A-Rod you are forgiven

Spring is in the air and falling in line with American traditions, two Indians went out to throw ball. A bynote to this would be the purchase of baseball gloves at Walmart when Cartman and I went to buy a compass for installing the dish (damn Corporations and Business Intelligence softwares that tell them to place baseball gloves right next to the camping section). So having come into the possession of these gloves, we threw the ball around for a good part of an hour. Tried to do everything including ground balls, immediate transfer and throws to the first base, double plays. A lot of erratic plays happened including erratic throws into nearby bushes, missed groundballs and muffed catches. It is not as easy as it seems. Having gotten used to catching a ball with bare hands in the palm near your eyes, it requires a completely different technique. A lot of fun though.

Also this past Friday, after India's exit from the World Cup after their dismal performance against SriLanka, in order to take our minds off it, we went for the Penn State baseball season opener at Medlar Field at Lubrano Park. It was my first time there and was fun to watch the game up close and personal. The last occasions I have watched baseball games has been in Yankee Stadium from the bleachers and the last 4 seats in the stadium (I kid you not.. Subash had no-one next to him and behind him... go figure) from where Randy Johnson looked like a peanut and David Ortiz a garbanzo bean. So after this experience I sure appreciate the players for hitting a 95 mile an hr fastball for a homerun or even coming in contact with it. And not to mention the superb plays in the field.

So while I will now watch the rest of the World Cup without any tension of India's performance and for pure cricket, I sure look forward to the baseball season as well. A night game at Yankee Stadium is planned for this season sometime. Maybe a bit closer to the field of play.

The ides of March...

... or to be more precise 23rd March. It is the day that haunts Indian cricket during its recent world cup campaigns. It was pointed out to me by a friend that it was March 23rd 2003 when Australia dashed the Indian hopes of winning a world cup when it had come so close and put its stamp as a class apart side (God, I friggin hate Aussies). And 4 years later to the date, it is 23rd March 2007 when Sri Lanka dashed a billion hopes. Once again we are left with a bad taste in the mouth. A lot of hype, too much anticipation and a complete letdown. With India and Pakistan running the cricket show and raking in the viewers, I wonder if it is powerful enough to bully the ICC from not scheduling any games for itself on this day of the year.

On another note, in the post game interview, Dravid talked about the format being that having one bad day caused us the tournament when India lost to Bangladesh and the same held true for Pakistan. I believe that this world cup format has been the most fair of them all. Two strong test teams grouped together with minnows to get themselves warmed to the tournament and by the time the tournament reaches the semifinals, the teams would have played all the strong teams and qualified themselves as the best four teams. From then on, it is about rising to the occasion against a formidable opponent. While India's group was termed as group of death because of having another test playing team as one of the minnows, it was the attitude of the players in the group matches that lost it for us. There was no confidence. The rout of West Indies in the warm up matches should have given the team an arrogance to tackle Bangladesh. Instead they prodded around and if you cannot get 200 on two occasions against a decent bowling performance while posting the highest world cup total against another, it just shows that all this team is fit for is a bilateral series of 7 games hoping for 4 good days and expecting 3 lousy days to take a series.

This is World cup cricket. It comes once in 4 years. You cannot expect an off day during this fortnight. Not the whole team. This is a whole team playing and everyone decides to perform only on one day out of three. What about the rest of the days? Or is it the attitude, "I did it yesterday, someone else can do it today?" Well they can all sit at home and let the other teams do it the rest of the days of the tournament.

Satellite Locked In

The world cup got underway yesterday. This is the 3rd world cup, Cartman and I are watching in State College. Never in my wild imagination had I considered it while preparing to watch the 1999 world cup at C720 Parkway Plaza. And I celebrate the trifecta (the only 1 to host the 3 world cups in State College, PA on dish). Fatass had been a guest on the first occassion. In fact if the world cup was played more often, I could have made a lot of money as a dish installer. I have become quite an expert at it. A change of location did not deter us and we got the dish up and running in a little over an hr. It took professional installers about 4+ hrs at my aunt's place in NJ (ok...ok.. they ran the wires in the walls and all). But still for once in 4 yrs not bad huh!

On the first occasion in '99, Dish and cricket broadcasting was new in US of A. It was called the Kelly Broadcasting System. There was only 1 place that sold a Dish in State College and we bought the only piece they had. We had it installed on a plank of wood clamped to a dining table thanks to Bhatta and Janak putting to good use their workshop skills in the Mech Engg. workshop. We had 25 people who contributed towards the $300 plus on that occassion at C720 but with India not doing too good, it was rarely all of them showed up. Some of the memories from that occasion were Bhatta's commitment of showing up every night around 11 PM with a sleeping bag, a spring loaded alarm clock and 4 video cassettes to record the game to watch replay in case it got interesting.

Four years later and the world cup had moved for the first time to the African continent. The Penn State Cricket Club was all set to return in State College and there were more Indian grad students at Penn State. India was expected to do well, cricket was more watchable in USA but still needed a dish to watch the game. In some places like NJ and DC, Indian movie theaters were telecasting the Indian games. Still in State College one needed the dish to watch it. And we were one of the places to set it up for a total cost of $400 ($100 dish + $300 package). This time lot more people were interested in watching at least the India games. So we covered the money. India made a good run but ran into those damn Aussies once again. Previous to the Ind-Pak game, a couple of undergrad students called us up asking if they could watch it. When the game started around 20-30 showed up instead of 3-4. We still had lot of fun watching it in 2 rooms with mixed emotions on the two sides. Other highlights was Murali breaking Ram's dining table chair and Kapadia, Janak and Garg visiting for one game.

2007. Technology has made it possible for streaming webcasts. No need for dish. One can watch the matches online. Peer-to-peer television and SOPcasts offer free links to watch the games. But there is nothing like watching cricket on TV with no buffering or connection problems. And so after many deliberations, Fatass and I decided to set up dish again. The cost this time was lower as the dish was already there and stream casts meant that Echostar Network as now it is called had to offer the package at competitive costs. With friends from the club interested, we had no issues with covering costs. So we have it all set up. I am still to start the free broadband access through willow TV as it is offered with the package but I hope to have it running by Monday for India's match against Bermuda. Still will try and watch cricket on TV as much as I can.

Goosebumps

I saw the 2007 world cup opening ceremony today. It was long boring and like Reggae music. Once u have heard one song, u have heard it all. And the only thing u recognize is Bob Marley. Having played with West Indian players for the past few yrs in WMCB, we have come to recognize some of the traits of people from the Caribbeans. First of all they are chilled and as Viren aptly pointed out, they like to blow their own horns a lot. And they like to talk.. oh Man, do they love to talk?

So it was not surprising that the ceremony was long.. full of reggae music in which all u could hear was "Put your hands up", "clap", "peace", "friendship", "together"... All the songs had it. I mean this was kind of country music w/o the reference to a pick-up truck or barn. The crowd was going crazy though. That was the only good part about it. Those guys enjoy to party and chill out.

And then there were the players walking out to the middle. It was funny to see the Bermuda players walk out in pink shorts. I mean come on! Fine, u gave the Bermuda shorts and all but this might be your only stint in the World cup and to be dressed like that is awful. A lot of players like Lara acted serious and all and then there were a few players like Sachin grinning like a schoolboy about to play in his first world cup and that gave me the shivers. Here is a guy who is playing in his 5th world cup (yeah 5th), has played in more ODIs than any, scored most runs in ODIs, most runs in world cups, what not... and still he is excited like a kid getting his first chance. I hope he gets the tag of World cup champion as he truly deserves for the spirit and love he shows for the game.

A parallel universe

The past few years, I have been living in two different worlds and it just dawned on me how alike they look when now I sit back and look at them. I am talking about my doctoral student life at Penn State.

I joined the doctoral program in Fall 2001 but it was not until Fall 2002 that I actually started on my PhD research topic. I got the opportunity to work on Finite element modeling of die compaction process a research topic I had worked on for my masters. The project was NSF funded and had 3 other doctoral students working on it. My work was supposed to develop decision algorithms for process specifications to minimize density gradients and achieve full density parts with minimal distortion. Along the same time the Penn State cricket club was revived by a bunch of enthusiastic students at Penn State. I became aware of it in an IGSA meeting of which I was on the committee of. However it wasn't until 2003 that we actually got to play some meaningful cricket. We played in CLNJ the first season and it was not what we hoped for. Many losses, losing interest due to the travel involved and bad management and the club was on brink of dying similar to what was happening to my research at that time. Yet again I was struggling to get past the modeling of die compaction without a complete grasp on the material model with the overall goal of research miles away. Yet the fight kept going on both fronts. The cricket club kept running and my research kept dabbling.

Fall 2003 and I got control of both facets of my life. After discussing with my adviser we decided to forget the overall goal of research and focus on tackling the die compaction modeling once and for all. I also became the treasurer of the cricket club and helped the club change leagues to make it easier for travel and budgeted properly to allow us to book school van to travel as a team. The research came along and so did the club. We started winning games, the club got steady and my research started coming along. Over the next couple of years these two universes ran in parallel and alike. We won more games and got better as a team and I completed my comprehensive exam where I was finally ready to define my PhD thesis topic.

Finally last season (summer 2006), they both achieved fruition. We won our group to be south div champions and I successfully defended my thesis. It wasn't easy. We had to fight through rained out games and points till the last match and I had to juggle the scheduling dates but it happened. Now as my student life came to an end, so did the cricket club's participation in WMCB. And that is when I got thinking of this amazing coincidence.

As I sit here writing this blog, a new chapter starts in my life. I am now part of another research group as a postdoc. At the same time, with PSCC no longer participating, a few of us have joined the roster of Monument Cricket Club to get a chance to play cricket once again. How will this unfold? I wait to see....

The two universes have worked complementary to one another. One to shape my life and the other to help keep me sane as I shape my life. I hope to find a similar balance throughout my life.