IPL 3 and its aftermath

The controversy surrounding IPL has become so murky that one is not able to make sense of it.

Lalit Modi is no doubt a brilliant innovator and marketing man. As one who has no special interest in cricket, I admire the way IPL secured the free-to-net rights on You Tube; probably the first major sporting event in the world to be aired live on the net.

He remains defiant of his innocence and is portraying himself as the fall guy. Whilst the controversy has already bagged its first victim in Shashi Tharoor, its hard to believe that Modi is whiter than white as he is portraying himself to be.

At the time of writing this post, almost all the franchisee owners have come out in support of Lalit Modi, the Commissioner of IPL and whose brain child it was. These owners include the Bollywood brigade, Vijay Mallya, Subroto Roy, Jay Mehta and many others.

However to the ordinary fan, a clean up of the tournament (if one is needed), and a smooth running is required to bring the focus back to the sport rather than its organization. After all it is the fan who pays for the extravaganza that is IPL. And let us not forget the fact that the IPL is owned by the BCCI, and the BCCI represents INDIAN cricket. The traditionalists in cricket would love to see the IPL fail and are revelling in the current controversy. It is time for the administrators to not only clean up the game but also to deliver the perception of cleaning up.

As a neutral, a few points:

- there shouldnt be any need for franchisee owners to declare their share holding pattern. they are business enterprises and like any other private enterprise, they should divulge what is required of private businesses and no more

- Shashi Tharoor may be naive, guilty, a fall guy, whatever. Doesnt mean Lalit Modi is taint free

- IPL has transformed the marketing and consumption of cricket world wide. It would be a shame if it had a short shelf life

- The IPL is Lalit Modi's baby. However he is not bigger than the IPL

- The system always wins

Ashraf Laidi

i cant praise Ashraf (www.ashraflaidi.com) highly enough. his market insights are an eye opener and i will recommend him to any forex trader, raw or experienced.


thanks Ashraf.

Innovar

check out www.Innovarltd.co.uk

Paul Baron runs Innovar, a planning company and they are offering free planning health check ups to organizations.

I know Paul very well and you get value from Innovar and their services.

Rocket Singh Salesman of the Year

its been a long time since i have identified so much with a movie, but this particular movie is one. its a big banner production but feels like an indie movie and has a terrific supporting cast.

its not a movie thats likely to do well with the masses but will strike a chord with the thinking man.

and the spiderman quote is sheer gold.

More on CRM v SCRM

where i stand on this is pretty obvious, but still to reinforce my point, here are my comments on Esteban's blog

http://tinyurl.com/r2x6vd

i dont see SCRM as anything new but an evolution of CRM and not a revolution. at the end of the day the adoption of social technologies isn't radically going to change the face of business.

SCRM vs CRM

was following this debate, http://www.socialmediatoday.com/SMC/112298, and felt the need to respond there and post in more detail here.

i do not see any great difference between CRM and SCRM except a label change. in fact i think the need to rebrand is more a reflection of the young age of the industry than anything else.

my views are not too dissimilar from Graham's comments (2nd response in http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d83452eab969e2011570d264fd970c)

SCRM uses social technology to enable businesses reach out to customers. so what exactly has changed?

customers were still talking to one another and influencing one another's purchasing decisions (through user groups or otherwise) and/or business behaviour before the advent of social technology. the arrival of social technology has lubricated this process and has had a multiplier effect on consumers' ability to change business behaviour. all that social technology has done is to aggregate consumer behaviour and empowered consumers to have a two way dialogue with businesses (if said businesses engaged in it).

that doesnt mean i think SCRM is irrelevant ( i think the label is, but its here to stay). businesses (some of them) now have to be more responsive towards aggregate behaviour. business has also got yet another tool from which to extract behavioural data and then strategize and deliver.

there seems to be an underlying message in most blogs/posts on SCRM, that with the advent of social technology, the consumer is king and has extraordinary power over business. I disagree with such notions. If anything, social technology has made irrelevant the individual consumer because of its aggregating nature

some random thoughts on CRM and SCRM

· CRM by itself is meaningless. It is a term created to describe how businesses interact with customers through several and often disparate functions/processes such as sales, accounts, support etc. CRM has become synonymous with the underlying technology platform to collate consumer data/behaviour through these functions/processes.

• SCRM is not a revolutionary change over CRM but a mutation. CRM implementations were driven by large technology vendors and early adopters. SCRM implementations (if one may call them that), will be driven because of the advent of social technology, so SCRM exists not because of one or many LARGE vendors but because of step change in the usage of social technology in the environment

• I find Paul's take on SCRM /(http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d83452eab969e2011570d264fd970c) woolly or pretty obvious from point 5 or so onwards. SCRM is not going to make THAT big a change to the way a business does business in the same way Web 2.0 hasnt revolutionised daily life ( it hasnt).

• There will be a surge in consulting spend on SCRM but like the CRM spend of previous years, I bet this spend too will be questioned for returns a decade down the line

• SCRM is less relevant for B2B and even in the B2C space, most relevant for those businesses where transaction values are low,sales cycles are short, impulse buying is prominent, and/or there is a social cachet to the purchase

and lastly for me atleast, SCRM = old wine but in a user friendly bottle.

Roger Federer - Roland Garros 2009 Champion

I was hoping that the adrenaline would die down today and saner minds would prevail, but when you have the tennis equivalent of an Obama moment, the high will continue for quite some time.

So... this might be interpreted as a drool jerker and those of a delicate composition should look away.

All along I have maintained that Roger Federer's best years are past and sometime earlier this year I had also predicted that no one beyond the age of 26 will win anything noteworthy this year. I have been properly humbled by a master who himself has experienced what humbling means.

The last two weeks we saw the incredible runs of Robin Soderling and Juan Martin Del Potro and despite my being a Federer appreciator, I firmly believed that one of the two would be his nemesis this year.

Neither happened.

Federer called upon his survival skills against Juan Martin Del Potro (who surely is a top 3 contender now) but if my hopes started rising that Federer had a chance against Robin Soderling, they were quickly dashed when I re-watched Soderling oust Gonzalez and pit the clay of Roland Garros with craters caused by his forehands.

So came the final and I was expecting Soderling come out with his bazookas blazing, bring to court his ferocity of attitude and make Federer wilt.

Federer forgot to read that script when he left the hotel.

All we could see was the maestro was back with quick, short points and drop dead shots that left Soderling gasping at the base line.

And the aces! Federer has never been in the Pete Sampras class of ace mongering, but yesterday we saw a new ace merchant in play and that too on clay. Some of those aces defied physics and followed the unwritten rules that only genius is privy too. We have excellent statisticians on this board and it will be interesting to see how many aces Federer served and how they compare historically to past RG finals.

However, all along we were expecting Soderling to burst through, to unshackle his weapons and torch Federer’s dreams.

Didn't happen. A full day later the abiding memory of the final is that of control. Federer had that match in control, in his palm the moment the players stepped on court. Federer smothered Soderling's brilliance with his serves, his movement, and his drop shots. In Soderling’s own words, " But it's always -- you know, every time I played Roger, after the match I always said, I played so bad today. Now I learned that it's not that I played bad, he makes me play bad. So that's what's so difficult playing against him"

For me, this achievement of Federer’s is less about statistics and numbers and more to do with the human psyche. Very few of us can comprehend what he has achieved because we haven’t been there and done it. All champions are equally insecure too and Federer has had to battle his insecurities, demons, the continual media barrage, the weight of the fans, the loneliness of the tour, the records; day in and day out, and he came through all that yesterday as not just last man standing but deserved man standing.

Late at night when he was asleep, his subconscious must have kept on asking him especially these last few years, "Who am I? Can I do this? Am I worthy? Am I fake?” Yesterday he answered his subconscious.

And what does this say of us, us Federer appreciators?

Vicarious living is partly why champions in any field have a fan base. But there is more to fandom and appreciation than just vicarious living.

When you watch a Roger Federer, or for that matter a Raphael Nadal, a Tiger Woods or a Pete Sampras, you realise this is what Charles Darwin and Gregor Mendel set out to discover when they did their research, on the Beagle in one case and over peas in the other.

The coalescence of inherited traits, environment, and ability to evolve results in one Roger Federer out of a billion. Such benign freaks are worthy of following because they reaffirm why we no longer live in caves half naked. They provide a reference point for achievement and drag humanity forward just by being that reference point.

Till yesterday Robert Frost's lines must have resonated with Roger Federer.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

Today it is Roger Federer unshackled.

Champions League and the IPL

I dont follow football, in fact detest club football. the exceptions i make are for international football.

champions league 2009 was a matchup between two giants in european football and had the potential to be a humdinger of a match with two of the world's best players going at each other.

one team lived upto its billing and the other didnt. one man lived upto his billing as the greatest footballer on the planet currently and the other came close.

football is a stupid game if you think about it and is designed for failure. what can be more awkward than 22 men chasing a small ball around a park? yet when barcelona play as they did yesterday with messi, iniesta and xavi dominating the show, one can only marvel at the fluidity and ease with which 11 players can mesh together. then one realises why this is the most followed sport on earth.

a last point. yesterday's final was played between two clubs with contrasting ownership. one, owned by hardnosed american businessmen and arguably the most successful football club in the world. the other owned by the supporter members of the club who elect a management team every few years.

guess who won? righteous football or what!

for whatever reason i imagined that ipl 2009 would not be as successful as ipl 2008. i have been proven wrong.

ipl2008 astonished me with its vision. given that i dont associate indian businesses with vision (ipl is a business and most indian businesses are short termist), and that ipl 2008 was conceived, planned and executed in less than a year, the foresight in its structure (mandatory number of players under a certain age for example) amazed me.

ipl 2009 has gone one step further in its ability to be creative/innovative/make its own rules. i cant think of a single national sporting event that was transported lock, stock and barrel to a different country and run successfully there. not just innovation at its best, but also outsourcing! in stark contrast, the dinosaurs that run english cricket would prefer to choke on their prawn sandwiches than to contemplate minor change let alone execute major change.

ipl is also showing the world the australian legacy to world cricket. shane warne and adam gilchrist might not be single handedly responsible for their teams vicotories in the two ipls, but no one can deny their ability to bring together good teams on small budgets.

and lastly, i dont know if eddy grant's song, "give me hope jo'anna" was preplanned for the closing ceremony but it certainly was fitting for a nascent rule breaking sporting event.

Indian Elections

Every few years, a circus is laid on for the whole world by India, free of charge. That circus, the general elections, comes accompanied with sound, violence, unbelievable twists in the plot; pretty much what a typical Bollywood masala offering is about.

For a Westerner the Indian general elections are a thing of bemusement. The very fact that 1 billion people in a third world country vote every few years is astonishing. To top that, by and large the results are accepted gracefully (Dubya take note), and the democracy does work (so long as you dont raise the bonnet).

I have always trumpeted that for third world countries to break the shackles of the third world tag, mere annual growth rates arent enough. Those growth rates have to be backed by lessening of the wealth divide and a development of a mature society.

General Elections 2009 have been a revelation not because of the mandate given to the Congress but because the voters had the courage (inertia?) to vote for a government that will deliver political stability at the very least.

Maybe this is a false dawn, but still the emergence of social maturity is one to celebrate.

Obama again

as i write this the first quarter of the year is past and economic gloom has set in well. job insecurity is rampant and i keep saying to friends and family alike that this year the standard form of greeting has been changed from the conventional hi/hello to 'how's your job'.

obama has sprinkled some of his stardust on the uk during the g20 visit as a result of which the ftse rose a hundred odd points. nice. can we petition that we get him to visit the uk every quarter? being a staunch republican i am annoyed at the media coverage of michelle obama breaching royal protocol by hugging the queen. i was intrigued to hear obama use his full name, barach hussein obama, at a nato event last week. i expected him to shy away from using his middle name, but looks like the man has reserves of self confidence.

i have discovered that even in these times relationships are not that easily swayed. i had to make a good friend redundant in february and our relationship has withstood that.

a friend of mine runs a mcdonalds franchisee and he is naturally ebullient. he wants a recession to happen every year.

and on that upbeat note, au revoir.

Obama it is

We have seen the enemy and the enemy is us, said Pogo, a cartoon character 30 years back.This week the American electorate might well have said: We have seen change and the change is us.

Enough has been written about the significance of Obama's victory; suffice to say a decade back, no one would have predicted a non white President for the USA in their lifetime. A view that I have increasingly come across is that Obama got elected because of the colour of his skin and not because of his policies. That he is unproven. That he has vacillated during his tenure as a Senator. Those views might have some credence, but I think they obfuscate the point of Obama's victory

USA came into existence because of an idea. An idea that a person's destiny would not be determined by his or her birth. USA came into existence because immigrants took risks in moving to a country which they knew little of.

By electing an unknown entity as the President, USA proved that its fundamental values were very much alive. That in its deepest ever economic crisis, it could still ideate. It could still take risks. And for me, that was the point of the 2008 elections.

There isnt a single country in the world today which would have taken that kind of risk and therein lies the success and charm of the USA

Do not go gentle into that good night

i wrote an article last year when roger federer won his 5th wimbledon crown, quoting dylan thomas.

those same words are true even today.

on a day when grey skies and rain hewed the day, the king and the prince set out to light fire. the blaze was of such raging intensity, that the skies had to reluctantly make way for the sun to come watch.

for those watching, the adrenaline had run out, the goose pimples had had their day, the mind had gone blank; couldn't believe the visual feast, and still the King and the Prince battled on.

till the Prince coming from the land of the moors tasted greatness.

in the same land which gave birth to a certain chunky cigar chomping persona who inspired the nation with " Never give in! Never give in! Never, never, never, never - in nothing great or small, large or petty. Never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense"

for the King's fans, it was bittersweet. On the one hand it was reassuring to see him come back in great style and make the Prince work for his win. On the other, one wished he could have lived the dream a little longer.

however time, age, change and revolution have their own agenda. that agenda left the King and the Prince swapping their roles, both teary eyed, and the audience wonder struck.

we will see lot of debate on whether the Prince is greater than the King, and whether the King can come back. there are even threads saying the King is dead, no doubt inspired by a certain lady during the A.O.

all this is irrelevant. what the King has achieved cannot be taken away from him. half a decade of sustained brilliance is unexpungable. What will happen in the future is unknown. The Prince might well go on to win 20 slams. That does not diminish the achievements of the King or of other greats.

as to the King being dead.. in tennis, Kings dont die. they become immortal, passing on the mantle of sovereign to the reigning great.

the clouds have come back today with a vengeance, as if denying yesterday happened.

But we witnessed what happened yesterday.

We witnessed Magic.

The Emergence of Ordinary

andy warhol is responsible.

not only does he takes crappy pictures of a crappy soup can, he then has the temerity to say everyone will be famous for 15 minutes.

lo and behold the internet arrived giving everyone the ability to be just that. the internet didnt remain at being just able to connect things and people in ether, but also ended up having a multiplier effect on all of society.

this has created a niche for the ordinary.

here goes my list of things ordinary

chetan bhagat's one night at the call centre - inane drivel

amy winehouse - lousy hair, lousy tattoos, lousy posture, lousy behaviour, a voice that mumbles. and she wins a grammy or two for that. go figure

tate britain, work no 850 featuring sprinters running in the gallery - crap packaged as art. surest way to sell. www.tate.org.uk/britain/exhibitions/duveenscommission/default.shtm

spiderman 3 - bollywood song and dance and love triangle. in english. with sfx

lindsay lohan and paris hilton - having a blonde day everyday

mona lisa - famous for being famous. otherwise an itty bitty painting.

big brother and all its spin offs in all countries - at one point television and movies provided escapism from reality. now reality provides escapism from reality. boring shit.

Nano, Jaguar and evolution

a few weeks back was arguing intensely(nothing new there), with a friend of indian origin about cars and the Tatas. this gentleman is widely travelled, has a passion for cars, and both took him to an automobile show in geneva. the nano and the indica were on display there and according to him were the only cars in which visitors werent allowed to sit in, to get a feel for the cars. the reason given to him was that visitors who had sat in the cars, had damaged parts of the car, and the dealer didnt have spares available.

this got my friend started on his hobby horse of indians not being able to plan, anticipate.

he has a point. however dealers sell cars not at exhibitions but at their showrooms. car makers dont sell cars at exhibitions. they sell awareness.

the nano annoumcement generated a lot of front page publicity in britain with business papers and magazines givint it extensive coverage.

while most folks seem to associate the nano with a cheap small car for the masses, i tend to look at the nano differently.

with the nano, the tatas have taken first mover advantage. they have forced the established manufacturers to accelerate their development plans for cheap small cars. they probably have got the manufacturers to give away freebies in the basic version, to differentiate from the nano.

i am willing to bet that the nano will be higher priced than the 100k originally declared, but then i am also willing to bet that a few grand here and there will not take away the sheen of the nano.

i have always believed that indian companies are not very good at marketing and branding with the odd companies such as kingfisher being the exception. however indian companies are good at innovation and thats what the nano is about.

on jaguar, i am on less sure footing re the tatas abilities. given my take on the marketing and branding abilities of indian companies, it will be interesting to see how the jaguar brand value is retained. but then toyota did launch lexus demonstrating that a mass market car maker could also launch a successful luxury car so there is precedence.

do not go gentle in that good night

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

perhaps roger federer is a fan of dylan thomas. perhaps he read these lovely words of his. roger is not old. nor is he in the twilight of his career. nor is the genius back in the bottle.

but it has been a tough year for him. the australian open win was followed by some pedestrian displays and then he came back emphatically at hamburg, only to be quelled at the french open by the spanish matador.

the pack smelt demise. the pack smelt the end of an era. it was growling,snapping, sniffing and biting. and we could see the pack in the form of the spanish conquistador.

and this was the backdrop to the coliseum that was sw19 yesterday, whence our gladiators clad in pristine whites came to do battle. the challenger who doesnt know what capitulacion means.. and the defender who doesnt know what defeat means on grass.

the puppet master, above, in his wisdom, knows genius cannot be made on an assembly line. it has to be handcrafted in a minority to enliven and enrichen the lives of the masses. and hence one shane warne in australia, one sachin tendulkar in india, one jonny wilkinson in england and one roger federer in switzerland.

the puppet master also knows that genius is not on tap. these greats will have ordinary days. yes their ordinary days are on a different scale to us mere mortals. but they are still ordinary. and hence roger federer had, by his own standards a very ordinary year.

we hadnt witnessed the glorious shot making that we know he is capable of. we hadnt witnessed the mind numbing beauty that his tennis is capable of the whole year. and we had too few of those jaw dropping, pinch myself, am i alive, moments.

we the discerning started doubting the maestro. maybe the maestro started doubting himself. after all michaelangelo cannot paint a sistine chapel every day.

and so the gladiatorial contest started yesterday. doubt and hope warred amongst the believers.the spanish matador ran better, ran quicker, hit harder.. set 1 came and went. set 2 went .and set 3 went and so did set 4. the maestro still hadnt gone into his turbo charged game.. and doubt started turning into despair for us believers.we railed and ranted internally. surely the puppet master had not set an expiry date on genius.

maybe the maestro heard us. maybe he didnt.

but came set 5

and the maestro went into the ZONE.

i do not know what the zone is. i am not a genius. mere mortals cannot describe it. genius cannot describe it and will not describe it cause they know mere mortals cannot comprehend.

but the zone is jonny wilkinson with that final drop kick. the zone is that day in adelaide when shane warne commanded the field.

the zone is roger federer, the maestro, in the 5th set of wimbledon 2007.

it does not matter to me now if roger federer should or should not be called the goat. it does not matter whether he wins the french open.

all it matters is that i was witness to this 5th set. there was reason to be alive. there was privilege to see this man play, win. and stamp his greatness on the grass. and tell the matador, not yet my friend, the day still belongs to me.

and so onto monday. the day is flat. the day is empty. the gladiators have packed their bags and gone in search of other coliseums.

there will be days when the demons come back. there will be days when insecurities rear their head. there will be days when i can hear the pack growling in the background.

to such days i have the antidote.

it is chris martin on the boom box
"When you try your best, but you don't succeed...

And the tears come streaming down your face
When you lose something you can't replace...
Could it be worst?

Lights will guide you home,
And ignite your bones,
And i will try to fix you"..

and remembering the 5th set with the maestro in the zone... then the day will be brighter.. the demons will recede.. the impossible will be possible

Tony B's negotiating skills

I liked Tony B during the initial years of his office. he had charisma. that,since then, has leaked faster than a Roger Federer forehand. But to get to the point, i wish he read 'Negotiations for Idiots'.

when you sit across Putin and want to tell him you are concerned about their aggression.. Don't say, "people were becoming fearful" of Russia's foreign policy"!

Negotiation 101 says, DON'T expose your weaknesses and fears!

Tony B, which address may i post 'Negotiations for Idiots' to?

Pukeworthy Award of the year so far goes to

Ash Crowned: MSN's most searched person.

Cont...

Ash Crowned: MSN's most searched person

Friday, June 08, 2007
18:00 IST

Blog this story

From her latest movies to her appearance at the Cannes Film Festival, everyone wants to know what Aishwarya Rai Bachchan is working on and where she is going next. Aishwarya Rai Bachchan was today crowned the most searched personality on www.in.msn.com by the IIFA brand ambassador Amitabh Bachchan at the glittering eighth annual International Indian Film Academy (IIFA) Awards ceremony at Yorkshire, England.

Paris Hilton, " Mom, Mom, its not right"

" no one has taken my picture in three days. I am traumatised".

any bets on whether this circus will result in a bestseller?

Spidey 3 - Bollywood influenced?

i wonder what sam raimi did with the song and dance routine? maybe kirsten dunst and toby maguire were singing and dancing around the web and the web gave way...

other than the song and dance routine and the fx, its very much takes off on orthodox bollywood themes.. love between friends, two friends after the same girl, evil avatar of the good hero (though bollywood would have made this as the evil twin of the hero and the twin too would have been after the girl), and lastly, sacrifice of the friend in the end..

if bollywood was able to copyright its themes it would have made a killing on spidey

repetitive foot in the mouth syndrome

to you know who you are

i am sorry. the intentions and belief were and always be right. the medium and conveyance was wrong.