Team of the Century

In my idle time off-late I have been musing over a queer point - what would be an all time cricketers XI. Actually this thought has been there ever since the turn of the century when every sport was nominating its greatest-Pele for football,Laver for tennis etc.. So i thought it would be great if I can pick such a 'dream team'. Here goes my selection...

1. Sir Jack Hobbs

You just cant argue with a player who has 60000 first class runs and 197 centuries, this in spite of missing out on his golden years due to World war I. In fact there was a saying that the greatest player before Hobbes was Hobbes himself before the war.

2. Sunil Gavaskar

He could pile up runs like pages in a thick book on his day. 10000 test runs and 34 centuries -13 of them against the great west Indian attack - is enough to put the little master in the team. But what these statistics don't reveal is the grit and determination of the man.

3. Sir Don Bradman

The greatest batsman of all time, the great man comes in at one down. Need I add more?! A career average of 99.94 should suffice.

4. Sir Viv Richards

The man who had the 'Me-and-my-chewing gum-against-the-world' attitude comes in after the don. Quite simply the most destructive of batsman who played in the most destructive of sides.

5.Brian Lara

He is one of my favorites. There was competition for this spot what with the likes of - the three Ws,george headley,tendulkar etc. - but i'll go with lara for he's a real math winner and with scores like - 375,501,400 - he has to get in.

6. Sir Gary Sobers

The best cricketer to have graced the field, ever. The no. 6 slot is for an allrounder and so the greatest of allrounders comes in here. He could do everything for you - bat and score hundreds,bowl chinaman, bowl left arm swing,field superbly anywhere.

7. Adam Gilchrist

The greatest no 7 of all-time comes in at 5 down. He has revolutionized wicket-keeping for ever. No more is the keeper a clinical man behind the stumps and keeps the tail enders company in front of it. Now he is the key man in the side and on the same plane as batsmen and the credit for this transformation goes to this man.

8. Shane Warne

Down to the bowlers now and the greatest of them all leads the pack. Another of my favorites. A true genius with the ball in his hands he's the quintessential match winner who can turn the match with his ball as well as his attitude.

9.Wasim Akram

The greatest left-armer of all time comes in as first change. Like warne he's a true blue match winner with close to a thousand international wickets and four hatricks and innumerable super spells.

10. Malcolm Marshall

The new ball will be taken by the best of the west indian fast men. A genuine fast bowler who can bowl close to 100mph at both Perth as well as Peshawar, a truly rare breed of bowler.

11. Dennis Lillie

Sharing the new ball will be 'Dennis the menace'. The great Australian had a big mouth and a bigger heart and raw pace to boot.

Well, I'm done with it and looks like inadvertently I have picked a team which has players belonging to most of the major test playing countries. So there it is the team of the century...Cant see anyone waiting to line-up against them :)

L'amour de jeux

"L'amour de jeux" this was the slogan of the Paris Olympic comitee for the 2012 olympic bid. The bid failed but the slogan stuck in my mind with me being an avid sports lover. It roughly translates to english as 'Love of the games'. It embodies the french spirit of sports and is pretty apt considering the french connection with sports viz. the resurrection of the olympic games, the genesis of the football world cup both of which had frenchmen Pierre de coubertin and Jules rimet respectively behind them.

Sports i feel is a microcosm of life itself as it has all the emotions that life has to offer. Be it Joy,sorrow,heart break,nostalgia you name it and sport has got it all. A sportsman will experience all the myriad emotions in a span of 10-15 years that a normal person expiriences in his entire lifetime.

This explains why sports persons generally have a longer,fitter and wholesome life. Extending this logic from the individual to societies and countries we find that countries that have a sports culture like australia and Italy are more happier ,prosperous and holistic than the others.So the writings on the wall,if you want to be a holistic and healthy society invest in and encourage sports.

The Spell...

For the past couple of months I've been under a spell - not that of some oriental magic - but that of a spell-binding book. This book or rather a Tome goes by the name of 'Glimpses of World History' written by our very own Jawaharlal Nehru. Never have I been so smitten by a book as by this one. I had always preferred Fiction over Non-fiction but of late I've come to believe that fact can be as compellingly interesting as any fiction.

This book is a must read for all the history buffs out there as Nehru remarkably covers the rise and fall of empires and civilizations,discusses great men who made a difference to the world we live in. I was awe-struck by the breadth of Nehru's knowledge and his understanding of history's lessons. And to think of the fact that this book came out as a series of letters from a dingy old Indian prison where Nehru did not have any recourse to reference material you are filled with admiration for the man.

As things stand I'm still mid way through this book and I think I will be as spell-bound by the second half as I was by the first one. Ciao.

One year of professional life!!!

August 2 2004,A day i will never forget,it was my first day of employment , a day when i was introduced to the world of professionals.

As i was on my way to the office on that day i was mulling over the sudden and pleasant turn around of events that had happened over the previous week.I had got a job in Syntel,Pune and the posting would have been in Mumbai...not a comforting thought for a guy like me who had spent all his life in bangalore.I was eagerly looking for a job in bangalore,my friend sourabh had got into Perot Systems,Bangalore and he had informed me about a recruitment going on over there..and I attended the interview the next day and i got through...I had to report to duty on 2nd August.I was thrilled to bits and was releived more than happy.

A gamut of emotions were running through my mind on that first day...What kind of people am i going to meet?what will the place be like?similar to the emotions i faced when i joined college... As it turned out i spent the most amazing one year of my life there and still continue to do so.I met some of the most amazing friends there.We had so much fun at our training,it was a virtual 9th semester of college.The bets,the lunch time chats,the tea time fun,the thrill of the first salary ,the strange trainer at roshni,the .NET certification preperations,going to a cricket match with all the friends,the funny skits,the team building retreat at silver oak,those birthday treats..sure is a long list of happy moments.

Ironically,I had more fun in office than in my college.We had and still have a strong rapport not withstanding the fact that a few of them have moved on to other companies.

Time really flies,one year has gone by me and as i look back at a bygone,blissful year i feel so happy that i was at the right place at the right time.I will have many more years of professional life but the first one will always be the sweetest ,so will be the first company I worked for,the first salary I earned and the first colleagues I had.Ciao.

Akio Morita : The Face of Post-war Japan

Akio Morita,few of you would recognize this name but I bet many of you will recognize this name for sure "SONY".Ahhh...now you recognize that don't you.Well it is one of the biggest brands in the global market and a world leader in Electronics.It is one of the many brands that japan has given to the world and indeed it was the first brand to emerge out of post-war japan.Akio Morita was the Founder of this Global brand.

I think for any budding Entrepreneur there can be no better role model than Akio Morita.At a time when japan was producing cheap knock-offs of items developed in the West he built a corporation whose bedrock was Innovation and creation of new technology trends.

Post-war japan was not the ideal place for a budding entrepreneur,but he converted this millstone into a milestone.He was one of the first Entrepreneurs in the world who sought to blur the boundaries of their bussiness and move into a global market.He pioneered such innovations as the first radio produced using a transistor,walkman,the first color home videotape recorder,the first 3.5-inch floppy disk.He also entered completely different domains to form Sony Music and Sony Pictures.

The path of innovation that he set at Sony continues to be tread to this day ,even after his death.

I've allways thought that India has a lot more to learn from Japan than from the US ,for the simple reason that India and Japan are more similar as both are ancient,orthodox and intellectual societies.Well I just hope that one of us from India will emulate a person like Akio Morita and turn India into a global power to be reckoned with.

William Shakespeare : A man for the ages

There are but a very few people who continue to live in the public's memory well after their times,such people do not belong to a generation or an era but they belong to the ages.Shakespeare is one such remarkable human being.

His works are being read,discussed and enacted even to this day and it is amazing that they are as relevent today as they were 400 years ago.The range of human emotions that Shakespeare is able to potray in his plays is simply too vast to comprehend.

Shakespeare arrived at a time when English was looked down upon by even the Englishmen as it was seen as a language of the peasents and the middle-class people.The upperclass Englishmen preferred to patronize the more 'refined' French.Shakespeare changed all that and was primarily responsible for the rise of English as the lingua franca or "The Language of the World".

Shakespeare is also credited to have invented a deluge of English words and phrases.He not only invented words he gave existing words new meanings.In all of his work – the plays, the sonnets and the narrative poems – Shakespeare used more than 18,000 words. Of these about 2000 were invented by Shakespeare himself.Which means he invented 1 out of every 10 words he used or in other words he invented a word of his own in every two lines he wrote!!!

Words like - assassination , accused, champion, critic, foibles, frugle ,gossip, hint, jaded, ode, monumental , summit, unreal, zany - have become commonplace today. It is just amazing , well even 'amazing' is a word invented by shakespeare.

He created some of the greatest fictional characters in history - from the Romantic Romeo to the Tragic Hamlet to the Melancholic Macbeth to the Pity arouing King Lear.He also brought back to life great historical characters like Ceasar,Antony,Cleopatra,Coriolanus.He gave them all some of the most memorable lines to speak.His characters are the ones every actor worth his salt aspires to potray even to this day.My favourite though is Hamlet.Hamlet's characteristics are those of a quintessential youth - Naive,angry,vengeful,frail - and then again everybody loves a tragic hero.

It is almost insulting to confine people like Shakespeare,Gandhi,Newton,Einstein as citizens of a particular country....they are in fact Citizens of the World.

Testing 1..2..3

Hi Everybody.I welcome you all to my blog.I started this Blog in march of this year but was a bit busy to put anything on it.As i am free now a days I've decided to kickstart it.

The whole purpose of having a blog is to give an expression to your thoughts and ofcourse have a tiny address of your own in the vast expanses of the Internet.Ideally you would like to have a website of your own...If you are not that lucky then a Blog is the Next-best-thing you can own.Whereas a blog lacks the personal touch of a website it comes with the advantage of being easy to possess and maintain.

Let me give a brief Intro of myself.My name is Prem,I am working as a Software Engineer in Perot Systems,Bangalore.I did my schooling in Baldwin's High School and my PUC in St.Joseph's College.I passed out of M S Ramaiah College with a BE degree in Computer Science.

Well that's it from me for the moment...Hope u all enjoy visiting my blog as much as I do hosting you all...Bye for now.

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