Mallus' invasion of Mysore - Domestic tourism explosion

Spent the long weekend going around some tourist spots in and around Mysore - Talakad, Somanathpura, KRS, Nanjanagud etc. It was nice, but what surprised me was the number of tourists, especially out of state tourists, in Mysore. Had never seen that kind of rush in Mysore except during Dasara. Most of them were from Kerala, but there were quite a few from Tamil Nadu and Andhra too. There were cars, taxis, matadors, tempo travellers all bearing neighbouring state registration numbers. Good to see domestic tourism growing in India. What was even more heartening to see was that majority of the tourists weren't the "new economy people". Is this an evidence for trickle-down effect in operation?

Mysorism

I have always believed that Mysore is more than a place - it is a state of mind, a way of life. If I were to describe Mysore in one word, it is moderation. In Mysore, like its weather, everything is moderated. Pace of life, desire, ambition, wealth, effort, ostentation - Mysoreans love everything in moderation. You are not supposed to be either too rich or too poor. If you are over ambitious, you are ridiculed. But if you live like a sanyasi, you are ridiculed too. You study or work too hard - you are called a kudumi. You don't study at all - you are classified lazy or useless. You spend a lot on your daughter's wedding - you are called a show-off. Cut corners and you are called stingy. Whatever we did, we were always encouraged to go for that golden mean. Neither too much, nor too less.

In sharp contrast is the metro philosophy - more the merrier.

Virginia campus shooting coverage

Indian-origin prof killed in Virginia campus shooting shouts the headline on CNN-IBN website. Even their TV coverage in the morning was focussed on the Indian victims - a professor dead, a missing student etc. I don't understand this. If this was some hate killing and the victims were mostly Indians, then yes, it makes sense to emphasise the nationality of victims. But from what I gather, there have only been a couple of Indians at most out of the 30+ victims. It seems more like indiscriminate killing than targeting persons of any nationality. Then how does the Indianness of the victims matter? Is it some kind of pride: "We Indians are not behind others in any field - not even in getting killed on US campuses"? I just don't get this. If you want to cover it, cover it for the human tragedy it is. Cover it for the growing trend of violence in US schools and colleges. Or if you think such coverage won't be of much interest to Indian audience, then leave the topic. Go on to something else. Even Richard Gere kissing Shilpa Shetty. But why focus solely on the couple of Indian victims?



I really want to see how the thought process of those who decide such things goes. Do they get excited when they hear that there were a couple of Indian victims. "Whoopee, surely they must have some relatives over here. Can we get their sound bytes?".

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If Sri Lanka can produce a top class cricket team, why can't Karnataka...

If Sri Lanka with a population of 20 million can produce a quality cricket team, there is no reason why every state of India cannot do the same. Yes, I am not talking about single Indian team, but every state - Karnataka, TN, Maharashtra etc with populations 2-4 times that of SL should be producing such teams. After all, these states are no worse than SL in economic parameters or in level of interest in cricket and we are no different genetically/racially either.



So why doesn't it happen? Simply because of this stupid nationality based format which allows a Test team for a tiny country like SL but also limits a huge nation like India to one team. So since the requirement is to produce just one team out of a billion population the system has geared itself to produce just one team out of this huge amount of raw material we have. Change the requirement to produce twenty teams instead of one and each state will be churning out a team like that of SL or the current Indian team.



Just goes to show ICC's stupidity - they constrain a huge cricket crazy nation of one billion into producing just one team and then go around desperately trying to create teams in places like Netherlands, Canada, what have you.

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Secession of the successful

Is Narayana Murthy's comment about singing of national anthem embarassing the foriegners another evidence for this phenomenon mooted by late economist JK Galbraith? Where the successful just retreat into their own world and tend to be disconnected from rest of their countrymen? And to think such a man was being considered as a candidate for President of India!

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BCCI's restriction on endorsements

Couple of points:

1. BCCI is well within its rights to impose these conditions on players who wish to play for them. I have seen people (including some business leaders) question bcci's right to do so, have called it violation of players' rights etc. which is utter nonsense. Playing for bcci is not a right guaranteed by constitution. If you want to play for them, you abide by their conditions, as simple as that.

2. As for whether it makes sense - I don't agree with the stated reason (spending too much time on shooting ads etc) but there are other grounds for justifying the decision. There is no doubt that endorsements do not reward all performances equally. Batsmen who do well in one-dayers end up with bulk of endorsement deals whereas bowlers and Test batsmen (Laxman vs Yuvraj/Dhoni for example) don't get as much. This can lead to and has in the past led to frictions within the team. If bcci doesn't want to create such differential rewards, if for them harmony within the team is important, then it makes sense for them to impose restrictions on endorsements. There was a similar case in my previous company when a customer wanted to reward some of the team members, but the company didn't allow it - they said we have our own performance management and incentive schemes, we don't want you to meddle around with it.

3. In any case, I have always argued that boards are more powerful than players in the current system and I am just happy to see the players get screwed :-) If this leads the players to go play for a parallel league, as a consumer, it will be better for me.

How cricket continues to delude itself...

I hadn't seen this earlier. A world map showing flags of all teams participating in the world cup. You look at it and you will think, "How evenly the game of cricket is distributed across the world. 4 in Asia, 4 in Europe, 3 in Africa, 3 in Americas and 2 in Australasia". Never mind that 80% of the market is represented by just that one tri-colour there!

Nenapaadalu Shakuntale

Watched a play by that name at Rangashankara last evening performed by Aneka group. The play followed Kalidasa's masterpiece pretty much to the letter, but the notable feature was music and songs in kannada. Probably the songs occupied more time than the dialogues and they were sung very well by the group led by a youngster called Venugopal.

Highlight of the play - Shakuntala's friends Anusuya and Priyamvada run off to the ashram leaving their friend alone with king Dushyanta. Shakuntala, while happy to be alone with her lover, pretends to be scared and tries to follow her friends. Dushyanta holds her hand and she keeps saying, "leave me, leave me". Dushyanta says "yes, I will". She turns to him and with a smile and feigned impatience asks, "yavaga?" (when?). Beautiful.

However, more than the performance, while watching the play I couldn't help but admire Kalidasa for creating a masterpiece like this nearly 2000 years ago. The description of serene atmosphere of the ashram, Shakuntala's love for nature, blossoming of love in those pristine surroundings, friendly banter between Shakuntala and her friends, everything in this play reflects the sheer genius of its author. Thanks to Rangashankara and Aneka for staging this and keeping the great poet's works alive.

Another organization that is doing its bit to keep alive our tradition and culture is Sri Rama Seva Mandali of Chamarajpet. Like every year, this year too they have organized music concerts to celebrate Ramanavami. Had been to couple of concerts (Kadri Gopalnath saxophone and vocal recital by a youngster called Madurai TN Krishnan) - both were excellent.

Speaking of music, got Worldspace satellite radio installed at home. It rocks!

Timmajjiya Myaglundi

Here's an attempt to write in kannada - a review of a book I read recently. Click on the images to get enlarged versions.

A suggestion to make one-day cricket more interesting

There is a problem with one-day cricket. No, I am not talking about match-fixing or the over dependence on Indian market or too many meaningless tournaments or chucking or any of those. Those are bigger issues. But the problem I am talking about is to do with the game itself. Which is that there are very few exciting games taking place these days. Even if the teams are evenly matched, even when we can't tell in advance who is going to win but what we can tell with fair amount of certainty is that it is going to be an easy win at the end for either team. In nearly 80% of the matches, result is obvious within the first 15 overs of the second innings. They are either chasing a low total and get off to a good start or chasing a huge total and lose a couple of key early wickets. In first case there is very little the bowling team can do except going through the motions and in the second the batting team does that.

This has mainly to do with the fact that a couple of key batsmen can have a huge impact on the fortunes of a team. So if those key batsmen get out cheaply, match is as good as lost. So here are a couple of changes to fix this problem:
- A batsman can continue to bat when dismissed.
- Deduct 30 runs from batting team's score per dismissal [1]
- Maximum limit of 50 deliveries per batsman

Pros:
- One mistake by batsman doesn't put him out of the game thus substantially reducing the luck factor (or bad decision factor)
- One or two batsmen cannot dominate the entire innings. Just as a bowler is limited to 10 overs, batsman is limited to 50 deliveries.
- Match is not over till all the 100 overs are bowled. Even if the chasing team is 100 runs past the target there is always a chance for bowling team to take a hattrick and win back the game.
- More importance to attacking bowling and taking wickets.
- Just as a bowler can be taken off if he is not bowling well, batting team captain can recall a batsman if he is struggling and send him back in at a later stage. More thinking to be done by captains.
- Since only 6 batsmen are required to bat, teams can go with 4-5 pure bowlers rather than going with bits-and-pieces players as done currently.

Now, tell me why it won't work.

[1]: If you think deducting 30 runs leading to negative scores can be confusing to viewers, add 30 runs to bowling team's score instead.

ICC, call off the world cup

Now that the Jamaican police have confirmed that Pakistan coach Bob Woolmer was murdered, I think ICC should cancel the world cup if they have any sense of decency left. It is bad enough that they got on with the event without missing a beat when an important member of the cricketing community died under suspicious circumstances. But to carry on with the carnival when it is confirmed that it was a murder and probably related to cricket would be totally improper. World cup is supposed to be a celebration of the game and how can you carry on with the celebration when the game itself is under the cloud?

Besides, all the caribbean governments have invested heavily on this event and it is in their interest to make sure that it is a success. It is not inconceivable then that pressure is brought to bear upon the police to delay the investigation till the world cup is over. If ICC is really interested in getting to the bottom of this murder, they should call off the event so that the police can carry on the investigation without any fear of their own governments.

C'mon ICC, for once act with courage. If you have to, return all the money you have received from your sponsors. But don't let cricket and justice down for a few million dollars.

Vegetarianism

While returning from a business trip recently, as the efficient staff of Singapore Airlines started serving breakfast and the familiar sten... er, smell of roast beef filled the cabin, my mind as is its wont wandered. Why is it that of all the places on earth, vegetarianism has a significant presence only in India? Look eastward, and in Korea, Japan and China people eat everything including creepies and crawlies. Look west and you have middle east, Europe, Africa and Americas - again mostly meat eating societies (despite some recent movements of vegetarianism in Europe and USA). So how is it that India alone has developed this habit of not eating meat? According to the wikipedia page on vegetarianism India accounts for more than 70% of all the vegetarians in the world and that the percentage of vegetarians in India is anywhere between 20-40% of the population (this tallies with the recent CNN-IBN survey too which had mentioned that in South India around 20% of the people are vegetarians whereas in North, the figure is around 40%).

So, coming back to my original question, why has this practice developed only in India? The wiki page cites mostly religious reasons like ahimsa, asceticism (as meat is considered a luxury), the Law of Karma (you hurt the animals, the bad karma will come back to hurt you), etc. But then, next question would be, why did those religious beliefs develop here? What made people here, and only here, realize that hurting animals is bad? As someone who believes that there has to be an economic reason for most human behaviours, I wasn't willing to accept religion as the only reason for vegetarianism in India. Sure enough, the wiki also mentions economic reasons for not eating meat.

As populations grow, lowering meat consumption worldwide will allow more efficient use of declining per capita land and water resources, while at the same time making grain more affordable to the world's chronically hungry.

But that doesn't fully explain the behaviour either, because if the reasons were economic, then you would expect the poorer people to be vegetarian. However, in India it is not so. It is the upper castes like Brahmins and Rajputs (of Vaishnav variety) who are vegetarians by choice. So, maybe it is religion after all which has made us vegetarians.

Speaking of vegetarianism reminds me of an incident which happened a few years ago. I was telling my wife about a team lunch we had gone from office and mentioned that fish was on the menu. My daughter, who was three year old at the time, was surprised and asked "What?". I explained to her that some people do eat fish (and other animals). She said, "No, we shouldn't eat that". I was surprised by her vehemence, because I didn't expect her to have an opinion on anything at that age, let alone on what people should or shouldn't eat. Just to understand where she was coming from, I continued the argument and asked why not. Just as we eat vegetables, they eat fish, what is wrong with that? She thought about it for a few seconds and then said, "But fish have eyes like us. We can't eat them?". I was intrigued by her response. I wondered why did she choose eyes and then realized that she didn't yet have the concept of life or living beings at that age. However, she somehow instinctively knew that fish are more like us than vegetables and when I pressed her she had to think about it and justify her belief. She couldn't say they have arms or legs or head or face, because fish don't have any of those. So she chose eyes as one of the few things they have in common with us. This got me wondering - are kids vegetarians by instinct? Remember, we had not taught her that it is bad to eat animals or any such thing. In fact, that was the first time she even got to know about the option of eating animals and somehow her instinct told her that it is not right. Food for thought.

Telecast rights imbroglio

They are at it again. Doordarshan is once again fighting with the cricket rights holder, Nimbus in this case, for something that they don't own rightfully. Nimbus bid for those rights and have paid a hefty price. I don't understand what makes DD think that they have some god-given rights to the signals of cricket matches. If Sony gets exclusive rights to telecast some Bollywood blockbuster would DD similarly ask Sony to share the feed with them? They don't. But somehow neither DD nor the government seem to get this simple concept of "he paid for it, he owns it" when it comes to cricket rights. The I&B minister has called Nimbus "unpatriotic" for not sharing the signal with DD. Come again? Onstensibly, the objective is to make the matches available for those who do not have cable connection. But then, what about those who don't have a TV set itself? Would the minister ask LG or Samsung to distribute TV sets for free to all those who don't own one and call them unpatriotic if they refuse to comply with such a ridiculous request? It is no less ridiculous to ask Nimbus to part with something they have purchased legally.

In any case, what has cheering for a bunch of cola salesmen got to do with patriotism anyway? It is high time we put an end to this myth that the players are "representing the country" and supporting them is a patriotic activity. It is just entertainment business, folks. No different from movies, music or other television shows. The players make money, boards and sponsors make money and hopefully the viewers get some entertainment. Let's leave it at that, rather than attaching non-existent attributes like nationalism, patriotism etc.

Media hypocricy

The coverage of Jessica Lall murder case on our 24x7 news channels has been bordering on ridiculous for some time now. But Karan Thapar's interview of Ram Jethmalani on Sunday went way beyond the ridiculous.

The whole basis of Thapar's questioning was that the argument used by Mr. Jethmalani in the court is immoral and unethical. Implicit in that suggestion is that the argument is also false and not based on facts. Because, surely if the argument is based on fact, then Thapar can hardly accuse it of being immoral. So, the question then is, on what basis did Karan Thapar conclude that the argument isn't based on fact? Isn't it the job of the judges to make that decision? Why is the media so eager to pronounce judgement in this case. First there was another CNN-IBN anchor pronouncing that Manu Sharma was "indefensible". Now we have Thapar claiming that Jethmalani's arguments are "immoral". Hey guys, how about leaving it to the courts to decide the matter for a change?

Another argument made by Thapar was that Jethmalani was "maligning the reputation of a dead woman who can't defend herself". That's one of the lamest arguments I have ever heard and it is sad to see it coming from a person like Karan Thapar. Now, as I said above, if the claims made by Jethmalani in court is true and crucial to the case, then you can hardly expect him to NOT make those claims just because it allegedly maligns the reputation of a dead woman. If the claims weren't relevant, then surely judges wouldn't have allowed them to be made. As for the veracity of those claims, again, let the judges decide. But, I have a question for the media. If these guys are so concerned about Jessica's reputation being tarnished, then why are they publishing these arguments being made in court? Jethmalani atleast has a reason for making those arguments - he is defending his client. What reason on earth do media have for publishing those arguments, except to increase their TRP ratings?

Plan for restructuring cricket

Interesting interview with BCCI Vice President Lalit Modi on CI. He makes it quite clear why BCCI is frequently having issues with ICC. It is not because BCCI is being greedy or arrogant, but because all the money in Cricket at present is in India and everybody, including ICC and all the other boards, want to have a share of this money. BCCI is naturally trying to protect its turf.

Some quotes:
Tony Greig:

This country has now become the banker of world cricket. There is no doubt about that: this is where the money is and everyone realises it. Knowing the abundance of money here all the world of cricket including Cricket Australia realise that if they want to implement some of their programs this is the key to it.

Lalit Modi:

But you got to keep in mind that when we look at their schedule, when we look at their balance sheets, whether it's right or wrong, majority of these sports are making their money only when India plays with them and that's once in four years. And if you see at the rest of the matches you will see a big spike: two million dollars a game when India plays, when India doesn't play it is 100,000
dollars a game. So they actually make money only when India plays except for the Ashes. Apart from that none of these boards make any money.

I think this is a ridiculous situation to be in for many reasons. First of all, all these teams are supposed to be competing with India, but how can they compete when their boards are making money only when they play against India and hence are dependent on BCCI for their very survival?! Secondly, why should Indian money be financing all these various boards and ICC? Let the Indian money stay within India.

So, how do we achieve this? To do that, teams should have roughly equal sized markets. However, there is no other country which has a cricket market anywhere close to India's size. So, the only way to go forward is to have multiple teams within India. Let there be four teams, one from each zone. In addition to those four, let there be teams from Australia, England, Pakistan and Africa. I think those eight teams will make for a terrific league. There will be intense rivalry between all the teams. In the present league, hardly anyone cares for teams like New Zealand, West Indies and Sri Lanka, not to mention Bangladesh and Zimbabwe. That means, five out of ten teams are uninteresting or boring. Which means, out of the 45 possible match-ups, 35 or close to 80% of the match-ups have suboptimal viewer interest. Compare that to the league suggested above, in which every single rivarly will have huge fan following and generates tremendous interest. Be it any of the Indian regional teams vs Pakistan/Australia/Africa/England or the inter-regional matches like South vs North or North vs West etc. What's more, the teams will have roughly equal sized markets, so we won't have the kind of situation where one team will be driving the entire cricket world.

Ofcourse, you can't name the teams as North, South etc. You can't shout those names in the stadium. But not a problem. Go retro and name the teams as Uttar, Dakshin, Pashchim and Poorab. I can already imagine myself shouting "Dakshiiiin, Dakshiin"!
Ofcourse, players will be free to move from team to team, so you can have a Ponting playing for Dakshin or Dravid playing for Australia.

You might say the Indian regional teams won't be of test standard. Which is utter nonsense. If Sri Lanka with a population of 50 million and the same economic standards as India can produce a test side, there is no reason why each region of India with over 250 million population cannot produce a test side. To start with, they can use imported players to improve the quality of the teams, till they produce required number of Test quality players.

I think this proposal keeps the international flavour of the game, takes unwanted/uninteresting teams out of the picture, restores balance in terms of market sizes of teams and makes for a terrific league. What say?

BCCI's bid for global rights irks some people

BCCI's announcement of bidding for global rights of ICC events has elicited some strange response from certain quarters. Scyld Berry writing in Telegraph rants about "India's bid for world domination". So, according to Berry, was Murdoch's Global Cricket Corporation, which owned the rights for last 2 world cups, running world cricket for last four years? Or does Berry fear about world domination only because it has come from an Indian organization?

A quote on Cricinfo goes even further, questioning BCCI's capability to handle such rights:

"This is an organisation that only set up its own website in the last year or so. Not so long ago, frustrated observers would complain that it was incapable of answering a letter. Now it is saying, 'We'll deal with worldwide television for you'."
Wisden Almanack editor Matthew Engel on the Indian board's move to bid for global TV rights

Now, could someone please tell Mr. Engel that BCCI has successfully sold the rights for its home matches for close to a billion dollars, so they know a thing or two about selling television rights? Incidentally, BCCI is in the process of setting up its portal (bcci.tv) which according to Lalit Modi will be the best sports portal in the world. Is that what is worrying Cricinfo and Mr. Engel (Wisden owns Cricinfo, btw)?

Cricket moving to club format - gonna happen soon?

Google search threw up couple of slightly old interviews with BCCI vice-president Lalit Modi. Very interesting...

Wednesday, July 26th, 2006

"Modi also said a national inter-city league and a Twenty20 tournament, in which each side plays 20 overs, would be launched in the 2006-07 season.

'The inter-city league will be on the lines of the Premier Football League (of England), and we will have separate television, merchandising and grounds right for that,' he disclosed, and added it would not be part of the rights that Nimbus holds.

'It will probably become the single largest revenue earner for the BCCI in the years to come, if we structure it right. It will also help us drive crowds back to domestic cricket and help build more stars.'

Saturday, May 13, 2006

Now to cricket. Do you see it eventually moving away from its nation-based structure to something like football, where the real interest lies in club rivalries?

Oh yes. It's gonna happen. The intercity cricket league is going to happen. My next big project which I'm going to announce. I'm still not ready for it because the game has evolved since the last time I developed it. It will be a home-and away concept. We hope to launch that by the end of the year.

He also talks about his earlier attempts to start an inter-city league almost a decade back which was scuttled by the then BCCI. This guy is smart, I tell ya.

No wonder he doesn't mind taking ICC on. He believes the domestic league will be the biggest revenue earner for BCCI, rather than this stupid international cricket.

An afternoon of adventure

I was studying in fifth standard when we shifted our house from Agrahara, one of Mysore's older central localities to Saraswathipuram, a relatively posher locality on the outskirts of the city("extension", as we used to call these outlying new areas then). Consequently, I had to change schools too. Probably a month had passed in the new school when one day the school was declared closed for afternoon due to some teachers' meeting or something. My younger brother, two years junior to me, was also studying in the same school. We finished our lunch boxes and then weren't sure what to do for the afternoon. No one will be home and we didn't have the key. Mom used to teach in a school in another part of the town, close to Agrahara. Dad's office was close to our school, but we knew he won't let the two of us go home by ourselves - he will either ask us to stay with him in the office or insist on taking us home. Idea of spending the rest of the day with our disciplinarian dad didn't quite excite us.

That's when we got the idea. Let's go to ajji's place! Our ajji (mother's mother) was also staying in Agrahara, quite close to our old place. When we were staying in Agrahara, our daily routine used to be to go to ajji's place on the way to school in the morning and drop off a set of clothes to be used later in the day (and anything else mom had asked us to carry). Once the school was over in the afternoon, go back to ajji's place, change from school uniform to "home clothes", eat the snacks that ajji has prepared (dosa, uppittu, idli, chapati, etc) and then run off to play with friends. Mom and her sisters used to come back from work later in the evening, gossip among themselves and with their mother for a couple of hours over snacks and coffee. By the time we were done with our play and Mom with her gossip it used to be well past 7 in the evening. Off we used to go to our place, just in time to have dinner, finish whatever little homework that is to be done and then to bed. As a result we used to spend a good portion of our waking and non-schooling hours in ajji's place, all our friends were from that street rather than near our own house etc. Since ajji was always at home, we never had to worry about things like what to do if the school closed early.

Now, barely a month in the new locality and new school, we were already missing ajji, aunts and our friends from that street. We had been there just once or twice in the whole month and for those who were used to spending close to 4 hours everyday there, that was clearly not enough. So this half-day closure of school (remember where we started?) came as a blessing for us. Going to ajji's place for the afternoon, having the snacks prepared by her and reconnecting with friends there seemed like a perfect idea. But then came the question - how to go there? It was quite far, atleast by Mysore standards. We could have taken the city bus, but neither of us had a penny in our pockets to pay for the bus fare. But our enthusiasm to go to our favourite granny's place was such that we didn't let such petty things come in our way. We decided to walk all the way.

By the time we reached Saraswathipuram 1st main bus stop, barely 1/10th of the total distance to be covered, we were already a bit tired and the thought of going ticketless on city bus did cross our minds. But a sense of self-respect and the fear of getting caught (more of latter than former) prevented us from taking that route, and we marched on. Soon we reached district court office and the road diverged there - which led us to our next problem. Which road to take? As I said, we had only been in S.Puram for a month and weren't much familiar with the route. After a bit of thought, I said "Left" and off we went. It was only when we reached RTO office and saw the familiar landmark of a house with a chariot on top that we were sure we were on right track. We continued with more vigour, now certain that reaching the destination was only a matter of time.

Soon we reached Siddappa Square and mom's school was nearby. We entered the school and mom was surprised to see us there. "How come you are here? How did you come all the way from school?". "School is closed for afternoon, amma. We came walking". She was close to tears hearing that. Her colleagues started hugging us and we felt like some heroes. Mom hurriedly took permission for half an hour from her headmaster, we took an auto and headed to ajji's place. Mom dropped us off and went back to school. More hugging and crying by Ajji. She prepared our favorite snack - akki rotti. Mom and aunts came back in the evening and the entire discussion that day was focussed on our heroic walk. There was quite a bit of crying and some cursing of our dad too, for having shifted to that "godforsaken" place against everyone's wishes and for having separated the kids from their grandparents.

As for us - we enjoyed the walk, enjoyed all the attention and were happy to be back in familiar place with familiar people. And oh, akki rotti I had that day is probably the best I have ever had in my whole life. All things considered, not a bad afternoon.

Who makes money from Cricket?

It is fairly well-known that India accounts for close to 70% of the total cricket market. Thanks to BCCI's recent much-publicised broadcasting deals, it is also fairly well-known that the Indian board is the richest among all cricket boards. Yet, what is not so well-known is that this huge Indian market for cricket, apart from enriching BCCI, also sustains many of the cricket boards world-wide. That is because of the system cricket follows where the hosts own all rights for the series they organize. So when India goes and plays a series abroad, it is those foreign boards who make money from the Indian market. We play a series in Pakistan and PCB makes a cool $150 million from Indian market. We play in Windies and WICB hits a jackpot. We play the world cup or a Champions Trophy and it is the ICC which makes mega bucks out of those events. So much so that, most of the boards, like Windies, New Zealand, Sri Lanka, etc are surviving mostly on the money they make by hosting India or from the handouts from ICC.

Sometimes, the consequences of such a system goes beyond financial. PCB for example, has awarded the rights to matches held in Pakistan to Dubai-based Ten Sports channel, owned by Sheikh Abdul Rahman Bukhatir. Now, Bukhatir is apparently still close to Dawood Ibrahim and played a key role in Dawood's daughter's wedding. Which means, every time we play in Pakistan and millions of Indians tune into watch the match, it is quite possible that we are contributing to the coffers of India's most wanted terrorist.

Good thing is, there is a simple solution to solve this problem. All that needs to be done is, instead of having the hosts own all the rights, let each board have the telecast rights for its territory irrespective of where the match is being played. So BCCI owns the rights for Indian territory, irrespective of whether it is a home series or away series or world cup. Similarly, ECB for UK territory, CA for Australia, PCB for Pakistan and so on. Let the ICC own the rights for all neutral territories like USA, Far east etc. That way, every board makes money from the market they have created, rather than freeloading off others' markets. Sure, that could lead to some of the boards like Windies, New Zealand and Sri Lanka going bankrupt, but so be it. If there isn't enough market there for cricket to survive, there is no point in sustaining those boards artificially. There is enough demand for cricket in India, Pakistan, Australia and England and let cricket cater to that market well. If you think four teams aren't enough to have a decent league, then create multiple teams within India. As it is we have enough diversity based on region/language etc that we can create a good rivalry between these teams. Let these regional teams also import players from outside to strengthen the team initially, while we develop strong teams. So a league of eight teams, say South/North/West/East India, Pakistan, Australia, England and Africa will make for terrific cricket. The markets will also be pretty evenly balanced, so you won't have the current situation where India accounts for 70% of the market. Allow for movement of players from team to team, so that the players can also earn their true market value. As it is, in the current system, the players can only play for one team, which means they are the bonded labourers of their respective board. A few can make money from advertising, but those who can't have to live on the pittance that the board pays them. If you allow for movement of players, they will also be more competitive and that makes for good cricket.

Google news archive search - History brought alive

Google news has a new feature - ability to search archives of newspapers and magazines going back over 200 years. For now, the sources seem to be mostly Time, Guardian and Washington Post, of which the first two are free but the Post is pay-per-view. But Time alone is good enough. You can read reports of historic events as they happened and understand how they were viewed while they were happening. Be it Hitler's rise in Germany or India's struggle for independence.

Speaking of latter, there is a school of thought among some Indians that Gandhi's role in India getting freedom from British isn't as great as it is made out to be, that the second world war played a bigger role in Britain's decision to leave India, etc. Couple of reports from Time in 1930 - one on Gandhi's Dandi march and the other on 1930 Man of the Year is enough to show that Gandhi's independence movement had become a major threat to the British long before Hitler had even come to power in Germany. So much for the revisionists.