Ultimate Enigma: November 2005

And then there was silence

I return to my blog after a rather extended period of silence. The usual excuses prop up (no time, lots of work, etc) but I guess the fact is that I really haven't been in the mood to write anything. Have been reading lots of other blogs reasonably regularly, but haven't really felt like commenting on any either, even though on some posts I have had strong opinions. I've noted down various things I wanted to post about, but everytime I thought of writing out my thoughts, I decided to "do it later". I wonder.... is the interest dieing out??
...I guess I will know once some more time passes by...

Anyways, this weekend I'm off to Houston (on business for 2 weeks) and New York (on a personal detour for 2days). Will be back in the middle of December. And guess what, during my return I'm gonna be spending my whole birthday in the confines of an aeroplane. Yeah - I'm boarding the SIA New York-Singapore flight the evening before my birthday, and will land on the morning after my birthday. Never done that before!!!

Want to make more money??? Easy... Just pay more taxes!

If you are in Holland, there is an easy way to make some extra money.... Just over-pay your taxes. Yes, you heard that right. The Dutch government gives 5% interest on any excess-tax that is paid to them, which is beyond the market rate!!

More here.

Travel Watch

Travellers out of Mumbai just got more choosy- the Wadia group has finally launched GoAir. They are starting off with just 3 sectors - Mumbai-Ahemedabad, Mumbai-Goa and Mumbai-Coimbatore; with the Coimbatore sector tickets priced at Rs 899.

One thing though.... their 'Book a Flight' section does not work on Firefox :-s The only selectable destination is Mumbai even when the origin is changed out of Mumbai. Better change that soon Go!

Playing the Suber Sub!!

The Super-Sub rule has been employed in international cricket for a few months now and over this period more and more cricketers have come out against the idea as it currently is employed. One of the latest to voice out his opinion in this direction is the captain of the World Test Team Graeme Smith. The general consensus is that the Super Sub rule favours the team batting first to a great extent. And this is basically true, since it can be assumed that most captains would name the first-11 with an 'assuming-we-lose-the-toss' mindset and then add the super-sub who would be most useful if they won the toss. Thats no doubt the best way to use this rule.

But Rahul Dravid in the 2nd and 3rd ODIs against Sri Lanka has used the Super Sub to hedge the risk of losing the toss. This was espescially the case in the 2nd ODI at Mohali, where it is a known fact that spinners would struggle when bowling in the 2nd innings. With this in mind, Dravid had selected an Indian-11 that would be very strong if they bowled 1st, and added a pacer - Sreesanth as the Super Sub to bolster the Indian bowling department in the event that India lost the toss and had to bat 1st. This way, Dravid retained the option to replace a spinner with a pacer - a better option had the game gone that way. As it turns out, India won the toss and bowled 1st, which meant that the Super Sub was wasted, and many felt that Dravid had made a mistake in this regard. But in my opinion, it was a calculated decision by Dravid (and probably Chappel as well) to use the extra player to hedge a major risk rather try to have extra resources when things were already going your way!!

The fact that Raina was the Super sub when Dravid intended to bat 1st in the 3rd ODI also indicates that this is the thought-process of the Indian captain. This time around, India lost the toss, and the Super Sub was made use of - and no big fuss was made of his choice of Super Sub. Would it have been the same had India won the toss again... well we would never know.

I was waiting for the team for today's 4th ODI to be annouced to see if Dravid continued with this line of thinking, but looks like apparently not, since Raina is the Super Sub and Dravid has decided to bowl 1st, ensuring that the Super Sub will play a role in the later half of today's proceedings.