I am in Shimoga

This Sunday(6/29), I traveled to Shimoga with my wife and daughter. We were pleasantly surprised to see the road (if we can call it as road) between Birur and Badravathi patched. This reduced our travel time by almost 45 minutes. On the way we stopped by a farm house near Gubbi (taluk in Tumkur)district) to show some of the farm animals to our daughter;she finished her breakfast in 45 minutes, as there were lot of interesting things to see around.

We reached Shimoga by afternoon; it has been drizzling intermittently till Wednesday morning. This weather is execellent to enjoy masala mondakki and menasinikai bajji (Davanagere special).

Euro 2008 was entertaining

Euro 2008 was very entertaining with most of the matches being competitive. This was possible due to fewer weak teams compared to any other tournament of this magnitude (except for Greece and co-hosts). I thouroughly enjoyed the hammering Ronaldo & co (portugal) got from Germany ( I am a Chelsea fan). In the end Spain were the most consistent team in the tournament and deserved to be champions.

2008 Cricket season - 29/6/2008

I represent Vijaya cricket club in 3rd (we got promoted last season) division cricket league coducted by Karnataka state cricket association. This season has been excellent for me. I am the highest wicket taker for our team (26 from 10 matches) , and also have contributed with bat in key matches. Going into last match of the season, we still have a chance to get promoted again if we win our last game, and other YMCA (competing team for other promotion spot) either loose or draw thier last match. I shall keep you updated on what happens next week.

My Hyderabad trip

I had been to Hyderabad for a day on 29/5/2008. I am listing here few of the things that stood out for me.

1. Reluctance by KSRTC (volvo) driver to give me one extra bottle of water when he had many of them lying unused. (delighting the customer)

2. Shared autos in Hyderabad that work very professionally, effectively, and efficiently; probably quality of the vehicles could be better.

3. While coming back, KSRTC bus stopped at a location for dinner where anybody with any sense of hygiene will not eat.

4. It took 11 hours from Bangalore to Hyderabad where as return trip more than 14 hours.

I was happy to see my daughter cry (2008 champions league final)

I stayed up till 3 AM (22/5) to watch my team (Chelsea) loose to MU (team, I hate most) on penalties. Game was excellent with both teams going for it unlike other regular big cup finals. MU could have been 2/3-0 by half time if not for Peter Cech's brilliance and lots of luck. Frank Lampard equalized just before half time with a lucky break. Second half was completely opposite with some excellent football from Chelsea and it was time for MU's share of luck to keep them in the match with Drogba and Lampard hitting the wood work. Finally it all ended with a penalty miss by Mr.Chelsea (John Terry) that would have won them their first European cup.

After the match I was left wondering about the fine line between victory and defeat as one strike from JT would have resulted in Chelsea being the winners instead of MU. I did not watch the presentation as I was heartbroken and was wondering how to forget the match ASAP, fortunately for me, my daughter got up and I had to rush to console her. First time in last year, my daughter has cried when I wanted her to;)..

Indian team's performance in SA is not surprising

Indian team's South African tour is almost half complete. I am not surprised by team's performance at all, I am not sure why whole of nation is surprised this time including our parliamentarians. If at all ever Indian team was real underdogs it was this time with the absence of Yuvaraj , Ganguly and Laxman (initially, well anyway it did not matter when he played) and rawness of our bowling attack. I am not sure how we expect this team to win against SA in their backyard with Dinesh Karthick coming in at number 5 considering the fact he was not even good enough to play for India some time back in the role of wicketkeeper batsman, Ravi Shashtri summed it up well when he said "India need to surprise me to beat SA".

Some people are of the opinion that the surprise and disappointment is due to the fact that team not competing well. I think it is does not matter the manner in which you lose unless you really get close and there are chances for both the teams to win. All these bad performances have definitely made Ganguly's bid for getting back really hard to ignore, if that happens our top order will read the same as it was couple of years back, this after all the talk of experimentations and blooding youngsters.

Among all the ruins there were some bright spots with the strong return of Zaheer with good bowing performances and some batting displays from Dhoni and Dravid.

Test matches will present even tougher challenge with more livelier pitches and no restriction on short stuff, I feel India are better test batting team on these kind of pitches because there will be not be any pressure to score runs at a faster rate, if we look at the dismissals of our batsmen in one day matches, most of the them were out edging the off stump line to either wicket keeper or slips and in test matches there is no need for it.

Test series prediction

There will as usual 2-0 loss with some bright batting performances from Tendulkar and Dravid at some stage with no bearing on results.

Hope there will be some fight in test matches at least for the sake of ESPN TV team, who have to consistently act sad in between all the good life there are having in South Africa…

Indian one day team for SA tour

These days team selections are mostly non events as most of the big names pick themselves and the only anxious people will be fringe players (anyway they carry drinks only;)) , with super fast access to information the anxiety to know the team is also lost. (We used to wait till 8.40 PM Hindi news in childhood days to know the team).

As for the selection, I cannot figure out how Dinesh Karthik is a better batsman than Laxman, the reason given for his exclusion is that he is not enough fit , on the same yardstick I am not sure how Kumble makes it to the team.

Wasim Jaffer should consider himself lucky to be picked ahead of Gambhir and Uthappa considering the fact that he was only picked for challenger series because Sachin was not expected to be fit for earlier matches.

Champions Trophy update

Champions trophy has come to an end, but the story remains same, every other team is fighting to reach the finals and then loose to Australia comprehensilevly;).

Somehow Aussies seem to play at one level higher when they are in finals, although their normal level of performances is enough to defeat most of the teams, they look even invincible after the recent successes of Shane Watson in allrounder capability.

My best performers

Batting
Chris Gayle and Fleming, Gayle's back foot straight drives were a treat to watch.

Bowlers
Jerome Taylor.

Emerging player
Shane Watson, he has been a great addition to Aussies and I am jealous they will be more stronger with his inclusion is Ashes.

Champions trophy

1. Champions trophy is happening in India, I absolutely don't see any buzz regarding this, is it mainly to do with over hype of every triangular series as a big event (they are conducted like weekly episodes in all sundry places), let me know what do you feel about this.

This year's Champions trophy format is very good and the format allows for more competitive matches. Dew and flat wickets will make bowlers' job even more less enjoyable than it is already, entitling I was expecting a 500 score in the tournament but with the lesser number of matches for Bangladesh and Zimbabwe the likelihood of this seems less.

Hope the better team wins.

Podcats I listen to reguraly.

1. http://leo.am/podcasts/sn - Regular security related podcast
2. http://leo.am/podcasts/twit - weekly technical discussion
3. http://www.hanselminutes.com/hanselminutes_MP3Direct.xml - Very good podcast on current Microsoft techinologies.
4. http://edcorner.stanford.edu/podcasting.shtml - Good podcast on thought leaders.

Hi All,
I am Krishna Kumar from Bangalore. I have varied interests in sports and Music and software engineering, may be in the same order;).....