The Week Mind - 12th to 18th Jul

Thanks for your feedback on the read being too long. As an improvement measure, we will restrict the newsletter to about 1000 words.
Also, there was some feedback on this newsletter being on the lines of The Ken. It is flattering to say the least. Although it's not a blatant copy, The Ken and The NYT have inspired me a lot to write this newsletter.

Let's dive into The Week Mind

A. Political

Nothing worth sacrificing my 1000 words limit.

B. Technology

The hidden trackers in your phone, explained, Sara Morrison, Vox
This quote from the article should pique your interest -
"how trackers hidden in smartphone apps are the source of incredible amounts of specific data about us, much of which gets sent to companies you’ve never heard of. This has been going on for years and is an essential part of the mobile app economy."

C. Marketing

Marketers must gear up to thrive on consumer diversity, Biju Dominic, mint
Biju Dominic takes us through a brand's journey from mass personalization to actual personalization, that each consumer deserves. How, with the advent of digitization, personalization may look easier for targeting and not from a product's point of view.

There is too much data and not enough heart for it, Arun Raman, afaqs
Data, data everywhere,
Not a drop to process
                         - The Rhyme of the Ancient Analyst
Arun Raman, in his funny ways, helps us understand how our thinking has changed with the deluge of data that it is almost leading us to an analysis paralysis situation.
Thank you Shashank Muthalik for sharing this article.

D. Economics

Asia's two big economies will lose as they decouple, Ajit Ranade, mint
Ajit Ranade takes us through on what the status quo was on the bilateral trade between China and India, before the recent skirmishes. He offers a historical perspective on how India and China were important to each other and how both the countries will tend to lose out because of the recent developments on either side of the Himalayas.

Solar Flair: India's quest to supersede China, Seetharam G, The Ken
Quietly behind the scenes, India has been working on a big idea. An idea as humungous as BRI. Seetharaman.G takes us through the inner workings of the International Solar Alliance (masterminded by India), and the possible challenges we will face. Quite an interesting read. It is a free story by The Ken as well.

E. Sports

#raisethebat gave way to one of the most riveting test matches. What a display of character by Jermaine Blackwood. If only he'd been a bit more patient to carry his bat through, he could have got his well-deserved century as well.

#raisethebat's second test match is underway. Is Ben Stokes human or what!? Another scintillating batting performance. Nicely setup for Day 4 today and if WI can hold it out, we have got a draw on our hands.

Arsenal has probably had the best week under Mikel Arteta. They won against the European and English Champions Liverpool. They even took it one step further to show the door to the current FA Cup Champions Manchester City, in the FA Cup semi-final. A shot in the arm for the ardent supporters as they will hope to carry on this form to make sure that St. Totteringham's day does come back after 2015-16!

Real Madrid has won the La Liga as Barcelona made a mess of their lead with unwitting draws and losses that paved way for a consistent Madrid. Messi fans are fuming about how the Barcelona team isn't good enough and that he can't keep carrying them forever. But, remember that they say the same thing about the Argentina team as well.

IWC Drawing Competition, Laureus
Adam Grant in his podcast says, "This is a different kind of ad and I have played a personal role in selecting this ad". Similarly, I have played a personal part in choosing this promotion.
This is the artwork of a 10-year-old artist Anmol Vikey from Hinganghat, Maharashtra. His artwork has been selected as one of the top three entries for the international 2020 IWC Drawing Competition.
Slum Soccer had facilitated the participation of this EduKick project student in the contest. If you haven't heard about Slum Soccer, you can read about them here
or watch the trailer of the movie being made on their journey

Kindly cast your vote for Anmol Vikey Entry No.1 Project: EduKick here

F. eCommerce

JioMart wants to revolutionaise the e-grocery space, Soumya Gupta, ET Prime
ECommerce 101 lessons written by Soumya Gupta. This article analyses the pain points of hyperlocal eCommerce and how some others have tried and failed. Where there is failure, Jio smells an opportunity. Soumya gives some valid points on how Jio can succeed.
This is a subscriber only article from ET Prime. If you want to read it and don't have a subscription, kindly whatsapp or email me. I will send you a gift link.

G. Behaviour

Why our mind wants to spread misinformation, Simon Pitt, One Zero
When something is too good to be true, we have this need to be the first one to share this unbelievable piece of news with our near and dear ones on Whatsapp. We almost take pride in being the bringer of this news to them, of being the first to report. As the saying goes, Sun rises in the East. Whereas in reality, it's the Earth that revolves around the Sun. Simon Pitt makes a psychological argument on why do we certain things despite having better knowledge.

Window Swap
Please take a moment to see from someone else's perspective. Worth a click!
Thank you Zahid for sharing.

H. Books & Cinema

I am still reading Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond since 7th Jun. No changes there.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Kabir, who allowed us to watch Gulabo Sitabo in two straight days. The movie is funny in parts and requires you to be in a different,laid-back zone to enjoy it. Amitabh Bachchan and Ayushmann Khurrana have been terrific. Although we struggled with the Lucknowi Hindi, the subtitles helped us. Shoojit Sircar makes offbeat movies, but they don't border on the art genre. The imdb rating of 6.4 is extremely harsh!

With that, we wrap up this week's musing.
Do share your list of interesting articles that you came across.
Do share your thoughts on what was good and what can be improved.
And that's word no. 1084

My Green Top Story

Ever wondered what it feels like to play on a green top? The green top hailed all over the world as the toughest of the pitches to play on. There is no home advantage involved; just toss advantage. Win the toss and put the opposition in to bat. Bring in your fiery fast bowlers to swing the red cherry in ways that reminiscence the batsman their shameful failures of tendering their kindergarten swing. It is so magical a strip that, one hardly finds the difference between the pitch and the ground. It is almost like a park where the bowlers are playing “Ringa Ringa Roses” with the batsmen and “all (wickets) fall down”.

We have green tops in India too. Flabbergasted by the previous statement? These green tops are the ones that we play our school tournaments on. The green mat spread to three-fourths of the pitch and in which a leg spinner can garner better bounce than a medium-pacer. And how does it feel to take a wicket in the second ball of your career – out of the green top. For most part of my tennis-ball cricket career, I was a wicket-keeper; probably because I used to have good reflexes and also because I like to sledge a lot. But, when it was time to play with a red cherry, I always wanted to bowl. A part of the reason I took up bowling was because my former tennis-ball bowlers couldn’t control the seam and it was getting difficult for me to shield away from the bruises. But the main reason was, I wanted that rugged attention that a fast-bowler gets when he runs into bowl and the crowd goes “oooooooooo000000ooooooooooh”. Bowling with an upright seam and making the ball talk was what I had always wanted to do and imagined myself doing.

This incident dates back to 1999, when I took my run-up to bowl the first ball of my career. Bowling to a Right-handed batsman, I imagined myself to be Glenn McGrath and bowled on the goodlength-off stump line, pitching on the seam and the ball deviated a few degrees towards the slip cordon crossing the batsman by his chest. The batsman was as amazed as I was, tapped the green mat, where he found a one-rupee coin on which I had pitched the ball. Mid-on comes and encourages me. “It was a neat out-swinger” says the umpire. Impressed. First ball of your career and you caused panic in the dressing room.

Second ball. Pressure building up. I ran into bowl not knowing how I was holding the seam and where the shiny side was. I pitched on the same one-rupee coin, but this time the ball moved into the batsman. With my Karizma ZMR top-speed of 140kmph, he was struck plumb in front. The whole lot of us appealed “Howzzat???” and without a doubt, the umpire raised the finger that all batsmen dread. The crowd erupted in joy. Thus a Wicket-keeper turns a Bowler! And the prolific batsman couldn’t believe the amount of swing that I could muster. I became a two-ball hero because that was one wicket we all wanted desperately. I finish that over with great zeal and enthusiasm.

After the over, I stepped out of the rope to put my pads and gloves on, when Dravid asked to steam-in with another couple of overs on the green top to castle the New Zealand team before lunch. I obliged him, telling my captain Azharuddin about Dravid’s astute decision. Christchurch was one heck of a green top to bowl on and the NZ were all-out for a menial score. Harsha Bhogle termed me as the next superstar of Indian cricket and without an option Richie Benaud agreed to it. When I walked out of the field leading the team, I showed the crowd my test cap that I got from Sachin at the start of the match. It was an innings victory for us and the next week’s Sportstar carried my bowling action as the Starposter.

 All through our childhoods, we all dream, nothing wrong in it. But how many of us take that dream to the next level? I do. I still dream playing in Indian XI, especially when sitting in a lecture where I don’t understand anything about why the strategic potential of a cutting-edge throughput should satisfy the market demand!!

Baby, you like it?

Cricket has for long caught the attention of the average Indian’s mind and body like nothing else. But, interesting statistics put cricket at second to none other than football in terms of team-sport viewership and analyses point the recent success to the advent of T20. Lot of history behind the 130 years old sport that the Englishmen gave birth to although; India’s innate Gilli-danda is proclaimed to be the genesis of this wonderful game.

History reminiscences about the unlimited-time Test match played once upon a time to the 60-overs ODIs. Till then, the marketing of the sport was dogmatic concerning only the aristocratic, but, in 1977, the Australian Kerry Packer involving Channel Nine turned things around with his Supertests involving a bunch of Australian delights against the World’s superstars under lights for the very first time in history. As an expected retaliation from any human congregation to changes, the Kerry-Packer series was amidst myriad controversies. The ACB (Australian Cricket Board) and the others who controlled the game then, rebuked the idea (What did they know that “An idea can change your life sirji”) and castigated it. Luckily, BCCI was not a part of that “others” group as we were still finding our feet in the deep waters of 60-overs ODIs.

Finance is the key to any market and when the ACB found themselves smooching bankruptcy, the only option that they had was to break-up with their narrow-minded thinking. Kerry either wasn’t doing that well to afford a holiday package in the Great Barrier Reefs, but, he was patient enough to envision beyond the horizon. As it all happened a deal was stuck to give Channel Nine exclusive telecast rights and autonomous power to market cricket in Australia.

West Indies won back-to-back World Cups in 1975 and 1979 and thanks to them that the helmet was invented in one of the Supertests played in 1977-78. Surprisingly from nowhere came the underdogs (or the Slumdogs??) lifting the 1983 coveted trophy for the first time. May be one good thing about cricket then was that, whatever you did, it went into the record books as “for the first time”. Four years later, the Asian sub-continent hosted the World Cup. Again, it was for the first time. In 1992, back Down Under, the World Cup was played with the colours replacing Whites and the white replacing the red cherry, for the first time.

Things happened and cricket a 50-over a side sport ,started attracting people from all over the world. Apart from The Ashes and the Indo – Pak series, the World Cup was the only other, much watched programme with respect to cricket. Cricket then went to a dormant phase where the routine took over the turbulence, until the Match-fixing controversy hit the scene in 2000. Again, for the first time a magnitude of such sorts was achieved in the sport. The Men-in-dark-blue went pale much before the 1996 World Cup and the meaning to the change in contrast of their jersey’s colour was understood by the average Indian, as late as 2000. A complete re-jig was done to save cricket and the retired-cricketers-turned-management-gurus were apprehensive over losing the billion Indians, if not millions at least. The fact that, cricket is in the second position in viewership is attributed to the fanatics from the sub-continent where the population is also really high. (A real bad move by football and other sports to leave out the Asian sub-continent to market their sport) Attributing to this reasoning, was India’s march to the 2003 World  Cup Final, a part of the marketing gimmick to save the sport in India. Absurd as it sounds, because, if that was the case, India would have won the tournament. The average Indian has been treated by their stalwart cricketers as a sinusoidal wave with interests peaking, attaining a maximum and then starting to stoop.

The anti-climax of the changes that the game underwent was with the advent of T20s. May be they got their idea from the rain-truncated matches which used to be a 25-overs a side affair that pulled the crowds to the grounds despite the rains. T20s was a flabbergasting hit right from the word “Go”. Or, was it we the Indians who were on cloud nine when India won the inaugural World Cup in 2007, again for the first time? The World Cup triumph gave birth to IPL (Indian Paisa League. Oops!! Indian Premier League) which was an idea stolen from ICL (Indian Cricket League) of Zee Sports. What happened next is definitely not history, but controversies. Players who went to the ICL because they will never get a chance to play for their country and they also need to feed the cricket fanatics of their family were banned by BCCI. This happened when BCCI was not even aware of the potential that the T20 format possessed. IPL happened only after our World Cup triumph and they were not even ashamed to acknowledge the fact that the idea was indeed stolen. Similar to what ACB did to Kerry-Packer Series, although not the same. Then in chronology came the spot-fixing or the great Pakistani torrents of mishaps. Should I even talk about them? Better to leave it at the authorities’ hands to provide justice to the game.

Today we have different leagues and cricket is shaping into a massive crowd puller, just like football. Sirjis, please capture the market of China as well, before football takes them over completely. With China and USA in the foray, one day I dream cricket to be the most loved and viewed team sport in the world and I pray that my dream comes true which will be the actual climax.

Cricket clock ticks back again!!!

There have been innumerous times, when the game of cricket in India has gone through phenomenal changes. Every now and then, the absurd situations of loss in interest leading to decline in viewership have baffled the cricket industry. And each time a disaster occurs, it occurs in its true sense. Etched in the memory of the present T20 generation, the century’s birth was marked by the match-fixing fiasco, followed by dismal performance in 2003 World Cup finals, 2007 World Cup first round exit and the recent T20 World Cup. Every time, the road along the abyss seemed deeper, but the anti-gravity force has proved stronger enough.

 After the match-fixing scandal, we saw the formation of a new team of youngsters taking the reins at the helm. A new dawn was on the horizon with fresh legs and smarter brains. The most successful Indian captain took the team to new heights and the front-end work thoroughly projected the back-end efforts. It was those individuals who brought the hopes of billion other Indians alive. Alas! When the going was good, the same individuals buckled under pressure, hay-wired on the March 23^rd finals and shattered the expectations.

The rebuilding this time was not that fast enough. Taking examples from the past, the team started playing consistently and were rightly rewarded, supported by stellar performances from the next pool of youngsters. Infusion of young minds once again proved that the juice of cricket is worth the squeeze for the Indians. But, they proved that watching cricket over studying for exams is not that great an idea for millions of students across the nation, during the jet-lagged 2007 World Cup.

After the falter, the recovery did not take much of a time, as the Indian board used the same old trick of betting on the youngsters and were rewarded with the first T20 World Cup. Cricket reached new heights and the pinnacle was right in sight. Cashing in on the cricketing craze that was generated and the adrenaline being pumped in, the birth of the Cricket League and the Premier League fanaticized the fans. With myriad controversies surrounding both the leagues, the common fan was very optimistic about the future of the game. His interest rocketed and the mere numbers of economical crashes never even bothered him.

Plummeting at the second T20 edition, did not bring that many hearts down until the IPL-III happened. Again giving way to controversies and conspiracies, the tournament thought-out as a preparation for the T20 World Cup, 2010, proved to be a devil in disguise. With fitness issues at the centre and personal issues in the periphery, the Men in Blue, portrayed themselves to be completely disordered. Finding solace and trying the same approach of investing in the new pool of youngsters in the Zimbabwe tour backfired and the next strategy to rejuvenate seems to be a looming asymptote. Was the thrilling India-Pakistan match of the Asia Cup the panacea? We got to wait and watch.

Cricket World Cup 2003

Its cricket again. India was World Cup runners. It was an awesome moment for us Indians. But, saddening part was also there that they lost in the finals. This poem was written during my eleventh annual exam.

Fourteen teams fight,

with seven on each side.

Each play six,

is what the ICC fix.

India making a quiet start,

but, ending the league with a bulls-eye dart.

Its all about beating the Pakis,

where each of us believe as luckies.

Everything behind Sachin and Sehwag,

but, our captain doesn't want to talk.

Zaheer and Srinath on their pacy way,

joined by Nehra at the blue moon bay.

Kaif and Yuvi, the blended youth,

also with Mongia, having in some faith.

Nobody could be compared to the THE WALL Dravid,

who will never ever become livid.

If Bhajji hits a six, a lion roars,

but, if Dada hits a six, a mouse squeaks.

The cup of joy is their choice,

Win the World cup, Come on Boys.

Match Fixing

This was a poem written by me when I was in Ninth grade. Cricket was hit by this huge controversy called MATCH FIXING. My childish feelings @ that point of time..

Match fixing scandal,

for cricketers its vital.

A group of Hansie,

can make cricket fancy.

Bribe is money,

they eat it as honey.

Not only very bad,

but also very mad.

For a six,

they will fix,

and for a four,

they raise a crore.

In amazing victory,

there is some mystery.

Cricket, a gentleman's game,

now, called in money's name.

Talk about cricket,

all the people neglect,

As a game,

it is a shame.