existing myths and norms about becoming a success-ful and profit-making ( this is very important, these days !! ) startup. I've known plentyoffish.com as a dating site for a while now but never knew the story behind it until yesterday when coding horror had a blog about "My Scaling Hero". Something that started as a web site to test his ASP programming skills that he was learning after his day job at home, now became his main livelihood that gets him a cool profit of $10,000,000 a year.
What I liked, was plentyoffish is not your web-2.0-ground-breaking-social-networking-long-tail-community-web-site that attracts millions eyballs but makes zilch in return. It's actually far from being a cool website with a below-average to average layout. And it's not built by 20-100 people with 5-100 million dollar venture capital on the bleeding-edge-lamp-stack-based-ruby-on-rails-with-memcached-amazon-S3-tech. It's developed by a single programmer using simple ASP on windows 2003 in his apartment. And the business model of the web site is not complicated, it helps people to get laid as codinghorror puts it, which is better than to get paid for many young people. And while it's doing that, it makes money by showing Google Ads. But this did not happen overnight, dating is a very competitive market with so many players from a very long time. How did he do that ? Well sheer hard-work and patience. Here's his recount of how he started a dating empire.
There is a funny story that his bank did not accept him when he went to deposit his first million dollar cheque from Google, so Google had to send him two checks dividing the sum into two parts. Find more about the Love Guru.
.  February 09 Finally againIt's been almost an year since I'm blogging again... Feels nice... Things have changed a lot... even spaces has changed... I had to spend 10 minutes before figuring out to find where to click to add a new blog entry... so much for the UI design... It shows once again... as to why some products have the most unintuitive design sense... Esp spaces was so simple when it started that I loved it... now it seems that have added a bunch of features that I dont use and have made it's usability that much more complex... I guess there is one important point to keep in mind when creating new features for an online service... that is we should give the right to the user (or blog owner here), as to whether he likes these new features or he wants to stick with what he has.... Its no different than I as a customer having the right to decide whether I want to buy the new Vista or I'm happy with my XP.. To me both scenarios are the same... just coz I'm not paying for the service here, the provider has no right to do an *automatic upgrade* of features to all of its users by default... Anyways enough on ethics of design... but yeah good to be back and good to be blogging... btw I got caught with the facebook bug these days and am slowly becoming a member of the club that believes it's the FUTURE... ciao March 18 WeddingFinally got some time to upload pictures from my wedding and our trips to tirupathi and kerala. Check'em out. January 03 Road TripLast week three of us Srinath, Guna and myself set off on a road trip to the wild wild west viz., California in search of Sun ;) We got so bored of the rains, power failures in Seattle that we decided to call it quits with the weather... We did not know where we would want to go.... One of us wanted to goto San Diego... the other to LA and I wanted to go all the way to Mexico... :) No plan, no direction, all we had was hope that at the end of it all Sun god would be smiling at us. Okay its getting a little dramatic here... I'll cut to the chase... We started around 8pm on friday and hit portland around 10:30 or so... after having dinner there we were off thru the oregon mountains... The night was pitch black and it felt amazing as we were doing around 100Mph with no traffic around... By the next morning we touched California border...Called up a friend who was supposed to host us... Surprised him that we were driving to his place... and we need directions... Finally around 11 am in the morning we reached our destination.... I was like totally exhausted... and crashed on the bed all day... We dint do much except for a visit to Santa Cruz beach to catch the sunset which was gorgeous... check out the pictures... there was a gult gang of about 15 people and all the nights were spent playing poker and mafia, let me tell you those guys play it pretty rough... I almost got involved in a fight with one of them... :) The night before we returned, we thought our trip to CA would be incomplete without checking out a telugu movie... After the movie, we set off on the return trip... drove for another 12 hours with 6 hours in continuous rain... All of us were down & out... by the time we reached Seattle... When I told this to Veena she told me that she would not allow me to go for any of those crazy trips after marriage... Lets see !! Although it was tiring... it was fun... kind of felt like Che Guevara of motor cycle diaries... Ciao
November 05 Diwali and other things...Its been a looooong time since I wrote here... Was quite busy with various things that were happening in life...
Just came back from a diwali party by the telugu association at Seattle here... It was okay... but the food was great !!... There was a dance troupe from india which played a dance drama... which was good but a little bit too long...
Things are going steady otherwise, with moments of joy and despair once in a while... Gotto see Bill 'G' when he came to meet the search team... Although I dont think on those lines usually... but for a moment there was a sense of euphoria that the world's richest man is standing just next to you... The surprising thing was he was talking to the dev leads of each feature team seeing demos... asking questions...
Rains have started here already.... with sun going down as early as 3:30 in the evening... frustrating days ahead I guess... Spent the night of diwali at Raghu's place.... Mahathi tried to make some "mysore pak" forgot to put sugar in it... so it was only left with 'mysore' but not 'pak'... :) Vani was generous enough to call us (Srinath and myself ) for yet another dinner at their place... Only this time Geeta ( her roomie ) took the honours of being the chef... Nowadays, Srinath complains on all of the friends getting married/engaged and says he would form a new group of "bachelor" friends. Dint do anything for Halloween though... a few kids knocked on my apartment door only to be sent emptyhanded :-))
Otherwise.. its just work, phone calls to India, sleep and movies... that's pretty much it... btw saw a very good Hindi movie called "Woh lamhe"... yesterday... Man this guy Shiney Ahuja seems to be a real find by bollywood... his style of acting is so unique and intense that I think he's going to go places if everything falls in place... I was actually very impressed even with his first movie named after one of Ghalib's poems "hazaron khwaishen aisi" which was quite interesting as well.
btw uploaded a few photos that were taken in the recent past ... check'em out. September 10 Try the new improved Live Search betaLive Search went thru' a recent upgrade in UI and features. For those who want to experience a change in searching, you can now visit http://www.live.com August 26 Last week !!Last week I packed my bags for home on what was going to be an eventful trip... Life moved at such a pace and so many things happened in seven days... that I felt like living in fast-forward mode... now after coming back to Seattle everything is slowly sinking in.... For all the fights some little and some seriously dangerous I had with my little sister ever since we were kids... in a sense she made up for all of them.... as I got engaged to her best friend... Although I knew her thru' my sister and met her on a couple of occassions before... the thought of marriage never crossed my mind... until recently when the proposal came... And the rest as they say is history... August 24 A Champion's storyHere's a story of a young man who dreamed of playing foosball ever since he joined his first job. He was written off... by his fellow players & critics as someone with "sissy" wrists... But the indomitable spirit inside the young man made him work hard some times even at 1:00 or 2:00 am in the midnight... and here he's now rejoicing after being crowned as the foos ball champion for the summer of 2006.
No prizes for guessing who he is... its none other than Yours Truly...
Okay that makes a nice storyline for a cheesy hollywood underdog-becomes-champion movie.... May be I should sell this to Stallone to make a series like Rocky... Jeez.. if only foosball was as popular as boxing :)
But for all those foosball lovers around the world including Joey and Chandler... this is a time to celebrate... while you're at it... have a look at the photos as well...
July 22 Desiderata - Max EhrmanGo placidly amid the noise and haste, Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be. Max Ehrman
(c) Max Ehrman 1926 June 06 Lake ChelanAfter a long time, I took a break from work... gawd it felt so good... a bunch of us went to see Lake Chelan... which is about a couple of hundred miles from seattle... we were thinking that the whole long weekend was going to get rained off... but the rain gods were a little kind on us for a day... Man... the lake was amazing... I mean by indian standards... you have to call this a river.. I also gotto know its one of the deepest in the US... but it was good that I got this info after I came back for we would'nt have enjoyed as much if we knew that before... We rented out a motor boat... it was pretty good as we went about 20 miles on that... also did some jet skiing ... it was great fun... btw posted some pictures... June 02 Spamming MSN SearchOkay, I think this will be the last straw. I'm now going to spam my own search engine. I've waited for a long time for MSN Search to display my home page as the first result for my name query.
Now I am going to spam my way up to the top creating reciprocal links. Here you go baby !!
Is India turning into a freakin Communist State ?The recent turn of events in India are making me believe that the country is turning into a freaking communist country under the garb of democracy.... Take the case of govt's recent reservation policy, state govts banning films like DaVinci Code, or govt aided mob guys burning the posters and threatening theater owners not to run the film of movie star Aamir Khan who happened to support a controversy... I mean for gawd's sake if christian majority countries like the US have no problem showing Da Vinci Code, I cant understand why Indian state govts have problems about it... In the name of supporting minorities... the politicians are screwing up the rest of the country in whatever way they can... More and more I read about these stories, I come to believe that there are few such democratic values preserved in India any more... there is absolutely very limited freedom of speech or expression... Any one in the name of BJP/VHP/Bajrang Dal/soc called secular party/ can come and kick your ass if they dont like what you say/write. As long assholes like these are ruling at the top supported by the ignorant and illiterate mob... the country would just go down the path of degeneration... January 05 Happy New YearHappy New Year folks... Dint have much to write for the past two months. Just got back from a whirlwind tour of east coast. Man... it feels like I got back from another country... more so becoz of the 7 hour flight from boston to seattle... Thankfully while coming back the plane arrived on time here...
Well... I must say I had a pretty good time there... I gotto reconnect with some old cousins of mine whom I've not seen for years... They're all busy raising their little kids... Finally got a chance to meet my undergrad friend in NJ... Luckily another friend from Ohio also came over to see us... We'd some good fun on the New Year's eve in the NY City...
What to say about NY... it reminded me more of any Indian city with lots of traffic.. people all over the streets... okay accepted that you dont see such high skyscrapers in India... but you dont see so many people any where in the US... Time Square was something else on the new year's eve... Dint stay there for the ball dropping as it was getting chilly...
What else... I guess this is enough for today... gotto get back to work, btw uploaded the photos.. if you care to see :) October 13 Stuff...Seems like a lot has happened... in the past two weeks... Had to go thru' the process of moving apartments... which I think is the most difficult task in the world...
Anyways... having spent a couple of weeks waiting for the comcast guy to transfer my internet connection... I caught up with some reading... A colleague of mine gave me this book "Last Chance to See" by Douglas Adams, probably more famous for his hitchhiker's guide to galaxy... I finally got a chance to finish this book which I started on my return trip from India... I'd say I really liked the narrative style of the author... and have become a fan of his wit and sarcasm... The book is about an expedition the author made sometime in 80s to different parts of the world... looking for animals that were fast becoming extinct... The cover page of the book might mislead you that this is some sort of serious discovery channel like documentary... Although the primary theme of the book is animals... the author makes it amazingly interesting... in describing the situations he went thru' in the expedition...
Also did some reading of the classical text on pattern classification by Duda&Hart. Although I did a course at grad school on this, I would say I did not understand it very much then... mostly coz the professor made the course very easy then... Anyways... only this time after some careful reading I started appreciating the beauty of some mathematical functions... that reminds me of the book "Computational Beauty of Nature" that I want to read some time, even added it to my wish list at Amazon... waiting for some cash back on my amazon credit card before I buy it...
September 24 New Hotmail demoThis is cool... Take a look at
Also watch the interview of the inventor of DHTML now being called AJAX.
For all the cool videos go to
September 22 Sourav's journey: from Glory and Fame to Taints of ShameSourav Chandidas Ganguly, a name Indian cricket will probably never forget just because of the sheer influence this interesting character has had on it.
Sourav's tryst with his cricketing destiny is interesting, a football player suddenly decides to play cricket at an age which might be a little late by today's standards in professional sport. Gets selected in the tour party that left to Australia in 91, resents carrying drinks to field, gets dropped on disciplinary reasons that he's not a team player. Waits for five long years before destiny gives him another chance in 96 Lords test against England, this time laps it up with both hands scoring back to back hundreds. Begins his journey to fame by then joining the club of "Big 3" with Sachin and Dravid.
A few hiccups follow but finally cements his place in the side. Gets promoted to open during Sachin's captaincy, which helps him stay in the ODI team despinte his poor running between the wickets and poor fielding. Evolves into a prolific one-day batsman becoming the second highest century maker in ODIs. Gets questions from the critics on his technique while facing the short ball, play on the leg side, running between the wickets, lazy outfielding. Despite all this, earns a fan following of his own including the likes of Geoff Boycott for his silken cover drives, huge sixes and more so for his in-your-face attitude.
Indian cricket finds itself in a match-fixing shithole thanks to its own famous sons like Azhar, Jadeja etc... With BCCI deperately seeking to cleanse its image and with Sachin unwilling to go thru' the captaincy hell again, destiny once again gives him a chance and this time the second most important post in the country ( the first being its Prime Minister ). With our first foreign ( I would say "professional" ) coach to help, Sourav goes onto become the most successful captain in the history of indian cricket... by believing in a few talented youngsters, backing them during their failures, fighting with board on these selections... becoming a "dada" to all these youngsters. Takes Indian cricket to dizzying heights, WC finals since 20 years, squaring the series in Australia ( almost beating them ), test seriese win since 20 years in Pak. All this takes a heavy toll on his batting, and the time comes when people or even his teammates start to question his place in the team on sheer form.
As the saying goes "some one who's seen the peak can only come down" Sourav's downfall starts, fueled by his continuing poor run of form, losing the home series to Pak, and contraversies surrounding him and Dravid. And now with the storm in the tea cup of Sourav-Chappel row seeming to a "katrina" for him. This time its does not seem easy for Sourav with an equally aggressive individual like Chappel who goes and writes a 6 page email to BCCI telling them how unfit Sourav is to be a captain.
The facts of letter being Sourav skips fielding sessions feigning injuries, follows divide-&-rule policy in the team, favors his pet players... etc etc things which turn a hitherto supporter like Chappel into his adversary.
Only time can say if Sourav's destiny plays its game again and pulls him out of this trouble except this time it seems rather unlikely. With Sachin and some team members expressing displeasure at Sourav's press statements disclosing and even concoting his dressing room arguments with Chappel, it seems curtains are falling down on him pretty soon.
September 12 Steve Jobs - "Bill, thank you. The world's a better place."Just found a cool new tech blog site called digg.com . Apparently its the users who decide which article gets published on that, instead of a bunch of editors like in slashdot.
Read more about what Jobs has to say about Gates here. Anyway most of the article is shown in the movie "Pirates of Silicon Valley".
Scroll down to see the actual article posted by some one from the TIME.
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