Author: SK

Returning to my grandmother’s place after a quiz yesterday evening, I was greeted with loud sound of fireworks. This was odd, since Diwali is still a couple of months away, and India’s cricket match was to come much later in the night. Then, I switch on the TV and realize what had happened. Pakistan had just thulped New Zealand in the semis to enter the final of the ICC World Twenty20.

The sound of the fireworks, as it turned out, was coming from “Tareen Block”, a medium-sized Muslim area in Jayanagar 3rd Block. They were celebrating Pakistan’s win, it seems. No such celebrations were heard from there following India’s win later in the night. And, for the record, this is an area that is largely inhabited by educated and well-off Muslims.

And they cheer for Pakistan. And don’t cheer for India. The advantages of being a politically significant group…

Update

I watched today’s game from my grandmother’s house. At the end of it, there was a loud cheer. It was from a crowd of auto drivers, etc. who had gathered in front of a consumer goods showroom opposite my grandmother’s house.

No crackers. No obvious signs of celebrations from the Tareen Block side.

Oh yeah and of course Shoaib Malik has apologized to these guys right? Quite funny that was.

The unnecessary controversy over the very existence of Lord Rama has put a major question mark on the Sethusamudram project. The statements of the ASI and Karunanidhi has turned an earlier neutral Hindu public against the project, and it is going to be next to impossible for it to go ahead. In this regard, there is a need for some out-of-the-box solutions to tackle the problem.

Two things to consider here. First, what is the very purpose of the Sethusamudram project? The stated purpose is to cut down the distance taken by heavy ships which currently cannot go through the area and have to circumnavigate Sri Lanka, thus losing valuable time and money. The proposed canal will make it possible for these huge ships to just cut across the palk straits instead of going all the way through Sri Lanka.
The other thing is the very financial viability of the project. the project is supposed to involve significant costs (too lazy to google this out) and even before the existential controversy, numerous questions had been asked regarding its financial viability. Reports suggest that the payback period for this project some 8 to 10 years, after which it starts becoming profitable. By talking about profitability one assumes that the canal could be tolled and this raises the question as to whether the traffic projections have been overstated (from experience (mumbai-pune, baroda-ahmedabad, etc.) most planners make the mistake of overestimating people’s willingness to pay and thus demand for tolled roads, etc.).

So basically the way it works is that the government spends a huge amount of money upfront in dredging a canal, and then starts collecting fees from ships that want to use this canal. For a few years, not much money is made, but after that enough is made in order to make the dredging of the canal worth it. The ships save the cost of going around Sri Lanka, pay a fee in the government, and still make a profit (if they don’t, it is only if the tolls haven’t been structured properly). And over the long run (don’t ask me how long), the toll thus generated compensates for the investment the government is making now.

Here is the deal. Take out the physical dredging and the canal. Make it a purely financial project. Suppose the money saved by a ship by not going around Sri Lanka is Rs. X. And the toll is Rs. Y. And the net benefit is Rs. (X-Y) (with loss of not too much generality we can assume that this saving is per ton of cargo sent). Add to this the money value of time saved. Let that be Rs. Z per ton. Thus the net benefit of the canal to the shipper is Rs. X + Z – Y. What if he is paid this money?

Instead of investing the humongous amount of money into making the canal, let the government invest it in the bank. And use funds from this fund to compensate the shippers. Suppose you are a large shipper who was going from Madras to Tuticorin, and couldn’t take the Sethusamudram canal because it doesn’t exist. You’ll be financially compensated for it by the government. The money for the compensation, of course, comes from this fund. In the initial years, acceptance of this would be low, and less funds would be used. Whatever remains just gets invested back. Will definitely help pay the shippers when hte demand for the non-existent canal goes up.

Given our track of tolled roads, etc. I’m not if the projected returns from the actual building of the canal can be met. In this respect, this artificial compensation would surely help. And be a much sounder proposition from the financial perspective. And wouldn’t offend anyone’s religious sensibilities. Right?

Ok here is the equation. Before the last group E game between India and South Africa, New Zealand are at a net run rate of +0.05. And having played all their matches, that is going to be their final NRR. South Africa are at 0.77 and India are at 0.2. Remember that the last two numbers are going to change after today’s game.

For India, it is plain and simple. They have to just go out there and win the game. Even a win with a net run rate of 0 (say by 1 run or last ball finish) will ensure their net run rate ends up higher than New Zealand’s.

It’s a little more complicated for South Africa. If they win the game, or if the game is abandoned, they are thru, along with New Zealand. If they lose by a margin of less than 28 runs, once again they are through. However, if they lose to India by a margin of >= 28 runs, they are out of the tournament. India and New Zealand go through.

So here we have the situation where both teams potentially have something to win in this game, both teams have something to lose, and most importantly, it is NOT a zero sum game. There is a situation (where India beats SA by less than 28 runs) which will benefit both teams. And by choosing the margin of victory, they can even determine who is E1 and who is E2, and considering that group F would have resolved itself by then, they have a chance of choosing their semifinal opponents. If the margin is 11 runs or less, South Africa top the group. Else, India will top the group.

One’s mind goes back to 1982. Back to a time when one wasn’t even born. FIFA World Cup 1982. To quote the Wikipedia

West Germany and Austria knew that a West German win by 1 or 2 goals would qualify them both, while a larger German victory would qualify Algeria over Austria, and a draw or an Austrian win would eliminate the Germans ? the fourth team in the group, Chile, was eliminated regardless of the outcome. After 10 minutes of furious attack, Germany succeeded in scoring through a goal by Horst Hrubesch. After the goal was scored, the two German-speaking teams went into an unspoken agreement and just kicked the ball around aimlessly for the rest of the match.

It’s going to be tougher this time. It’s tougher to fix the outcome of a cricket match than it is to fix a football match. And unlike Austria and Germany, which were neighbors and spoke the same language, nothing (apart from Gandhi maybe) binds India with South Africa. And unlike Algeria, which was a Muslim Arab African state, India and South Africa have nothing special against New Zealand.

Still it’s worth a try. Situations like this don’t come along every day. Everything is in these guys’ hands now. Not only will they both qualify, both can choose their semifinal opponents. If only they collaborate. If only they collaborate and fix the match.

The analysis has been done assuming that India bat first. Replace margin of victory in runs by overs and you’ll get the picture if SA bat first. However, to keep things simple, if they decide to fix, India should bat.

I’m writing this at the innings break of the India – England game.

Quick analysis tells me that if India restricts England to less than 204 today, we’ll only need to win tomorrow’s game. No run rate worries.

Sounds good right?

For the uninitiated, the world chess championship is going on at Mexico. And I wouldn’t be surprised if a number of you don’t know about it, given the ineptitude of our mainstream media (as I had lamented here). The tournament is being played on a double round robin format, and after five of the fourteen rounds, Anand is in the lead, having won two of his games and drawn the rest.

The games are available online on the official tournament website, and earlier today I was going through some of them. As Devangshu Dutta of the Business Standard had predicted in his weekly chess column two weekends back, because of the “winner takes all” nature of this tournament, players will tend to be more aggressive than they normally are. Devangshu had also suggested that due to this format, naturally aggressive players such as Anand stand to gain, and that has been the case so far.

One thing that strikes you while looking at the games is the choice of openings. From the games that I have seen, a large number of players have opened “d4”, which have mostly been met with an attempt to nimzo-indian kind of formation, which has transposed into a queen’s gambit kind of situation. Then, there have been some freaks, like leko playing the almost-defunct 1.e4 e5 2. Bc4 against Kramnik. It was no surprise that the game quickly petered to a draw.

Interestingly, both Kramnik and Gelfand chose to employ the Petroff (1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nf6) against Anand and managed to draw their games. The former was an exciting game, as Kramnik quickly went a pawn up and had a passer as soon as the game came down to a rook end game. However, Anand played the end game superbly and managed to draw it. From his games so far, Anand seems to be in good form, and is playing extremely aggressively, though he was forced to draw from a winning (pawn up) position following some excellent play by Morozevich.

One of the more exciting games so far, mainly due to the choice of opening, has been the Anand-Svidler game where the latter employed the Marshall Attack. Anand deviated from the best known line on the 12th move, preferring an older variation. He then defended accurately and picked up two pawns to force Svidler’s resignation.

It is an exciting time ahead for the chess-lover. The tournament has been nicely set up, though the matches are at an unearthly time here in India for us to follow. They all start at 2 pm local time (in Mexico) and are webcast live on the official website.

However, one thing I’m looking for is for annotations for the games. Looking at the games by myself is one thing. Looking at them with some expert annotations/commentary is another. Does anyone know of a good site where I can get the same?

For an out and out business daily, the Business Standard shows that their competence extends to writing about sport as well – something that a lot of mainstream white papers struggle to do. Check out this editorial about Dravid’s resignation.

The key issue in deciding who will be captain is to be able to distinguish between playing ability and managerial ability. It is rare for one player to have both in equal measure. Usually, the good players make bad captains and indeed, start playing badly as well. A good cricketing brain and a will to win along with some people skills is what?s needed in a good captain, not necessarily great batting or bowling excellence.

It’s sad that the Business Standard doesn’t publish it’s Sunday edition outside of Delhi, and hence most of the readers who don’t live in Delhi would’ve missed out on this. ?

One of the most popular pastimes when a major tournament is on is in terms of super selectors or fantasy leagues. In this, you create your own team drawing players from various teams participating in the particular tournament, and get points every day based on the performance of the players in your team. This kind of a game is especially popular for games like cricket where the contribution of each member of the team can be quantified, rather than for say something like football.

Now, what can be really irritating when one takes part in these games is loopholes. Most of these games seem to have some inbuilt loopholes and the person who exploits these loopholes usually wins. And you usually realize that after the tournament is over, when you realize that despite your best tactical acumen you’re not in the leaderboard.

For example, during the Cricket World Cup earlier this year, people in our office organized a fantasy league. The problem there was that there was only 1 match a day in the world cup and the cost of making substitutions in the team was really low. So what does the winner (incidentally the same guy who organized the tournament) do? He changes team every day depending on who is playing. It’s australia today? Put in Hayden, Gilchrist and Ponting. Sri Lanka tomorrow? Drop these 3 and put in Sangakkara, Jayasuriya and Muralitharan. And the guy had made the rule that 3 substitutions would be allwoed every day so it became a question of betting on who are the 3 best performers in every game rather than betting on who are the best performers in the tournament.

Then, another common loophole is to give too much money to the managers. Usually, players’ costs and money given to managers are such that every manager is forced to include 2-3 not-so-well-known faces in the team. Now, you have these tournaments where the money you have is no constraint and you just end up picking 11 proven studs. Takes the whole fun of it. There needs to be a tradeoff!

Now, cricinfo has introduced a fantasy league for the ongoing 2020 World Cup. A well designed league in most aspects. You are forced to bet on 2-3 unknown faces. Number of substitutions is limited (11 after the tournament begins). However, as usual, there is a loophole. Now, when I started writing this post, I wanted to write aboutt he loophole. But now I think I want to exploit it all by myself. So go figure out!

Don’t you think TIPS got the ordering on the Gupt tape horribly wrong? Isn’t the normal ordering something like all the good songs on Side A and the rest on B? And the side A songs are the ones that usually make it to Philips Top 10 and similar shows. Forget the title track which (justifiably) occurs thrice.

And what do we have on Side A? Duniya haseenon ka mela and Mere khwabon mein tu. And on Side B? mere sanam… yeh pyaar kya hai… yeh pyaasi mohabbat.. (some of you might have never heard these, blame the ordering for that ). and anyone who has watched the movie and seen kajol in these songs will be able to appreciate how awesome they are…

the album saw good sales anyways but wouldn’t it have been better if they’d shown a sensuous kajol in yeh pyaasi mohabbat rather than bobby deol dancing in a club in duniya haseenon ka mela?

is there anybody else in here who feels the way i do?