Monday, December 29, 2008

Changes in Indian Cricket is a reflection of changes in our country

I wanted to write this blog for quite some time, India’s victory in fact comprehensive victory over Aussie, actually the Mighty Aussie (when you have defeated your opponent to make your victory bigger praise them) makes the timing of this blog perfect. This is not really about the Aus series, but something much more. I believe the changes in India’s cricket team are a reflection of the changes in India as a nation.
Let us see the events chronologically. Indian cricket really got noticed after the 1983 world cup victory, through out 70’s we were known for our spin bowling but never as a strong team. It was after the world cup victory and the tri-series win in Aus that we were started to be counted as a force to recon with. As a nation it was the changes initiated by the then PM- Rajiv Gandhi and Sam Pitroda that we are seeing the results today. They started the Computerisation era in a big way in India and we all know that today it is one of the fastest growing sector. If this example sounds really like a coincidence so here are many others:


In cricket: From Spin Kings to Pacers
As a nation: Not just an agriculture state

India was well recognised as a spin force, the pace bowlers were required to remove the shine from the ball. This trend stared to change with the emergence of Kapil Dev. Manoj Prabhakar was useful bowler who opened the bowling alongside Kapil and also started opening batting towards the end of his career. There were many pace bowlers who came and went in the 90’s. Some were one match wonders while others were injury plagued (Abey Kuruvila, Salil Ankola) On the other hand some left behind a mark- Javagal Srinath being the most noticeable. While all these new pacers were being born the spinners did not die out. Venkatpathy raju, rajesh Chauhan shined for a few years while there were longer term success like Anil Kumble and Harbhajan Singh.
India’s main employment generator was agriculture and large part of the nation was living in the rural India. But with sustained effort from the various Political leaders and Indians themselves, industrialisation started increasing. Much like Kapil in the 80’s, Industry was in the hand of the government and a few large families (Ambani, Tata, Godrej). Entrepreneurs started appearing much like the pace bowlers, some failed some succeeded. Today India is well known for its service sector companies like IT, BPO etc. While IT and modern companies grab much of the headlines, agriculture remains the largest contributor to the GDP.

India is not just in the cities
During the 90’s Indian cricket was concentrated in the large cities. There were many players from Bombay (now Mumbai), Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Hyderabad, Delhi and West Bengal. The same holds true for our nation as well. Most of the large business establishment and hence centres of employment were in the large cities. Smaller towns were less known. Things have changed really big time now. The present Indian Captain is from Jharkhand and there more players from smaller towns. This is a reflection of how the things are in our country as well.

In cricket: More than home tigers
As a nation: A growing Global force


In the mid 90’s India had a phenomenal test record in India. Pitches were like these dust bowls where the ball would turn like crazy after the third day. Many countries were beaten badly it all looked very familiar. The table would turn when India went on an away tour. The pitches would be green and bouncy and the players would perform a parade. Most of them got out by poking to the swinging ball, believe me their dismissal looked so similar. Towards the end of 90’s things started to change. It was so much of self realisation; Mohali stadium was newly built and was on the most non Indian pitch. It had nice bounce and swing. Manoj Prabhakar once got a broken nose playing against west indies in Mohali. India got batsmen like Rahul Dravid, VVS Laxman to support Sachin on the away tours and they were able to stamp their authority with their technique. At around the same time India was also producing genuine pacers and all this combined with a new aggressive captain in Ganguly meant that we were drawing matches abroad and also winning at times.
India as nation was self contained. The Industry would mostly satisfy local need and most of the Industries were regulated by the government (Nationalised Banks, Government TV etc). There was a major crisis in early 90’s and the then PM-Late P.V. Narsimha Rao and FM- Dr. Manmohan Singh, opened the economy allowing foreign capital to flow in. They reduced regulatory controls. Many industries started doing better with the influx of foreign capital and know how. Automobile sector is a good example, initially we had the primier padmini, ambassador and then Maruti 800 came in the mid 80’s. 90’s saw an explosion of car companies and models. Things started looking better in the home front. India started getting recognized as a global force after the outsourcing boom. Education had always been a key to urban Indians and with an increasingly globalised world. India was a major force to recon with in the world. One would never call India as third world country. The ever increasing Indian population was now viewed as a large consumer market which was untapped by most of the large global corporations.

In cricket: We can sledge too
As a nation: MNC buy out


Aus was one of the best sledger’s in the cricket field. It was as if they had the licence to sledge. As a teenager I would feel so angry seeing them on TV. But Aus would always use sledging as a secondary weapon and their main weapon was their cricketing talent. All pacer bowlers give a mouthful to the batsmen. India bowler were mostly the other way, I remember Javagal Srinath once checking if Ricky Ponting was alright after a nasty bouncer. Ponting not used to such niceties, reacted thinking that Srinath was sledging and started abusing him in turn. Such was the Indian team they would hear everything and never respond. Early 2000’s saw a new Indian team emerging, backed by an aggressive captain, team members started saying things back to the sledgers. As of today mostly the Indian players react to on-field talk.
As a nation we saw many MNC come to India post liberalisation come to India and setup shops. Some succeeded, some failed they would many times buy out the local Indian players. Many saw this as this as a disturbing trend and they reminded the public of the british raj and east India company. As we know today these fears were unfounded and the Indian industry grew stringer with the MNC presence and large payers like TATA have started the reverse trend. TATA group has acquired big names in the automobiles industry much to the dismay of the locals. Only time will tell how the MNC buy out works.


In cricket: Who cares for technique T20 rules
As a nation: New streams of Education


India is the T20 champions of the world. Led by a fearless captain they triumphed in the first edition of the trophy. Batsmen in T20 are not expected to be technically perfect, all they need to do is to score runs. Contrast this with the earlier era when players had to be technically perfect, have good defence. Imagine Sunil Gavaskar and you will understand what I am talking about. Now think of Robin Uthapa and his batting style, nobody cares about his batting technique as long as he scores run. In between the test and T20 were the One day internationals which involved little bit of aggressive cricket and on some occasions proper technical play.
As a nation until the early 90’s the education system that had little variation. Study till 12th, complete graduation and search for a goverment job. Things started changing as private enterprise started growing in India. Now there were newer job openings in private sector. Education system was changing and more course that were practical and job oriented were now available. In the past decade many new courses have mushroomed to cater to the changing economy.

In cricket: Challenging the leader- Australia
As a nation: changing the world order- 123 agreement


Numerable websites are shouting that Australia will be dethroned as the #1 team in the world. South Africa and India are pitted in a battle to gain the top spot.
As a nation we saw that the US administration bend over its back to get the bill through the various global organisation (IAEA etc), this clearly establishes the changing position of India in the world.


To conclude,
The last few weeks have been a tough time for India as a nation. Mumbai was under seige by the terrorist trained in Pakistan. Hats off to the personnel who helped in ending the seige. India is a diverse nation with people of many religons, regions, castes co existing. Last few decades have seen a sharpening of these differences and it is the same difference which the terrorist want to exploit. We should NOT let them succeed. As a nation we treat cricket as a religon. Can cricket be a uniting force which will help us overlook and live happily along with our differences?
As the Historic victory over England in Chennai sent waves of happiness across the country and sachin tendulkar dedicated the victory to Mumbaikars, can we hope that cricket which reflects our society in so many ways be the force which unites us as we march into the next century as world leader?

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Euro Tour

My wife and I we went on the trip of our life in June-2008. We visited Paris and Italy (Venice, Florence, Pisa and Rome) the trip started 20-Jun and we returned back to London on 30 Jun. Following a super duper Scotland trip we decided to plan our tour ourselves and what a nice idea it was as we googled upon awesome and free audio tours by ricksteeves.com (more about this a bit later)
Here is tour iternary in short:
20-June Land in Paris, Eiffel at night
21-June Chataeu de versailes
22-June Disneyland
23-June Historic Paris walk as per ricksteeves.com audio guide and on top of Eiffel at night
24-June Land in Venice, St. marks square
25-June Venice- Grand canal ride, St. mark bascila. Travel to Florence. Historic tour of Florence at night
26-June Uffizi and Academia gallery in Florence, travel to Pisa at night and view Leaning tower
27-June Leaning tower of Pisa in the morning and travel to Rome-
28-June Rome- Colloseum, Forum, Pantheon, Spanish Steps
29-June Vatican
30-June Back to London
I will update this with more details

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Scotland Trip- 1st week May 2008

Scotland Trip- 1st week May 2008
This was one of the best Birthday I ever had, little consolation to the fact that this is my last B day in the twenties. True to our belief the trip was self planned and all the details were decided by us. My wife and I spent a good amount of time on the internet in order to plan out the holiday. The time spent was worth the effort and this was on e of the best trips I have had, the drive in the highlands and around the lakes (called as loch in Scotland) was breathtaking.
The summary details of the trip are as follows:

02-May night Departed from London on landed in Edinburgh.
03-May Edinburgh local sight seeing
04-May Drove to Glasgow in the morning, drove to fort William in the evening
05-May Visit to isle of skie and night stay at fort william
06-May Travel to Inverness in the morning and take flight back to London in the evening.
I will post the details as an update

Friday, June 6, 2008

Indian Glue


What is that one thing without which India would collapse? Become a failed nation? It is a small and simple philosophy something that is so ingrained in us that we take it for granted, it is so basic to or nature that we tend to ignore it and we are ignoring it more than we can handle. I strongly feel the nation needs a dose of messages to reinforce that philosophy. So what is this philosophy which I am building up so much? It is simply Diversity. Our ability as a nation to historically co exist as different people, co exist and flourish in our own cultures and traditions. To be happy living our culture and not trying to impose my culture on others. We are increasingly become less tolerant to diverse points of view, to the extent that even the most feeble sign of descent is crushed upon with such immense force that no one ever dare to oppose the majority opinion.
If you do not believe, here is an example. Just a few days back the editor of a newspaper got the wrath from Shiv sena for expressing his opinion that Shivajis statue should NOT be made in the middle of Arabian Sea and that government should spend its forces in other areas. Such a simple thought. I mean no disregard for Shivaji and have as much respect for him as a national hero as any one else claims. Sadly I do not live in Mumbai but I can safely say that if the government can spend half of the money it plans to use to build the shivaji statue, for developing Mumbai road, drainage etc. The people will never say no and I am sure that the MP from Mumbai will be re elected. And this is just my view, if you do not like it, then fine let us discuss it. But having different view is not incorrect and the way our society is progressing it is not able to tolerate differences in opinion. I feel that the root of this animosity to diverse opinion is our failure to accept that India can become successful only when we sustain our diversity. But diversity should not be misunderstood as minority appeasement, in fact I feel that we staring loosing our openness to diversity from the time we started minority appeasement. Look back at out history, what did the British do? They tried to divide us as a nation to rule successful, and they have been bloody successful at that. Even today we spend millions on weapons to settle Kashmir and India is suffering as it faces other issues inspired/supported by Pakistan, while Pakistan is moving on a fast train to be called as “failed nation”. In a way cricket is a face of our nations (Ind and Pak), see how bad the Pak team is now, from and era in mid 90’s when they were unbeatable. Just imagine a combined India-Pak team no country in the world could defeat us- allrounders like Kapil and Imran bowlers like wasim and waqar, batsmen like sunil gavaskar, javed miandad, fielders like azhar....

Friday, May 30, 2008

Calling your parents to UK

UPDATE 2- The Visa Applicaiton asks you to clarify which type of Visa is requried. For my parents I selected "Family Vistor Visa".

UPDATE 1- Good news- my parents got their Visa and are presently in UK. we are having a nice time. Read ahead how I went about it.- Calling your parents to UK.

I am in UK on Workpermit along with my wife on dependent Visa and recently arranged for my parents to come to UK on family visitor visa from India. They have little knowledge of the internet and so I had to make most of the arrangements online from London and took help from my cousin in getting the print out of the stuff. I had lot of searching to do for the getting the visa and guessing there might be more people like me who would want help, I am putting together a step by step of how to get you parents on family visitor visa done.

1. Book your flight tickets early. This ensures you get good fares and also the visa office knows that your parents are sure of coming back to India. Booking can be done from UK or India.
2. Book an appointment with VFS for the visa interview, make sure you give yourselves enough time (10-15 days) to send all the docs and help your parents with the visa completion.
3. Get all the required documentation (checklist provided below), send them to India. I sent across scanned copies and VFS were ok with the print out.
4. Discuss the form section by section and help them complete the form, I asked my parents to first fill with pencil and then finalize the form after discussion. Update 2- The form asks you to clarify which type of Visa is requried. For my parents I selected "Family Vistor Visa".
5. Once the VFS interview is done and you await the arrival of passport, prepare a checklist of things you want them to bring along and things they need to complete before coming to UK. Some examples- get Chest X Ray and if you have ailing parent make sure they get all their medicines
6. Before they take off every one should know where to meet in the airport.
7. Ask you parents to carry GBP.
8. They should keep your contact numbers handy.

Checklist
There are two sets of document-
Required from the sponsor- person in UK
Required from your parents- person in India

I have listed each in detail, please drop a comment if you need any clarification.
Required from the sponsor
1. Sponsor letter- this is a letter in which you invite them to UK and give everyone passport details. Sample which I used:
------------------------------------------Start--------------------------------------------------
Statutory Declaration

This is a declaration that I Srikant Suddekunte currently working full-time for ABCD Technologies Limited in London and having the following details:

Passport Number: Bxxxxxx
Date of Birth: xx-xxx-19xx
Residing at:
Would like to invite my parents, and , with the following details:
1) Name:
Passport Number: Fxxxxx
Date of Birth: xx-xxx-xxx
Residing at:

2) Name:
Passport Number: Fxxxxxxx
Date of Birth: xx-xxx-19xx,
Residing at:
to a holiday in the United Kingdom. I hereby solemnly declare that I undertake to provide accommodation and full assistance to my parents, and , during their visit to UK on holidays. I enclose my recent bank statements and pay slips to show that I can afford to do this. I make this declaration conscientiously believing the same to be true and by virtue of the Statutory Declaration Act 1835.
Docs enclosed:
1. Bank statement copy
2. Payslips copy
3. Work permit copy
4. Passport copy
5. Tenancy Agreement
For further information, I can be contacted via phone on 0044xxxxxxxxxx or via email at <email id>
Signed by Sponsor: Date:
Place
--------------------------------------------End-------------------------------------------------


2. Tenancy agreement- Sponsors rental agreement
3. Sponsors payslips
4. Sponsors bank statement
5. Sponsors work permit
6. Sponsors passport copy containing the visa page
I scanned the above docs and sent it across via email.


Required from your parents
1. Passport
2. Photographs
3. Proof marriage ( example passport entries or ration card)
4. Proof income
5. Pension certificate
6. Bank passbook
7. Proof of property (if any)

Once you know all the steps its a simple process. As you would have noticed I have not given any hyperlink, try googling it should be easy.


Suggestions:
1. Booking early means that you have decided their duration of stay. If it is too short then they will miss out on some of the sights in UK but a long trip may also be not a good idea as they might get bored after 3-4 months.
2. Blocking tickets is another option, but we kind of wanted to do everything on our own.
3. Confirmed return tickets gives surety to Visa office that they plan to come back to India.

If you have any doubts leave a comment I will try to respond back to you.

Monday, April 14, 2008

Women Power-WCP

Oppression of women, equality of sexes, women’s lib (eration) and what have you. There is so much talk about injustice being done to women ( all of which I agree with) why not talk about the innate power which most of the women can and do yield. It is literally in your face and we never talk about it (I know it may leave you speechless but some one has to speak about it some time and this time it is me) it is the Cleavage Power which all women yield. One can easily say it is more of a western phenomenon and not so much true in India but my experiences suggest that things are fast catching up (or shall I say hem line is fast going down).
So what is this Cleavage Power all about? When do when women use it? Why do they use it? What can we men do to fight it? Well let’ start with the dress, these days ladies dress is shrinking from both ways – top and bottom. While it is their right to wear what they want, I just want to ask why is it not the right of guys to see what they want? A recent e-mail discussion we had amongst a close group of friends was about this photo of a few Indian cricketers staring at the carelessly exposed mid riff of an Indian cricket fan. All the ladies in the group were gaga about a senior player who choose to ignore it while the young lads in the team were ogling away to glory oblivious of the paparazzi. My only question is that when the girl has all the right to wear any kind of dress she likes, why cannot the guys look at what they like? Why is it unethical for the guys to stare at the same areas which the girls want to expose? Is it some kind of exam or quiz or a challenge? I believe it is this right to behave in this unethical manner and then use it to your benefit should be called as Cleavage Power.
Women use this as the last line (pun intended) of defence when they feel they are not getting their way they just yield the power (how it is yielded is left to readers imagination). What can men do? Well to be fair Men cannot go Scot free in this power game, they have time and again shown their vulnerability to this kind of Power. This dates back to mythology when one of the dancers from Lord Indira’s court was sent to Earth to break the meditations of a saint on Earth. I feel it is time for the men to accept and play this power game. The Art of war clearly says that draining your opponent’s strength is one way to victory. So I would suggest that we men let women yield the CP and let them think that they are successful in it and once their powers are drained we continue with our regular work as if nothing has happened. The next time a woman calls a man MCP, we have a response-stop using WCP.

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

3 decades of life

As the London Sun sets much later these day. Days become longer; I am nearing the end of 3 decades of life on Earth. 3 decades oh my God (yeah you remember him when you get such shocks) mom said son you should have a son, I sit up and wonder - am I past my youthful life- the best part of life? Am I now well and truly an uncle? Hairline has not gone back very much and the grey hair pops once in a while (and mysteriously disappears) the ponch refuses to reduce in size. We have stopped fitting with each other coz we know how the other person behave and what s/he wants (this is a real achievement but it was very easy). Do I take this in a stride and say I can now enjoy another phase in life or mourn that I am past my best. Some one please tell me what is there to look up in the 4th decade in life?

@ changes

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Monday, January 21, 2008

London Bridge has not fallen down

Thank God "London Bridge has fallen down" did not happen. This was a tune I used to play in my Schoold Band and the whole school used to march past to that (I am sure they never cared to know about it). First weekend in London and we decided to check if the bridge was still intact despite all the cacophony we used to create. The Bag piper is what I used to play ( not drink please I am strict non drinker- of whisky, its rum for me). This piece of useless history apart, standing on London Bridge was a real great feeling, you can see the forcefull Thames river beneath and the Tower Bridge at a distance.

Smoking in London

No! I am not back to smoking again. But during the first few days in London, I cannot but notice the huge number of smokers. My God! This city is full of them. Seems smoking makes them forget their civic sense (no wonder they get kicks from smoking) and they throw the cigi butts all around. It is called as the financial capital is it also the smokers paradise ?