ChinmayC Blog

It’s now nearly a fortnight since the flash floods devastated the north Indian state of Uttarakhand leaving a trail of endless sufferings and indomitable courage. Torrential rains and cloudbursts led to the flash floods the fury of which was beyond our human imagination. The floods swept away or swallowed up anything that came its way—pilgrims and tourists; cottages, houses and buildings; guest houses and hotels; huge chunks of land mass and roads; hills and hilly tracks and the temples and even the sacred idols in this holy state of the Char Dham Yatra pilgrimage. After the rescue of more than 100000 pilgrims thousands are still trapped and missing. While the official death toll has been pegged at around 1000 sources say it could be beyond 10000 when you account for the fact that thousands of missing persons have not returned still. Mother Nature punished her greedy children one more time in such a telling manner that the governments and the people of our planet earth better stop and...

It was a miracle of a match. Rains being a spoilsport in the most important encounter of the tournament the final between India and England in Edgbaston finally became a T20 match with one-day rules. England in the morning won the toss and looking at the weather decided naturally to field first. Then the rains, rains and rains. The crowds never gave up hope though. Some genuine cricket lovers of genuine cricket cursed the ICC for not keeping a reserve day for the all-important final involving the hosts England and the best undefeated team of the tournament India. India started batting with the opening pair of Shikhar Dhawan and Rohit Sharma making a relatively good start, though repeated rain interruptions did not help them much. England had them on the mat at 65/5 in the 14 th over. But thanks to the most incredible all-rounder for India in this tournament Ravindra Jadeja with Virat Kohli took his team to a fighting 129/7 in the allotted twenty overs. While not even the most optimis...

On Monday the full semifinal line-up has finally been completed for the ICC Champions Trophy- 2013 currently on in England and Wales. On Sunday in a crucial Group A encounter England faced with elimination if defeated managed to beat New Zealand by 10 runs in a rain-curtailed match reduced to just 24 overs each side and booked a berth in the semis—the first team in that group to do so amassing 4 points. New Zealand with 3 points missed the bus thanks to their wickets falling in heaps, but stuck on to their hopes that Australia beat Sri Lanka and stay below NZ's much better net run-rate. Mercifully there was no rain threat on Monday yesterday. Australia put Sri Lanka in winning the toss to be perhaps on a better position to track the required run-rate for a semis berth. For Sri Lanka captain Mahela Jaywardene played a superb innings of 84 runs batting tactically lower down the order and brought his team into real contention. Set a competitive target of 254 runs to win Australia p...

India have demolished a listless Pakistan by 8 wickets with nearly three overs to spare in the ICC Champions Trophy last Group B match cut short and shorter by innumerable rain interruptions followed by Duckworth-Lewis (D/L) revisions. It was a huge occasion with the archrivals playing each other and crowds filled in to the brim in the Edgbaston stadium apart from millions of viewers glued in to their TV sets on Saturday. Everybody expected exciting cricket and they desperately wanted it to be of full fifty overs. Well, a poor batting display by Pakistan made it a one-sided affair and frequent rain interruptions dampened the excitement further. But Indian fans still have a cause to celebrate while the Pakistan fans can only feel sorry as their team let them down. The match started as a full fifty-over encounter, but shortly afterwards rains made it forty-overs. Pakistan could not even last that many overs and got all out for a paltry 165 with two balls to spare. D/L method revised the ...

While Indian Cricket made all the wrong headlines thanks to the IPL Spot Fixing scandal the Indian Cricket team in England and Wales for the on-going ICC Champions Trophy-2013 played the best of cricket so far. India became the first team of the tournament to sail into the semifinals outplaying West Indies in their second Group-B match on 11 th June. Earlier in the Championship opener on 6 th June India edged out South Africa by 26 runs in a toughly competitive and high-scoring encounter. In both matches Shikhar Dhawan, the sensational new-find for India, made brilliant back-to-back centuries contributing hugely for the team victories. In fact, this is Shikhar’s 3 rd consecutive hundred if we take into account his brilliant Test century against Australia in Mohali after which he got injured. With Rohit Sharma this opening duo seems to be doing extremely well at the moment and cricket fans would hope they make the pair Team India has been looking for after the failures of the Sehwa...

We have been used to getting impatient with Pakistan for being in a constant denial mode, but presently we are increasingly getting used to the Indian national opposition political party BJP demonstrating the same mode most lucidly. Interestingly enough, the BJP has always been used to castigating Pakistan in the strongest of terms for upsetting India with its constant irritants and then the denials instantly. That we are not beating around the bush would get clearer as we push ahead with this post.  As we all know one of the founder figures of the BJP, Lal Krishna Advani has always been used to opposing the idea of Narendra Modi taking over the lead role in BJP. But the BJP could no longer ignore Modi due to his natural aggressive leadership and recent achievements for his party. The Goa BJP national convention was the occasion when the party had to take a position on Modi considering the paramount importance of getting battle-ready for General Elections-2014. Threatened with int...

Finally the BJP national President Rajnath Singh seemed to have mastered the required support and/or dictates of the party’s top rank leaders including prominently LK Advani who absented himself from the Goa convention and the fundamentalist organizations to take the decision awaited with abated breath since the last few days. It had been a most suspenseful run-up to the announcement made in the last moments of the two-day convention in Panaji, the capital of the state of Goa . He was flanked by Arun Jaitley and Sushma Swaraj on his left and right respectively as if to render him the most needed moral support. Narendra Modi was not present in that brief news conference where Rajnath Singh just made the announcement and did not take questions from the press. Yes, Narendra Modi has been declared the Chairman of the BJP Election Campaign Committee for General Elections-2014. Celebrations started inside the venue and outside in Goa, in Gujarat and also in other parts of India as thousand...