ChinmayC Blog

Five-time IPL Champions Mumbai Indians (MI), the maximum number any franchise has won the tournament title, has crashed to their consecutive sixth defeat in IPL-2022 losing to Lucknow Super Giants (LPG) by 18 runs today at the Brabourne stadium Mumbai. The irony gets even bitter as this time the tournament has most of the league matches being played in Mumbai, the erstwhile home ground for the team, leaving the crowds with nothing to cheer for. I just wonder if this is some kind of a jinx with the newly appointed Team India captain in all three formats going on a losing spree like the former captain Virat Kohli with his team Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) figuring at the bottom steps of the points ladder in almost all the previous versions of the IPL! Now, MI is looking at a disastrous ouster from the tournament unless it achieves the near-impossible task of winning at least 7 of its remaining 8 matches to stay in contention.   What ails MI? Well, to my mind the biggest factor...

Imran Khan became the first ever Prime Minister of Pakistan to be voted out of power through a no-confidence motion after a daylong high-voltage drama yesterday that finally culminated in a midnight climax in Islamabad . Perhaps this is the reason as to why the Pakistan parliamentary system had never been used to such political games behind a confidence move unlike in India where such games are very common and often the transfers of power are more or less smooth; Pakistan being more used to army coups and abrupt, often violent, changes. However, the delaying tactics indulged in by Imran and team were not at all constitutional. The irony gets more emphatic as Imran Khan was a democratically elected Prime Minster in 2018 general elections . The monthlong political theatrics had seemingly ended on 7 th April when the Supreme Court of the country ordered the confidence motion to take place on 9 th April thus reconstituting the dissolved National Assembly. But Imran had other ideas s...

In a very significant development on Thursday, April 7, 2022, the 193-member United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) has suspended the membership of Russia from the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), a UN body formed in 2006 to replace the erstwhile United Nations Human Rights Commission, with 47 elected members and a mission to promote and protect human rights around the world. In an urgently called session of the UNGA 93 nations voted for the suspension of Russia, 24 including China voted against the move and 58 nations including India abstained whose votes did not count in the final tally, and therefore, the UNGA got its two-thirds majority to pass the move. Although the move is not legally binding Russia would be effectively prevented from raising its voice in the UNHRC.  Thus, Russia becomes the first permanent member-nation of the UN Security Council to be ousted from a UN body. The other Security Council members are the US, the UK, France and China.   The UNG...

The high-voltage political drama in Pakistan has seemingly ended today with the Supreme Court of the country dismissing Prime Minister Imran Khan’s decisions to dissolve the National Assembly and holding general elections within 90 days that he announced moments before the no-confidence motion on 3 rd April 2022. The Court held the decision of the Deputy Speaker of Pakistan National Assembly to reject the motion quoting the constitution as illegal. The Court has now fixed the date for the no-confidence motion against Imran Khan on Saturday, the 9 th of April by reconstituting the National Assembly. The no-confidence motion was brought by the opposition alliance on 8 th March and the date for the motion was postponed to Sunday, the 3 rd of April. It has been apparent since the beginning that Imran Khan’s government was reduced to a minority with many of the members of his own party Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) defecting to the opposition.   In an emotional address to the nat...

Indian Premiere League-2022 (IPL-2022), with 10 franchises only for the second time and restricted only to fours stadiums in Maharashtra till the play-offs, was expected produce hot rivalries and upset wins or losses in the process. That’s exactly what’s transpired in the first ten days of the T20 cricket extravaganza. More definitively, the results so far are evenly split between successful chases and defenses, thus neutralizing the perception that in the Indian pitches the chasing teams always win the matches. Before going to those details, we must first capture what Pat Cummins, a leading Aussie fast bowler of world cricket in both Tests and ODIs, has done last night in a match between Mumbai Indians (MI) and Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) played at Maharashtra Cricket Association stadium, Pune.   MI put up a rather dicey target of 162 runs to chase for KKR on a pitch where the batsmen have been seen to struggle to score runs. MI had the match in good control capturing the top 5 ...

The Amazon original movie ‘ Sharmaji Namkeen ’ (Savory Mr. Sharma) that released on Prime Video on 31 st March 2022 is all about one of the greatest actors of Bollywood —the lovable romantic hero since the seventies who started graduating to endearing and at times intense performances in character roles since the 2000s— Rishi Kapoor . The movie actually reminds us how dearly we miss the stalwart who passed away on 30 th April, 2020. Rishi Kapoor after being cast in the titular role in this movie and shooting started accordingly fell seriously ill. He had to undergo prolonged treatment in the US. Movie director Hitesh Bhatia and the producers waited for him to get well and return to the shoots. It was just impossible to replace him. His tremendous actor-son Ranbir Kapoor said how eager too was his father to complete the film. Rishi Kapoor did get well, returned to India by the end of 2019 and the shooting schedule started anew from December. Sadly, it was short lived. The superstar f...

In a historic move today the Indian Home Minister Amit Shah has announced a reduction in the ambit of the dreaded Armed Forces Special Powers Act-1958 (AFSPA) in three North Eastern states of Assam, Nagaland and Manipur. As per the details of the announcement the AFSPA has been removed in 23 districts of Assam, in 7 in Nagaland and in 6 districts of Manipur (under 20 police stations). The home minister said that this decision is made following a drastic improvement in the security situation of the insurgency-infested states and a palpable progress in moving toward peace and development. He claims the move as a credit for the devoted commitment of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. No doubt, the present Chief Minister of Assam Dr. Himanta Biswa Sarma, after defecting from the Congress, had led BJP (ruling Bharatiya Janata Party) to victory in Assam in 2016 and in 2021, and has contributed immensely in establishing dominance of the BJP in nearly all states of the region. So then, some credit ...