Tweet Post

Through fellow tweeters, found out about loudtwitter and the service it offers. So trying it out.

• 13:35 And so RSA falter in the first match itself. Barring Dale Steyn, everyone seemed to have just got out of bed for the match. Not so SLA #
• 14:00 RT: @i_become: On the i-blog:- Company Visibility: BASF “We are manufacturers for manufacturers” bit.ly/lUxxJ #
• 14:34 You can get your passport in 3 days flat – that’s the promise. India Passports to Go Digital Next Year – BusinessWeek bit.ly/jJ42c #
• 19:29 Massacre at Wanderers. Afridi’s out to finish the slaughter. This is the end of the West Indies as we knew them. Let’s call them Zimbabwe #
• 19:35 Darren Sammy is one player I recognise from before. Though the way he is playing now, seems a different player. What use experience? #
• 19:38 Just some fun, anyone tried Boxer beer? Had in Pilani once. RT @prempanicker: Okay… time to go find the beer with my name on it. *poof #
• 19:41 Pak taking it easy now. It’s more the ineptitude and low morale of the WI bats that is making it a Himalayan effort to play 50 overs. #
• 19:49 Finally, a quality over all round – two peaches of seam bowling from Rana, one blast through covers by Sammy. It’s lifting up. #
• 20:01 Batting powerplay with WI 88/8. Wonder what Nikita and Tino are planning to do about it. Nikita BTW is a guy. Least they should just hv fun #
• 20:03 First powerplay over 12 runs – Nikita hits 3 boundaries. WI touch 100 which is an achievment. From 47/7 to 100/8 – added 53 in 12 overs #
• 20:07 Shaun Pollock in commentary. This should be a pleasure. Especially with the boring Manjrekar with him. Pollock & Warne together will be fun #
• 20:21 Innings of great pride by Nikita Miller. Fighting it out ol’ fashioned hard way. 33 in 5 batting powerplay overs. Apparent chance for WI #
• 20:31 Half century by Nikita Miller. Celebrates with an Usain Bolt like arrow pose. Has certainly revived the Caribbean boys. #
• 20:48 First over of the chase – one clean shot for four, three mistimed shots. WI need to be more penetrative. Like what Tonge just did to Nazir. #
• 20:53 Excellent over from Tonge. After the first ball wicket, had Malik in much bother. Wicket maiden. Sammy has to respond #
• 21:04 Dylan for Peace Prz RT @amitvarma: Ladbrokes odds for the lit Nobel – Alice Munro & Bob Dylan are equal at 26 to 1. WTF? bit.ly/z53HZ #
• 21:10 ICL-return Tino Best bowled at 144kph. Tonge gets Akmal forward. These guys making Pak work it out hard. Revising my rating of the WI team. #
• 22:03 With $1.2 b, India one of the biggest investors in Afghan reconstruction. Strategic value underplayed but quite apparent bit.ly/oIdMB #
• 22:22 Now WI are up against class – Shoaib Malik and Md Yousuf. Guess its the end of the road for them in this match. #
• 22:36 RT: @i_become: LinkedIn Answers: Submitting the perfect CV / Resume from the i-blog. bit.ly/ZhXRh #
• 22:59 Introducing the i-blog from The i-become Initiative wp.me/phdLM-8v #
• 23:18 had switched off the match. Now cricinfo tells me Pak 76/5. Windies putting Pak on the mat. Well done #

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Cricket Post: Bangalore v Mumbai

Bangalore has had a recent resurgence with two consecutive wins, first against Kolkata and then against Punjab. With six points, they had the opportunity to win and jump to the top four on the table. Mumbai on the other hand already had 8 points and would have gone to the top of the table. I live tweeted the entire match and I am putting it here as a full report of the match.

Exciting stuff here, Ravi says. First thing I hear as I switch on the telly. South africans take over RCB, get JPD. Exit of KP significant?

Note: Had a conversation with Dibyo on this. Dibyo said KP may not have known about Du Preez and Van der Merwe. Also, KP as a bat did not really shine. A shame because “it would have been a treat, Bangalorean or not“

Dravid back in the team. Am not sure if Uthappa still makes the grade. But possibly no Indian alternative available

SMG says Du Preez is a ’surprise package’ cos he took wkts of SRT & Rahane, etc. ‘inspired selection’. bcos SMG has no idea who this guy is

Jaya – 39, SRT – 36, Jumbo – 38, RSD – 36, Kallis – 35, that’s the line up today. Young man’s game, anyone?

Note: Got it wrong, he is 33. Doesn’t change the purport of my tweet anyway

Jaya has just started scoring freely. But has to stop because of the tactical time out. Likely we will see AK 1st over after the break

8 off AK’s 1st over, all run. SMG feels 39 year old Jaya’s legs will cave in with all the running. What all does he get away with, does SMG.

Note: In Twitterland, we have had major things to say about Sunny Gavaskar’s commentary, not all of it is fit for publishing.

120 – 130 target likely. RCB will have to watch out for their first over wicket blues. No Ryder mind you, that should help I suppose

MI did very well in part 2 of their innings. Nayar seems hot candidate for Indian team for the World T20 team.

Note: In the last five overs, MI (Bravo and Nayar) put up 63 runs. Tremendous stuff. MI were 53/3 at the end of 10 overs. They finished with 149/4.

MI 149. Think it is going to be really tough for RCB. Their batting has been much under par. And today they have Wasim Jaffar to open.

Jaffar, a solid opng bat, says SMG, opportunity to show he relishes the game. What a contrast to his talk re M Vijay y’day

Note: Sanjeev and me had a banter about the propensity of the “crawl” when Jaffar and RSD come together. Sanjeev suggested that RSD and Jaffar would not complete 150 runs even in 50 overs, leave alone 20 overs. But Sanjeev then disproves himself by pulling out stats where Jaffar scored 178 of 132 balls. And argument about RSD is non starter anyway.

camera pans the crowd and shows all posters which sya inane things like Thank You IPL etc. Think they are planted by LM pr team

Note: Really, in all the cricket across the world, where have we actually seen posters thanking the tournament, board, board members, organising committee members, administrators, etc. You think an average Indian cricket fan is going to make a poster saying “Thank You Niranjan Shah”?

Lots of chikni chicks in the Mallya box waving RCB flags. My guess, Mallya has got his F1 pit babes over for the weekend.

Jaffar really wasted that over. Five dots including the ball that he got out to. Upset the rhythm they had first 2 overs.

Kallis takes 2 sixes of Malinga’s 1st over. Makes up for the previous over depression. Kallis going at 200 SR

Kallis timing and placement is outstanding tonight. He has been shining infrequently this #ipl . Hope he carries on for a big one

Danny Morrison reports that there are 35 cameras covering one match. That’s more than the number of players in the KKR team.

Note: This KKR team is a joke and hence making more jokes referring to them is perfectly okay.

Malinga bowls a maiden. Uthappa kept swinging his bat and hit nothing. Will have to be made up in this Nayar over.

Just 3 runs in the last 2 overs. RR has nosedived.

KP may have gone but seems to have left his scratchy play with Uthappa, including the stupid switch hit shot

Time out break > time required to smoke a kingsize cigarette

Nayar’s bowling run up and bowling in gen is reminiscent of Chris Harris and Gavin Larsen

+15 (Prem’s system), 9 wkts in hand. This is RCB’s game as of now. If they win, the ipl is wide open. Only KKR are assured of 8th spot

Zak’s going off. Won’t be avail to bowl a few overs at least. This will be crucial for MI.

This one is definitely planted “Lalit Modi, we Indians are proud of you”. They prbbly hand out these posters saying u’ll be on tv

Note: See above. LM has definitely done a good job, he has made a big business killing. He’s a successful fellow. Right. Poster in the stadium? Why not for Ratan Tata? For Dhirubhai Ambani?

Ok Robin Uthappa has just pressed a button and found his form. That six makes it +2 now. Are we done here?

1st fifty for Robin in all the #ipl matches he has played over two years. Underperformance to the hilt. Anyway, makes RCB much stronger.

16 off 18, that’s -2. This has been the best batting performance of the #ipl so far. Just good intelligent stuff runs all over the park, etc

9 wkts, 11 balls to spare. That’s 2 out of 2 for AK as captain. This Indo-RSA combo for RCB seems to be a sound strat.

DC, DD, MI and RCB all 8 points. CSK, RR, KxiP on 7 points. This would be good fun.

Bangalore thus move to the fourth spot. Lots of matches still to be played. But, the general thinking is that 7-8 wins should see one through to the semis. So RCB have three more matches to win at least (and one of them is against KKR). But of course, KKR is not so much significant as all teams have matches against KKR. Delhi infact has yet to play KKR, so they have two potential wins there.

As of now, from the consistent form on display – Hyderabad and Delhi look solid; Mumbai & Punjab are slightly more consistent than Bangalore, Rajasthan and Chennai.

But, to borrow from Ravi Shastri’s cliche list, the tournament is going to the wire.

Iraq and blogging

Bloggers remember Where is Raed (it now has a new avataar Salam Pax). For many around the world, it provided an alternative to the images broadcast by CNN and Al-Jazeera. The earliest archived post is of December 30th 2002 and it goes as follows

[salam]

from this article in the NY Times
If this wasn’t so sad it would be beautiful, the electricity went out at the Christmas week concert performed by the Iraqi National Symphony Orchestra. The last time I went was when they were still playing once a month at the Rasheed Theater, now they play at the Ribat Hall, everybody was sad when they were moved out of the Rasheed the Ribat is just an abandoned ruin with bad accoustics. They sounded depressing then and I stopped going. The Rasheed Theater, after the French Cultural Center stopped using it for perfomances of french artists and movies, is rented now for a “commercial” theater group prefering silly slapstick comedies.

And then there was Baghdad Burning. The earliest archived post is of August 17th, 2003 – The blogger, Riverbend, writes:-

The Beginning…

So this is the beginning for me, I guess. I never thought I’d start my own weblog… All I could think, every time I wanted to start one was “but who will read it?” I guess I’ve got nothing to lose… but I’m warning you- expect a lot of complaining and ranting. I looked for a ‘rantlog’ but this is the best Google came up with.

A little bit about myself: I’m female, Iraqi and 24. I survived the war. That’s all you need to know. It’s all that matters these days anyway.

Riverbend

The voice of Iraqi people has been heard by millions through these blogs (and many others no doubt). There’s nothing much one can do but share the emotions and the struggle of these people caught in the crossfire of a confused war. In this light, this news report in USA Today made me perk up: Can Iraqis tweet their way to a state of normalcy? The online barons were all there:

The Online Barons - Google, Twitter, AT&T - meet up in Baghdad

Hopefully, we will get something. I will try and search for some people from Iraq on Twitter to follow.

Microblogging – 140 characters be damned

All the different presentations on Slideshare about the marvel that is Twitter focus on the concept of microblogging – in 140 characters , one expresses the essence of one’s life. Of course, the student of Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy does not need anything more than two digits, maybe three if he wants to be cryptic and write “7×6″.

However, couple  of particular individuals whom I follow on Twitter are probably unaware that they are not conforming to the generalisations propounded about this medium.

One such gentleman is Mr. Prem Panicker. A distinguished writer, journalist and cricket fan, Mr. Panicker (or Prem to friends – not to be confused with Prem, the alter ego of Salman Khan or Prem, Prem Chopra) is one for whom the phrase “a man of few words” does not apply. But fortunately, unlike similar afflicted people like Arundhati Roy and an aging Salman Rushdie, Prem does not suffer from verbal diarrhoea. 

This elaborate introduction about Prem Panicker is in aid of furthering the argument that Twitter need not be a 140 character limited telegraphic communication engine. 

For example, today, he tweeted (is there a word) on the on-going Ranji trophy finals:

While on Ranji, Amish Sahiba appears set to be man of the match again — if you define MoM as the person playing the most influential role.

The dismissal of Kaif was unfortunate — and “oddly enough”, his mistakes tend to favor Mumbai most of the time.

That said, not entirely sure what Kaif’s UP thinks it is doing. Digging deep and focusing on accumulation through attrition is fine.

But 117 runs in 60 overs? That kind of stasis puts all the pressure on the batting side, and lets the fielding side free to call the play.

Parvinder earlier this month was on song — in fact, his partnership with Shivkant Shukla helped UP edge ahead of TN in the semis.

That’s a nice feeling to take into this partnership between the same two players

If they can reprise their knocks of 138 and 178 NO from the semis, they can still give Mumbai a scare. 1 wkt though, and Mumbai is home.

When you spend 30 overs scoring 55 runs, it does strange things to your mind.

Flashy shots are what such a mindset eschews, but typically, flash is what batsmen tend to perish to in such situations.

Pity about Parvinder. Shivkant Shukla doing well, but he has too little support left to conceive of getting the 231 runs UP needs to lead.

And this is true even for replies which would make one-line email replies die of shame.

Of course, the twitter scoop of Mumbai terror attacks is well publicised. This leads to relooking at the Twitter status message question, “What are you doing?”

To this, @ddeeps gave as answer, “Most ppl unfollow for noise. I unfollow for silence. Why do ppl.who never engage in convos with me feel miffed if unfollowed is a mystery.“

This of course begs the question, what is the meaning of “doing”? Does “what are you doing” also mean “what are you thinking”? What are you ranting about? What are you watching? What are you reading? What are you saying?….

Doing means experiencing life…