Who is the most valuable indian player in the last decade ?

Sachin Tendulkar has been in the best form of his life in the last year. He has not scored more runs in a year than what he has already scored in this year. He also became the first player in the history of ODIs to score a double hundred. But my choice for the most valuable player is not sachin.

My choice for the most valuable player in the past decade are the two Vs of the Indian cricket. V.V.S Laxman and Virendra Sehwag. Both of the have made valuable match winning contribution in the last decade. The nature of the contribution is totally different for both of them. While Sehwag has mainly contributed in the first innings, it is the opposite for Laxman.

Laxman is one of the player you can rely on when the chips are down. He has bailed out the indian team in the 4th innings of a test match numerous times. He has got under the skin of the aussies. His speciality has been to strive under pressure. He relishes playing under pressure. He specializes in playing with the tailenders. Be it the famous 2001 test series against the aussies, the 2010 sri lanka series or the just concluded series against the aussies; Laxman has delivered when the team had lost all the hope in winning the match. That is his speciality which Sachin has already lacked.

Sehwag on the other hand has mainly dominated the opposition in the early stages of the test matches. He has given blazing start to the team, which not only increases the run rate (thus increasing the chances of the match producing a result) but also increases the morale of the batsmen down the order. The bowlers are crushed when he is in full flow. One of the negative points about Sehwag is that he fails in the 2nd innings but he makes up for it in the first innings by scoring doubles and triples !!

I see tremendous potential in Murli Vijay who can become the most valuable player in the next decade. He is a free flowing batsmen like sachin.

SIGCOMM 2010

I always wanted to know what happens in an conference. I got the opportunity to attend a conference when i received an email about travel grant for SIGCOMM 2010. SIGCOMM is one of the most famous conference in the field of networking. I send the application for the travel grant and it was accepted. I was delighted that i will be going to New Delhi to attend the conference. One of my friend (Kaustav) also went with me. We also registered for a workshop "APsys" which was held one day before the main conference.

We went to New Delhi by train. My mama had made arrangement for our stay at Banga Bhavan. After reaching there we took some rest and ate typical bengali food there. I enjoyed the food extremely. In the evening we went to Cannaught place. We also rode Metro Train. The train and the station were outstanding to say the least. I had never seen such type of railway station in my life. I was like a Mall !

The next day we went to the conference venue Hotel Le Meridien. It's a 20-storey 5 star hotel. For the first time in my life i went inside a 5 star hotel. It was amazing. The workshop was at 20th floor. The seen was amazing from the 20th floor. Everything was glittering. The lift were made of of glass.. something that i saw only in movies.The workshop was held in a small room and was quite boring except for the Keynote talk by prof. Hari Balakrishanan. We had snacks and lunch through the day. I didnt like the workshop and had extreme headache.

The next day was better. The conference started with presentations on wireless network. I liked couple of them. But after that i didnt find that much interest except for couple of papers. The lunch and the snacks were truly amazing, specially the desserts :-).. i had tons of them.


In the night there was a gala dinner. I never went to such a dinner party ever. Truly unique and amazing experience. Ate lots of starters and juice. We also interacted with a person from Bell Labs, US. I was surprised to know that he likes spicy indian food.

Next day was the best day as the best paper in Wireless networks were presented on that day. I enjoyed listening to them. In the night there was a banquet at Taj. Another thing that i had never experienced before. There was a Outrageous Opinion Session where profs. shared "Networking Jokes" with us. There was also some classical Indian music.

The last day was quite boring for me. None of the papers interested me. But i had to stay to get my travel grant check :-).

Sigcomm 2010 was a wonderful experience. For the first time i saw so many DONS in the field of networking. For the first time i went inside a five start. For the first time i had such a wonderful dinner and banquet.

The only thing i couldnt do was visit some places in Delhi. It was not a option for me because i went with kaustav :-( ......

Goa Tour

Since i came to IIT Bombay, the place i wanted to visit the most was Goa. Me and my friends made many attempts to visit Goa during the first year. But we failed each and every time.
Suddenly on 8th july evening we realized that most of our guides were out of station. So, we suddenly decided to make yet another attempt to
visit Goa. But there was more intent to it this time. We decided to book tickets for bus. At around midnight we booked 10 tickets to Goa. The bus to Goa would leave at 5:30pm from Kanjurmarg.
The next day, full with energy 10 of us left for Kanjurmarg to catch the bus for Goa. The journey was boring to say the least. It took us 16 hours to reach Goa. I couldnt even sleep at night. But finally we arrived at Goa.
Our first stop was Margao, a small town in south Goa. We took a cheap hote(Rs 220/head)l there. After having lunch we booked Qualis to visit various temples and churches in south Goa. We visited two beautiful (but identical) temples. The temples were really quite and i found peace there. The environment there was quite and peaceful there. Some of us also bought 'Goa T-Shirt' from a shop outside the temple. Then we went to visit some churches. The first church that we visited was Se Cathedral. It is the oldest church in Goa. The church was huge and full of architecture. I have never seen such a huge church before. We also saw the coffin were the body of St. Xavier's was kept. We visited a art gallery in the church. After visiting that church we visited another nearby church. The state of the church looked like it was not used for hundreds of years.
After visiting the churches the Qualis dropped us at Colva beach. It is one of the famous beach in south Goa. The beach has many coconut trees. At around 5pm we decided to take a bath and have some fun in the sea. After having a bath some of us decided to have a beer in the beach. The beer didnt have any effect on me, so i was a bit disappointed . After that we returned to our hotel. After taking a shower we went to have dinner. For the first time in my life, i ate lamb. It was extremely mouth watering to say the least. We had some drinks (scotch) with red chilly lamb. After that we had some baskin robbins icecream. After that we came to the hotel . Some of us slept and some of us watched the fifa world cup match for the 3rd place.

Next morning after having some light breakfast we left for north goa. It is the happening and rocking part of Goa. We changed four buses to reach our destination. While moving towards the Calangute beach (The most famous beach in Goa) we saw hundreds of wine shops on the way. On reaching the beach many dalals contacted us for hotels. One of the them said he has he room for 10 people costing around RS 1500. We were surprised to hear about such a cheap hotel in Goa and that too near the beach. The dalal took us. We were waking through the beach and were wondering where is the hotel. Suddenly he pointed towards a hut and took us inside. We were surprised to see concrete walls inside the hut. The hut was a disguise for the police. The building was illegal and had to be covered with coconut leaves. After a long discussion we decided to stay there (after all our budget was very less). After dumping our luggage we headed for the beach. We also bought a football. The beach was a 3kim long. It is known as Calangute and Baga beach. We walked from Calanguta beach towards the beach. Along the way we played football. A dog also joined us in playing. After reaching the beach some of us had beer and chicken. After that we had 4-5 hours of fun in Baga beach. Never spent so much time at a beach at a stretch. We played many types of sports with the ball in the water. In the evening we came back to the hotel and took shower.

After that we went for dinner at a restaurant in the beach. The restaurant was quite expensive. Some of my friends decided to go for crab and some decided to go for squid. I opted prawn. The prawn was good but the curry was awful because it was cooked with coconut oil. After the expensive dinner some of us went to buy some decorative items for our home. After that 6 of us decided to to have high volume of alcohol and have fun in the night. We stat in a open air restaurant in the middle of the beach. Three of our friend ordered Hokka and all of us first ordered Cashew Fenny. It is a local Goan drink. After that we went for couple of pegs of Royal stag. We had lots and lots of fun there. The nice was full of fun and the sea made it better. After that we went back to our room. The Fifa world cup final was going on. I was supporting Spain and rest of my friends were supporting Netherlands. Finally Spain won and i was the happiest man in the room that night.
Next morning we left the hotel and headed straight to a Fort near the sea. We spent around one hour roaming inside the fort and taking photographs. Then some of our friends found out a way to reach to the sea. The path to the sea was extremely tricky and risky. It was like trekking but was more dangerous. I couldnt even complete it because my pant was torn on the way :-(. But the seen there was amazing.
After that risky adventure we went to the bus stand to catch a bus for Mumbai. After yet another long and boring bus journey we returned to our campus at 6am in the morning. After coming back we ate the famous Goan sweet called Bebinca.

World's Best UNiversities in the field of IT

I have been looking for a list of world's best technical universities for quite some time. Finally i found out an authentic page. http://www.usnews.com/articles/education/worlds-best-universities/2009/10/20/worlds-best-universities-engineering-and-it-universities.html .

I am proud that i am part of an university that is ranked 30th in the world. Also it is the top engineering college of the country.

Oh! Kolkata , I will miss you ....

Four years ago i came to Kolkata to pursue B.Tech from Techno India. Previously i had been visiting the city once or twice a year to visit my relatives. From that time , i have developed love for the city and its people. So , i was quite happy to pursue my B.Tech here.

I have thoroughly enjoyed staying here. I made so many friends here and have some unforgettable memories with them. I have never enjoyed friendship so much. During my schooling i used to frequently change my place and schools , so i didnt have as many friends. But here i have throughly enjoyed friendship . I have made some friends whom i will never forget in my life. Some of them are Rajorshi , Rahul ,Nirmalya , Kalyan , Bagchi , amit ,susmit , sumit , nandan and many more. Rajorshi one of the first friend that i have made after coming here. I will never forget the days when at the start of each semester we used to go to college street to buy books and also eat :-) .Rahul is the friend with whom i have interacted the most , be it mobile , online or in college. I have thoroughly enjoyed chatting with him many for countless of hours . And i must admit that i loved giving him chap(he has also understood this) . So sometimes he doesnt believe me even when i am serious :-) . I want to thank him for giving me so many s/w and games and scanning and email-ing important things. He has truly helped me a lot.

Nirmalya aka mallu has been extremely lucky for me. Whenever i have traveled with him , good things have happened . He and i suffered from the same pain after the TCS campusing . So we used to share our pain. During the infosys campusing i went with him. That turned quite lucky for me . I got through , so did he. Also he , rajorshi and samya helped me immensely during the Infosys campusing. I will thank them forever for this. Also i will have unforgettable memories of the semester exam days. The way samya used to copy from me was simply astonishing . He became quite famous for that. Loved every bit of the exam days with samya and samrat aka bokaro.

Kalyan is the friend who has helped me immensely academically. I call him SUPER kalyan because he does everything perfectly and never misses out on anything like lab work ,assignments . He is one of the guys who used to reach college at the earliest. So i used to chat with him regarding academics at that time. I sincerely pray that he quickly gets a job. He is person who deserves a job more than anybody else in the class. Also i have many friends with whom i have interacted a lot , like amit , susmit , nandan , sumit , anustup and anand.

Finally one of the friend whom i wouldnt miss at all is kaustav because he will be studying Mtech with me. I am quite lucky to have got such a helpful friend like him . He is always ready to help u at any situation. For my computer problems i always turn to him for help. Loves cracking jokes at others. I am quite lucky that he will accompany me to IITB.

I am going to miss my college days so much. Also i will be missing Kolkata a lot.

Thanks Kolkata for everything you have give me.....

My Solution to the Fatigue problem for the cricketers

Recently there has been discussions on the continuous amount of non-stop cricket that cricketers are playing nowadays. With the popularity of T20 and tournaments like IPL and world cup T20 , the fatigue factor among the players has even increased further. So its high time that we find a solution to the non-stop cricket that cricketers play nowadays. Also as a spectator we dont want the amount of cricket to reduce. Also the cricket boards and sponsors dont want to lose money because of less cricket.

Keeping these points in mind i have tried to find a Mathematical solution for this problem. I think the main reason for fatigue is that players play too many matches during a certain period of time , like they play say 3 tests and 8 ODIs in one month. That puts a tremendous amount of pressure on their body. For this purpose , i think a rule should be made that you are allowed to play only certain number of matches during a period of time.


To make this rule i think certain point should be given to tests , ODIs and T20s. For example 10 points for a test , 5 points for an ODI and 3 points for a T20. Now if a player plays one test match and one ODI , then he has 10+5=15 points. Now we should make a rule such that a player doesnt exceed certain amount of points in the last few days. Like we can make a rule like a player should not have more than 50 points in the last 30 days. Now if a player's point exceeds than 50 , then he should rest for few days and let his number of points reduce .Then again he can play. For example - Suppose a player has 50 points between 4th june to 4th july , and suppose he has played a test match between 5th june to 9th june... now points between 10th june to 10th july is 40 . So the player cant play between 5th july to 9th july , but can play on 10th july.This rule stops players from playing non-stop cricket continuously.

Now many people may argue that why shouldn't a team play his best player if he is fully fit. But i think if the team management does its calculations correctly then it can stop the player from playing in non-important matches and save him for crucial matches .Also the team's bench strength gets tested. A team having a pool of good players will succeed. Also the amount of cricket played doesnt reduce and hence spectators , boards and sponsors are happy.

I know this idea is not 100% correct. But i think my modifying this idea we can certainly come up with some solution for this fatigue problem.

Please post your valuable comments. DO let me know about my idea and the modifications to this idea.

Is Micheal Jackson Still alive?

Just days after Michael Jackson died, rumours are flooding the internet that he faked his own death.

Thousands of fans have been logging onto websites to join wacky conspiracy theories that the singer is still alive and is just getting ready to make a spectacular comeback.

One website released a photo three days after the singer's death claiming that he is alive.

Another says the singer has been planning this for a year-and-a-half and is now in hiding in eastern Europe. However, there is no proof to back these claims, reports the Sun.

Another site has released a photo it claims is of Jackson, insisting that the man who died on Thursday was the singer’s body double with a terminal illness whose family will be looked after in return.

“Over the past few days there have been many Michael sightings. People have emailed with pictures and amazing stories," a message reads.

“Michael is alive and well. The plot was 10 years in the making but it had to be done.

“We know he is alive because we have seen pictures. Clear pictures taken on June 26, 2009 of Michael Jackson lounging poolside with friends.

“Those close to Michael known about the plot for years, t was a very expensive and intricate venture.

“The man who died had a terminal illness and his death was long overdue. He was given facial surgery to resemble Michael exactly. No doubt his family will be taken care of.

“Soon, Michael’s new music will be out. Under a different name and with a drastically altered face... though a harmoniser has been used to disguise his voice”, the website claimed.

Source :- Hindustan Times

Poor captaincy and over confidence throws India Out of T20 world Cup.

Its not west Indies and England who threw India out of T20 world cup. Only the Indians are responsible for their debacle in the World Cup. Poor captaincy by Dhoni coupled with over confidence of the players were responsible for the early exit of the Indians from the T20 world cup.

The players were over confident was evident from their interaction with media. Between the game between WI and ENG Yuvraj Singh was asked a question -" Why team India is shopping Instead of Practicing for the crucial match against England?". Yuvraj replied saying that they know whats best for them. But Clearly Yuvraj didnt know whats best for the at all. The team struggled against Bouncers in the match against the Windies. And they didnt work on even after the failure , the result - The Indians again struggled against the bouncers in their match against England. Had Yuvraj Singh known whats best for them , then they would have certainly worked on their weekness during the practice session. Instead they went shopping. Also some of the press conference with Captain Cool MSD raised some eyebrows .

MS Dhoni was not the captain he used to be before the IPL. His captaincy was pathetic to say the least in the world cup. He made countless errors this time and this blog space might not be enough for me to list down all the errors. In the match against England , RP singh and Zaheer Khan bowled so well early on. RP singh gave us the important break through , but Dhoni didnt even utilise his full quota of overs!! Even Zaheer khan's one over was left. Instead he went for Ishant sharma who went for 13 runs in his first over. Also Ishant was hammered in the last match. Clearly either MSD got his calculations wrong or he made a huge mistake. He must learn from Sri Lanka. They utilize their bowlers so well. The key bowlers - Murli , Mendis and Malinga are handled so well by them . All three bowl some overs in the middle and also the last 4-5 overs of the innings. Its as if everything is planned before they come to the field.

Also Dhoni got his batting order wrong virtually in all the matches. In the game against Windies he made the mistake of promoting himself up the order and in the game against English men he promoted Jadeja up the order. Both his decisions proved suicidal with respect to match outcome. You got to have your best players early in T20 matches because overs are very few. In the ideal case one would want their best players to play the entire 20 overs so that they can score as many as possible. But Dhoni held back Yuvraj and Yusuf Pathan and instead opted for the slow scoring jadeja.

This result will surely act as a wake up call for Team India and MS Dhoni. Till now he was enjoying a golden run but now his real test as a captain will start. As Sourav Ganguly rightly says we have to wait and see how Dhoni performs when the going gets tough and then only we can comment whether he is India's greatest captain. So Dhoni must learn from its mistake and show the world that he is a good captain in the champions trophy starting fews months from now.