The Indian machine looks well-oiled

	Suresh Raina was given the head start against Rohit Sharma and he grabbed his chance with 54 © AFP

In the last 12 months India have won 20 of their 30 games and lost only eight. In the same time period, the No. 1 team in the world, South Africa, won 13 out of 19, losing five. And Australia have won 14 while losing 8 matches. India’s win-loss ratio is almost equal to that of South Africa’s while Australia lag behind considerably. Times are changing.

India know that they can bridge the gap between them and Australia, which is just five points in the ICC rankings. Now, with a comprehensive performance in the first ODI against Sri Lanka, the wheels are churning in motion towards that.

Leading them is Mahendra Singh Dhoni, who gives the air of a man who knows his job. Dhoni is an easy man to like as captain. He rolls out the right words to the press, never shirks from a tough question, is proactive during play and does the unexpected things regularly on the field and many a time off it as well.

Today, the press conference offered another example of his candour. The reporter’s question was a very simple one – Suresh Raina and Rohit Sharma performed well in the absence of Virender Sehwag. Is the current bench strength good? The answer was revealing of the man. Instead of a stereotypical ‘yes’ to that question, Dhoni went on to add, “But one more thing we can improve is the finishing part. If the batsman gets set, especially one of the top four, if he can continue it will be great for the men coming in later. The pitches are slow here and it’s difficult for the new batsman to score.”

Let’s play the devil’s advocate and recount the situation from the game.

Suresh Raina was run out and Yuvraj Singh threw away his wicket, holing out to long-on creating some artificial excitement. The required rate came down to a run-a-ball with two new batsmen in the middle and Muttiah Muralitharan and Ajantha Mendis back into the attack. It was the only time India looked in any sort of trouble in the opening game. Dhoni might be warning about such complacency.

Otherwise the series has started well with the various mini-battles for the spots in the playing XI off to a competitive start.

Raina was given a head start against Rohit Sharma, something Dhoni announced before the first game. Thilan Thushara’s bouncers shook him up for a brief while and he hopped on couple of occasions, took his eyes off the ball once, but there was nothing dramatic – the wicket wasn’t threatening – and he got out of jail, compiling a fine 54.

Today, in the nets, Raina was given a thorough working over by coach Gary Kirsten who threw down several short balls. Kirsten walked up time and again to offer suggestions and shouted words of encouragement whenever Raina connected well with the pull or swayed away perfectly.

	Dhoni has shown a penchant to use the part-timers liberally and intelligently. Yuvraj Singh and Sehwag have been utilised a lot by him in the past and he showed in the first game, where Raina and Rohit turned their arms over effectively, that he is always looking at more options

The battle for places saw an improved performance from another player. Yusuf Pathan, shadowed by Ravindra Jadeja in the allrounder’s slot, turned in his best performance with the ball in recent memory. It helped that the scenario didn’t allow Sri Lanka’s batsmen to go after him but he kept it tight and didn’t offer much room. Today, he bowled at the likes of Sachin Tendulkar and Virender Sehwag and was constantly asking the batsmen how he was progressing.

The final fight was between Munaf Patel and Praveen Kumar. Munaf didn’t have a great game; nor did he have a poor game. He went for 15 runs in his first three overs and gave away a further 17 when he returned for a second spell of two overs. Today, Praveen and Munaf toiled hard at the nets. Praveen may have the edge, thanks to the dramatic swinging deliveries in his arsenal which looks much better than the good old line and length that Munaf operates with.

The presence of batting allrounders has also helped India significantly. Dhoni has shown a penchant to use the part-timers liberally and intelligently. Sehwag and Yuvraj Singh have been utilised a lot by him in the past and he showed in the first game, where Raina and Rohit turned their arms over effectively, that he is always looking at more options. At times, in the first game, the Indian team looked like the victorious Sri Lankan team of the old, when a slew of part-timers would choke up the run-flow in the middle on slow wickets.

The Indian machine looks well-oiled and it will take a brilliant performance from either Murali and Mendis, or a combined effort from the top three Sri Lankan batsmen to be upstaged. Mahela Jayawardene put it succinctly: “It will be a good challenge for us to beat a side that is doing so well.”

If you are beaten by a special performance from the opposition, then there isn’t often much you could have done about it. India are not there yet but have put Sri Lanka on notice that they have to really step up to claim this series.

ICC ODI rankings Opportunity for Australia to reclaim top spot

Australia may have lost their No.1 ranking in ODIs to South Africa after their 39-run defeat in Perth, but they have an opportunity to reclaim that position quickly when their five-match ODI series against New Zealand gets underway.

South Africa went ahead by a fraction of a point after winning the series 4-1, but a victory in the first ODI against New Zealand in Perth, on Sunday, will be enough to push Australia to the top. Australia are still the top Test team, enjoying a five-point lead over South Africa despite losing the Test series 2-1 this summer.

South Africa are back at the top for the first time since April 2008 and held the position for a brief period. The gap between the top three sides is steadily narrowing, with India also in the picture. They are currently five points behind South Africa and Australia in the ODI rankings and a series victory against Sri Lanka will push them further towards the top.

Meanwhile, Zimbabwe have also made progress, moving up one place to tenth after winning the opening two matches of the five-ODI series in Kenya.

Team	Matches	Points	Rating
South Africa	34	4245	125
Australia	33	4113	125
India	42	5022	120
New Zealand	27	3041	113
Pakistan	31	3446	111
England	32	3469	108
Sri Lanka	39	4125	106
West Indies	27	2463	91
Bangladesh	38	1731	46
Zimbabwe	29	585	20
Ireland	10	190	19
Kenya	9	11	1

Younis appointed Pakistan captain

Nearly two years after he should’ve taken over, Younis Khan took his place as the captain of Pakistan, after the Pakistan Cricket Board decided to relieve Shoaib Malik of his duties. Younis, who has twice previously turned down the leadership, takes over as Test and ODI captain, his first assignment less than a month away when Sri Lanka return for a two-Test series.

After a night and day of intense speculation, and a day full of meetings, Ijaz Butt, the PCB chairman, confirmed rumours that had begun floating almost as soon as Pakistan trooped off the field after one of their worst ODI defeats to Sri Lanka on Saturday. They were fueled by a 15-minute meeting earlier today between Younis and Butt, in which the offer was first made. There followed meetings between Butt and senior officials from the board and team management at which it is learnt there was clear consensus: Malik had to step down.

“We asked Shoaib Malik to step down as captain. He agreed and only then did we appoint Younis Khan as captain of Pakistan,” Butt told reporters at the Gaddafi Stadium, Lahore. “We have taken the step because our performances weren’t great. The end result is not just winning but the performance. We didn’t just lose to Sri Lanka, we performed poorly. So we have made Younis Khan the captain of both Test and ODI sides.”

No tenure has yet been set for his leadership – “as is the PCB way,” said one official – but there was unanimous approval for the move to replace Malik and bring in Younis. “The feeling was clear that something had to be done because the team had performed so poorly and Younis was the first choice,” an official present at the meetings, said.

Younis has long been seen as the natural choice to lead Pakistan. The impression was built during an impressive two-year reign as vice-captain to Inzamam-ul-Haq, where he often stepped in to take over in sessions and Tests to telling effect. But he blotted his credentials by twice walking away from the post, which in turn led to uncertainty today over whether he would accept.

The first time he had done so was in October 2006, days before the Champions Trophy, when he walked out of a press conference fuming that he didn’t want to be “a dummy captain.” He turned down the post again after the World Cup the following year, though reasons weren’t made clear at the time. But over the course of the year, Younis is said to have changed his views, culminating in the trip to India at the end of the year, where he expressed a desire to captain Pakistan.

It was understood by Cricinfo that Younis was keen to set some terms and conditions for taking over, but it appears that has not been the case. “As far as we are aware, no terms and conditions have been set,” said the official. “The chairman is not the kind of man to qualify an offer. Younis was offered it and he accepted and that is that.”

Malik’s downfall had been on the cards for some time. His win-loss record in ODIs remains impressive but it has been built on weak opposition. Against bigger teams he has been less successful and the resounding nature of the defeats to Sri Lanka sealed the deal. But as much as on-field results, the pressure built on him because of his inability to build a relationship with senior players in the team. Mohammad Yousuf criticised him openly, though he did so only after going to the ICL. Privately, at least two other senior players were also unhappy with his approach and particularly at the clique he is said to have cultivated within the team.

These issues culminated last week with Malik openly questioning Shoaib Akhtar’s commitment during the Sri Lanka series, before u-turning and claiming he had not singled out Shoaib. The episode is said to have greatly incensed the board and though Butt played down reports of a rift, another official hinted it might have been worse than previously thought.

“Many things were discussed in the meetings, including Malik’s relationship with players. Things weren’t great and as an example, during the last ODI in Lahore when the team was staying at the team hotel, Malik stayed at the National Cricket Academy (NCA). Draw what conclusions you want from that.”

BBC assailed for refusing to carry Gaza appeal

LONDON: In more than 80 years as a publicly financed broadcaster with an audience of millions at home and around the world, the BBC has rarely been buffeted as severely as it has in recent days over its decision not to broadcast a television appeal by aid agencies for victims of Israel’s recent military actions in Gaza.

BBC executives made the decision late last week and defiantly reaffirmed it on Monday, citing their concern with protecting the corporation’s impartiality in the Arab-Israeli dispute.

The dispute stirs high passions here, and the BBC, like other news organizations, has struggled uneasily for years to strike a balance, even as some critics claim it has tilted heavily toward Israel and others claim it has favored the Palestinians.

The three-week Israeli campaign in Gaza that ended nine days ago had already elicited a fresh barrage of complaints about BBC bias, for and against Israel. But the decision to block the aid appeal had the effect of magnifying the protests, and their virulence.

The decision has met with angry criticism from Church of England archbishops, editorial writers and senior British government ministers, as well as sit-ins at the BBC’s London headquarters and its broadcast center in Glasgow

News planning sessions at the BBC have featured heated exchanges among editors and reporters, and BBC officials said Monday that they had received more than 11,000 complaints in the past three days.

A strong undercurrent in many of the protests has been that the BBC gave in to pressure from Israel or Jewish lobbying groups, which the BBC has vehemently denied.

A more common view has been that BBC executives, already wary because of a recent series of embarrassments unrelated to Middle East coverage, became so averse to controversy that they made an awkward extension of the concept of impartiality to a purely humanitarian issue.

But the BBC’s director general, Mark Thompson, denied Monday to reporters that he had been subjected to “arm-twisting” by pro-Israeli groups and said that the corporation had a duty to cover the Gaza dispute in a “balanced, objective way.”

“Of course, everyone is struck by the human consequence of what has happened,” he said. “And we will, I promise you, continue to report that as fully and compassionately as we can. But we are going to do that in a way where we can hold it up to scrutiny. It’s our job as journalists.”

The three-minute video, which was shown on several other channels in Britain on Monday night, was prepared by the Disasters Emergency Committee, an organization representing 11 relief agencies. Among them are many of Britain’s best-known charities, including the Red Cross, Oxfam, Save the Children, Help the Aged, Christian Aid and World Vision.

The committee has said the money it raises will buy food, medical supplies, tents, blankets and other necessities for those suffering in Gaza in the wake of the Israeli offensive and the military actions of Hamas, the militant Palestinian group that governs Gaza.

It asked broadcasters to show the appeal as a public service.

The BBC does not accept advertising but has shown humanitarian appeals on other issues in the past, including the conflicts in Rwanda, the Congo and Darfur.

Some of the sharpest criticism of the BBC’s decision on the Gaza appeal came from within its own ranks, from unions representing its newsroom staff and from retired editors and reporters.

Sir John Tusa, a former head of the BBC World Service, said the scenes of distressed children and families in Gaza captured in the video appeal were a matter of “common humanity.”

“Nobody, surely, in their right mind, can say that is being partial towards the victims, as if somehow they deserved the fate they got,” he said in a BBC radio interview.

“The thing that worries me,” he added, “is that there is now an overcomplication of regulation and compliance and policy, and that in the course of that, common sense, and, I regret to say, humanity, seem to have been left behind.”

The BBC was joined in its refusal to carry the appeal, and its contention that to do so would compromise the impartiality of its Middle East coverage, by Sky News, a broadcaster whose majority shareholder is Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation.

But three other broadcasters — the publicly owned Channel 4 and two private broadcasters, ITV and Channel 5 — accepted the appeal. After the BBC, ITV has the largest number of viewers for its main nightly newscast.

As shown on Monday night, the video focused heavily on the plight of Palestinian children — small boys and girls wounded and sobbing, being rushed into hospital emergency wards and, at one point, a parent clutching a tiny white shroud. Other scenes were of homes and apartment blocks collapsed into piles of twisted steel and rubble, and of a woman in black clasping her hands to her head as she surveys a bombed-out wasteland.

ICL recruits begin fight against bans with letter to PCB

Pakistan’s ICL recruits have finally restarted a legal process to fight the bans imposed on them by the PCB from playing domestic and international cricket. A letter has been sent by the legal firm of retired judge Fakhruddin G Ebrahim to the PCB on behalf of the players. Currently, however, the communication is not “a legal notice”, a board official said.

“No legal action is being taken just yet but we have received a letter from the firm,” the official told Cricinfo. “The letter asks us why we have banned them and under what rules.”

The board has not responded yet, though it is understood the issue will be brought up at the ICC executive board meeting due to take place in Perth on January 31. Only after a clearer picture emerges from there will they respond to the queries.

The move comes more than a year after a group of ICL players, led by Imran Farhat and Taufeeq Umar, first attempted to take the matter to court. They started the process towards the end of 2007 but it then petered out. The process has started again, said a prominent ICL player, because the environment is ripe for it.

“We tried doing it in 2007 but Nasim Ashraf [the then PCB chairman] had too many connections in the government of the time,” the player told Cricinfo. “Whenever we did something or tried, it would come up against a dead end because Ashraf would use his friends in power to stop proceedings. So we decided to just wait it out till the government changed. Now it has and so has the administration and we feel, from the comments they have made, that we can progress this time.”

The current board administration under Ijaz Butt has been far more ambiguous about the ban on the players than the one under Ashraf and seems far more willing to look for ways out of the situation. Pakistan has 19 players in the ICL – some of them, like Abdul Razzaq and Mohammad Yousuf, still good enough to play for the country.

Javed Miandad, the PCB’s director-general, has openly called for the bans to be removed claiming they hurt Pakistan and are only in place to appease BCCI interests. Butt, however, has been vague and often confused over the stance. He insists it is up to the ICC to resolve the matter and that the PCB does not want to ban the players.

“We don’t want our players to be banned because they have contracts with the ICL,” Butt said on a TV show two weeks ago. “But unfortunately we can’t do anything unless the ICC changes its stance on this issue.

“The PCB has not directly banned the players, We have banned them under the ICC rules,” he said. “The rules state that no tournament can be held without the home board’s permission and, in the case of the ICL, the Indian board [BCCI] does not recognise it as it runs its own league, the IPL.”

Board officials have been examining legal aspects of the case since before the letter was sent to fully brief Butt before he attends the Perth meeting. The letter has been sent on behalf of almost all of Pakistan’s 19 ICL players and Moin Khan, coach of the ICL’s Lahore Badshahs team, is believed to be handling the matter as a representative of sorts.

Indian Republic Day 2009

I am very thankful for Padmashri: Aishwarya

Tuesday, January 27, 2009 Exclusive Mangalore pub attack In Photos

Barack Obama’s site leading to Trojan

NEW DELHI, INDIA:The US Presidential campaign has created yet another opportunity to spread more malicious code, just ,a typical occasion for the malicious hackers behind the fake video codec social-engineering scams, says Websense.

Websense Security Labs ThreatSeeker Network has detected that malicious hackers have registered multiple bogus user accounts on My.BarackObama.com (an online community for citizens to rally behind President Obama), in order to spread malicious code around the Web. A My.BarackObama.com social-networking account empowers the user with tools to join groups, raise funds, and even create his or her own blog. The option to create your own blog is a common feature provided by most of the popular Web 2.0 social sites today, driven by user-generated content.

In the Obama campaign, malicious hackers created blogs on My.BarackObama.com with a fake YouTube image, enticing visitors to “Click here to see movie”, says Websense.

Clicking on the link led to a Web site using YouTube’s template for viewing online videos, filled with pornography.

Clicking on the video to view results in the Web site prompts the browser to download a supposedly required video codec, which is really a malicious Trojan .exe.

But the malicious campaign doesn’t end there. BarackObama.com is a highly visible, reputable, and popular Web site, with an Alexa ranking of 872 (at time of writing), with almost 9,000 other sites linking to it (according to Alexa). The malicious hackers have been spraying these BarackObama.com URLs all over the Web by injecting them onto blog comment forms, and various user-generated content management systems commonly used by Web 2.0 sites.

Visitors who double-click on this downloaded .exe will be infected with a Trojan. At the time of this writing, the malicious code has almost a 35% detection rate by the major anti-virus vendors (SHA-1: 7e1e623cdae2aba83aecaa2380133b3ccb4f1193). We acknowledge that this has been mentioned before, but now that President Obama has officially been sworn in, and with the new administration’s efforts to “expand and deepen this online engagement”, we can be sure that the frequency and intensity of malicious campaigns aimed at anyone seeking to engage with the President online will only increase. The malicious hackers will also seek new ways to abuse Web 2.0 functionality on any of the new administration’s online properties.

Just prior to the inauguration, US-CERT reported increased spam and phishing sites aimed at luring anyone searching for information on the historical event. We are monitoring this threat, and the ThreatSeeker Network can confirm the US-CERT report. Here are two screenshots of more malicious activity centered around the Presidential Inauguration.

SAG win makes Slumdog come as Oscar hit

Los Angeles: Slumdog Millionaire, the rags to riches tale of a Mumbai slum dweller, emerged as favorite to win the best picture Oscar after winning the top prize at the 15th Screen Actors Guild awards on Sunday.

Slumdog, which involves a host of amateur young actors in Mumbai’s slums, won for best ensemble cast on a night where Hollywood actors traditionally tend to honor their own. The SAG win followed four Golden Globes earlier this month and a Producers Guild Award on Saturday.

“It was overwhelming enough to be nominated. But to win this is unbelievable,” said Anil Kapoor, who plays the cynical quiz master in the independent movie. “It is the children who have done it, not us.”

“It is historic where India is concerned,” Kapoor said, telling journalists of his excitement at meeting Angelina Jolie at the SAG awards dinner.

But the night did not belong entirely to Slumdog, which came away with just one prize and had to share the limelight with the late Heath Ledger, Sean Penn, Meryl Streep and Kate Winslet in four other films.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which has a leading 13 Oscar nominations, came away empty-handed on Sunday, as did Frost/Nixon which recounts journalist David Frost’s interviews with disgraced US president Richard Nixon.

David Poland, editor of Movie City News, said: “People admire Benjamin Button but they don’t love it. It is big and the acting is beautiful but it doesn’t hit them emotionally.”

Sean Penn won the best actor award for playing slain San Francisco gay rights activist Harvey Milk in Milk. Veteran Meryl Streep was a popular best actress winner for her role as a vindictive nun in the Catholic Church abuse drama Doubt.

Neither Milk nor Doubt has featured strongly in the awards season so far, but Penn’s win set up a tight-two way Oscar race with Mickey Rourke, who won a Golden Globe for his comeback role in The Wrestler.

Milk has played well in Los Angeles, where the gay community was dismayed by a November 2008 referendum that banned same sex marriage in California. “This is a story about equal rights for all human beings,” Penn said in his acceptance speech.

Streep paid tribute to other strong performances by women in the past year, adding, “There is no such thing as the best actress. There is no such thing as ‘the greatest living actress’,” referring to the accolade often bestowed on her. Ledger, who died at age…

Los Angeles: 28 a year ago, added a SAG award to his haul for playing the Joker in Batman blockbuster, The Dark Knight.

Sunday’s award, greeted by a standing ovation, makes Ledger a virtual shoo-in in February to join Peter Finch as the only two actors to win Oscars after their death. Finch won in 1976 for Network. British actress Kate Winslet won the best supporting actress award for her role as a German woman with a hidden Nazi past in The Reader.

Winslet, who is also Oscar nominated for her performance, said it was the most challenging part she had ever played. “Playing Hanna Schmitz was such a blessing, even though it made me completely insane,” Winslet said.

SAG also handed out awards to television actors. Tina Fey, Alec Baldwin and the cast of 30 Rock swept the TV comedy awards, while Mad Men, set among advertising industry players in the early 1960s, won for best TV drama ensemble cast.

British actor Hugh Laurie won best actor in a TV drama for his cranky doctor in House, Sally Field won for best actress in a drama for Brothers and Sisters and Laura Linney and Paul Giamatti won best actress and actor in a TV miniseries for John Ada

HCL Technologies posts Rs 373.3 Cr net profit Declares 100 per cent dividend for the quarter

NEW DELHI, INDIA: HCL Technologies Ltd announced on Friday the financial results for the quarter ended December 31, 2008.

The Company has posted a net profit of Rs 373.3 crore, up 12.1 per cent YoY and 4.8 per cent QoQ, it said in a release. The total revenue rose to Rs. 2490.8 crore, up 37.1 per cent YoY and 5.1 per cent QoQ.

HCL also announced 100 per cent dividend for the quarter. This is the 24th consecutive quarter of dividend payout.

While the company added 26 new customers during the quarter, the the headcount of the company stood at 52,957, a net addition of 243 and a gross addition of 3935.

“HCL’s robust corporate governance structure and best practices and the unique culture of Employee First and Trust through Transparency, sets HCL apart,” said Shiv Nadar, Chairman and Chief Strategy Officer, HCL Technologies.

“It is our belief that uncertain environment should be responded with affirmative actions. HCL’s growth is founded in the trust that we have earned over years of our employees, customers, investors and other stakeholders which we are committed to uphold”he added.

Commenting on the results, Vineet Nayar, CEO, HCL Technologies said: “The last quarter has been significant for us. First, HCL has inked contracts worth US $ 1bn in the last quarter, the biggest in its history. Second, we have successfully integrated AXON as part of HCL to dominate the SAP space globally.”

He said some of the world’s most notable thought leaders have recognized the transformation of HCL, nominating it among ‘the top 5 emerging companies globally to watch out’.

“HCL will continue to invest in new growth engines through expansion in new geographies, verticals and services,” he added.

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