Book Review: The Lovely Bones

Read the book (fiction) The Lovely Bones, By Alice Sebold.

The story is about is fourteen year old girl who gets raped and killed by a weirdo in the neighborhood. The book focuses on how the parents and others deal with this loss over time. Interestingly, the little girl goes to heaven and gets to see and participate in this process. Great idea and hats of to the author for the wonderful writing style and creativity. The story and writing is truly engaging and depicts the grief and sorrow that the family has to deal with in great detail. Unfortunately, I found that there was very little beyond this! I was hoping that something would come out of the crime and waited the entire book but nothing came about. The story is certainly very moving, but I found myself disappointed overall, because the entire book was pretty much an emotional trip and nothing else. If you are the deeply emotional type, you’ll love this book.

Third ODI: India Spineless

India put up a spineless response to Pak’s 319. Veeru failed and India collapsed barring a decent show by Pathan with the bat. For an ardent Indian cricket fan, it was disheartening but nevertheless familiar sight of a procession of Indian superstars walking in and out after failing to settle in and dominate the Pak bowling. For the third consecutive time Sachin returned with a single digit score. For all the pressure on Ganguly to perform, Sachin, Yuvraj, Kaif are not far behind.

Dravid was out to a nasty delivery. The rest had no excuses. Dhoni threw his wicket away to a poor shot just when he looked set for a big score. The sad part is that for once the famed middle order got a golden opportunity to build a score because of the early loss of wickets and simply failed to deliver.

Pathan could use a break?After his dismal show with the ball, Pathan had to redeem himself somehow and he certainly managed to do that with the bat. In any case, Pathan’s bowling seems to have completely lost its venom. In a relatively short period he has regressed from being India’s lead strike bowler to a potential weak link in the bowling. In short, I think he could use a long break, a la Zaheer Khan. The break certainly helped Zaheer regain his bowling form at least to a certain extent.

The Wicket: The Jamshedpur wicket was certainly not a bad one, in that it wasn’t a batting paradise like the earlier ODIs. The truth is that the Pak bowlers exploited the pitch while the Indian bowlers simply failed to. It won’t be a stretch to speculate that India would not have put up a big score even if India had batted first.

Changes in the Pak team: Younis Khan was reduced to a mere passenger (he did manage a catch or two) while Danish wasn’t really tested given the way the Indian batting collapsed. The true test is when Viru starts slogging him at the top of the order, just as Pathan did to him at the end.

Thank God, no Agarkar: Dada’s choice of Pathan over Agarkar shows how little confidence he has in him. He clearly prefers an out of form Pathan over Agarkar. Wonder who is behind Agarkar’s selection when the captain has so little faith in him. The next one day might unfortunately see Agarkar in action after Pathan’s poor show with the ball.

Overall a very convincing victory for Pak. The Pak bowlers bowled well and the batsmen had no trouble scoring against the Indian bowling. Hopefully, the next one day will be hard fought and won’t see another “wuzzy” performance from the India superstars.

Third ODI: India-Pak

Pak put up a fine batting display. As often happens, India has the rare ability to bring out of form batsmen from the opposition back to form. In this case, it was Salman Butt’s turn. He played a fluent innings and deserved the century. Pak seemed set for a score higher than the 319 they ended up with. They lost too many wickets at the end to achieve the 350 target.
In any case, I had predicted that India would make 220 in reply. India is now struggling with a pathetic 76-5. I still think it will take a miracle for India to win and we’ll be lucky to cross 200. Pak seem set for a morale boosting win. The psycological impact of this Pak victory here will be huge. India could well find itself in a post third test mind-set. The dependency on Sehwag is similar to India’s dependence on Sachin in the 90s, and is cause for serious concern.

Google Maps: Classy Stuff

Check out Google Maps. Slowly these folks seems to be offering everything that the portals of dot com days offer/used to offer, but with a distinctive class of their own. Here are some initial observations.

  • Just as Gmail, Google Maps are easy to use once you get a hang of it.
  • The satellite pictures are way cool!
  • The maps views when you zoom in are nice and uncluttered and show you the street names very clearly.
  • You can select the map that appears after you type in your start and end points and actually move it around with your mouse. Check it out, enough to give goose bumps!
  • No matter what you do to the map, the directions that appear on the right of the screen always remain. This is a really nice feature, as opposed to the whole page refreshing.
  • The links to start address and end address lets you zoom in on specific related to the roads at the two end points. Very useful feature.
  • The ability to fire up the satellite picture within the inset/pop-up window while the map remains in the background is simply awesome.
  • Can’t seem to print only the directions without the map view.
  • I could not figure out the use of “Link to this page” feature. Didn’t see it in the help either. I didn’t spend too much time (who cares to read manuals anyway!) trying to figure this out.
Overall, I love Google Maps. Its amazing how these guys repeatedly figure out a better way to offer existing services. Impressive stuff!

Second ODI: Cool Victory!

Glad that India won in style. Hats off to Pak for putting up a fight. Dhoni is a great find. I hope Dada will continue to send this guy up the order. Dhoni and Viru at the crease is electrifying cricket. Man, that guy Viru, is like Kapil Dev on steriods.

Razack’s batting was very impressive. He is a master of improvisation and placement. Nehra was completely clueless about where to bowl to this guy. It was not that Nehra was bowling badly. This guy just had an answer for every kind of ball. In my opinion this guy is more dangerous than Afridi. He indulges in sensible hitting and is hard to keep in check.

Btw, can someone tell me what on earth is Agarkar doing in the team for the third one day! What happened to Dada’s pool of young fast bowlers — Bhandari, Munaf Patel, Gagandeep, etc.etc. Anyone can do better than Agarkar. I can’t imagine Agarkar bowling to Afridi is full flow. Agarkar has a strange knack of putting people in a “zone” where their free stroking skills simply come alive! God, I hope he doesn’t play in the third one day! Even an injured Balaji is a safer bet!

Second ODI: India 356 for 9

India recovered quite a bit in the last few overs, after losing a flurry of wickets, thanks to some lusty blows by Balaji and Zaheer. Pak need a flying start from Afridi if they have to make this score. Veeru went completely berserk right from the start. After the early loss of Sachin, Dhoni joined Veeru and did a super job of keeping up the run rate. After Veeru’s dismissal, as always Dravid played a sensible knock and took the Indian score to a respectable 250+. Then a flood of wickets and finally a cameo from the tailenders helped India to a very good score. Hats of to the Indian team management for promoting Dhoni in the order. If this guy proves to be a good keeper, Dinesh Karthik better watch his place in the test side. His batting was very impressive. And finally we have found someone other than Veeru who can really whack the ball! He is definite asset in the one day side and should be used whenever needed to accelerate the run rate.

Pak need a flying start from Afridi if they have to make this score. A run rate of 7+ can obviously be daunting. Should be an exciting match ahead provided Pak can remain in the chase.

Note: India made a decent score even without Ganguly striking form.

The Captaincy Conundrum

The Indian cricket captain has the toughest job in international sports. Several millions watch the game very closely. Everyone has an opinion and plenty of advice. No matter what you do, there will always be plenty of criticism simply by the sheer volume of followers of the game. In this day and age, media scrutiny is another challenge.

Despite all this, our current captain, Ganguly has achieved the unique status of being the most successful Indian captain ever. Yet, there is not a day when someone somewhere calls for his ouster. Persisting with Ganguly might not be so bad after all, and here are a few reasons why.

1. Transition to a new captain takes time. If a new captain is named it definitely requires an adjustment period both for the team and the new captain. I think it takes close to two years for a captain to get comfortable with the job and form his own trusted team of players. With the world cup round the corner in 2007, India must dump Ganguly now if it were to give the new captain sufficient time. At this stage, this seems unlikely, given Ganguly’s record as captain, unless India loses very badly to Pak.

2. Ganguly is the first Indian captain who is not the mainstay of the team! Historically, the top player in the team has always been made the captain. For once, India didn’t do that (more so by circumstance, than by true intent, after Sachin’s failure at captaincy) and we ended up producing the most successful captain. He is at a stage in his career where he has nothing to prove! This is a good position to be in when captaining the side. Since he has never been the teams top batsman, bowler or fielder, he can focus more on the team. There is no other name that comes to mind which fits, this “not the mainstay” criteria and can still enjoy the confidence and respect of the other team members.

3. The alternatives are Sehwag or Dravid. Choosing either would go back to our common mistake of burdening the best player with the captaincy. The result, we end up with the loss of a consistent performer, and a failed captaincy. The other alternative would be Sachin! The less said about this, the better.

In short, Ganguly might not be a genius captain. But he is by far the best we have had and will be so for the foreseeable future. So rather than criticizing him at the slightest opportunity, lets come to terms with the fact that Ganguly might be our best bet under the circumstances.

India-Pak ODI series crucial: If we absolutely have to have a change of captain it might be best to put the new captain in charge of the one-day team first (especially with the world cup in view), a la Australia. If India loose very badly to Pak in the ODI series, a change of captain right way for the one-day side, might be a good move. This will give the new captain sufficient time to prepare for the world cup, and put Ganguly on notice for his Test captaincy. A nice way to phase out the experienced and usher in the youngsters.