One mmmore series with Sri Lanka

One of the most ignored cricket tournament in recent history has been the Asia cup 2010 held in Sri Lanka.
This has been one of the prestigious tournaments in the past. All these regional
tournaments have been fading due to the onslaught of IPL and other T-20 tournaments.
Now, we are facing prospects of one more boring test series and one day series with Sri Lanka.
It looks to me that with Pakistan imploding with their internal strife, there is no one else for BCCI to push their team to. But the question is why play one more meaningless series ?
We have just been through an interesting IPL, a good but no so great T20 World Championship and through a lacklustre Asia cup. Asia cup showed us that there is no more interest in cricket watching public for inconsequential cricket matches.
This will be a great time for all the bowlers and fielders to condition themselves for Australia series. There is World Cup 2011 looming on the horizon. Why put the players in gruel ? Why take the risk of injuring key players? As such, Zahir Khan has declared himself unfit. Is Yuvraj fit yet ? We don't know unless we see him in the tests. We don't know how fit are Srisanth, Ishant Sharma, RP Singh and other medium pace bowlers.
A side thought, when will we produce a 145+ kph bowler ? VRV Singh flattered to deceive a few years ago. Ishant has gone down to 130 kph. We are glad if our bowlers bowl a ball 140 kph .. in a session !
I say let us not worry about Sri Lanka series. Just give them the promised money.
With IPL and all BCCI should have enough money.
Let us prepare for 2011 World Cup!

Sachin and Indian cricket

Sachin Tendulkar did it again. He alone took on Australian might when others fell wayside. He led an age-defying lone hand charge against a confident Australian bowling attack after Australian batsman had scored a mammoth 350. When Sachin fell, that score looked like in danger of being overhauled by 49th over.
What an innings that was ! He scored a huge 175 out of 347 scored by India. Next highest score was 53 by Suresh Raina.
Gambhir, Yuvraj and MS Dhoni left the field to leave Sachin battling alone.
Time and again, we saw in this series that middle and top order left quickly
to let someone else do the work for them.
Every match it was someone who took the responsibility and scored runs.
In Guahati .. none was available to take the responsibility - check the score 27/5.
We need someone who can just stand and take on the bowling.
The top and middle order seemed batting in a T20 match - as if they need to bat only few overs and not 50. Wonder what they will do in Test matches.

Look at the batting order - Sehwag, SRT, Gambhir, Yuvraj, MSD, Jadeja, Harbhajan, Pravin Kumar. I would say this line up can take on any bowling attack and decimate it.
In fact they did it on two occasions in this series. But that is not enough - that is less than 50%. If India plans to be no 1. in near future, then they need
to be consistent over a longer period of time. Need to be consistently responsible.
Being responsible means not leaving the job to someone else.

We all fans would like Indian team to fight till the end .. something Sachin
did a few days ago. Not give an inch to the opposition.

Come on guys ! We are all with you. Go ahead and fight from heart.

Australia derailed

Australia has gone down the test cricket rankings to #4. That is quite a slide .. and was quite expected. After the stalwarts of the Australian cricket retired one by one, the new foundation will take some time to set in.
And this is the chance all the other cricketing nations like South Africa, England, India, Sri Lanka and to an extent Pakistan should be looking forward to.
South Africa is #1 ranked test cricket nation right now. But Sri Lanka and India are not far behind. Sri Lanka has got a chance to stay there for quite some time
with a win over New Zealand.
India will need to wait for few months before they can claim the crown.
But India has a chance to go to #1 in ODIs, where they are behind South Africa.

This has thrown the field wide open. Whoever puts some planning in place and follows it up with efforts, will be crowned as #1.

Do we have discipline ?

There have been a lot of calls for action for all and sundry govt agencies after Mumbai attacks.
There has been lot of finger pointing, responsibility heaped on shoulders that didn't know how to carry the weight.

Is anyone doing any introspection? Is anyone thinking about how they should behave? Anyone thought they should be more disciplined?

Why do we push forward 100Rs note when we cut red signal but complain about builders bribing crores of Rs to politicians?

Why don't we cross roads when signal is red?

Why do we try to cut corners on taxes?

The army don't have proper weapons because we have not been paying our share of taxes.

Let us have some pride discipline in day to day life and not wait for a tragedy to take place.

Chandragupta Gupta

My interest in Chandragupta Gupta began when I read "Bharatiya Itihasaatil Saat Soneri Pane" by SwatantryaVeer Vi. Daa. Sawarkar.
Chandragupta took the title Vikramaditya. He cam to the throne when his elder brother Ramgupta offered his wife Dhruvdevi to invader Shaka king and Chandragupta rescued her. Poeple sided with Chandragupta and it is said that Ramgupta was killed by Chandragupta.
This, in short, is Chandragupta Gupta's story.

But there are some considerations that go beyond a little piece of history.
Why is Chandragupta Gupta so interesting ?
There were 3 Chandragupta's in Indian history who rank amongst the visionaries for United India. These are Chnadragupta Maurya ( who is more famous because of his said association with Alexander, the Macedonian king) ; Chandragupta 1, from whom the Gupta dynasty came to focus and Chandragupta Gupta who was the true Vikramaditya - whose rays of bravery fell on whole Indian subcontinent.
Here is a link for some considertion about Chandragupta's times - http://www.geocities.com/narenp/history/info/epilogue.htm.

Here is a link from Wikipedia about Chandragupta II -
Chandragupta II.

The coins issued during the Gupta Dynasty - very interesting to note the evolution of coins.
Gupta Coins.

Does the iron pillar in Delhi belongs to the Gupta dynasty and specifically during the Chandragupta II'e reign. No one knows, but here it is standing in its place and observing the events for last 1700 years.

Here is a research paper that propeses a data for the iron pillar and provides strong reasons for the proposal. This also shows that the science and arts during Chandragupta's period ( and Gupta dynasty's as a whole ) were in growth phase.

The subject of Chandragupta Vikramaditya is an interesting one. There is lot of literature and references available about Chandragupta, his life and times.

I will add to my knowledge more about Chandragupta and Indian history in future.

- Shekhar Kale

Family Values

We can learn the values that our family follows and pass these values to our children after adding our own values to them. In a way, we are improving on what we learnt and see the the values grow in front of our own eyes.

Our history

Why didn't we remember it ?

What was the reason that we need to research into our own history ?
If we make caeful records as we are doing today, we might have been able to tell our story to the world
without waiting and hoping that they interprest and tell us our own history.

Many a times, we believe in their ( mainly the western, european historians) interpretation of Hindu history.
We need to be more expert in our own history. Whole world knows in their heart that the cradle of World civilization is the Bharat. That is why there are so many efforts to prove it contrary.

We may be down now. But have organized ourselves. The Bharatiya people are growing in strength.
They will make the history happen.