Author: Pran Kurup

Pran Kurup is founder and CEO of Vitalect, Inc.

Rahul Dravid’s Return: It’s all about form

There has been plenty of analysis and theories about Rahul Dravid’s returnto the ODI team. Shouldn’t the selectors look to the future? What if he fails? Is this his ODI farewell? etc.

As cricket gets more and more commercial and players end up with a near 12-month cricketing calendar it is next to impossible for any player to perform consistently over an extended period of time (not to mention challenges posed by frequent injuries).  It is just too demanding and hard to sustain. Dhoni is a prime example. The man who burst into the scene with a slaughtering 180+ score against SL now says “I need time to settle, I can’t hit from the first ball!” Ironically, it was this ability of his that made him a favorite of so many Indian cricket fans.

To adapt to the year long cricket season, teams must select players purely based on current form. Proven stars like Viru, Sachin and Dravid are assumed to be in form unless proven otherwise. Dravid was dumped when he was out of form and returned when he showed that he was back in form. He is probably sufficiently rested and hungry to perform well again. The return of Ashish Nehra is another example. He showed that he was in form in the IPL and resurrected his career, thanks partly to Zaheer Khan’s injury and Ishant Sharma’s slump. Dinesh Karthick is another example of a player who worked his way back by virtue of good performances in the IPL and in the domestic season.

When India failed at the T20 World Cup, heads had to roll, deficiencies had to be addressed, so those out of form like Rohit Sharma were dumped in favor of those in form with the necessary skills.

Srikanth and co. deserve kudos for selecting “in-form” players regardless of age. It sends a clear message to young talented discards like Sreesanth, Rohit Sharma and Uthappa that if they return to form opportunities could open up for them. Unlike Australia, India does not have to worry about losing players to retirement all at once. There is plenty of bench strength and rotation among a pool of players makes a lot of sense.  There is no point looking to the future when India is losing in the present. India should try to forge a combination that can win in the present and the future will take care of itself.

Movie Review: Sorry Bhai!

Title:  Sorry Bhai!

Starring:  Shabana Azmi, Boman Irani, Sanjay Suri, Sharman Joshi and Chitrangada Singh

After a long break I watched a Hindi film.  It turned out to be a film that I had never heard about and one with relatively unknown stars. I was looking for a change from the conventional “boiler plate bollywood”.

Firstly, the pros -A fairly simple yet bold theme, just a handful of actors, and shot completely in Mauritius so there is plenty of scenic beauty to enjoy.  The story revolves around a family with two brothers, where the younger sibling and his brother’s fiancee fall in love.  Shabana and Bomman play the parents, while Sanjay and Sharman play the brothers.

The end, which was cleverly folded into the beginning of the film to introduce the suspense element in the plot, completely contradicts the supposed progressive story-line. It was a case of four big unconventional, progressive steps forward drowned out by eight super-traditional steps backward!

It is hard to get into the details without revealing the plot.  The end of the film was a huge let down. The film is edited and presented well but the end is bizarre and destroys all its positives. In a blatant attempt, to satisfy the conservative and the progressive audiences at the same time, the film has ended up achieving  neither.

The acting is overall very good except for Chitrangada Singh who appears to struggle at times to appear believable. The songs sounded trendy but I don’t recall any being instantly catchy.

Book about “Afterlife”

Read a review of the book “SUM: Forty Tales from the Afterlives” in the Mercury News.

David Eagleman shows in his new book, “Sum,” very entertaining, too. The author, a neuroscientist with literary leanings, has set out a series of possibilities for the afterlife, described in 40 vignettes, each of which presents a different explanation of who God is and why he or she (or, in some cases, they) chose to create us and what might be planned for us on our demise.

Here is another section of the review that’s very interesting.

“There are three deaths,” Eagleman writes. “The first is when the body ceases to function. The second is when the body is consigned to the grave. The third is that moment, sometime in the future, when your name is spoken for the last time.”

In this scheme, when we die, we go to a cosmic waiting room where we mark time until our name is never again mentioned. The famous are trapped here, of course, for a very long time; they wish for obscurity, but it may take an eternity to arrive.

VOIP and The Promise of Free Calls

Over the last several years I have been an active user of internet based phone services. Skype, Google Voice, Voice chat through Yahoo IM etc.  are the ones I have been using most frequently. There is no doubt that the ability to make calls over the Internet (free or at a low cost) has far reaching, powerful implications but these services (like most new technologies) have their share of challenges.  Here are some of my experiences with these services over the years.

The Good News

These services are great simply because they are free. They give you an opportunity to talk to people who you normally don’t speak to as often. They give you a chance to make and receive calls in places where regular phone calls can be very expensive. With increase in Internet access and computers around the globe these services serve as a terrific means of communication and will undoubtedly play a significant role in communication in the years to come. The learning curve in using these technologies is minimal. A five minute demo is sufficient even for the most novice users.

The Bad News

The free or low cost services can be unreliable. If you make a call using one of these services be prepared for random changes in voice quality, sudden dropped lines etc. If you are considering these services for business use, think again.  Its great to be able to make a phone call from your computer without having to change your headset etc. but its embarrassing to explain that its the phone connection and not the “wind” that the person at the other end is hearing. (Once I was forced to quip, “I hope its not President Obama’s plane!”) While it might be ok to be interrupted during a personal call to friends and family, the same is not true for business calls.

Paid VOIP services like Lingo, Vonage etc. are definitely far more reliable. The old adage “you get what you pay for” holds true for these services. These services do come with their share of headaches. Lingo for instance recommends that the cable modem (at home) feeds into the Lingo box. If you use a router this means that the Lingo box feeds into the Router rather than the other way around. The big downside to this is that if Lingo goes down for some reason, your internet access will go down as well. Its possible to set up the network such that the cable modem feeds into the router as opposed to the Lingo box. But this is no simple task even for the reasonably tech savvy.

What’s the best free service?

All the free services are equally good/bad in the sense they have their strengths and weaknesses. Skype has been around the longest and so one would imagine that it has probably ironed out many of the technology and service challenges. On the flip side it probably has more traffic to deal with than the other providers. Calls to India on Skype from the US in the mornings are almost always of poor quality. On the other hand, the calls at night are very reliable.

Google Voice is very, very high on the “coolness” factor. It has some very powerful features. If you like the Gmail interface you’ll love Google Voice. Where it falls flat is the idea of having a new number to act as a clearing house for all your calls. It might sound great in theory but in practice it doesn’t exactly work well because most people don’t want to change their phone number as far as possible. Besides, explaining to people (about a new number!) who ask you for your cell phone number is an arduous task in itself!

I find myself using Skype more often simply because it is always accessible on my desktop. Besides, Skype was the first to introduce Skype number and the ability to forward calls from Skype to other phone numbers. The ability to forward calls from Skype to a cell phone number is a handy feature especially when you are traveling. Among these services Skype is the only service (other than probably Google Voice) that I am aware off that works on Linux. If you are used to working on different operating systems, Skype becomes an automatic choice.

Google Voice requires no local install (which is great!) but it requires you to login to Google Voice when making calls from the computer. Google Voice loses out because of this extra step. Yahoo on the other hand loses out because I mostly use Meebo for IM. I don’t think there is way to call from within Meebo using Yahoo! voice (or maybe there is and I haven’t figured it out as yet).  In short, its hard to say which one is the best. It depends on a host of factors ranging from personal preference to OS to familiarity to UI etc.

p.s: There is a service dedicated to free conference calls (Sabsebolo.com or “Talk to Everyone”) that is also available for those who might be interested. The above mentioned services also support conference calls though I have only used the conference call facility in Skype.

End of Deodhar Trophy?

The BCCI canceled the Deodhar Trophy for 2009-10 season because of a tight schedule.

Its an interesting move and a sure sign that with the rise of T20 cricket something has to give. The big question is whether this is an isolated instance or a sign of trend that the 50 over game is slowly making way for the more trendy and fast paced T20.

Jet Airways Struggles

The WSJ has a detailed article today on the struggling Jet Airways.

Without a doubt it was India’s best airline at its peak. It was a huge disappointment to see Jet Airways cancel it’s flights to India from SFO so quickly after introducing them. With the airline industry struggling the world over its not surprising that airlines in India are now hit by the decline as well.

Hopefully, Jet can stage a comeback!

Team India: Down and Out of the T20 World Cup Semis

Team India crashed out of the T20 World Cup. Dhoni and his boys have gone from being superstars to failed stars overnight. Here are some thoughts on Why India failed and some possible solutions.

Players Hiding Injuries

Virender Sehwag and Zaheer Khan were not fully fit for this T20 World cup. Between the BCCI, the team management and the players themselves, their lack of fitness was allowed to be overlooked. There should an investigation, followed by some firings. The players themselves must be banned from playing for India for a year. In this day and age, with so much financial benefits (among other things) at stake, the players and all those involved need to be strongly reminded that hiding injuries is simply not acceptable and will be dealt with in very harsh terms.

Dhoni’s Growing Pains

After a successful honeymoon period, India’s Midas man who has never captained a team before he earned the most demanding job in world cricket, seems to be suffering from growing pains. After he stepped into the job, he phased out the seniors, brought in young blood, and led from the front with impressive personal performances. Unfortunately, like most players he seems to have hit a lean patch in his batting of late. His team failed to make the final of the IPL. Many youngsters around him have started performing better than he himself. His aggressive out of the box moves have started to fail more often than succeed. His cool and calm at the post-match interviews has been replaced by irritability, annoyance and other such emotions.

The fact remains that Dhoni had an excellent team on paper but it fizzled on the field. Its all part of Dhoni growing up on the job. Thus far he has shown great talent, skill and the resolve needed to make a very good captain. At the same time he has shown fleeting signs of insecurity (promoting himself ahead of other in form players a la Dada), desperation to prove his point (playing the same team for the last match against SA despite being a turning track), and the rumored clash with Viru and its aftermath (a PR fiasco raising more questions than providing answers). However, it would be foolish and premature for India to pressurize him or even contemplate replacing him in the short term.

Player Rotation

Gary Kirsten was probably right when he said the team was tired and exhausted after non-stop cricket over several months. Unfortunately, in this day and age of “fast-buck” cricket, this is no longer a valid excuse. India is bursting at the seams with talent. Manish Pandey, Virat Kohli, Praveen Kumar, Dinesh Karthik, Pradeep Sangwan, Abhishek Nayyar, are just a few of the many talented players on the sidelines. There is no reason why the same set of players should be doing the rounds in all forms of the game. Why not have separate teams with a few common players in all forms of the game?