Coming soon - the Mother of all disruptions

Ok, I am not using disruption in a positive way here. Rather in a 'Beware, things might get so bad, the previous months will feel like good times. Hell, even the demonetization days will start looking good' kind of way!
Yes, I am talking about GST, which will hit the road starting the day after tomorrow (and any resemblance to any apocalypse themed movie title is purely coincidental and unintentional). Several countries have implemented a unified Goods and Services Tax; in most of them there is one single rate (to make life easy). India has taken a step in that direction with a 5 slab structure - 0%, 5%, 12%, 18% and 28%. There is also a 40% slab which is yet to be introduced.
There have been quite some articles in the media about how GST will be good (by the government and by the business community - the government's reasons are obvious. The businesses do not want to rub the government the wrong way). There have also been a lot of articles criticizing it - I came across this one today. While a lot of them focus on the multiplicity of rates, there are some other reasons for us to be critical of GST. And in my limited opinion, slabs are not a valid reason:

1. Slabs - Multiple slabs are a nuisance. Yes! They will make it difficult to classify things, they will give people reasons to get creative and pass off their businesses under lower rates and they will definitely give rise to protests/ threats/ representations and maybe legislation to get certain businesses/sectors/ items under lower tax slabs. But, these are necessary to limit abrupt price rises (which is why most food items are at lower slabs). Ultimately, the government will move towards one or maybe two GST rates (alcohol, tobacco and some other 'luxuries' will more likely move from 28% to 40%; everything else will finally settle down at a 12/15% rate. Yes, there will always be a 0% for some items, but that is the closest we will ever get to a single rate!). This multiplicity of rates is a necessary compromise between politics and business!
2. Increased cost of compliance - This is definitely a very valid complaint about GST. Returns need to be filed thrice each month and (apparently) in every state in which the business the operational. My reason for using 'apparently' will become apparent (for want of a better word) in the next point. But yes, the increased work in terms of filing returns will make people spend more effort on ensuring compliance and less on actual business.
3.Supreme lack of clarity - This is possibly the biggest problem. The Government had been very transparent in issuing the entire rate structure, the items covered and not covered under GST. However, because of the fact that it is very detailed, there is way too much information for people to parse (and also because by nature, we are time-starved, low on attention etc etc , most people have either not read it fully or selectively interpreted it - myself included). Also, the government has decided that it will roll (rather steamroll) GST on July 1, come what may. Indians are so accustomed to deadline extensions (we engineers perfected this in our engineering colleges), that most people thought July 1 would be missed. Now that is not going to happen!
4. Limited dialogue with businesses and media - Assuming the government is the only party that understands the true impact of GST (and I hope this assumption is not wrong), it would have helped tremendously, if the government were to give a detailed tutorial/ FAQ through Youtube/ FB/ T etc. explaining the sectorwise impact and most importantly , the impact on prices. Today, since such information is not available, everyone has a different point of view. Marketeers are making hay by announcing 'pre-GST' sales (the assumption being prices will be high post GST), builders are trying to get people to finish purchases prior to July 1 (though the govt. says that prices in real estate should come down) and dealers are refusing to stock up (due to lack of clarity on input taxes). To my mind, this bit is what is affecting people most. This is also something that has the potential of causing chaos for the next quarter!

Here's hoping I am wrong....

Investors force a CEO to resign!

Travis Kalanick - the pugnacious (and world famous of course) CEO of Uber was forced to resign as CEO, by his investors. Uber was infamous for a male-dominated work culture that looked down upon women (the 'bro-culture') and was sort of the ring-leader among gender insensitive companies. A detailed investigation resulted in several people being fired; Travis was under pressure to stop being the CEO. And he finally relented! Interesting this is that he continues to be on the board (he is the largest share holder), so, I am wondering how much will the culture really change if the person with the most influence is still around to question the new CEO.
This is a case of the influential shareholders doing the right thing for the right reasons - but so many times, influential shareholder do the right things for the wrong reasons or the wrong this for the wrong reasons (typically - share buybacks to boost up share prices, when the excess money can either be invested or paid back as dividend). Am not sure if this will make all existing unicorn CEOs better behaved, or will they get more combative and ensure that they can never be forced out?
Coming to the bit on forcing out the CEO - it is interesting how Uber now is truly in 'self-drive' mode! No CEO, no COO, no CMO , several key roles not filled (or were asked to leave) and yet the company is functioning! It is like Uber is in self-drive mode and doesn't need any leaders!
Uber of course had been looking far and wide, high and low for a COO - preferably someone like Sheryl Sandberg. She is now being spoken about as a possible CEO for Uber. Uber ideally needs a woman to counter the 'bro-culture' tag. But hey - what is Sheryl Sandberg simply doesn't want to quit FB. Who does the Uber board turn to? Why not Marissa Mayer? She is now 'jobless' (if there is such a thing for her), she is a woman (of course) , she lead a billion dollar company (though well, it went downward) and more importantly, if Uber is truly able to function without key personnel, even Marissa Mayer might not be able to mess things up :D

Alls well that ends well!

The Champions Trophy is over and Pakistan are the new champs! Something that no one thought possible before the tournament began. The reasonable expectation was that India might face England in the finals - India reached , but lost.
We lost so bad, that we made less than half the runs that Pakistan made. While there are a lot of theories going on about what India did wrong, lets consider some facts :
1. Pak won all its matches (except the one against India), while chasing. So, it looked like they had figured out how to restrict teams to a low total and with Fakhar Zaman, they had figured out how to chase. India too were successful chasing - so, it made sense for India to chase.
2. The Indian team bowled and fielded badly, but we batted even worse! So, even if India had managed to keep Pak below 300 (a 'gettable' total ), we still wouldn't have won. We made less than half the runs they made.
3. Surprisingly, no India batsman, except Hardhik Pandya and maybe Yuvaraj, could figure out how to play the Pak bowlers. Indian batting wasn't just bad, it was atrocious! So, it is likely that India would have lost even if they had batted first. We couldn't figure out the Pak bowlers and that was that!

Overall, the Champions Trophy turned out to be so boring (despite a 'dream final' between India and Pak), that most likely there will be no CT in 2021! The ICC has at last realized that people would love a World T20 instead of another World Cup clone. And I think that (more than the unpredictable Pak team winning) is the biggest plus point of this Champions Trophy. Hopefully, this is the beginning of the end of ODIs.

The CT final!

So - one of the semi-finals went according to script. One did not! Pak beat England (amazing really) while India beat Bangladesh equally convincingly! So, today, the Indo-Pak is happening again (exactly 2 weeks after the group match).
I was about to type that Pak were headed for a 350+ score, with Fakhar Zaman having a chance of scoring 200! Well, he got our before I could type that :(
So, 201/2 after 33.3 overs. Pak can get to 320/330 and if this is finally a typical English pitch (not the ones in this tournament - the ones that were part of the Eng-NZ series 2 years back and since then), India will win with enough wickets in hand and some overs to spare. I mean, this can become a typical boring run chase. Lets hope Pak tries to create some interest; both with the bat and with the ball. 

And today's the final league match...

So Pak vs SL is an interesting match today - not only because it is a virtual quarterfinal. SL hit 236; Pak are 7 down with 31 to win in 9 overs! SO, SL are trying hard for wickets. But it has been looking bad the last few overs - 2 dropped catches, quite some mis-fields. Getting the feeling that luck has deserted SL and they know this too! Some amount of despondence among the fielders and bowlers - and nothing seems to be able to fix it now! I guess this is the Pygmalion effect in full flow - SL are believing that they cannot win and the Pakis are romping home!
Can Pak beat England in the semis? Looks tough. For me, England is the finals for sure....but...can India beat Bangladesh ;)

The Champions Trophy comes alive!

Looks like bad news on the political front matches with good news on the cricketing front!! The UK polls were generally a disaster (but Theresa May is showing Margaret Thatcher like qualities by refusing to budge), but the Champions Trophy has picked up steam!
Bangladesh beat NewZeland (surprise, surprise) and England beat Australia (no surprise there); with the result that England and Bangladesh qualified from that group , for the semis. And in India's group - today's India versus SA and tomorrows Pak vs SL, both are important matches!
At the start of the tournament I was thinking that Eng vs Aus and India vs SA would be matches to decide the no. 1 and no.2 teams of each group - nothing else. And that Pak vs SL would be to decide who would finish last! But hey - thanks to the vagaries of the weather and cricket, all these matches have become important (weather played a role in the England-Aus-NZ-Bangladesh group; were it not for the rains, Auz, NZ and Bangladesh all would have been on 2 points each and the run-rate would have decided the second spot).
Today , India seem all set to win (and knock SA out of yet another tournament). Tomorrow, it will be interesting to see who among Pak and SL win. If Angelo Mathews plays, SL will be my favorite to win. In Pak's case it is impossible to predict which version of their team will show up!!
And BTW, SA (the team Pak beat to go on an upward trend) , is generally in a bad shape. Looks like ABD should hand over captaincy to Faf du Plessis (who has always been keen to be a captain and has proven his mettle as a Test captain) and go back to becoming the star player he is. Then, maybe , SA will bounce back!

the UK polls and...brexit!!

There is a story I had heard and read several times as a kid..... An ambitious king thought of capturing a resource rich province belonging to a neighboring kingdom! That kingdom was known to be peaceful, so he thought he would have an easy victory. However, he faced unexpected resistance from that kingdom, lost, got driven out and ended up losing not just that battle, but control of some of his provinces too! As he and his weary army were hiding in a forest on the way back to their capital, he saw an interesting sight. A monkey had its hands full of some peas that it had snatched from the king's cook. This monkey was safely on a tree, about to enjoy the peas, when it saw some more peas on a plate on the ground. So, with its hands full of peas, it came down and made an attempt to steal those peas too. The cook saw this, threw a stone at the monkey and in its attempt to escape safely, the monkey lost all the peas it had! The king compared this to his own situation and said "Sometimes it is better to be content with where you are and what you have!"

What is the significance of this story today? Well, the political situation in the UK reminds one of the monkey and the king! Lets look at what happened so far :
1. The then PM (David Cameron) chose to make a grandiose promise during elections - he said he would hold a referendum on UK leaving the European Union! Was it needed at that stage? No! No one was asking for it!
2. Cameron won and thought it would be a fun idea to actually work on his promise of a referendum! Was anyone still asking for it? No!
3. The referendum was held and the side that said 'Leave EU' won....narrowly! Cameron lost face and had to leave. The next PM was someone who originally supported staying in the EU - Theresa May! Were there other better leaders available? Yes! Were they considered? No!
4. Now in April, May announced snap-polls to strengthen her hand in the negotiations to leave the EU! Were these polls needed! Actually..No!
5. The poll results are announced today - and, Theresa May's party has not secured a majority! Infact her party is now worse-off than it was before the elections!

So, like the king and the monkey, the PM's in the UK did what was un-necessary and lost whatever they had. The next few days will be interesting as people are calling for Theresa May to resign and if that happens the UK's plan to leave the EU (Brexit) will be jeopardized further. It won't be surprising if , given these results someone calls for another referendum on leaving the EU. And this time, the referendum result may be - Let's stay. What is the EU then gives UK the middle finger, or worse, agrees to take the UK in but only after UK makes some concessions to the EU!
Well, it looks like David Cameron and Theresa May are all set to go down in British history as politicians who tried to do the unnecessary for the unwilling and paid the price for it! Here's looking forward to exciting times.

Pak and SL breathe some life into CT

Boring matches and rains have been the norm this Champions Trophy! So, it was in some ways great to see Pak beat SA ; thought it is debatable whether they would have been able to bat all 50 overs. The rains helped Pak win I guess; though we must say that they bowled excellently and batted sensibly!
SL versus India today too is interesting this far. SL are playing like the team of old - when any and every chase was carefully managed till the 40th over. And then, the team would go berserk and finish off the match! So, SL has a chance of upsetting India. If that happens , then the last 2 league games will be virtual quarter-final games. India versus SA and SL versus Pak - whichever teams win will make it through to the semis. India will stand to benefit even if the rains wash off the game - better run rate! So, here's hoping SL win today's match to keep the group alive....even if the games are boring, the results will atleast leave people waiting with bated breath.

Champions Trophy - Pak vs SA

Finally, a match that is a good advertisement for ODIs. Yesterday's NZ vs Eng match appeared promising at first, but once Kane Williamson got over, it was all over for NZ.
Today, Pak bowled and fielded as though this was the original team and the one that played against India was some B or C league team! SA could only manage 219 in 50 overs. And Pak are fighting hard - this looks like a tough match. But I am hoping that the SA fast bowlers repeat their performance vs England (3rd ODI) and get rid of the Pak top order real fast :D
But anyway, definitely a match worth watching.

If only the rains could save cricket from itself....

Another day another Champions Trophy match, another damp squib (as I had suggested in my earlier post), another bad advertisement for ODIs! Today's match had some thrills on account of the rain - there was a good chance that Pakistan would run away with a point if it rained hard enough. Finally, the rain was enough to allow Pak to try and attempt a chase of 289 in 41 overs (India ht 319 in 48 overs), but Pak were all out for 164! Tomorrow's match might be slightly better (Aus versus Bangladesh), but that's because Bangladesh will fight really hard. Yet, impossible to see how Australia will lose.
Frankly, given how boring and one-sided these matches are, it wont be a bad idea if all matches get washed out due to rain. Atleast that way, the sheer stupidity of ODIs wont be questioned (why am I following ODIs if I think they are so stupid? Well, it's sheer morbid curiosity - I want to see how bad can it really get). Frankly, if the CT bores fans out of their minds, then the World Cup in 2019 is in serious danger! Time perhaps to have only 2 formats in cricket - Tests and T20s. 

Champions Trophy Match #3

Well, well - a match that went to script after looking like it would not! SL vs SA - it was natural to expect SA to win quite easily. But after looking like they would reach 350, SA managed only 299 in their 50 overs. Surely, that looked gettable. But, in the end SL lost by 96 runs! Looks like CT will drive another nail in the coffin of ODIs by showing the whole world how boring this format is. Hell, the IPL ...no wait, the India-Aus test at Ranchi had more excitement than these matches (that was a test that ended in a draw!). Yes, the Aus-NZ match yesterday, that finally got called off due to rain might have become exciting (NZ were in a better position than Aus when it rained), but we will never know.
Tomorrow's supposed to be the mother of all battles - India vs Pak. My bet, is that it will be a damp squib. India will have to play really really badly to lose; chances of that happening are not very high.

The politics of cricket

Rain has curtailed today's Champions Trophy match between NZ and Aus - maybe it would have been a good thing if it were washed out! But then, Australia would have been un-necessarily cheated of points (and that would have made the run rate in this group very crucial - assuming both Aus and NZ, beat Bangladesh).
Anyway, rather than a boring ODI run chase, we are getting to witness some off-field antics :
1. The Kumble- Kohli spat, where it appears that a coach who put the team first is getting the boot because he over-ruled the captain's wrong strategy!
2. The episode of Ramachandra Guha resigning from the India CoA - read his full letter here .
3. The pay dispute between Cricket Australia and the players.

Both points 1 and 3 are a confrontation between players and administrators; where public opinion might generally favor players, it is necessary to acknowledge the value administrators bring. Which is where, reading Ramachandra Guha's resignation letter/ mail will be interesting. He mentions how a few 'superstars' and their egos are skewing the way of working. How, in order to accommodate these interests, rules are being broken.
My view is that now since we have enough respectable retired cricketers in every country, they should be made administrators and allowed to administer without political interference. That way, there is more certainty of not only the interests of the game being protected, but also of the spirit of the game being upheld

And Champions Trophy begins...as a terrific bore!

A typically boring ODI tournament. England decided to chase; Bangladesh hit 179/2 in 34 overs! In typical ODI fashion, they will most likely try and reach 220 by the 40th over and then try and hit 100-120 runs in the last 10! England will then chase 330 or so in 48-49 overs maybe?
Looks like this is headed towards a very boring T20like finish  (5:33 PM IST)

So, Bangladesh finally manage 305/6. Can their fast bowlers do what the Indian fast bowlers did to them a couple of days ago? Maybe Mustafizur will fire away. Otherwise, this largely looks like England's game.  (6:45 PM IST)

There's one innovation in ODIs of late (I guess this started around the time of the 2015 World Cup) - teams have started accumulating in the first 15 overs. Rather than score at 10 an over in Power Play, they seem content to be in the 5-6 Runs per over range and keep wickets in hand. They now seem to be using the last 15 overs to accelerate. Not quite been able to get the logic behind this, but it seems to work well for chasing sides. Unless they are chasing 350+, the teams batting second don't seem to get bothered by a 5.5 run rate at the start. Towards the end they operate in T20 mode! Maybe T20 is the explanation for this then. Look at England today - 95/1 in 18 overs. Need close to 7 an over from here to win, but they are perfectly calm (maybe a loss of 2 more wickets will cause some panic, who knows). So, the fun has gone from the ODI game :( . Sigh! 8:20PM IST

And so - England win a really boring ODI by 8 wickets with 16 balls (nearly 3 overs) to spare! I first thought that maybe this was because they were facing Bangladesh, but now it appears that it is something else :
1. The 50 over format doesn't excite even the players enough because of all the T20 they play! So, they spend most of the game going through the motions and then crank it up only in the end.
2. Teams are not afraid of chasing anymore - they chase more than 8 an over in T20 anyway. So what is 6.5 or 7 runs an over?
3. Pitches are so batsmen friendly now that teams have decided they are better off with bowlers who can bat than bowlers who can bowl! That sucks!

Lets hope there are some exciting matches in this Champions Trophy, but if the rest of the matches go anything like this - we are better off playing only Test matches!