Author: Pran Kurup

Pran Kurup is founder and CEO of Vitalect, Inc.

Dhoni Might Just Have What It Takes

Captaining Team India with a cricket crazy audience of a billion people, a team full of de-facto celebrities, and an administration packed with political heavy weights and yes men, is no mean task. It takes a unique combination of cricketing abilities, man management skills, PR skills and political savvy, along with some luck to be consistently successful at the job over a period of time.

Take a look at India’s recent captains – Rahul Dravid, Saurav Ganguly and Sachin Tendulkar. Dravid simply didn’t have the stomach for politics. It appears that he really couldn’t influence the team make up to his liking and had to play with what he got. Being a thinking, conscientious cricketer, he probably figured that he couldn’t make a difference as captain in the long run and hence he’d rather just contribute to the team than have to deal with the rest of the baggage. Little did he know that he might find himself out of the team under the guise of a flimsy excuse of lack of form!

 

Dravid’s predecessor, Saurav Ganguly came closest to possessing the right mix of qualities and a good chunk of luck. Unfortunately, over time he clearly fell short on cricketing abilities. He simply wasn’t good enough to retain his place in the team and he wasn’t as self-confident or gracious as Dravid to walk away or step aside at the right time.

 

Tendulkar landed the job at a very difficult time, when India was struggling for talent and was up against the most formidable of oppositions. Besides, the team was way too dependent on him at that point. In other words, he came to the job with way too much baggage to start with! 

MS Dhoni who has been on the job for a few months now has had a dream honeymoon period. A brand new form of the game where he was one of the undisputed senior players (along with Yuvraj), with the big three out of the picture, served as a terrific start. This was promptly followed by a couple of domestic tours. His promotion to ODI captaincy has been a nice upgrade from T20. The T20 World Cup victory has more than added to his stature. In this short period of time he has shown that he might just have the right mix of skills to succeed on the job. Here are a few signs.

  • Dhoni spoke highly of the “out of control” Sreesanth (saying we need some aggressive folks around). However, he quietly dropped him from the playing eleven in favor of RP Singh when the young man could not back up his on the field antics with a good show with the ball. He made the right decision without getting caught up in all hype about the lead man in India’s newly found on-the- field aggressiveness.
  • He makes it a point to always speak highly of Yuvraj whom he referred to as his “trump card” during the T20 World Cup. Considering that Yuvral was pipped for the captaincy at one point, and has been around longer than Dhoni himself, he seems to have established a good working relationship and figured out a way to get the best out of the man who is known to be full of himself (as per Greg Chappel). A sure sign that Dhoni has the skill to handle big egos.
  • Despite Sehwag (another prospective captain at one-time) making it to the team, Dhoni favored Gambhir (his point man for T20 victories) in the playing eleven, saying that Gambir has been preferred over others (“meaning Dinesh Karthik” who was favored in England) and has never been given a steady stream of chances despite performing well. (It remains to be seen if Gambhir finds his way to the Test team ahead of Dinesh Karthick). Surely he has earned some serious loyalty from Gambhir in a fairly short period while signaling that present form is more important than past records.
  • His decision to promote himself ahead of Yuvraj Singh in the first ODI against Pakistan was a master stroke. He knew that the target was achievable and that there was no real pressure to demand big hits. The situation demanded a cool head and steady batting. He trusted his abilities and backed himself to provide the stability. A move Rahul Dravid would have certainly had adopted if he were captain. The left right combination served to further legitimize the move. A perfect sign of a self-assured batsmen and a tactful captain.
  • Then, the dropping of Dravid. When asked about Dravid’s dropping for the last ODI against Australia, Dhoni replied with a now trademark disarming smile that he was “rested“. Following this Dravid was dropped from the team for the first two ODIs. It is easy to brush this aside saying that Dhoni had little to do with it. It has been argued that this is a first step towards planning for a future beyond the Big 3 (Rahul, Saurav and Sachin) . If this is the case, its hard to imagine that this step was taken without the captain’s acquiescence. Besides, if Dhoni felt that Dravid was critical to the team he could very well have put his foot down and demanded his inclusion just as Dravid had fought for Sehwag’s spot during the World Cup. A clear sign that Dhoni is looking ahead into the future.
  • Finally, the man himself has grown from a small town boy from Jharkhand to a national iconic figure to say the least, in a very short span of time. Bollywood’s latest newbie, Deepika Padukone has been linked to the young man already. For probably the first time in India’s sporting history has emerged a man who has a cult following of sorts. His aggressive hard hitting batting style has placed him well ahead of Sachin, Yuvraj, Sehwag and others on the popularity charts. Everyone from Bollywood stars to young kids seem to have taken to his hairstyle en masse. And at the peak of the mania, Dhoni goes in for a deep hair cut! Surely the man is not afraid of change.

Clearly, MS Dhoni has a lot going for him. His off the field persona combined with his on the field performance might just be the sort of leadership qualities that Team India needs. However, it remains to be seen how he handles the pressure when the team starts to lose heavily. The Australian tour will be a good test of Dhoni’s ability to handle pressure, even if he were not made the captain of the Test team.

Does all this mean that Dhoni is the best man to lead Team India in Tests at the present moment? This might be a moot point now that Tendulkar has declined the offer. The selectors might have no choice but to hand Dhoni the job.

Open Social: Google plays catch up!

Nice to see Google desperately trying to play catchup.

Facebook after a long period of being out in the cold, recently opened up its platform. Since then, it seems to have caught fire and today appears to threaten to Google’s (and all other social networks) bread and butter (Adwords) from a new unexpected direction. Google has had Orkut for years but has done little with it. It is slow and clunky and used mostly in Brazil and India.

On the other hand, over 5000 developers made their applications available through Facebook (don’t miss the hot “Techniq eLearning” application) and this list of applications continues to grow. Unlike Google’s conventional search play, Facebook has oodles of information about people, their social networks, like and dislikes etc. Having suddenly attracted a host of developers and end users, Facebook was now uniquely positioned to take on Adwords by selling adveristising. Thus, in a fairly short span of time Facebook stole a march over the one-dimensional social networking LinkedIns, Plaxos and the Nings of the world. However, things really got heated up after big brother Microsoft stepped in and bought a stake and did an advertising deal with Facebook.

Facebook started its advertising foray with simple “flyers”. Its kind of like a black hole. You create your an ad and pay for it, and Facebook displays the ad a pre-determined number of times. If someone clicks on your ad, consider yourself lucky. That was the start. Now Facebook has Flyer pro which follows a pay per click model. Clearly the sophistication (reporting and other bells and whistles are lacking) in Facebook’s ad platform. In fact even simple features like the ability to edit an ad once its created are lacking in Facebook. But its improving by the day. The best part about the newly introduced Flyer pro is that you can target ads based on a host of parameters like city, age group etc. Everytime you select one of these parameters the target number of users updates on the fly! This is very powerful when compared to what you can do with Google’s Adwords of today. Further, by partnering with Microsoft, Facebook has threatened Google where it could really start to hurt.

Enter Open Social. Its now all about democracy, a level playing field, mother of all APIs and what not as far as Google and other social network sites are concerned. As the NY times rightly put it Google and Friends are ganging up against Facebook before it becomes too powerful. For now, Facebook has a clear headstart. The Open Social idea does make sense in theory, however. As a developer I don’t need to port my application to each social network that comes along. But as an end user do I want every single social network out there to have access to all my private data?

Finally, there is a tiny window of opportunity to challenge Google’s virtual internet advertising monopoly (and GOOG topped $700+). The bad news is that a the monopoly from Redmond is the force behind this new challenge!

Last Night’s Democratic Debate

For the first time, Hillary Clinton faltered. Gone was her smile and characteristic pre-programmed laughter. Being the front runner doesn’t come easy. Even Tim Russert, one of the moderators wanted to come after her! She came across as a candidate with calculated positions (as her husband Bill Clinton did). Unfortunately she lacks his charm and presence of mind. If this perception lingers, she could be in for some setbacks.

Obama, despite pre-event rhetoric stuck to his “politics of hope” mantra and went after her rather selectively and somewhat reluctantly. His opponents are bound to say that he does not have the stomach for a hard fight. On the other hand, he seems to be better equipped to win the “who would you rather have a beer with” question. He showed some excellent presence of mind and good humor in responding to the question about life beyond the earth. However, overall, he seemed too serious, sounded like he had a cold, and appeared subdued and unduly restrained. His body language could use some work!

John Edwards on the other hand went on the offensive at every possibly opportunity against Ms. Clinton. I suspect that his attacks helped Obama as much as it helped his own cause.

As for the rest, Bill Richardson has a good resume but can’t seem to engage the audience. Joe Biden sounds the best when he talks about foreign policy (and Guliani!); Chris Dodd brought up the issue of Hillary’s electability and indirectly helped Obama and Edwards’ case; Dennis Kucinich seemed too obsessed with impeaching George Bush than stating his own case!

The moderators particularly Tim Russert appeared blatantly out to attack Ms. Clinton. In summary, this was one of the better debates of this race.

Sehwag did little to regain his place

Some have it easy. Virendra Sehwag is certainly one of them. Despite continued poor performances, Sehwag has returned to the ODI team riding on one good batting performance in the Challenger series. The Week had recently reported that The All India Jat Progressive Front (AIJPF) had approached Pawar to give Sehwag another chance! Sounds like the meeting certainly paid off.

Dropping a player of Dravid’s class to include Sehwag makes no sense whatsoever and completely lacks justification. On the other hand a far more deserving player player like Badrinath continues to have to wait his time to make it to the team despite terrific performances. Gautam Gambhir on the other hand fully deserved his return to the team. Praveen Kumar’s inclusion is a good attempt at exploring some all rounders.

p.s: When asked “Rahul Dravid was a regular in the middle order. Now that he has been dropped, who do you think can take his place?”

Chairman Dilip Vengsarkar said:

At this stage Yuvraj Singh, MS Dhoni, Gautam Gambhir are the middle-order batsmen, and waiting in the wings are Manoj Tiwari, Suresh Raina, Rohit Sharma. So we have a lot of options.

Notice that Dinesh Karthick, Robin Uthappa and Badrinath or not on his radar!

Kerala Roads: A Complete Disaster

The roads all across Kerala are in a disgraceful state. Most Keralites will admit that the roads have never been as bad ever in their lifetime. Thankfully the Kerala High court has intervened and some celebrities have started to speak out on the issue.

It is true that the rains have been heavier than usual this year. But rains in Kerala is not new. It about time a long term solution is arrived at. Kerala has been governed alternately by the LDF and the UDF for years. The roads have always been equally bad (or good!) no matter who is in power. The current crisis requires a non-partisan commitment from all parties to make fixing the roads a priority. The present state has adversely affected normal life all across the state. Given the condition of the roads, autos and taxi refuse to travel depending on the state of the roads. Driving time has more than doubled. Deaths due to accidents have been on the rise, many of which have been caused when drivers have tried to avoid dangerous potholes. The road leading to the Medical College Hospital in Trivandrum (Kerala’s capital city), is a prime example. A patient traveling to the hospital on this road should be lucky to survive the drive!

Ironically, Kerala CM has been courting IT companies in Bangalore to setup shop in his state. Interestingly enough, he went over to Bangalore to make the pitch rather than have them visit the state. A smart move considering the state of the roads!

After my travel in Kerala, I did stop over at Dubai for a couple of days. The roads there are as good as the best in the world. Incidentally, a large number of laborers who help lay these roads in Dubai are expatriates from Kerala!

I didn’t have a camera when traveling through Kerala unfortunately, but found another blog with pictures.

T20 Cricket: India Dominate Australia

The recent India-Australia T20 game was a refreshing change. India played like Australia and Australia played like India!

The ODI world champions clearly lack the same self-assurance in the T20 format. They started with a huge strategic error of dropping Brad Hogg on a turning track. Even without a turning track, Hogg has been troubling Indian batsmen. The Aussie bowling and fielding were not up to the mark and India won rather comfortably. It was nice to see Ponting grant the Indians the credit they deserve for the victory.

Gambhir is fast proving to be a T20 expert. He is so calm and composed even when the overs run out and he always looks to be in control. As for the rest of the batting, it was clearly India’s young blood in control. Uthappa seems perfect at number 3 followed by Yuvraj and Dhoni. Viru blew a perfect chance to shine. His failure reinforces the fact that he is not yet ready for a recall to the team. India’s batting in T20 seems very well balanced.

The bowling on the other hand does have holes. Sreesanth is a complete misfit in this form of the game. The man is fast, erratic and prone to giving away runs. RP on the other hand does have the ability to bowl tight like he did in the last over of the match. India could have done well to use Joginder Sharma (India’ last over specialist!) instead in this match. India did well to include the in-form Murali Karthik who alog with Harbhajan played a key role in restricting the Aussies.

There is no doubt the Aussies will return to the drawing board to study the T20 game carefully. In the meantime, India should do whatever it takes to sustain its momentum in this new form of the game.

Ms. Bhutto’s Return Cost Lives

Ms. Bhutto’s return has already taken its toll. Over a hundred innocent people have died and several hundreds injured. Her attempt to gain maximum political mileage nearly cost her her life. “The attack on me was not totally unexpected” she writes in the WSJ clearly indicating that she knew about the potential dangers. Despite this, she chose to gain maximum political mileage and media coverage on her return. Instead she could have slipped into Pakistan with minimum fanfare and then gradually launched into her campaign. Even if it didn’t gain all the instant coverage, it would have at the least saved a few hundred lives. Eight years of exile has not changed her “politics first” mindset.

Despite a symbolic change, unfortunately, between Pervez Musharraf, Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Shariff Pakistan has little to chose from. A Bhutto Government with Musharraf as President, which seems like the next step, is a case of a hopeless situation getting no better. At this point, Pakistan can only hope for some hope!

Air Deccan: Dramatic Improvements

Treat this as anecdotal evidence. Air Deccan has show dramatic improvements in its ability to fly on time. In the past I have noticed that their flights were almost always late. They also had a serious image issue. A friend of mine said “Give me a call just before the flight takes off and another call just after you land. Only then you can be sure that Air Deccan has actually landed!” If my most recent experience is any metric, this image is due for a makeover. Not sure if this change has anything to do with the deal with Kingfisher Airlines. Nevertheless, a great sign for a low cost airline.

Dubai: The Mess Starts at the Airport

Dubai has been in the Western media for many reasons of late (the Dubai ports scandal, the recent Nasdaq deal, the burst of construction etc.). None of these reports ever talks about the challenges of everyday living in Dubai. Nothing prepares you for the big mess in the Dubai airport until you actually experience it.

A grand sprawling airport equipped with all the so-called latest features fails to do a decent job of handling the crowds.

  • The flight boarding area (gates) for each flight is behind a check-in counter (similar to London Heathrow but unlike the airports in the US). As expected the check-in counter opens less than an hour before the flights. This means that the large passenger waiting area behind the counter remain inaccessible until just before the flight. The result is that you have an assembly line of gates with empty seats and a long corridor with just a single row of seats which invariably gets filled up in no time. With no where else to go, transit passengers literally sleep all over the place on the floor!
  • Emirate Airlines (UAE’s state owned official airlines) does not issue a day long visa to get out of the airport (unlike for instance in Singapore). They instead insist on transit passengers purchasing a package that includes hotel and visa. Even if I could take care of myself in Dubai for a few hours and return for my connection flight, I had no option but to buy the package or stay put in the airport. (Apart from this, Emirates is an excellent airline — great service, international crew etc.)
  • The smoking areas at the airport are not rooms or complete enclosures. Instead they are small areas bang in the center of the walkways with no clear seclusion. So there is no shortage of second hand cigarette smoke.
  • There is free wi–fi available at the airport. The bad news is that this service is at best sporadic.
  • The free Internet terminals are cramped in a partial enclosure very similar to the smoking area! Its hard to get in and if you do its even harder to get out! Some of the terminal don’t work and the rest are pretty slow.
  • Emirate Airlines provides one free meal to passengers (at the Sahar restaurant) who have transit time of over four hours. The queue to grab a meal at this restaurant is akin to a line for food at a refugee camp. Its long and painful.
  • There are no courtesy phones for transit passengers to use. If they exist, they are well hidden because I could not find any.
Don’t know if the challenges facing Dubai airport are simply a case of bad planning and design or an inability to deal with unprecedented growth in traffic through Dubai. In any case, Dubai’s mess starts at the airport. As for the rest of the city it is one big parking lot with perennially clogged roads, sweltering heat, and endless construction sites in the midst of tall fancy buildings of various shapes, colors and sizes.

Note: If your destination is Dubai then the airport experience is pretty smooth. It is transit at Dubai that is very painful.