Commentators & Cricket

We went for a drink on Friday last, five of us, into a sports bar - If one calls a bar that shows sports on TV a 'sports bar' what should we be calling a bar that shows 'news' or 'temples' or 'music' or better still 'women'

Well, that is my dry humor!

All five of us are sports enthusiasts to a varying degree and the subject of who are the better cricket commentators has cropped up for a brief while. We exchanged some names at that time and here I go now on what makes a good cricket commentator in my book.

My mother used to tell me when I was a kid that, if I can understand a particular thing well I can do it well. I don't know about other things in my life but cricket has been an exception - Very high on understanding (Confidently, not arrogantly) and very poor at playing (again, confidently). I managed to play a few years of very competitive gully cricket and a large part of the games I played are not because of my skills (Sometimes I played because I owned the bat or ball and some other times because we played the game in my backyard and some other times they wanted me to make the numbers and the last cricket match I ever played was because I was printing salary increase letters).

Sure I am not even a below-average cricketer, but by giving my ears to the fellows commentating on cricket for the best part of 22 years now, I think I have a sense for what makes a good cricket commentator for those watching it on TV/Internet (not for those listening it on Radio - thats a completely different art) and here I go - Its not a cookbook for wanna-be commentators though:

Sense of cricket - Obviously, No briner! But, let me delve. It is not about how much you have played or how much you have followed it or how many rules & regulations you know on your fingertips - It is about sensing the state of the match at any point in time and commentating accordingly, it is about resonating with the mood of the audience, it is about filling the audience with things that are not obvious rather than reading whats happening on the field (thats for Radio guys).

A good commentator in a tense battle will build anxiety and leave all of us at the cusp and say no more words. He will fill us with silence for a bit and then take us through the joy ride or pity valley depending on what transpires next ball. 'say no more words' and 'fill us with silence' are the sense of cricket! If you can think of Arun Lal and Laxman Sivaramakrishnan as commentators, you will understand how important this quality is!

Likewise, a Siddhuism will fly well with the audience when they are in good mood but not when they are in sad mood - This fellow did not realize this and soon shown the door! (BTW, he got another door opened for him called 'parliament' and there you are not supposed to talk that resonates with the mood of the nation - If you do so, beware!)

Filling the audience with not so obvious things is an art - it is not about having reams of papers with statistics supplied by Mohandoss Menon. I heard the other day a commentator saying 'that is Sachin's 1001th run in 4th innings of a test match overseas in matches that India lost the toss' - What the heck is he trying to convey, how on earth this interests a spectator?

Sense of Humor - If I can have my way into selecting all commentators, I would give this equal weightage along with sense of cricket. If you are watching cricket on TV, you are watching it for at least 4 hours (T20 game) - 4 hours of only cricket to be heard and seen is boring and you need a bit of fun in between and hence the demand for giving it equal weightage.

Like with any other aspect of life, making fun can be very dangerous and it is a very fine balance to strike and it is not everyone's pint of beer (=cup of tea, for teetotalers). I feel the best way is to make the audience see the funny side of an event in the match (like fielding, bowling or batting) and here synchronization with camera crew becomes extremely important. One other way is to take a poke at fellow commentator in between - who wouldn't want to see two people fighting as long it doesn't hurt us! (pl. do not repeat it till spectators think you guys are having a personal battle out there - Tony Grieg & Geoff Boycott fall in this place)

Best sense of humor is always contextual and spontaneous - anything other than this, people will make out easily.

Language/Vocabulary - It is important but it is not be all. It is important to the extent that you are grammatically correct, you use words that most people will understand (so choose simple ones), you use smaller sentences (David Lloyd is best at this - never more than 5 words) and pronounce them clearly.

Actually in this skill, there more things to learn on 'what not to do' and to my mind Harsha Bogle is the role model (not because he is best at it) - Harsha has great command over vocabulary but more often he tries to project his skill than using it to commentate on the game. He gives us so many adjectives which are OK first few times but later becomes a pain in the ass! He becomes a Shakesphere, Ms. Evangeline (my 5th grade English teacher) and N Ram (The Hindu Chief editor) at some point or the other in every match he commentates on!

I don't know of any one who watches cricket to learn English vocabulary - thats the point. PERIOD.

Before I shut up,

I like several commentators for certain things that they do: Ian Chappell - gives so many not so obvious things, Richie Benaud - uses silence very well, Bill Lawry - resonates with spectators big time, Ravi Sashtri/Mark Nicholas - Fills energy, Sunil Gavaskar - I've not seen a better poker, Harsha - When I am playing scrabble & watching cricket at the same time.

I use mute button on remote for - Arun Lal, Laxman Sivaramakrishnan, Waqar Younis, Ranjith Fernando (I found a mute button on my laptop too!)

BTW - Mandira Bedi, Gautam Bhemani etc do not fall under 'cheerleaders' category.

Ferrari & Force India

Ferrari and Force India - a 59 year veteran and the other 1 year toddler - What do they have in common?

As if 'F'ing their names is not enough, they duly 'F'ed first three races of the season and ended up with no points after the first 3 races - only two teams to do so this year. In fact, at one point in the race it looked like Ferrari is going to be the loner on the list of 'No points table' till Adrian Sutil banged into distance marker on the side.

Needless to say I'm fuming!

America will break into 6 entities

Caution: Read this post when you have absolutely nothing do. 'Coz this is bullshit!

I was forwarded this message. I always that there is some limit to stupidity and I'm wrong - there is no end to stupidity in this world.

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I told you that it's a funny world getting funnier. Many American analysts are saying that America's real economic collapse could come by the end of this year. "It will come to be known as 'The Crash of 09', they say. Others, especially a Russian political analyst, are predicting its physical collapse too. There's no doubt that the country is up the dirtiest of imaginable creeks without a paddle. But what's amazing is that America remains mired in stunning denial, continuing to make bad situations worse with useless bailout plans and messing around with the world instead of facing up to the reality that its time as a hyper-power is up, that's its economic system has failed and that its only recourse is to end its adversarial doctrine and get out of its lost wars as painlessly and honorably as possible. There's no point in going on flogging dead horses. The only sensible thing that survival demands is to craft a new moral economic and financial system and a moral foreign policy.

The deep recession verging on depression that we have seen so far was caused by the crash in the US housing market. Since other developed industrialized nations, especially of Europe, were aping the shenanigans of unchecked and poorly regulated American bankers and financiers, the collapse of their markets, banks and economies followed like dominoes. Iceland was the first to officially declare bankruptcy. Its GDP is only about $6.5 billion but its banks had lent something like $65 billion while its regulators were asleep on the wheel. Britain has not declared bankruptcy officially but we all know that it is bankrupt for all intents and purposes and none of its banks and financial institutions has any legs left.

However, this is only the aperitif. Wait for the crash of US commercial real estate, which analysts think will happen by autumn this year.

Shops are closing down and there's no one to rent them. Companies are retrenching and freeing up a lot of office space or closing down entirely and vacating even more precious office space with no one to rent it again. Huge skyscrapers are becoming ghost-scrapers.

All this expensive commercial real estate is mortgaged to the hilt. With no rental income coming in, the loans against them will become difficult to service and there will be fearsome default. There's insurance and re-insurance here also and the amounts involved are mind-boggling. No bailout plan would come even close to coping.

When the commercial real estate collapse comes, all hell will break loose. And if multinationals like General Motors and Ford call it a day, it won't just be thousands upon thousands of people unemployed (though its heartless to use the word 'just' here). Two entire towns will be become ghost towns. That's terrible. If you count the number of people - wives, children and parents - who are dependent on those incomes, it becomes worse than terrible. It becomes absolutely and totally unconscionable, while corrupt and greedy bankers and the likes of Bernie Madoff have made off with billions - perhaps trillions - of dollars and are still doing so because "our contracts say so."

Then there is Professor Igor Nikolavich Panarin whom I came across in a December 2008 article by Andrew Osborne of the Wall Street Journal no less, not some fly-by-night rag. If he has got it right, next year will come to be known as 'The Collapse of 2010' for that is when the USA will disintegrate into six separate entities. Those six entities, says Prof Panarin, are The California Republic, The Central North American Republic, Atlantic America, The Texas Republic, Hawaii and Alaska going back to Russia.

With millions of Chinese living on America's eastern seaboard (The People's Daily's circulation there alone is over five million) The California Republic, Prof Panarin thinks, will either be part of China or come under Chinese influence. The Central North American Republic will be part of Canada or under Canadian influence, Atlantic America may join the European Union, The Texas Republic will be part of Mexico or under Mexican influence and Hawaii will go either to Japan or China.

Prof Panarin is a former KGB analyst and a Russian professor of political science, Dean of the Ministry of the Foreign Affairs Diplomatic Academy in Moscow and author of several books on geopolitics. Thus one can hardly call him a fruitcake. Actually, he first made this prediction not after the economic meltdown that started last year but in Linz, Austria, in September 1998 in front of 400 delegates at a conference devoted to information warfare and the use of data to get an edge over a rival. Of course it was received with consternation. "When I pushed the button on my computer and the map of the United States disintegrated, hundreds of people cried out in surprise," he says. Later, many delegates asked him to sign copies of the map. Its like when the French political scientist Emmanuel Todd made his famous forecast in 1976 about the collapse of the Soviet Union 15 years before it actually did and many people laughed. But Todd had the last laugh.

Prof Panarin doesn't say that America's collapse is a foregone conclusion. "There's a 55-45 percent chance right now that disintegration will occur," he says. But if it comes it will be driven by three factors - "mass immigration, economic decline and moral degradation will trigger a civil war next fall and the collapse of the dollar.

Around the end of June 2010, or early July, he says, the US will break into six pieces... He predicts that economic, financial and demographic trends will provoke a political and social crisis in the US. When the going gets tough, he says, wealthier states will withhold funds from the federal government and effectively secede from the Union. Social unrest up to and including a civil war will follow. The US will then split along ethnic lines, and foreign powers will move in." All we Pakistanis thus have to do is hang in there and soon America will not be meddling in our affairs any more, what to talk of General Patraeus's adviser David Kilcullen saying that Pakistan could fall apart in five or six months.

It's not easy to comprehend the collapse of an empire or a superpower. When termites are eating away at their vitals for years one cannot see it. People are too much in thrall of their power, wealth and panoply. Thus when the collapse comes it seems sudden, and takes people by surprise. "I went to sleep last night and when I woke up next morning the Soviet Union was gone." The most powerful war machine ever built couldn't save it. Remember the British Empire on which "the sun would never set"? It set so firmly that only six decades later Britain is not only bankrupt, it has become America's appendage, a third rate power and could itself disintegrate soon with Scotland seceding. The history of the world is replete with the demise of civilizations, empires and superpowers. The graveyards of nations are full of their bones.

That there may be something to what Prof Panarin says is borne out by the fact that the late Bush Administration made contingency plans to impose martial law in case of economic collapse or massive and violent social unrest with blood on the streets.

His predictions seem plausible, even probable, if all the dire scenarios come right, as they have thus far. According to Rand Clifford the US has already made plans to "round up insurgent US citizens" and detain them in what are called "Rex 84" camps. Plus they have made "safe facilities" for members of Congress and their families. A report by the Phoenix Business Journal says: "A new report by the US Army and War College talks about the possibility of Pentagon resources and troops being used should the economic crisis lead to civil unrest, such as protests against businesses and government or runs on beleaguered banks." The Journal's story quote from the War College report: "Widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremist to defend basic domestic order and human security." It needs saying that the military regularly makes plans for the most dire of situations, however seemingly unlikely.

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Who is your competitor?

It might sound like an easy question to answer and it is true in some part - just look around to find who are playing in the same league/field that you are playing and you will figure out who your competitor is.

If you are in restaurant business, the guy operating another restaurant is your competitor - Thats an easy answer. If you think a little laterally - a good cook at home is also your competitor. Offices/work that lets a housewife go home at 5 pm is also your competitor (she has time to cook, leave aside if she is willing to)

The point that I'm driving home is there are obvious (traditionally defined) competitors and there are also not so obvious competitor in everything we do.

Here is one more, statistically evident, case if you still do not buy this logic that I extended to the restaurant business.

Private Equity (PE) firms - those that invest in early stage-to-public companies - Who is their competition?.

• Very obvious ones - 'another private equity firm'.
• Not so obvious ones - 'stock exchanges', 'banks' and other who lend funds (after all, these act as places where one can raise/borrow funds and that is what PE firms do)
• Obscure ones - Google, Microsoft, Yahoo etc

How the hell a Google or a Microsoft be competitors to PE firms, they are in the business of software, internet, what does software/internet have to do with PE firms? - That is the reason for they being categorized as 'obscure ones'

Let me elaborate - PE firms, specially those that focus on technology industry, are on look out for early stage/emerging companies that have a compelling technology/product which will be next 'super hit'. They will go and invest in them in anticipation of bigger returns on their investment. Now you might be beginning to understand why I call Google as a competitor to a PE firm, because Google also does (and continues to do) the same - Look out for companies that are building next super hit technology/product/service.

Look at this table below:

Company	# Companies it acquired during 2001-2009 (YTD)	# Companies where deal value is announced	Total amount spent on value announced deals
Google	53	14	$6,900,000,000
Microsoft	81	23	$12,509,344,000
Yahoo	39	19	$4,887,000,000
IBM	79	16	$19,112,000,000
TOTAL	252	72	$43,408,344,000

During the last 8 years, these 4 companies have acquired 252 companies that are in early-to-middle stage - predominantly a territory of PE firms. On 72 deals where deal value is announced they have spent a $43.4 Bn (if you add the remainder of 180 deals @ very conservative number of $3 Mil per deal, total value could well be around $100 Bn)

$100,000,000,000 ($100 Bn) worth of acquisitions by just 4 companies (dont forget that I've not collected stats of companies like Oracle, Cisco, Nortel, SAP and many others).

By traditional definition, this segment of investing/lending funds to early stage companies is supposed to be the territory of PE firms. But it is no more and hence I call 'Google+Microsoft+IBM+x+y+z' also as competitors to PE firms and that too in the category of 'obscure competitors'

I'm not suggesting that PE firms do not recognize this - they might well be!

All that I wanted to bring to attention of readers is that answers to 'who is your competitor' will not always be limited to 'obvious' ones that you are aware of and that we need to think laterally, vertically, horizontally and in many other ways to figure out those 'not so obvious', and more importantly, 'obscure' ones!

Australia F1 Grand Prix

You already know who won the F1 2009 season opener in Australia (Jenson Button, Brawn GP) but it was not until late in the evening on Thursday (5 days after the race) did we know the final results. For, there was a bit of controversy on who came 4th in the race - Trulli or Hamilton and eventually it was classified that Trulli finished 4th.

Leaving aside the controversy I've not seen a constructors standings look like below in all my life - This is my 11th season of intensely following F1 and I've not seen both Ferrari and McLaren at the bottom of the table.



It won't be long before this changes though - 2nd race is tomorrow in Malaysia.

Rajesh Setty

Last night I was googling 'Rajesh Polamarasetty' (a long time friend of mine) and landed up at 'Rajesh Setty' and I can't thank enough Google for this. I was consumed by this man's writings that I didn't require alarm clock to wake up at 3.30 am to catch up India's 3rd test against Newzealand.

There is no way in this world that I could have stumbled upon this guy's website otherwise - www.rajeshsetty.com - Seems like very intelligent & balanced guy and immediately it became one of the websites that I follow.

Thank you Rajesh (Polamara)setty.

Governments have no business to do business

I'm a strong believer in demand & supply theories. I go to the extent of arguing that, knowing well that most people in this world will call it absurd, even affection that we show towards our wife, children and parents in a particular situation is based on demand & supply theories! - Everything an individual does is based on how much he wants of that 'everything' and how much can the other take of that 'everything'!

Well, that was just a prelude to drive home by belief!

Now, there has been a rage on what Obama & team are doing with Finance, Banking and Automotive industry in the recent past. His team's thinking seems to be in the direction of 'I'm giving you the money so I better run the company' and this is exactly what I'm quite against to!

If one starts to believe that giving money (or investing in a company) is the only qualification to run a company successfully, God help them. I'm not suggesting that the investor (in this case government) should not interfere or that he should just give money and disappear or something of that sort. As an Investor they are fully entitled to have a say in the strategy & operations of the company but nothing beyond.

The very reason for origination and continued existence of 'Owners/Investors' and 'Professional Managers' is that these two are different arts. Yes, at times, you will find an individual who is good at both arts but that is more an exception than norm. This is precisely why I say Governments have no business to do business.

They do have a role in creating a policy framework, infrastructure, regulatory framework etc which are very vital for doing business successfully and all other matters of actually doing a business successfully should be left to those who are good at them.

Here is an interesting piece of transcript of TJ Rodgers, Founder CEO of Cypress Semiconductors. The best way to describe Rodgers is 'brutally candid'.

This is his testimony before the subcommittee on Technology, Environment and Aviation in March 1993 in the context of Clinton Administration trying to intervene in technology industry. I know it is 16 years back and world has undergone a sea change since then. I'm also aware that what Obama's administration is trying to do is lot different to what Clinton tried to do. Nevertheless point remains - lesser the government's intervention in doing business, the better it is for business and people at large!

Complete Transcript - Click Here.

Excerpts below (Blue colored parts are the ones that I believe have great relevance to what Obama's team is doing. Let me urge to readers to go beyond the literal meaning of the text to get the relevance for the current context):

"......Cypress makes data-communications chips used in electronic superhighways, memory chips for supercomputers, and microprocessor modules for massively parallel computers. We would benefit greatly if billions of taxpayer dollars were showered on the various technology projects favored by the Clinton administration. It would be easy for me to support these projects. I could spend one minute talking about our products, a few more discussing the wonders of the basic technologies, a few more minutes on the serious peril we face from other countries, especially the government-financed Japanese and Europeans, and finally, I could ask for a dole--to save American high technology.

But I am here to say that such subsidies will hurt my company and our industry. Why? Because they represent tax-and-spend economics--a brand of economics that is a known failure. I do not want handouts. The men and women of our company do not want handouts. And if Congress wants to help American high technology, handouts are the wrong way to go--especially if they are funded with huge tax increases on individuals and corporations."

"As a high-technology executive who faces the rigors of the market every day, I view both the data highway and any subsidy of high-performance computers as the most recent examples of industries lining up to feed at the public trough. There may be a few select winners, but the majority, and the taxpayers, lose."

"Don't assume that the Pepsi-Cola kid [John Sculley] speaks for Silicon Valley. We do not need pretenders who speak for us. We have visionaries who are rare, important, and doers."

"To Washington I say, please do not help us. The world of technology is complex, fast changing, unstructured, and thrives best when individuals are left alone to be different, creative, and disobedient. Go help the Russians. They are a Third-World technology state. Go help all the people who know how ‘pork' works, and who want to be taken care of. But please do not help us: Anyone who thinks corporate taxes promote employment does not understand the problem."

"I am a strong supporter of industrial policy, but lowering taxes would be the best form of industrial policy we could have. We should balance the budget by cutting spending, and if that means we cannot put money into the high technology infrastructure, that is okay. If wealthy individuals get taxed more, they will spend more time figuring out how to minimize taxes and less time creating wealth."

"....It too serves a useful political purpose. Indeed, it is a game as old as politics itself: divide-and-conquer, or, as Gil Amelio says, preaching "the politics of envy." Yes, the White House tells the American people, we plan to increase spending by hundreds of billions of dollars. But we plan to spend that on "you." Even better, "they"--the bad guys--pay for it"

"In essence, the administration is arguing that by taking my money in the form of higher taxes and "investing" it in subsidies, it can make better investments--more jobs and wealth. Does anyone believe that Washington invests more effectively in high technology than the free market?"

"Washington cannot create more companies like Silicon Graphics. The way to create more Silicon Graphics is to allow knowledgeable investors, steering their money through world-class venture capitalists, to try to fund just the right companies with just the right technologies at just the right time. Even these venture experts are not right all the time. But surely they are right more often than Washington."

"What does work? The ragtag, unmanaged, sometimes-painful melee of the free market. It's not pretty, it's not neat, but it is what has made the United States the world's technology powerhouse."

"America has plenty of work to do on the economic problems we have created for ourselves--problems that trace their roots to fiscal recklessness. Ultimately, though, the economic battles of the 1990s will be won in America's factories, labs, and offices--not in the halls of Congress or the corridors of the Commerce Department. That's good news. America's entrepreneurial companies have the guts, brains, and drive to beat the best the world has to offer. All we need from Washington is the confidence to let us fight it out."