What if India lost the final ???

1. Dhoni would be called the worst captain of all time for not picking Ashwin in the final.
2. Sachin Tendulkar would have retired without winning the world cup. People will speculate him playing in the 2015 WC
3. Dilshan would have been the Man of the tournament
4. Jayawardene's knock would be compared with Ricky Ponting's knock in the 2003 finals. He would have been the man of the match
5. Harbhajan would have been termed an 'ineffective spinner' unable to take wickets in spinning wickets
6. Kohli would have lost his position in the team
7. Sreesanth would be dropped indefinitely from the team for his poor performances in the world cup
8. Zaheer Khan would be reprimanded for bowling a poor final spell
9. Sidhu would have screamed all over TV saying omission of Ashwin was the reason
10. Sangakara would have not stepped down from captaincy, Dhoni would have been removed from captaincy
11. Critics will point fingers at Sachin and say he has never performed in crucial matches
12. Gary Kirsten's exit from the team would have been quiet. He would have never been approached to stay back.
13. Pepsi would remove all its ads featuring Men bleeding in blue
14. Ashwin would become a regular member of the team
15. Muralitharan would have achieved the highest glory for the second time in his last game
16. The BCCI would have never announced 1 crore prize money for all players. 
17. Kapil Dev and his team would still be approached during the 2015 world cup and asked how it felt to win the world cup. You will then see Kapil saying 'I am confident that this team will surely win the world cup'
18. India's poor record in the finals will continue. Cricinfo.com would put up statistics displaying how India have poorly performed in the finals over the last few years.
19. One section of India will console themselves with the fact that India won Australia and Pakistan in the QF and SF respectively.
20. Dhoni would consider going back to his 'old and lucky' hair style with long hair.. ;)

And finally,

Kohli would have never said these golden words 'Tendulkar has carried the burden of the nation for 21 years. It is time we carried him on our shoulders'

Good Bye, Ricky Ponting

In what could be his last world cup match, Ricky Ponting was magnificent. And finally, after years of dominating ODI cricket, Australia have been knocked out of the World cup. There will be a new champion this year.

After months of suffering from a bad patch, he produced a knock which can be compared with his 2003 WC final's innings. Only legends will be able to muster enough strength to silence out their critics. It would be unfair if he will be remembered as the captain who lost Ashes 3 times and crashed out of the WC in the quarter finals.

In the movie 'Dark Knight', the lead character Batman says 'You die as a hero, or you live long enough to be called a villain'. This is Ricky Ponting's sad state. People tend to forget what he has done and start questioning what he has not done. Jayasurya, Vaas, Shoaib Akthar, Steve Waugh, Kumble, Dravid, Ganguly suffered the same fate as well.

On a crumbling pitch, with a pumped up Indian bowling side, Ponting played what was required for his country. He scored singles, the occasional boundary and kept the score board ticking. The slog overs were utilized properly as well. The batsmen who followed scored at a healthy rate in the final overs. 260 was a good score on that pitch, but his bowlers let him down. As Ian chappel correctly pointed out, there were simply too many boundary balls bowled by the Aussie bowlers.

Yet another 100 by a legend in vain, the Australian media or public don't blame him for the defeat. Rather they admire him for his efforts. And that's how it should be. A national hero worth admiring!!! Salute, Ricky Ponting. You have entertained us well for so many years.

This result sets up an exciting match between India and Pakistan. The mother of all clashes. Pakistan are in awesome form and India is peeking at the right moment. There will be no lack in entertainment.

Vinaithaandi Varuvaya - Awesome !

Gautam Menon, Simbu, Trisha & AR Rahman, Wow the chemistry has certainly done magic here. For the first time in my life, I liked Simbu's acting. Trisha looks cute and has acted well too. ARR's music keeps you spell bound. [I still wonder what is 'Hosana' though :)] The love scenes at Kerala make you feel that you need to visit that place.

The movie captures in a silent manner what love means to a guy and what marriage means to a girl. Towards the end, where the guy struggles/refuses to move on while the girl moves on only shows the maturity of the director. Hats off to Gautom Menon.

But the weak heart that i am i would say that I liked the end of 'Jessy' than VTV :)

VTV - A must watch.

Killer.exe

Guys,

Just got back from bangalore. It has been 2 months away from home. Feels nice to be back. These 2 months were hard because i missed both my bike and my system.

When i got back home, i was in for a big shock. My system was yet again attacked by a virus. And this time, the virus was a nasty one. This one is called as the 'Funny UST Scandal.exe' virus. Let me tell you one thing, this virus is not funny at all.

The initial symptoms were that i was not able to open certain drives in my hard disk. I tried restarting the explorer, my system just to ensure it was not a windows error. The same situation continued after reboot. Now, i knew that the system had a virus. I thought of killing the virus process by opening task manager. I opened the task manager and saw the process called 'killer.exe' running. While i tried to kill it, the task manager was closed automatically! I was really shocked. I tried opening task manager again, but this time it wudnt even open. Then i tried to prevent the virus from starting itself during reboot. I opened msconfig. To my utter shock, it closed automatically too! The damn virus wouldnt even let me open the command prompt.

I searched the net for information regarding the virus and got some info abt it. Few sites said that the virus file resides in C:\Windows with a hidden attribute. When i tried to view hidden files from the tools menu in the explorer, it closed too!

I was really shocked. The guy who wrote the virus must have been a genius. When i tried searching for the virus cure in the net, any web page which pointed to the cure also closed automatically. I couldnt open symantec or mcafee's site.

To make things worse, the damn virus wouldnt let me install anti virus softwares too. As i said before, who ever who wrote this virus must have been a genius.

To summarize the symptoms,
1. Task Manager closes automatically
2. CMD prompt closes automatically
3. System Configuration Utility [msconfig] closes automatically
4. Anti virus installations fail
5. Websites pointing to its cure closes automatically
6. Cannot open hard disks where the virus resides.
7. Cannot open 'Folder Options' in Explorer menu.

After numerous attempts in finding cure for the virus, i finally stumbled upon http://piyushlabs.wordpress.com/smss/. This blog really helped me a lot. This blog gives complete information abt the virus and how to clean it. The cleaning process is made easy by the batch files given in the site. The author of this site, Piyush is absolutely great. His solution helped me remove the virus from my system. Thanks Piyush! Continue in your attempt in kicking out viruses [and not creating them :)]

Hope you guys dont get this virus in your system. And if you are unfortunate to get the virus, consider yourself fortunate to find the solution at http://piyushlabs.wordpress.com/smss/

Until next time.

The Champions!

Indians have finally done it. They have conquered the 'All Conquering' Aussies in their backyard. When i wrote my previous blog during the mid innings break of the match, i dint know that it wud turn out to be such an interesting match.

I thought 260 was a score that can be chased. The Australian batting let them down very badly. They shud have concentrated on a decent opening partnership like the Indians. At this point i shud mention abt Adam Gilchrist. Wat an ambassador of the sport has he been! It is only fitting that he "walked" today before the umpire cud raise his finger. A career that he shud be certainly proud of.

Spare of thought for Brad Hogg who has always been a good bowler [for India]. A career which never settled down, a career where a major part was spent as the 12th man.



Ponting's bad form continues. He showed signs getting back to form with a century couple of matches ago, but that dint really carry over to the crucial matches. I wudnt be a surprised if Ponting is removed from captaincy. I simple feel the Aussies have concentrated too much on the talking part and have failed to play some gud cricket. The team relied heavily on the 2 home ground boys, Hayden & Symmonds. Their mix up in the middle was the turning point of the match. Otherwise they would have scored 250 odd in 45 overs or so. Hopes gave some 'hope' for the Australian crowd. Entertaining innings from him & Hussey.

The match had everything including the symmonds attack on the stripper. [i dont have the simplest clue why some one wud run around nude in public]



Indians have had a very good tour down under. 2-1 defeat in the tests and winning the CB series championship is something they will be really proud of. Young Ishant Sharma was the find of the tour. Praveen Kumar looks promising, but these are early days and comments cannot be made at this point of time.

This tour also marked "The Master" return to his throne. Sachin played a mature innings in the finals. For all those critics who say 'Sachin doesnt play in finals' must shut their mounts.

The blog's title is 'The Champions'. There is another team from India who are now crowned the 'World Champions'. I will certainly write a blog on that in the next few days.

Right now, i leave you with this picture.

CB Series - Second Final - Lunch

At lunch of the second final between India and Australia, both teams stand with a good chance of winning the game. Indians would feel bit sad of not scoring 280+ provided the solid start they had. Having said that, the pitch hasn't really helped their cause.

Crucial Toss won by Dhoni. Solid opening partnership between Sachin & Uthappa to give India the start they wanted. They had decent partnerships in between. Sachin yet again proving his class. Not the typical type of innings you would expect from him. Unlucky to get out in the ninties.



Had Yuvraj, Sachin or Ghambir carried on for slightly longer, Indians would have more runs on the board.

Aussies on the other hand would be happy that they still have a chance in the match. They have the batting strength to chase down this total. Indians have gone 3 seamers & 2 spinners. I sincerely hope, Sreesanth bowls decently.

Watch out for Hayden, Gilchrist, Ponting & Symmonds. If one of these guys gets going, Indians are gonna be in big trouble.
The second session promises to be a cracker. Sad that i cant watch the match. :(
Hope Indians come out victorious.

CB Series - Finals

Well then, what a match it was!

Disappointing if you are an aussie fan but cheerful if you support India. Good all round efforts by the Indians to restrict Aus to 239 and then chase them down well.



The special thing about this match was Tendulkar's innings. I dont remember seeing Tendulkar remain not out while chasing. This has to be one of best innings he has played. He has certainly silenced the critics who say he has a poor record while chasing. Rohit Sharma played a quality innings i think. A crafty innings which was over shadowed by Sachin's innings.

Aussies have a mountain to climb from here. They have 2 defeats in a row which they are not used to. Speaking of the aussies, i thought they wore outfits in yellow. But look at this!



The next match at the Gabba should be a cracker. Ind-Aus clashes are become more and more interesting. They are now considered equal to Ind-Pak & Aus-Eng clashes. Hope we have a cracker a match at the gabba where Aussies would be desperate to get back.