Be Patriotic, Support IPL!

It is amusing to read all this outrage at players being auctioned and bought by IPL franchises. "Cricket has become a business now" goes the refrain. Let's face it. Cricket didn't become a business with the introduction of IPL. It has been a big business for more than a decade now. ICC sold the rights for its World Cups and other tournaments for a whopping billion dollars recently. Was that not a business deal? The reason players play the game is because they get paid by their boards and sponsors. The reason boards organise matches is because they are paid by the broadcasters. The reason broadcasters pay huge sums for rights and show the game on their channels is because they make money from advertisers. And the reason advertisers pay broadcasters is because in between watching cricket we watch their ads too (or vice versa) and then go out and buy those products. As simple as that. It is an ad-driven, eyeball-driven business. Are we clear on that?

ok, good. Now, the only difference in IPL is the way that business is structured and as I am going to argue below, it is better for Indian economy. With the system being followed currently by international cricket, it is the board or entity which organises an event (be it a tournament or a series) that owns all the rights for that event. That means, when Indian team plays a series in Australia, as they have been doing for past two months, it is Cricket Australia which owns the rights for that series and hence they make all the money from that series, including from Indian market. That's right - when we sit in front of our TVs to support our favourite Men in Blue, we are in effect contributing to the coffers of Cricket Australia. And this is true when we watch World Cups too. We are making ICC richer. Or when we tour Pakistan, we fill the coffers of PCB. And so on.

Now one could ask, in that case, when those teams come and play in India, doesn't BCCI make money from those other markets too? Well, they could, but the problem is there is no other country that has a market remotely comparable with India's. Which means, whatever little money BCCI makes from overseas markets is peanuts compared to what other boards make from Indian market. Net effect is, millions of dollars go out of Indian economy to the coffers of various cricket boards around the world every year.

With IPL, that is going to change. Since IPL is completely owned by BCCI, whatever money is generated by those matches will stay within Indian economy. Sure, a few foreign players get paid a few hundred thousand dollars each, but that is nothing compared to how much the boards are making from Indian market at present.

So here's my question to Dasgupta's and Thackeray's who are criticising IPL. Would you prefer that Indian audience continues to watch cricket matches imported from Australia, England, Pakistan, etc. or would you prefer that we watch cricket matches produced in India by an 100% Indian entity, which pays its taxes to Indian government? I can't see how any Communist or a Nationalist can support imported matches over 100% Indian ones.

India on Tour - memories

Since Test cricket is on its last legs, with cricket going the club way, I thought of going through the various away test series I have followed over the years. For old times' sake.

Tours of England:

1979 - Best remembered for Bharat Reddy being picked over Kirmani and other selection goof-ups.

1982 - Entire theme of the tour for me was Vishy. Glued to the transistor and hoping against hope that he finds his touch. I think he scored a couple of fifties. Don't remember much else.

1986 - Probably one of the best cricketing memories of my life. Having just finished gruelling PU exams and engineering entrance test with flying colours, was enjoying a long break (May to October). So nothing to do all day. Get up very late, have a lazy bath and breakfast, do crossword, read some book or magazine and wait for clock to turn 3:30pm, tune into BBC TMS, enjoy their wonderful coverage. Off to play cricket with friends at 5pm and after a three hour cricket and katte session, come back to watch the highlights of previous day's action on DD and to catch the final session on radio. Abiding memories - Chetan Sharma inducing a collapse with two quick wickets, Maninder's mesmerising spell, Kapil scoring the winning runs early on day 5 of second test sealing the series victory.

1990 - Again mostly on TMS with highlights on DD. Pathetic bowling from India but more than made up by Azhar's batting. Blofeld on Azhar - "Out comes the feather duster again". Tendulkar's hundred to save a test at Old Trafford. Remember listening to Kapil's four sixers and not getting too excited (he was by then on my hit list). Kumble's debut. TMS comms getting all excited to watch two leggies bowling in tandem.

1996 - First time watching a test series from England live. Srinath and Prasad's spells particularly in second test I think against Hussain and Stewart. Ganguly's debut hundred and Dravid missing it by 3 runs. Collapse against Ronnie Irani.

Tours of Australia:

1978 - Chandra's 6-52 & 6-52 at Melbourne. The heroic chase. Remember elders talking about this being a Packer-depleted side, but didn't understand all that then.

1981 - Melbourne win. Being informed by the neighbour as soon as we got up amidst huge cheering and shouting. The Gavaskar incident.

1985 - Rain, Border and Tail frustrating us, not once but twice. Remember Shastri and Yadav running through the aussie batting line-up early one morning. Gavaskar, Srikkanth and Mohinder all getting a hundred.

1991 - Plenty of memories. Mostly sad. Whitney and Hughes running through us. Age finally catching up with Vengsarkar. Manjrekar failing to live up to expectations. Azhar raising hopes in Adelaide, albeit briefly.

1999 - First time watching a test series from Australia live. Sachin shoulder before wicket. Sachin's Melbourne hundred. VVSL Sydney hundred. McGrath showing Dravid his 'aukat' :-) Srinath bowling a good first spell but not able to maintain it longer. Agarkar getting lots of dharma wickets.

Tours of West Indies:

1982 - Mohinder standing tall amidst ruin. Windies chasing 200 after tea. I don't remember listening to any commentary. Mostly newspaper reports.

1989 - We had commentary this time and it was a funny feeling with a Test match starting at 7pm. Insipid Indian bowling. Hirwani in particular disappointing. Shastri and Sidhu's decent batting. Azhar flaying at everything.

1997 - First time watching a tes series from West Indies live. Dravid standing like a rock. Azhar getting out to Hooper. Barbados collapse.

Nuclear deal and Left's position

If you believe the commentary in most Indian media, both mainstream and blogs, the Left parties' opposition to the nuclear deal with US is motivated either by their traditional anti-Americanism or their love of China. It is certainly not driven by India's national interest. Assumption there is that the deal is in India's national interest, but Left parties don't care for that and hence are trying to scuttle the deal.

How valid is that assumption? Is the deal really in India's national interest? Or can one make an argument to the contrary? Let's see.

First of all, the leftists have made it clear that their opposition is not so much to the deal itself but to India's strategic partnership with US. So rather than looking at the nitty-gritties of the deal, let's see if a broad strategic relationship with US is in India's national interest.

Now, USA's relationship with China is lukewarm at best. So it is reasonable to assume that by entering into a strategic relationship with US, we reduce our chances of having a friendly relationship with China. How good will that be for India? No matter how great a relationship we have with US, fact remains that they will always be half way across the world from us whereas China will always be our neighbour. So it is more important for us to have good relations with China than with US. More so, when you consider that China is a growing economy and could well be the largest economy in the world in another 20 years. So we have to choose between China and US. If we go with China, we can be an equal partner with them and along with Russia, Brazil and Arab countries could form an alliance formidable enough to dominate the world in a couple of decades. Or we can go with US and end up having a troubled relationship with many countries in our neighbourhood (China, Iran, Russia, etc) which is going to hamper our own growth.

One could argue that let's have a relationship with US for the time being and we can always switch to China when we find that they are becoming more powerful than US. But the nature of strategic relationship is such that we won't be able to switch sides so easily. Take the 123 agreement for example. We will be expected to shape our foreign policy on the lines of US policy or we will have to not only return all the nuclear fuel supplied to us but also forgo the billions of dollars of investment that we are going to make in building reactors to make use of that fuel. That is, once we enter into a relationship, there will be cost associated with getting out of it. All that the Left parties seem to be doing is asking us to think carefully before deciding to tie the knot with US.

Update:
There is an interview with Edward De Bono in today's (9/18) Economic Times and he makes pretty much the same point I have made above:

Q: How can India become one of top three economic super powers?

De Bono: If India can partner China, they can be a real superpower in a short time. Alternately, if India and China form a coalition bringing other developing countries in their fold, it will beat all other world superpowers.

Cause and Effect

There is a railway crossing in Mysore which we go past many times whenever we are in that city as it happens to be on the route from my parents' to in-laws' place. Last weekend as we went past it, my four-year-old daughter asked: "Daddy, why does the train always come only when the gate is closed?".

This and that

Was in Cairo last week. Quite a nice city. Was surprised to find that the quality of infrastructure is much higher than in Indian cities. No phat-phati autos and hardly any two wheelers for example. Beautiful Nile flows through the city and is remarkably clean. No one washing their clothes or themselves in the river. Instead, you find boat shaped restaurants, some moored and some which actually go on a two-hour cruise and you can have dinner on the deck with dance and music and cool breeze from the river. Not surprisingly, most of the city's elite hang out near these restaurants.

This is not to say that it is on par with first world cities or anything. It is very much a third world city - roadside hawkers, pedestrians crossing roads even as vehicles are moving, reckless driving, honking and so on. But still, it is definitely better than any of Indian cities. The 3 km long al Azhar tunnel bang in the middle of the city linking downtown Cairo with the expressway that goes to airport is something I haven't seen in any Indian city. Or the ultra-posh Grand Hyatt which makes Bangalore's Leela look like a Patel Motel. There is a 10-floor mall, with restaurants, shops and a multiplex, all inside the hotel.

Another pleasant surprise I came across in Cairo, though nothing to do with Cairo or Egypt itself, was Al Jazeera English news channel. For someone jaded with IBN's and NDTV's, Al Jazeera was indeed like a refreshing breeze of professional, balanced and most importantly low-key news reporting. In their nightly 9 o' clock news for example, they only report news! No opinionating, no breaking into a panel discussion on a news item, nothing. Just an anchor and on the spot reporters. We don't have a Rajdeep telling us whether a judgment was harsh or mild, no anchor "hoping" that government takes this or that action, etc. Just report news as it happened. What a novel concept! Even their panel discussion programs are quite muted (and to think it is an Arab channel!), give plenty of time to panelists to air their views and again the moderator doesn't seem to have an opinion of his or her own. Quite a contrast from the Indian news channels where you can easily tell by their tone of questioning which side of the issue they are usually on. Here's a suggestion to Rajdeep and Prannoy: shut down your channels for a month, hole yourselves and your key editorial staff up in a hotel room and watch Al Jazeera non-stop. If that doesn't change your approach to news reporting, nothing will and you might as well look for alternate careers.

Hmm... what else has been happening. Oh, the Test match. BCCI Bozos vs ECB Idiots. One team bowls head-high beamers and the other throws peppermints on pitch. What drama, what emotions! To top it, I heard that ESPN made half an hour program on just one incorrect lbw decision! In that case, I hope Taufel got a cut out of the ad revenues ESPN made from that show.

Why keep the Rupee down?

Thanks to huge inward remittances of dollars, there is pressure on Rupee to appreciate. RBI has been trying to control this appreciation by buying dollars from the market. This in turn is creating inflationary pressure. The reason RBI doesn't want a stronger rupee is that it is bad for exporters. Everyone seems to take it for granted that a stronger rupee is bad for exporters. But, does it have to be so?

Let's take the IT industry. Let's say rupee goes from 40 a dollar to 30 a dollar. It doesn't mean the IT services companies have "lose their competitiveness". They can keep the billing rate at the current levels and still make profit - by cutting costs. Reduce salaries to account for the rising Rupee - other costs like travel etc will go down anyway as they are linked to dollar rate. A 20-30% reduction in salary for IT folks only means they are back to last year's salary levels in rupee terms - hardly makes a dent. Especially, if rupee is at 30 a dollar, petrol and all other imports will be much cheaper bringing down inflation - so your salary may be lower numerically, but in terms of purchasing power you are no worse off.

So, why not let the rupee appreciate to its true value? Why keep it artificially down in the process taxing all the citizens in the form of higher inflation?

Update: A ToI article supports the view with this sentence: "But many feel the focus has to be on cost control, and especially salary cost, which is by far the biggest component — about 40 per cent of total cost."

Destiny's Child

Rags-to-riches stories are plenty. But I find Rajanikanth's one of the more remarkable ones. A maharashtrian of humble background from Bangalore, no great looks, through sheer grit and determination becomes a super star in Tamil film industry. And then his popularity spreads all the way to Japan! A true Destiny's Child!

I have not seen any of his movies till date and I hope to correct the situation with Sivaji. Here is wishing him all the success.

"India Unbound"

Read this book on a recent long-haul flight. It is written by Gurcharan Das, former head of Procter & Gamble, India. It is partly biographical, but mostly an account of post-independent India's economic policies. Written in an engaging, informal style, peppered with anecdotes, it is a very easy read. Author is clearly a believer in free markets and recounts with frustration the socialist policies India adopted and the kind of impact they had on the economy.

Even though most people blame Nehru for taking us down the road of Fabian socialism, Gurcharan seems to think that larger share of the blame has to go to Indira Gandhi. Nehru at least had the excuse that at that time ('40s and '50s) central planning was considered the way to go by a number of leading economists world wide. When P.C. Mahalanobis came out with his Second Five Year Plan document in 1956, it was hailed as a master piece in economic planning. But by the '70s it had become apparent that central planning was not all that it had been cracked up to be and the author blames Indira Gandhi for not only refusing to change the course but actually taking us deeper into socialism.

Overall, a very informative book for anyone interested in history and India.

Sir Osama

In response to Britain knighting Rushdie, a group of Pakistani clerics have decided to bestow a similar honor on Osama Bin Laden. From now on, he is going to be Saifulla (Sword of Allah) Osama. Just goes to show the depths a society plumbs when it takes the path of religious extremism. I mean, Rushdie and Osama - one a man of letters and the other a gun-toting terrorist - and these guys think they are comparable. Scary.

Return of Atlantis

I haven't followed this Atlantis space shuttle story that closely, but till today I had thought that Sunita Williams is the only passenger on that space ship. Imagine my surprise when I learnt this morning that there are six others along with her and she is not even the leader of the team or anything. Then, why does the Indian media focus only on her? Is it just the first name? Idiots.

Actually, I don't even understand why there is so much hype about these astronauts. Given the risks involved in space travel, I am not even sure if we should be sending these highly qualified people and then worry about getting them back safely. Why not pick a few death row prisoners, give them six month training on the kind of experiments they need to do in space and send them off. If they come back safe, fine, they get amnesty, otherwise, well, they were going to die anyway.

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.