India Sri Lanka 1st ODI 2009 quick observations

So really close game, India just good enough to outlast the Lankans.

A couple of points regarding the finish. When Nehra bowled a yorker to Kandamby and Nehra threw the ball towards the stumps, Kandamby took a run with the ball deflecting off of his body.

Most teams have a policy which is generally accepted that you dont run if the ball hits you or your body. We had Brad Hogg in commentary praising Kandamby for taking the single. The argument being if the ball hits your body and deflects onto the stumps you are still run out if you are short.

A few overs later Angelo Mathews hit a drive down the ground and was coming back for the second run. He ran right in front of the stumps to prevent the fielder from being able to get the ball back to the keeper to affect the run out which is an acceptable thing. Except Hogg was fine with that too.

So in his rule book you should run in front of the stumps when taking a run and when the throw hits your body and deflects off you should take over throws as well. What a beautiful strategy. Why not have the batsman look at the throw coming in and hit the ball on its way to the stumps with his bat and collect extra runs. After all its all allowed right.

It was only deserving to see Kandamby run out a bit later on.

Highlights of the game if anyone is interested.

Best Facebook Privacy Settings

Privacy is not something I am usually too concerned with. Since you can usually rely on engineers at large corporations to make the right choices regarding what kind of information of a person should be made public and what kind of information can be analyzed to make money on through advertising.

Google does it, facebook does it and every other email/web service provider does it.

But with the recent changes to the privacy policy and default settings on facebook it made me wonder if facebook has their heart in the right place. Before you could leave all the settings untouched and be reasonably comfortable that only your friends and perhaps friends of friends would be able to access your information. And most people wont mind that, after all the way to grow your network and find new people is through letting a subset of facebook users see you.

With the new settings most if not all of your information on facebook becomes viewable by everyone on facebook. And to top it off there are things on your profile/status updates/notes/fan pages which will show up on any search engine as well.

So rather than going through all the details, here is a quick summary of what I have got on my facebook privacy settings to keep almost all the information on and about my profile limited to only my network.

To get to the privacy settings click on Privacy Settings under Settings. Top Right of the screen.

Profile Information. -> Photo Albums

Contact Information.

Applications And websites. -> What your friends can share about you

Search.

If you are making any changes click on the preview my profile on the top right to ensure your new profile page is acceptable to you.

Even with all these changes your friends list is still visible to everyone. This has been a bone of contention across the web. A simple way to make it invisible to strangers is to click on the small pencil at the top right of the friends box and UNCHECK the "Show my friends on my profile". Doing this makes sure no one sees your friends list if they stumble upon your profile.

It might seem a little paranoid to go through all these steps to hide all this information, but the information hiding is only from strangers, not friends of friends, Pure strangers.

Sehwag and his uniqueness

Absolutely brilliant breathtaking batting by Sehwag on the 2nd day of the 3rd Test match at CCI in Mumbai. In the first session of the test match the pitch looked like it would assist fast bowlers and spinners alike and what does Sehwag do? Gets India in the lead by 50 by the end of day 2.

The brutality of this innings was mind blowing. To bat the way he did for a session is difficult enough, he maintained his batting tempo for 79 overs except for a spell towards the end of the day and a couple of overs after tea.

During the 90s teams used to struggle to make 270 in a day. That gives a yardstick to compare the scale of Sehwag's achievement. And India did not even bat the whole day. Given another 11 overs he would have easily got the record for the most runs in a day which currently belongs to Sir Bradman against guess who, England, 309 runs.

If this was an ODI and Sehwag was the opponent SL would have still lost this match as I am sure if he plays 300 deliveries he will score around 350 runs.

Enough of stats. Coming back to the quality of the knock and the sheer brilliance of it. I dont think there has ever been any cricketer in the history of the game who bats as aggressively as Sehwag and for such an extended duration.

What goes into such an inning:

Talent

Hard work and practice

Physical strength and stamina to bat for so long.

Batting technique to survive international bowling

The sheer audacity to not give into the norm of bating for time in a test match. Following and trusting your gut instinct each and every delivery.

The first 4 any number of international greats have had over the history of the game. Sachin, Ponting, Dravid, Hayden, Viv Richards, Kallis, Border, Gavaskar..... Long list

But none of them have had the daring to have utter disregard for the classical mould of scoring runs. All of these players would have batted for the length of a day and longer. But none of them would have even thought about keeping their scoring pace for the entire duration of a day. Dont get me wrong I am a fan of each one of these players and they are all very very special batters. But the way Sehwag has batted for the last 6 7 years you just have to stand up and admire his style.

Here's hoping he gets to 500 by the end of the day, provided he doesn't get bored from the Sri Lankan bowling.

On a side note: I am really hoping Muralidharan gets a few wickets. It would be an absolute shame to see a legend like him playing his last game against India and abroad bow out being treated like a 2nd grade net bowler. He deserves better. Have to admire the man's spirit. The final ball of the day he bowled a straighter one to Dravid which Dravid didn't pick and there was a huge appeal. The ball was missing leg but the look in the eyes of Murali was worth staying up all night. Toiling for the whole day the man still had the energy and the determination to plot for a wicket and the sheer disappointment on his face at not getting the wicket was really sad to see.