Foreign coach for Maharashtra state team!

Check this out. Maharashtra Cricket Association has hired an Australian coach! This is quite a trend. Its only a matter of time before other states go down the same path. Btw, check out this rumor about Bahutle and Jadeja defecting to play for marketers. The biding war for cricketers at the Ranji level is just round the corner. Matching fixing at the local level is next?

Aussies are back to their winning ways

With two successive victories, the Aussies have put to rest any doubts about their continued domination of world cricket. These two victories highlight just how critical Symonds is to the team. A suspension for drinking followed by two outstanding performances. Man, this guy is awesome!

I think they are going to win all the remaining one-day games of this series. (I predicted their victory over England :-)

Movie Review: Parineeta

Starring: Sanjay Dutt, Saif Ali Khan, Vidya Balan
Hindi, romantic story based on Saratchandra Chatterjee's book.

Indian movie film makers have now resorted to the easy way out. Simply remake old movies! Inspired by the success of Devadas, follow other remakes such as Parineeta (apparently already made twice), Paheli (original appeared in the early 70s), and in the works is the remake of Don! Since I have not seen the earlier versions or read the book, I was pretty open minded about Parineeta.

Like most Vidhu Vinod Chopra's movies (1947, Kareeb, Munnabhai, Mission Kashmir etc.), this one is a made with a lot of attention to detail. The music is excellent and blends perfectly with the film. The sets are very impressive and the overall quality of the movie making is excellent. Newcomer Vidya Balan has put in a very creditable performance and is an excellent choice for the role. Saif Ali Khan, gradually emerging as a commercially viable romantic hero (Hum Tum, Kal ho Na Ho and now Parineeta), has put in a good performance as well. Sanjay Dutt (a fixture in Vidhu Vinod Chopra films) appears to have gained weight and aged significantly. The rest of the cast does their part.

The storyline as such is nothing new or for that matter earth shattering (as made out by some reviews and other movie promos). Typical stuff -- childhood friendship, grows into romance, some misunderstanding, love triangle develops, hero agrees to marry another girl (small role by Diya Mirza), realizes his mistake, melodrama ensues, and the couple come together. Someone has to be a villain. In this case its the hero's Dad. Saif plays the hero, Sanjay Dutt completes the love triangle, while Raima Sen helps fix the traingle. Rekha appears in a dance number to enhance the star power. The strength of the movie lies in the treatment of the none too new plot, the excellent music and the overall production quality.

If you are the type who generally enjoys commercial romantic films, this movie is a very safe bet.

Book Review: Q and A

Title: Q and A
Author: Vikas Swarup
Fiction, story based in India.

An exciting novel! The story revolves around a quiz show (and hence the name Q&A) and the lead character, who works as a waiter in a restaurant, and who wins the quiz show prize of Rs. 1 billion. The quiz organizers suspect foul-play and have the winner arrested. The rest of the book is about how he knew the answers to each of the questions, not by foul play but by a strange series of events in his life. The answer to each question has a story behind it. The author has ingeniously weaved a whole series of stories into one. Very creative and imaginative indeed! The book is fast paced and very engaging.

The book is quite "filmy". In other words, it has a strong bollywood feel to it. Perhaps the author was considering a movie even while writing it (or maybe it began as an attempt at writing a movie script). Its a masala of sorts -- gays, match-fixing, espionage, murder, robbery, romance, suicide, filmstars, child abuse, sex, prostitution, contract killing, incest, you name it-- a comprehensive list of issues du jour are cleverly captured in the book as a part of the story.

Overall a very impressive and commendable effort for a debut novel. Most debut novels have an autobiographical side to it. But this book is the product of a hugely imaginitive mind and has little, and probably no autobiographical side to it.

The author is from the ministry of external affairs in India. Check out his interview.

Firefox: Tabbed browsing problems

Everyone is raving about the tabbed browsing feature in Firefox. While I do agree that its a powerful and cool feature, I have noticed a couple of shortcomings. Firefox turns into a memory hog and slows down the machine when you have a number of tabs. Secondly, when you click the dreaded x mark to kill a tab it doesn't prompt you. Instead it just kills the tab without prompting! On more than one occasion I have lost useful work because of this. I wish they would prompt the user before killing the tab! Firefox is nevertheless a cool browser! (at least until MS IE 7.0 is out!)

Aussies in trouble?

After almost a decade Australia has lost 4 crickets matches in a row! No matter what, this must put them under a lot of pressure. To come out of this will take a lot of character and strong leadership. Its a good test for Ponting.

Tomorrow's match against England is crucial. If Australia loses again, they are going to be under a lot of psychological pressure. If you think about the last match against England, barring Pieterson's super performance, Australia were well on top. So one could argue that it wasn't as much of a failure on Australia's part. It was more to do with one "out of the world" batting display that sealed their fate.

With Symonds and Lee back in the side, Australia might just return to their winning ways. Symonds has a lot at stake given that his captain blatantly lied to coverup for him. All in all and interesting tussle lies ahead and for once the Aussies are on the defensive! If they lose again, they could be in real trouble!

Here is my prediction for tomorrow's match: Australia will thrash England

Democrats must pick their battles

Ever since the elections last year the Democrats have been struggling to develop a coherent strategy. Without a majority in either the senate or the house, the President has a strong chance of pushing ahead with his agenda. Faced with this predicament, the Democrats are inclined to oppose anything and everything simply because of the ideological differences. At present it sounds like they raise a hue and cry each time (judicial nominees and other appointments) and then finally go away empty handed. Unfortunately, this will not help their cause, especially in the long run. It might be prudent to develop a comprehensive strategy, which involves picking a few battles and somehow trying to win them. Else they will just come across as being obstructionist and this might worsen their tally in the years to come. The Bolton nomination is yet another test of their strategy.

I get the feeling that politics in the US is fast becoming like West Bengal politics (!!) -- the same party is always in power, the opposition is just their to fill some seats and make some speeches with little influence on policy.