Pran Kurup

Cricket: India Under Pressure

As India take on Bangladesh, the pressure will clearly be on India. New coach, minus Sachin and Ganguly, plenty of rumors about friction in the team, and the big loss in the World Cup, all combined, is bound to put Dravid and his boys under tremendous pressure. The Bangla boys on the other hand, have little to lose. If they win, they can claim that the world cup win was no fluke. On the other hand if they lose Bashar will attribute it to a poor show on the day, a slow start after a break etc.

With Shastri in charge, at a minimum, one can expect some reasonable control over the media and its endless speculation. But first, he and the rest of the team management will have to show some results. The pressure is going to be all around. An otherwise boring series might just turn out to be an interesting one!

MS To Acquire Yahoo: Two “Search” Losers Make a Winner?

Google is growing from strength to strength. A lucrative advertising industry is at stake. Yahoo’s Panama might have been an improvement over what Yahoo had before, but its in no way strong enough to pose a challenge to Google. Besides with the recent management exodus, the peanut butter memo-gate, the none to impressive quarterly results, and a shaky top management, Yahoo has hordes of challenges at hand.

As for Microsoft, their search and advertising strategy is simply way behind. It is struggling to get a foothold in this space and with each passing day, Google is expanding its presence and reach, thanks to its growing dominance of the search market. For an advertiser, the default choice is to advertise with the network that has the greatest audience. Moreover, once you start using Google Adwords and get familiar with it, you need something more compelling to change. It is almost like Microsoft’s hold over the desktop but certainly not there yet. But unless, the Yahoo-MS move fast, Google is going to be even harder to dislodge from a potentially huge advertising market.

So do two losers in the search and advertising market make a winner? Probably not. But at least it will pose a bigger challenge to Google, provided they can get over the integration issues that are likely to come with so much product/service overlap.

Check out stories on this news in the WSJ and the NY Times.

Movie Review: Nishabd

Title: Nishabd
Starring: Amitabh, Jia Khan, Revathi, Nasser

Director: Ram Gopal Varma

Director Ram Gopal Varma deserves credit for exploring so many diverse topics through his films. There is no question that he has a tremendous repertoire of movie making skills. If you consider sheer diversity of topics (Rangeela, Sarkar, Company, Satya etc. etc.), RGV is easily India’s leading Bollywood director. Nishabd is one more movie in this category of thus far unexplored themes in Hindi films.

Nishabd is about an old man (played by Big B) falling in love with a young girl (played by new comer Jia Khan), his daughter’s friend, who visits the family to spend a holiday. The movie is set in Munnar (in Kerala) and needless to say the location is beautiful.

The movie is extremely well-made with great attention to detail, like most RGV films. The acting is optimal (restrained) with minimal dialogues. The Director focuses instead on facial expressions and uses a monologue by Big B at the start and various points in the film to talk about issues related to the story. There are only a handful of actors in the film and all of them deliver good performances. In films like these (in particular most RGV films), there is very little of the conventional melodrama that is associated with Bollywood cinema. So purely from an acting point of view, the actors have to emote with minimal or often no dialogue. It almost feels like the actors have little to do, while the bulk of the work revolves around, the background score, the lighting, the editing etc.

Big B handles a role, unlike any he has ever played, and delivers an impressive performance. Revathi is a good choice for the role of the wife, but barring a couple of scenes, she has little to do. The movie is dominated by the leads, Amitabh and Jia Khan. The newcomer, Jia does a creditable job for someone in her first film, especially when it appears that the Director appeared to be more focused on her legs than on her acting!

The director possibly chose Amitabh for the role, because of his stature in the film industry. From the point of view of the story, however, a younger man (Anil Kapoor perhaps?) might have made the story more believable but probably not as “sale-able”. Overall, this film is fundamentally different from other Bollywood films. Some might find this movie too slow, others might find it arty, but at the end of the day its different, and worth watching (IMHO).

Google Needs An “i”?

Google renamed its Google customizable home page, “iGoogle”. I use this service and I think its very useful, and not to mention free. Its ironical that the World’s number one brand chose to join the bandwagon of “i” products, and that too, this late! “My Yahoo” on the other hand, which is Yahoo’s equivalent is great choice of names and was new and innovative when it was announced eons ago. On the other hand, “iGoogle” sounds weird (unlike the hugely successful iPod or up and coming iPhone both of which have a nice ring to it).

Surely, the marketing folks at Google can do better?

Cricket: Australian Dominance Continues

Australia won the Cricket World Cup held in the West Indies, as many had expected. With this victory the the Aussies have completed three World Cup titles in a row. The Aussie dominance of world cricket is unparalleled and almost reaching a point where its unhealthy for the game. The good news is that several cricket teams have improved the quality of their game significantly since the World Cup in 2003. The bad news is that the Aussies are still far ahead in terms of consistency, skill and overall professionalism. Ricky Ponting and his men are simply far superior than the rest of the teams combined and this has been the situation for many years.Sri Lanka deserves special credit for their outstanding performance throughout this tournament. Jayawardane has led from the front in all respects and at 29, with several years of cricket still ahead of him, seems to be firmly in-charge of Sri Lankan cricket. Their cricketing future seems bright and one worthy of emulating especially for teams such as Pakistan and India. Bangladesh and Ireland having qualified for the last eight at the expense of India and Pakistan, have plenty to be happy about. New Zealand is a team that seems to consistently progress as far as the semis and they have reason to feel frustrated as one more World Cup went by with another loss in the semis. South Africa return with their “chokers” tag in tact. India, Pakistan and England are back to the drawing board so to speak and have plenty to think about as they plan for the next four years leading up to the World Cup in the sub-continent.

Lastly, this World Cup was poorly planned resulting in poor spectator response. Matches could have been held without huge gaps and the entire World cup could have been completed in half the time. Hopefully, these mistakes will be addressed in the next World Cup. The final moments of the today’s match when the umpires, players and the officials were all in a confused state about the result of the match, was both comical and a sad reflection of the poor management behind World Cricket in general. As the game of cricket adapts to the times, it might be prudent to bring in some professional management at the helm of the ICC and the various Boards of the cricket playing countries.

George Tenet Shouldn’t Try Another “Slam Dunk”

Is George Tenet trying another slam dunk? Oh, please no! Thankfully, this time it is in the form of a book.

“As if you needed me to say ‘slam dunk’ to convince you to go to war with Iraq,’ ” Mr. Tenet apparently writes of Mr. Cheney’s infamous accusation that the WMDs were a CIA conclusion. While the decision to go to war was mostly that of the President and his insiders, Mr. Tenet simply can’t point fingers and try to go unscathed. He claims that the “slam dunk” comment was taken out of context. Even if this might be the case, it is well known that the Bush administration widely publicized the CIA findings as the basis for going to war. If Mr. Tenet felt strongly enough, he should have stood up for what he believed in at that time, rather than crying foul now. I suspect his book does more damage to himself than anybody else. Mr. Cheney is an easy target and so even if Mr. Tenet’s accusations were true, it does little to absolve him of any of the blame for the Iraq war.

According to the article in NY times, Mr. Tenet apparently expresses puzzlement that, since 2001, Al Qaeda has not sent “suicide bombers to cause chaos in a half-dozen American shopping malls on any given day.” “I do know one thing in my gut,” he writes. “Al Qaeda is here and waiting.” — And this guy was the CIA chief? When you read this, it sure sounds like his “slam dunk” defense seems less plausible.

With each passing day the Iraq war is losing its supporters, thankfully. Those responsible are in some form of trouble or the other if not already out of the scene. At the present moment, those responsible for the current state of affairs can better serve the world (and themselves) by trying to help deal with the mess in Iraq, than cashing in by writing books about the shameful past.

AOL: Better Late, Than Never

AOL launched its India site today. With established portals and newspaper sites already well entrenched, AOL’s move seems rather late. But with substantial growth still possible as more Indians get on the net, its a classic case of better late than never. Besides, there is plenty of ad revenue to be made provided AOL can drive the traffic to its site.

As for content and services offered by the site, there is nothing new. Its the usual “boring” stuff — Free email, news and articles on Bollywood, Cricket, Business etc. If you are one of those who is not satisfied with Samachar, HT, TOI, Rediff and the like, here is one more to the mix. The stuffing is the samei, but the package/label differ.

Cricket: Over-Aggressiveness Cost SA

South Africa went into the semi-finals against Australia with a very tough task ahead of them. Smith won the toss and elected to bat on what was supposed to be a batting track where as the match progressed, scoring runs would get more difficult (courtesy: Ian Botham’s analysis of the wicket). Unfortunately, SA pretty much lost the match in the first hour. It can be attributed completely to their over-aggressiveness. Smith is known of his aggression and on several occasions, it has served him well. But today was not of one of those days.

In the third over of the innings he jumped out a couple of steps trying to hit the ball out of the ground! Next, of all people Kallis, an otherwise sedate, level-headed batsmen, exposed all his stumps in an attempt to hit McGrath over the top! (Ponting’s pre-match characterization of Kallis as a “slow-coach” seems to have paid off!). From then on it looked like SA had no plan B whatsoever. Prince, the ideal man for the situation, threw his wicket away to a disgraceful swipe at a virtual wide ball!

In short, pretty much all the batsmen went out and had wild swings! Nothing epitomized this approach more than the insane shot played by the last batsman, Langveldt. With still 5+ overs to go and big-hitter Kemp at the other end, Langveldt tried to hit Watson out of the park when he should have been trying to stick around and give his partner the strike!

The South African team has over the years earned the name “chokers” for losing close games. This time around they strangled themselves and choked right upfront! Its sad to see a team that had the best chance of giving Australia a run for their money, completely fall apart.

Cricket: SL Peaked Early?

Sri Lanka was at its very best in the game against NZ (the eternal semi-finalists). Led by the captain, Sri Lanka’s batting was simply outstanding. For a team that has no real big hitters in the middle order, the amount of runs they made in the last 10 overs was simply remarkable. Jayawardene was outstanding to say the least. In the early part of his innings he was struggling to force the pace. But he remained calm as ever and more than made up for it in the second half of his innings. It was great example of ODI batsmanship. The kind of big hits that he produced at the end were so “uncharacteristic” when you think about his normal batting style. SL had two very poor lbw decisions against them, despite which they went on to make a very challenging total.

The SL bowling is so strong especially on the turning tracks in the WI that anything over 200 is a tough total to chase against them. With 290 to get NZ needed a big innings from one of their top batsmen, but it never came through, thanks to Murali’s magic. New Zealand’s main strike bowler, Shane Bond had a poor start from which he never recovered and this was consistent with NZ’s performance today overall.

Hats off to Stephen Fleming for quitting the ODI captaincy. The timing could not have been better. During the last decade, he has served NZ cricket in a big way both as captain and as an ODI player. Besides, he has even een grooming his successor. Martin Crowe was over-reacting by criticizing the NZ team and the coach, John Bracewell. After so many good games NZ just lost to a better team on a bad day.

One can only hope that Sri Lanka does not repeat India’s performance in the last World Cup final after so many great performances in a row. The fear is that SL’s performance today was so good, that its almost impossible to match this level of performance. It would be awful to see another one-sided final, especially one featuring a dominant Aussie team.

Btw, if my pre-World Cup predictions were to come true, SA should beat the Aussies in the other semi-finals! 🙂

Pubished at 96!

Harry Bernstein, a 96 year old man published his first book titled “The Invisible Wall”. See the article. Admirable spirit indeed! Apart from the fact that he was 96 years old, the other interesting fact is that he sent the book directly to the publisher(without an agent), in this case, Random House UK. NY Times published a review of the book.

“If I had not lived until I was 90, I would not have been able to write this book,” he said. “I wasn’t ready.”