Ban Harbhajan for slapping Sreesanth

If it is true that Harbhajan slapped Sreesanth, BCCI should take firm action against him. However bad Marco Materazzi taunted Zidane in the world cup, Zidane's head butt was not justified (This is in a sport that is much more violent than cricket). Similarly whatever Sreesanth had done to invoke Harbhajan, a slap is unwarranted and not justified. BCCI should take firm action after a quick and proper enquiry. He should be banned for at least a few matches and a huge fine should be laid on him.

Weed

By this slap, Harbhajan has let himself down and made the whole nation to doubt his earlier actions during the Australian controversy. He has also given fodder to the likes of Mathew Hayden who has already called him 'an obnoxious weed'. Now even the Indians would start asking whether he is really an obnoxious weed to cricket? Expect the Australians to get back on Harbhajan with full force.

Indian Premier League

But during this controversy there will be one group of people who will laugh their way to the bank - Organizers of Indian Premier League. This controversy will generate more publicity for Indian Premier League and will shoot its television ratings further. Lalit Modi would be thanking his stars for this controversy.

A Sport with Balls and Bats But with no Pitcher

That is how New York Times described Cricket in its article. It has been a dream of ICC and every cricket fan that Cricket spreads its wings all over the world and especially in cash-rich USA. So the esteemed New York Times' coverage of Cricket is surely good news. With this coverage and the inauguration of cricket league among school students in New York, cricket has taken its initial baby steps in US.

 

Cricket League

On Wednesday, the Department of Education in New York inaugurated cricket as its newest league sport, with about 600 high school students. With this, New York becomes the only public school system in the nation to offer competitive cricket. No one is expecting the game to overtake baseball, football or soccer in popularity there any time soon, but a modest increase in interest in the sport won the attention of Eric Goldstein, who is the chief executive for school support services and oversees sports programs for the Department of Education.

 

Future of Cricket in US

Mr. Thompson, the cricket coach at Herbert H. Lehman High School in the Bronx, said the sport could catch on in the United States — eventually. He said “I don’t think it’s going to lead to a situation where American kids are going to have to debate, ‘Oh, should I play cricket or should I play basketball?’ ” he said. “At least not yet.”

But who knows? Even the British who introduced Cricket to India never dreamt that India would become the economical powerhouse of Cricket.

Twitter: the next Big Thing?

While the media believes that Facebook is going to be the next big thing in Web Technology, the tech circles have started questioning that belief. These doubts arise from the recent user fatigue observed from the social networking websites, the increasing popularity of Twitter and few niggling problems in Facebook.

 

Facebook Vs Twitter

Twitter that started off as a micro blogging platform, has now started to encroach people's time from social media sites too. Facebook (and Orkut) provided us an opportunity to get into a conversation with your friends and peers. But unlike Twitter, you can interact with only one person at a time(that is, more like a email). But in Twitter, you get an opportunity to interact with all of your followers and thereby increasing the chances of a meaningful communication that happens real time but still thought provoking and intellectual. Twitter has brought its own blogging fatigue as Scoble recently reported in his blog. But I was still unconvinced since anything without an option to monetize is tough to succeed.  But today's post in Problogger - PayperTweet showed that people will come with innovative ways to solve that too.

 

Mainstream Acceptance

An interesting thing is the acceptance that Twitter is being able to generate from people outside tech circles. For e.g. 10, Downing Street, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, etc. have their own Twitter accounts though it has not yet got the publicity like Facebook.

 

India Centricity

As usual, Twitter has not found a mention in any of the mainstream media. None of the politicians or news channels are using them though Twitter as a service is the most suitable technology for their mode of communication. Thankfully, Chennai redeems the respect for India by organizing the first Twitter Meet in India.

P.S: If you are curious to know about me more, you can follow me in Twitter @ http://twitter.com/robinsamuel

Update: Sorry, I fell for April Fool's Joke in Problogger. PayperTweet was a April fool's Joke.. :(