English and Indian Cricket - the lion roars, the tiger miaows

one team has had an absymal Ashes series in which they reached rock bottom and then roared back in style to win the tri series, which was the one day series subsequent to the Ashes. yes they beat Australia, in Australia, not once, but thrice. lions indeed.

the other team could have won in South Africa, in December. the subsequent wins over the West Indies and Sri Lanka don't count.

home wins don't count. home losses do.

both England and India have teams with talent. and yet India remain paper tigers. so whats the difference between these two teams? what makes one come back from adversity and win triumphantly? what makes the other open its mouth to roar like a tiger... and out comes a squeak?

can it be hunger? the desire to win? that unquenchable desire that makes you sleepless.. that desire that lead Sir Steve Redgrave to 5 Olympic Golds.. that is 20 years of slog..

it certainly can't be lack of talent. the Indian team is probably the most talented team, counted individually. talent alone can take you so far. It is the desperate desire to win that tips the scale in your favour.

Don't believe me? Look at Tim Henman. oodles of talent. but lacked the steely determination that Pete Sampras had.

and then look at Ivan Lendl. no talent on grass. but can you imagine the grim, cold eyed will that lead him to 3 Wimbledon finals?

or is it not even the hunger.. is it something far deeper? the cultural and emotional psyche of Indians that make them less suited to competitive physical sport?

Race, State intervention and National Identity

today in the US we have the first Afro-American Presidential candidate in Obama and the first woman running for President in Hillary Clinton.

wow. make that double wow.

having watched American politics for a long time, i am flabbergasted. In the Reagen years I would never have thought of America having candidates from minority commmunities running for President. It is all the more astonishing given that mainstream US is very conservative. anti abortion, anti gay etc.

I think we are seeing a seismic shift here in US politics and minority relations. Its possible, probable in fact, that Obama and Clinton will not win the elections and we end up with another white middle aged male as President. But having Obama and Clinton getting considerable TV and mindspace in the next few months alone will have a significant impact on the conscious and subconscious of middle America.

so where does that leave the UK? the UK has always been a liberal home for views on abortion, gay rights, minority rights yet the UK has yet to have a black candidate for prime minister. Oh yes, we had a woman prime minister, the iron lady, but no black prime ministers or prime ministerial candidates. The UK has always followed a state driven initiative of improving race relations. is it because of this state intervention, which is often heavy handed, that is preventing black candidates to come to the fore? is it state intervention that is stifling activism that has lead to the US getting its first Afro American candidate? isnt it ridiculous to have the prime minister, chancellor and parliament lending their voice to the noise over the irrelevant Celebrity Big Brother?

i think it is. The UK is fast becoming a nanny state where state is expected to, and does, guide citizens on how to lead a life.

take the latest Unicef report on a survey of childrens' well being in different industrialised countries. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6360517.stm. UK comes bottom.

reaction from a concerned public : "

Shadow Chancellor George Osborne accused Chancellor Gordon Brown of having "failed this generation of children".

"After 10 years of his welfare and education policies, our children today have the lowest well-being in the developed world," he said."

Duh!

and here i was thinking upbringing of children and their well being was the primary responsibility of parents! no doubt the government will bring out a series of measures to monitor childrens' well being which includes incentives and penalties for defaulting parents.

a change of government is fast becoming attractive. provided the Tories take a fresher approach.

coming to national identity, i think the current lack of a unified national identity and debate on Britishness is down to decades of lack of appropriate state intervention. I am a naturalised British citizen. There wasn't a Union Jack in sight during my naturalisation ceremony. I cant think of any more damning evidence about national identity (lack of), than this.

citizenship is a privilege. its granting should be underlined by making an occassion of it. The single most important visual affirmation of identity is the national flag. and yet it is absent in these ceremonies.

maybe the state should devote its time to this. and maybe it will lead to an abatement of radical fundamentalism.

Jonny Wilkinson

God made man. Then God made Jonny.

enough said.

shilpa shetty on celebrity big brother

i watched this for all of 15 minutes,before boredom set in

to give some perspective on who shilpa shetty is in bollywood... shes not an A lister star like aishwarya rai but neither is she a C lister.. so she is pretty much part of the current Bollywood firmament, very well recognized and mobbed in India. No she's not a has been. she's an IS actress.

she seems lost on CBB and i guess she did not know what she was getting into when she agreed to take part. as to why a Bollywood film star mobbed by millions is taking part in this show, i guess the moolah CBB is paying her plays a small role ! after all isn't David Beckham is moving to MLS (who? :) ) for a meagre £128 m.

there have been some comments of racism by the other house members towards shilpa. i havent watched the show long enough(nor can i be bothered) to determine that.

one alleged comment about her had me in splits. and that was about her having an indian accent! duh. like what accent is an indian, whos lived in india most of her life, supposed to have?

there have been some (alleged) comments made by shilpa and also by the indian media about shilpa shetty representing indian culture and ethos on CBB.

hmm, Big Brother and Celebrity Big Brother arent synonymous with culture are they?

on shane warne

so he's retiring. and one hopes there is no one else like him. after all genius should be a one off.

did you watch the last day in adelaide? shane pulverised us. with his mind. no other bowler today could have turned around that test.

never has dylan thomas been more apt for a sporting genius

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Immigration and national economies.. random thoughts

after a recent visit to the US, realised that English must be one of the least spoken languages in the subways..which is no surprise given that it is a country built by immigrants. the diversity of thought and determinedness of immigrants can be seen in the USA.

which brings us to China and India. I am gung ho about both these countries, but where will they bring in the variety in society half a century from now? both countries are too populous to have immigration.

Roger Federer and the pursuit of excellence

just watched Federer win his 3 rd successive title and yes, its been a one sided final...which is good...because i would rather watch a genius at work, rather than two evenly matched players.. unless ofcourse both were of genius calibre. i dont think Federer is in Sampras class yet, but surely way ahead of the rest of the top 10 players.

business excellence is actually no different to sporting excellence except that it is expected to be sustained year round, whereas sporting excellence is dependent on the performance of the player(s) on that day. what is interesting is that sporting achievements are more closely linked with national pride than business achievements..maybe it is due to our cavemen days when we were dependent on our achievements in hunting to feed the family/tribe..

Bill Gates surely has a word or two to say about business excellence. he came across vey well, atleast to me, at the Live8 @ Hyde Park.

i am a little puzzled as to why he consented to come onto Live8...maybe because he is the world's foremost philanthropist and Africa is a good platform to be on these days...while Live 8 was a great event and did surely help in raising awareness, it has not presented any solutions to Africa's problems. those problems are more to do with the maturity of African governments, corruption, etc. than to do with more western aid to Africa.

in any case Live 8 was good to watch just for Pink Floyd

whither goes mobile

serving ISVs gives an interesting perspective on technology and its adaptation. like a few years back, none of our clients gave .NET a second look. today even the most diehard Microsoft haters are jumping onto the .NET bandwagon.

interestingly in the last 1 year or so almost every third person we talk to is doing something in the mobile space or planning to dosomething in this space. be it workflow applications, communication applications, enterprise applications, mobile seems to be the flavour of the month.

i was at a conference in february when Mike Short of O2 compared the mobile space to the Wild West. he was right. being a new technology frontier, the application providers in this space are all pioneers. the technology is largely nascent and experienced skills, whilst available, are not run of the mill. Business models, channels to market, product offerings - all are still being tried out and it is very much a 'trial by error' scenario at a macro level.

it is interesting to compare Geoffrey Moore's 'Crossing the Chasm' bell curve to the adaptation of mobile technologies.I would put all those mobile application developers in the Innovators category and would give about 3-5 years for early adopters to arrive in terms of established ISVs offering mobile solutions. i think those who have viable products and have a sustainable business plan in the mobile space will be around in the next 5 years as market leaders with a high margin business at the moment, but move on to low-medium margin-high volume business as competitors start to emerge and their value propositions become more mainstream.

Ajit Jaokar's Mobile Applications Club and his blog http://www.opengardensblog.futuretext.com/
is a good forum to network with application providers and movers and shakers in the mobile space. what strikes me is most mobile application providers seem to be B2C organizations with the rare B2B application provider.

in the last few decades we saw a few momentous shifts in technology - the advent of the mainframe, client server computing, Windows, the WWW (or.com,whichever way you view it) , and i think the next big thing will be Mobile. i am not yet sure if Mobile will attract the same hype or will enable the same kind of wealth creation we saw in the .COM days, but i would be surprised if it didnt.

so if there are wannabe entrepreneurs out there who are seeking their next big idea, i would suggest the Mobile/Wirelesss domain be one they focus on...

there is also Nano.. but more on that in another blog.

blogs - useless noise?

not really sure whether blogging is worth all the hype... have a sneaking feeling that it contributes to the noise in the www and a blog by joe next door will need differentiation to stand out....

there is all this stuff about blogging being used by marketeers and the like.. and i really fail to see how it will work unless you have someone like bill gates or bono writing a blog..

i think most people blog because of the 15 minutes of fame syndrome.. and on the www make it 15 seconds..

yours truly has been bitted by the bug