Mes Secrets Inconnus

followed by sumptuous meal!!!

RCB has done it again. They have sunk to their favorite position – second from last. Now to make into the top 4 for the semi finals, they have to sweat it out…No only will they have to win matches from here but also have a close eye on other teams winning and losing. The points and the run rate would very well decide the entry point into the Semi’s. Come on guys you are capable of much more. The old horses need to fire and fire consistently( Rahul, Kallis & Kumble). Remember Bangalore boys.. you have the takath and at one time there were 8 from Karnataka in the national team. Can’t you guys do this much for your fans :-)

PS: I have given up hope on this team ( at least for this season) , but i am still interested in the RCB tee shirts :-)

At last a victory for RCB. For a moment I thought we would loose the match. The match went down to the wire. I could not catch the live action but was glued to the score on IPL official web site. Well’ it took a 19 yr old to show the Bevdas how to win matches. And to think that this would be the last match Peter ka beta would play , then he has done great – win  the first and last match of his captaincy.

Actually to tell the truth, more that watching IPL , everyone is enjoying reading the blog created by the Fake IPL player. Read  from beginning and its so much fun

Yeah, i am a big fan of RCB. But the problem is they never win. After seeing yesterday’s match , i am very convinced that the RCB will come last place this year. Some how the last season they had Deccan Chargers for company, But this time around every one has pulled their socks except RCB. I think the two big blunders of RCB – Robin & Kevin. While Robin has no reputation on playing on pitches outside india, Kevin is here to take away the money. He had nothing to loose. He would only play a few matches and still pocket all the money. Look what Flintoff has done for Chennai.. faked a knee injury and is on his way back to UK.

Mr. Mallya, when are you going to learn? Leave the foreign brigade and play our local boys – no matter how old they are:-)  Just for a match play only the local boys with no foreign players and see the Sakath Takath of karnataka kids!!!!

and yes, winning tournaments by sponsoring teams from the money of broken families due to alcoholism is not going to happen ;-) Just give a thought – how many would have cursed you..

Try this one....looks cool.. Happy cricketing ....cheers!!! super convenient and simple way to get instant live cricket scores using GTalk.

Just add "instacricket@bot.im" to your contacts in Gtalk and you are done.

In the chat window type "score" to get current scores.

Type "sch" to get matches schedule.

Give it a try.

Well I am a humble kid. Especially when a supernatural feat is achieved, I always downplay. I really don't want to talk about it, but since cricket is a religion in this part of  the world, you can read it over HERE or HERE.

Both relate to the same incident , but they will surely get you a new high...

 

And on the night the Lunar eclipse was schedule, we spent the day playing cricket with Deepak, Guru and the neighbour's kid Samith.

The plan to play cricket was spontaneous and its always amazing how things work out when you don;t plan. 5 mins back we did not have bat or ball, but then we managed to get from a distant friend. That's another reason why cricket is a popular sport in india;-) . Well we did not have much choice of grounds or stadiums so we simply confined to our parking lot . We devised a lot of complex laws/rules which gave a fair chance of someone becoming out and if you adapt soon you could be among runs. We played various variations of the game. I am pretty sure if we write to Lalit Modi ( VP of BCCI), he would market it for millions of $

And the result was .... body pain, aches and severe cold stretching till fever...

The Olympics and the the controversies generated with the flaming torch has got me thinking - any publicity is good publicity... With all the hue and cry, i just hope this does not happen on  the first day of the D-Day :-)

First there was Sir. Gary Sobers, then it was Ravi Shastri. Well before you tell me its Gibbs now. I beg to differ.It was the summer of '2k. We were back for semester holidays.

Thats when we decided that we kick off our cricket practice. Mind you we really had a good team and won many tournaments. And offcourse we played daily at our park. Sometime bet on money.I can list the various kinds of betting but i am here to tell you that 6 sixes in an over, is a feat which i achieved during that time. Anil , our team's fastest bowler had a brawl with me, that he has learnt the art of reverse swing. I was not convinced.So he challenged me and i accepted that.While he rolled his arms over, i freed my arms. All 6 balls, i struck 6 sixes continuously each better than the previous one.Everyone looked in awe, just like when Gibbs was belting. But i would still consider, my effort better than him - simply because all my sixes were straight ones. Atleast Gibbs had the option of belting the sixes anywhere!!! Does this make me the best???

The selectors have given Sehwag too many chances.Drop Sehwag, I would be gutted if they pick him for the series against West Indies and Sri Lanka. IMO, ideally I'd want to see Ganguly opening again with Tendulkar like the old times from the mid-1990s; Sachin and Saurav used to be the most feared pair in ODI Cricket before Sehwag even made his debut. And another thing is that they need to look at Dinesh Karthik as a specialist batter. Just wonder if they put half the effort to improve his batting skills then they have worked on Pathan, Karthik seems to have the confidence and the ability to go a long way

And come on, somebody have a word with Sachin Tendulkar. Wtf has happened to him? Watching him bat last night, it felt like he didn't want to be there, he didn't show the stomach to fight and his injury is no excuse. Once a great, most feared batsmen has now become India's most unreliable player. I just cant't believe it. Just wonder what it is that's holding him back, and I feel he'll come to his natural best if he opens with Ganguly in ODIs. He just doesn't get the freedom and is forced to played too responsibly in partnership with Sehwag. That's not him, Tendulkar has never given a livin' f*ck about playing second fiddle, he used to own every partnership which is not the case anymore.
It's never been about ability with India, it has always been about self-belief and desire. This last test match was about who wanted to win the most. South Africa have grabbed this test from India's throat because they showed the desire and they deserved to win, fair and square.

The ultimate nostalgic "action" game, I developed when i was in college. This is how it all started! Click on "Run Program!" to start the game. Left player: Q=up, A=stop, Z=down. Right player: P=up, L=stop, <=down.


While rummaging some old backups, I came across this code and though would share it.As always, feel free to change the BASIC code to make this your game. For example you can add score keeping and new ball angles to make it more interesting :-)

1000 REM Ping Pong
1010 REM V Project
1020 REM ------------------------
1030 CLS
1040 PRINT "***** V- PING PONG *****"
1050 PRINT "LEFT PLAYER RIGHT PLAYER"
1060 PRINT "UP: Q UP: P"
1070 PRINT "STOP: A STOP: L"
1080 PRINT "DOWN: Z DOWN: <" 1090 PRINT "****************************"
1100 PRINT
2000 REM X,Y hold the position of the ball 2010 LET X = 10 2020 LET Y = 3
2030 REM U,V hold the speed of the ball
2040 LET U = 1
2050 LET V = 1
2060 REM P and Q are the vertical positions of the paddles
2070 REM R and S are the speeds of the paddles
2080 LET P = 11
2090 LET R = 0
2100 LET Q = 11
2110 LET S = 0
2120 REM W is a random component to the y-direction speed
2130 LET W = 1
2140 REM Draw the paddles at their initial positions
2150 FOR I = 11 TO 14
2160 PLOT 0, I, "white" 2170 PLOT 24, I, "white"
2180 NEXT I
3000 REM The keyboard input loop
3010 PAUSE 25 + 50 * (5 - LEVEL)
3020 REM Before moving ahead, we ensure we handle all of the keyboard buffer
3030 LET C = GETCHAR()
3040 IF C = "" THEN GOTO 4000
3050 IF C = "Q" OR C = "q" THEN LET R = 1
3060 IF C = "A" OR C = "a" THEN LET R = 0
3070 IF C = "Z" OR C = "z" THEN LET R = -1
3080 IF C = "P" OR C = "p" THEN LET S = 1
3090 IF C = "L" OR C = "l" THEN LET S = 0
3100 IF C = "<" OR C = "," THEN LET S = -1
3110 GOTO 3000 4000 REM Move the ball
4010 PLOT X, Y, "gray" 4020 LET X = X + V
4030 LET Y = Y + U * W
4040 PLOT X, Y, "white"
4050 REM Bounce off the top and bottom walls
4060 REM The plotted y-position is rounded so we round here
4070 REM when we are doing collision detection
4080 LET Z = ROUND(Y)
4090 IF Z <= 1 OR Z >= 23 THEN LET U = -U
4100 REM Check paddle position before bouncing
4110 IF X <> 1 AND X <> 23 THEN GOTO 5000
4120 IF X = 1 AND (Z <> P + 4) THEN GOTO 6000
4130 IF X = 23 AND (Z <> Q + 4) THEN GOTO 6000
4140 REM Bounce on the paddle
4150 LET V = -V
4160 REM Change the random component of the y-speed
4170 LET W = 0.9 + RAND(0.6)
5000 REM Move the paddles
5010 IF P = 21 AND R = 1 THEN LET R = 0
5010 IF P = 0 AND R = -1 THEN LET R = 0
5010 IF Q = 21 AND S = 1 THEN LET S = 0
5010 IF Q = 0 AND S = -1 THEN LET S = 0
5100 IF R <> 1 THEN GOTO 5200
5110 PLOT 0, P, "gray"
5130 LET P = P + R
5140 PLOT 0, P + 3, "white"
5200 IF R <> -1 THEN GOTO 5300
5210 PLOT 0, P + 3, "gray"
5230 LET P = P + R
5240 PLOT 0, P, "white"
5300 IF S <> 1 THEN GOTO 5400
5310 PLOT 24, Q, "gray"
5330 LET Q = Q + S
5340 PLOT 24, Q + 3, "white"
5400 IF S <> -1 THEN GOTO 5500
5410 PLOT 24, Q + 3, "gray"
5430 LET Q = Q + S
5440 PLOT 24, Q, "white"
5500 GOTO 3000
6000 REM Game Over
6010 CLT
6020 PRINT "***** V BASIC PONG *****"
6030 PRINT
6040 PRINT "******** GAME OVER *********"
6050 IF X = 1 THEN PRINT "RIGHT"; ELSE PRINT "LEFT";
6060 PRINT " PLAYER IS THE WINNER!"
6070 PRINT "****************************"
6080 PRINT
6090 PRINT "Click 'Run Program' to play again,"

The quarter-final loss to lower ranked Olga Poutchkova of Russia at the Tashkent Open brought another plunge in Sania Mirza's ranking as she dropped six places to be 61st on the latest WTA world rankings.
The other day as expected Martina Hingis won the SunFeast Open; as expected Hingis met Sania in the SemiFinal of the Open; and again, as expected the Swiss Miss defeated the Indian tennis star in that match. Defeated did I say? The word should actually be drubbed, clobbered,routed,humiliated - for once, the scoreline (6-1, 6-0) exactly indicated how the match went - absolutely lopsided; Sania had no answers to Hingis' graceful strokes, while Sania's famous "powerful" shots were totally out of control.

Yes, everybody has a bad day, but then a great athlete will pull oneself out of the abyss and try to scale the peak again. One hasn't seen Sania do this in a long long time and the next time she opines that it is "humanly impossible to perform at the same level every year", one should just ask her to look across the net at the likes of Martina Hingis - the comeback star of the year - or at the other Martina who turned pro years before Sania was even born and who recently announced her retirement after winning her nth grand slam title!

Same time last year, Sania was at the peak of her career and much admired.She truly was the icon of many a youngster in this country, symbolic of what we Indians can achieve if we really wish to do so. She was brazen, intrepid, dauntless and irreverent - the future face of India. Despite what she showed she could achieve, I do believe that the welcome she got on her return home was uncalled for - she wasn't yet a champion, not even close, having just started on a grueling, arduous journey on the road towards becoming one, someday probably. And Sania should have known this - but she revelled in the accolade, the adulation and the laurels, and started to believe she was worthy of it, that she has indeed reached the top, scaled the peak.

When she was awarded the Padmashree last year, I remember asking hubby, an ardent sports fan, if she really deserved it. To me, it seemed to come way too early in her career. The criteria to get a Padmashree award is defined as "excellence in their field". When did one decently good year translate to "excellence" in one's field? One cannot expect a child just learning to take his/her first steps to run - it has to be taken one step at a time, stumbling and getting up again, first with help and than without, getting a footing first and then finally taking a leap. Even if you do race down the track on your first outing, you would need to step back and evaluate your performance, so that the first race doesn't become the last one. But for some reason the powers that be decided that Sania was worth a "Padma" award.

This premature "recognition" of her "greatness" also seems to have gone to Sania's head. She has fallen a couple of notches down from the peak she presumed she had scaled last year, yet her head seems to be still stuck somewhere in the clouds above. I know she is indeed a role model for a lot of youngsters in the country today, and she has an an implicit social responsibility. But it still doesn't warrant her saying , "An `if or but' from my lips can create a national crisis''. I know she is young, and probably doesn't realize the enormity of those words, yet the same social responsibility that she is referring to requires her to think and act more sensibly, isn't it? The conceit in her tone and the speech, I am sure, isn't really lost nor is it actually condonable.

Success doesn't come easy. And it doesn't sit easy on anyone's head. Sania has the game, and has the power in her shots - but she is no way close to being a winner, a real champion. Yes, she is not even 20, but then so is Maria Sharapova and the distance between them is apparent - both on and off the courts. In this sports-personalities-starved nation it is easy to become someone the public reveres, but that doesn't necessarily make one a winner. Victory of any kind has to be won, gotten by a lot of sweat, strength of will and hardness of heart; not to forget extreme decency and dignity and sensibility.

Sania, you have a long way to go and it would help you as well as the millions who idolize you if the focus was indeed on the path ahead. You need role models? Look around you, they are all there - from Pete Sampras to Steffi Graf to Federer.