Bucknor up to his old tricks

From Cricinfo:

The twilight twist
With gloom settling in and bad light almost certain to be offered, enter India's favourite umpire, celebrating his 100th test. Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid were in the midst of a rescue act, quickly transforming into a match-turning one. Tendulkar had just completed his half-century, with a rasping square-drive off Abdul Razzaq.

Razzaq, in the middle of a disciplined and varied spell, started testing Tendulkar with short balls. In his next over, the first ball was again short, it went past Tendulkar's outside edge and swung away after going past his bat. As replays confirmed, the ball missed the outside edge by some distance. Kamran Akmal dived to take the catch and appealed meekly, as did Razzaq, protractedly. Nothing came from Steve Bucknor, Tendulkar moved away from the crease and as Razzaq's appeal withered, Bucknor suddenly raised his finger. Tendulkar jumped as if facing another short ball, stunned, Pakistan went ecstatic and the match took, on a day of twists, one final controversial one. A case perhaps for offering light to the umpire?

When an umpire makes a honest mistake, it can somehow be tolerated - but when someone standing in on his 100th test and supposedly one of the better ones around commits such a major blooper - it is unforgivable. And this is not really the first time Bucknor has done the Indians in, particularly Tendulkar. While it is difficult to subscribe to conspiracy theories suggesting Bucknor has a special dislike against the Indians, I cannot remember any other umpire since the days neutral unpiring who has given as many questionable decisions against this team. I have seen Shepherd, Aleem Dar, Ashoka deSilva, Venkat etc all getting it wrong sometimes ('afterall they are humans' - so goes the overused cliche) - but not consistenstly against a single team. Additionally, I have noticed he is often petulant in his behaviour against the Indians - I remember he was outright scolding Parthiv Patel in Australia (to be fair Patel was appealing rather too loudly for something that was obviously not out - but I am not sure losing temper is good sign for an umpire). As some of the match-reports and comments by people who actually saw the game suggests, he was again irritated today with Tendulkar and Dravid when they complained about the light conditions. One of the regular contributors at rec.sports.cricket, Sadiq Yusuf aka Cricketwallah - a person who has a keen understanding of the game and does not generally blow off steam in a partisan manner, - writes:

In this match, I think Bucknor has done a very fine job
before now - he has made the odd error (the no-ball etc), but basically he has also made some excellent decisions.
This decision today however was awful - but not just because
it was a poor decision IMHO. He just seemed annoyed by
the appealing for bad-light, and seemed to be more and more
unwilling to even consider the appeals out of annoyance
(as the light was getting worse). The Indians didnt help
by appealing repeatedly - maybe just a quiet word would have
worked better. But still, that isnt how one should react as
umpire - Hair seemed much more amenable even with the appealing.
I really do think, give how long he waited to make the
decision (again, long even by his standards) that he might
not have gotten a great look at the ball - and that was probably
*because* the light had faded so much. But, almost on
instinct, he gave it anyway. I dont think he's biased - he
has made basically fair and pretty good decisions for 3 days
so far other than this one. But it seemed almost that he
was just pissed off at the Indians for their appeals against
the light, and it felt as if he let it cloud his judgement
on the caught-behind appeal. Which, IMHO, is worse than
actually just making a poor decision to give it out.

Relations were deteriorating even more after that happened -
Tendulkar looked unhappy as he walked off, but first I thought
it was just frustration due to the light-issue, it was as he
neared the boundary that he clearly seemed upset by the decision
itself (and replays confirmed it wasnt close). Ganguly obviously
thought so too - he came in shaking his head and asking about
the light before he played a ball, and continued to ask for
it almost every ball. After being turned down a couple more
times (almost lost a bouncer directed at him once, taking
his eyes off and hooking/fending), he smacked a ball thru
cover for four almost out of spite, and then still shook his
head as if he couldnt believe he wasnt being given the
light :-) He talked to Hair about it too, at square-leg
IIRC. Finally it was in the middle of next over that Hair
walked over to Bucknor again, and they decided to offer
the light.

Even if this decision was not due to some hidden spite against the Indian team or Tendulkar, the ICC should sreiously consider if Bucknor is up to scratch in terms of the physical and mental fitness required while umpiring the modern game. Unfortunately, once you are in the Elite umpiring panel, it is apparently like a job in the Indian public sector, no matter how much you suck, you still hold on to your job. Srinivas Venkataraghavan, who was considered one of the premier umpires retired last year when he thought when he decided he was getting too old to handle the pressures of umpiring. It was a good decision, since, Venkat was starting to make glaring in the few tests (although nothing on this level) before his retirement. Will Bucknor and maybe even Shepherd learn from him ?

Reading the various reports for the third day's play, it seems like Tendulakar was in sublime form - the so called 'Tendulkar of the old' (I have problems with this description - but may another post to tackle that issue). This report by Dileep Premachandran, was particularly eloquent:

Tendulkar, though, will have no part to play in what promises to be an intriguing penultimate day. A few weeks from now, jealous mediocrity will crawl out of the woodwork and nibble at his reputation, citing that inability to apply the finishing touches. In a democracy, that must be tolerated, as were the Philistines who mocked and persecuted Galileo. Only those who sat and watched a gorgeous sunrise obscured by a man-made storm can appreciate how close a supreme batting artist came to painting in the one blank space in an otherwise breathtaking canvas.

In praise of Firefox (again!)

I have posted on the superiority of Firefox over Internet Explorer (IE) as a browser before. Much has happened since then, particularly, the official release of Firefox last Novemeber. I have become an even greater fan of this browser (in fact, I donated a small amount of money to help them take out the full-page ad in New York Times at the time of the official release - if you look hard enough you can find my name somewhere on this page). I have been crusading to get people around me to convert as well. I am not really an anti-Microsoft person, even though I have enough peeves against some features of the MS-Office programs. However, with the market domination of IE - its development had become stagnated. Ironically, it was the failure of Netscape (or Netscape-AOL) to innovate vis-a-vis IE (helped by MS's bundling of its IE browser with windows), which spawned the whole open-source, non-profit Mozilla Foundation that was responsible for Firefox. Being an open-source software, hundreds of people are working on development and testing of the plug-ins and extensions which makes the browser really user friendly and helpful.

There are two particular features I want to draw attention to here.

Those who already use Firefox as their browser (did I ever mention it is just AWESOME ?!), know about the Search Box feature located on the top right hand corner of the browser window. This allows you to keyword-search across a spectrum of sites ranging from conventional search engines (Google, Yahoo!), online stores or auctions (Amazon, eBay), dictionaries (dictionary.com, Webster) etc. When I had first installed Firefox, the number of search preferences were limited. However, I noticed recently that they have added many more search plug-ins such as IMDB, Wikipedia, Epinions, even university directories (UNC has one) among several hundred others. Check out all the search engines here.

For folks in the biological fields, I would also recommend downloading the Biobar extension - it is similar to Googlebar, but allows you to set different kinds of bio-related search engines e.g. NCBI Pubmed, Structure etc, plant or animal genomes and a lot more.

IMHO, the most useful feature of Firefox is the tabbed browsing - I realise how handy this is when I have to occassionally use IE on other computers and keep middle-clicking on a link, only to find it opening either in a the same page or in a new window, instead of a new tab in the same window. The tonnes of useful extentions helps as well. My favorites are: Tabbrowser Preferences, Google bar, ForecastFox, IEview (enables you to open on IE, any web-page or link that does not show up properly on Firefox !!).

Open-source Zindabad !!

World of cricket 2: Despair and non-MSM cricket coverage

I was planning to follow-up my previous cricket-related post (why else would I name it #1?) with one about the rec.sport.cricket usenet group and a couple of cricket related blogs, mixed in with some gloating over India's victory, which was more than a distinct possibility back on Friday. Unfortunately, equilibrium has been restored in the world of cricket - Australia came back to beat the Black Caps - pretty convincingly in the end and the Indians lost their plot on the final day and let Pakistan draw the test, though to be honestly appreciative, it was some fine rearguard action by the #7 and #8 batsmen of the latter. All this threw me into the depths of despair and depression. On top of that, UNC lost the ACC semi-finals against Gerogia Tech on Saturday afternoon (no I have not been converted into a college basketball nut - but living in the Research Triangle area it is difficult, as a general sports fan, not to get sucked into this - besides when you are sinking - you want to clutch onto something).

I guess I have somewhat recovered now. Going back to the original ideas for this post, I was going to recommend reading Amit Varma (India Uncut) and Anand Vasu's (Not Circinfo) cricket-related blogs. Both are regular contributors to Cricinfo - but their blogs provide a refreshingly different perspective on the cricketing world. Although India Uncut is more about India in general rather than being cricket-centric (Varma has another blog, 23 yards, devoted to cricket, but it has not been updated for sometime), he has been blogging regularly on cricket as he covers the India-Pakistan series for The Guardian. In fact, he was blogging from the press-box as the game progressed during the first test (probably a first), covering a variety of topics from 'cricketing cliches' to the difference in how cricket is covered by the English versus vernacular language journalists.

One of the ways to maximize the enjoyment of following a cricket series while in the US is to read the posts from a motley group of enthusiastic (sometimes to the level of being fanatic), key-board tapping cricket 'experts' on the usenet newsgroup, rec.sport.cricket. Usually, during a test or ODI series, the posting rate on the group is quite prolific (close to over by over if not ball by ball updates). This time around, however, things seems to have mellowed down a bit. Of course, with Agarkar not present and no shouts of Aag! Fire !.....I guess that cuts down the number of posts by a quarter. But where is Nikhil Shah's detailed pre-match analysis of how the local soil, humidity and weather conditions should affect team composition and the end of the day wrapup by R Bharat Rao ? An old troller by the name of 'squarecut' is still espousing the virtues of South Indian cricketers versus their northern counterparts and how the former are overlooked in the team. Also, cries for Ganguly's head still ring out loud - but overall much more muted . Are people losing interest in cricket or do these people finally have some life ? (considering that I spend way to much time in a day reading those posts, I should get a life too !!)

World of cricket 1: Topsy-turvy

An Indian team, playing at home with three fast bowlers and only one specialist spinner (that too in name only). An Australian captain winning the toss, putting the opposition in to bat, conceding 433 runs and behind by 300-odd runs at the end of day 2. This the same opposition that was pulverized by the Aussies 5-0 in a ODI series barely a week ago and that could barely manage to field a team after losing players to injuries and sex-scandals.

.....yeh kya ho raha hain ?? I guess that's why people talk about cricket being a 'game of glorious uncertainties' (for maximum enjoyment imagine Ravi Shashtri or even better Navjot Sidhu's intonation...)

Get your towels ready....

As Rahul has posted on his blog, there are a couple of more trailers of the upcoming H2G2 movie on the net here and here. Check all the related links from the movie's main web-site, especially this inteview with the filmmakers. Apparently, they are already planning a lot of DVD extras and have a big suprise in the form of the planet factory.

I wonder if the studio will be selling H2G2 merchandise as the movie releases ? I guess they might try to use its cult status and hype it enough to bring in new fans like in LOTR. Possible merchandizing items - towels, copies of bad Vogon poetry ?

On a somewhat related note - Monty Python (or the remaining members of Monty Python) are coming out (okay Eric Idle is the only original Python associated with this project - others just gave their blessings) with a Boradway musical based on their movie The Holy Grail, called 'Spamalot'. Among the merchandize they are planning to sell are coconut halve shells (not carried by either African or European sparrows) ! Those who have not seen the movie would not appreciate this - so my advice to them while waiting for H2G2 to be realeased is to go out and get (or order on Netflix) the Holy Grail DVD.

You can also listen to the coverage of 'Spamalot' by NPR on All Things Considered here (some of the new songs incorporated in Spamalot can be heard).

You can't please everybody.

Story from CNN-money.

The Norwegian Prime Minister has accused IKEA - the Swedish company famous for selling furniture in flat boxes, which subsequently need to be assembled, following oftentimes a complicated instruction manual, - of sexual discrimination since they show only men assembling the furniture on such manuals. If that is not absurd enough, here is the reason why IKEA supposedly does not depict women:

IKEA, which has more than 200 stores in 32 nations, fears it might offend Muslims by depicting women assembling everything from cupboards to beds. Its manuals show only men or cartoon figures whose sex is unclear.

Will someone please tell me what the hell are 'cartoon figures whose sex is unclear' ? Will its going to lead to another Spongebob-type controversy in the US ?
Anyway, coming back to the story -apparently IKEA's explanation fails to satisfy our Norwegian PM.

"This isn't good enough," Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik was quoted Thursday as telling the daily Verdens Gang. "It's important to promote attitudes for sexual equality, not least in Muslim nations."

So he wants IKEA to be the emancipator of women in Muslim countries! Going through the story, however, we come to the real reason for his vitriol against IKEA:

Bondevik added: "I myself have great problems with screwing together such furniture."

Come on man - doesn't the Norwegian PM have some other fish to fry - like increasing taxes or trying to broker peace in far off lands.

Btw, both my wife and I are fans of Ikea furniture and home-accessories. We have not had any trouble assembling the sofa, the love-seat, the coffee tables, sides tables of various sizes or the entertainment center/bookcase set that we have purchased from there.

Sardar ka Saloon

I was telling an Indian lab mate the story of Bhajji's saloon (see previous post), and we both started laughing out loud, conjuring the image of a pugdi-clad sardarji cutting other people's hair !

Then I began to wonder - what could have motivated Bhajji to open a saloon of all things. I am sure it was partly peer pressure - Kumble has his computer game, Sachin and Saurav have their restuarants - so what is our poor Bhajji to do ? He could perhaps open a dhaba - but being the wily spinner that he is, he unleashed a 'doosra' and went for the hair-cutting saloon !!
Sounds pretty lame in writing - but it was pretty funny as we were discussing it....

Bhajji da Beauty Parlour

Bhajji writing a newspaper column in English (although its probably ghostwritten for him) is funny enough, but somehow, a Sardar owning a hair-cutting saloon sounds so ironic.

Incidentally, I have decided that Pakistani fans are welcome to my saloon, and the staff will be happy to spruce them up free of cost. All they have to do is produce proof of their nationality and they are welcome to a free pedicure, hair cut, manicure, the works.

Look forward to some dapper Pakistani fans at Mohali from tomorrow.

For all the grad students out there....

....check out this site:

http://www.phdcomics.com/

A conference, a wedding and 60 flying hours in 20 days...

...adds up to an incredibly tired body and mind. Got back into Carrboro late last night and into the lab pretty early today morning - but I still feel pretty dazed. Will blog about the trip, Kolkata, and the wedding once I resurface.