CricTrivia

How many times has Ricky Ponting got out to Ishant Sharma in Tests - and who has got Ponting out most often?
By the end of the Mohali Test, Ishant Sharma had dismissed Ricky Ponting on six occasions, from only eight matches in which they had played against each other. Ponting has an average of 15.50 in those innings. Only three bowlers have got Ponting out more often than that, and two of them are Indians: Anil Kumble dismissed him seven times (in 17 Tests), Darren Gough eight times (in nine), while Harbhajan Singh has so far claimed his wicket on 10 occasions in the 13 Tests in which they have opposed each other.

Sourav Ganguly averaged 66 in Tests when he batted at No. 4. Is this the best average for that position, given a minimum of 1000 runs scored there?
Sourav Ganguly's average of 66.00 from 20 innings at No. 4 is indeed the highest average there in Tests, given your qualification of 1000 runs (he scored 1188). Five others have averaged more than 60 at No. 4:Garry Sobers made 1530 runs at 63.75 there, Everton Weekes 3372 at 63.62, and Graeme Pollock 2065 at 62.57, plus the current players Jacques Kallis (7183 at 62.46) and Mahela Jayawardene (7570 at 60.07). The most Test runs scored at No. 4 is 11,629 (at an average of 57.85) by Sachin Tendulkar (before the Mohali Test against Australia). 

 I have just watched Isuru Udana take a hat-trick despite bowling only two legal deliveries - has this feat ever happened previously?

The Sri Lankan left-armer Isuru Udana managed this while bowling for Wayamba in their Champions League Twenty20 match against Central Districts in Port Elizabeth last week: the key point is that the second victim, Mathew Sinclair, was stumped off a wide. Udana had already persuaded Brad Patton to sky a catch to the wicketkeeper, Kushal Perera, and then after Sinclair's unusual dismissal, George Worker was bowled by his first ball. As far as I can see, there have been no other hat-tricks in senior cricket that did not come from three legal deliveries.

‘Women fly planes, why such hype? I’m just driving a train’

DNA / Rajendra Aklekar / Wednesday, October 13, 2010 2:37 IST

Western Railway's first motorwoman Preeti Kumari was surprised to find the entire city's media at Churchgate station to speak to her and photograph her.

"There are women who fly planes, then why such hype for me, I am just driving a train," was the humble query of this 34-year-old mother of one.

As the 2.29pm Churchgate-Borivli new-age local train pulled out of platform number one, and the media jostled to get the best shot of Kumari taking charge, women who had crowded the compartment just behind the driving cab cheered and clapped.

"We are proud of her and she should be asked to drive the ladies special trains," Suvarna Joshi, a commuter on the train said.

As she took charge, she was quite focused and said, "It's just a train and I am quite happy that I'm the first one on this railway. My inspiration is my husband and I was very happy to see him come to receive me when the train returned to Churchgate from Borivli. Gender does not have anything to do with basic human qualities like alertness, grasp of technical knowledge," she said.

Kumari is quite worried about the deaths on track. "It is quite disturbing to see trespassers on the track and they should understand that it is agony for us too if the train runs over them," she added.

Senior motorman and her trainer Satishchandra Karve said, "She picked up things quickly and will be an asset to the WR staff. She has been a success during her trial runs."

She was welcomed by her male peers by putting up a welcome board in the motormen's lobby at Churchgate and also on the inaugural train.

India's first motorwoman on Central Railway Surekha Yadav, who has now moved to driving long-distance passenger trains, said, "I spoke to her today and congratulated her. I am curious to know the details about how her first journey was."

Influence Matrix in India !

Chartered Flights

Charter aircraft business soars in B-towns

MUMBAI: For several decades, a majority of the country's charter aircraft were owned and parked in Delhi, and then some in Mumbai. Now suddenly, there are wings all over the country: in the last three years, the airfields of Imphal, Chandigarh, Vadodara , Chennai, Lucknow , Davangere, Puducherry, Patiala, Sagar and others have become home to birds like the Cessna Caravan, King Air C 90, Beechcraft, Learjet and Bombardier Global Express . 

The decentralization of the charter aircraft fleet has meant different things to different people. For the residents of Imphal, for instance, it's been a definite answer to a very tricky question: How long does it take to travel from Imphal to Aizawl? "It used to take ten hours, if the weather gods were indulgent, that is. 

Otherwise it could take 12, 15, even 20 hours,'' says Roshni Kumar, talking about rains, landslides and other factors typical of road travel in the North-East. Then in 2008, North East Shuttles Ltd, a private charter company, began operations, and last year decided to fly its six-seater Cessna Caravan between these two towns. The Mizoram government subsidized the flight, and now for Rs 2,875 one can board the aircraft from Aizawl at 11 am daily and be in Imphal a flat 40 minutes later, come rain or sunshine. 

"IA does operate flights here. But many airports like Aizawl's Lengpui do not have landing aids, and so when the visibility drops, the big planes cannot fly there. Our Cessna Caravan turns into a saviour,'' says Kumar. So, on any given day, one can find a variety of travellers on this charter flight, from doctors and medical representatives to students and people visiting relatives. 

Like the Caravan parked in Imphal, there are several planes parked across the country. Currently, there are 118 companies in India with a non-scheduled operator's permit (NSOP), a licence issued by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation to operate charter flights. 

Together, these companies own a fleet of 295 aircraft (excluding offshore operators like Pawan Hans , Global Vectra and United Helicharters), of which only 117 are based in Delhi and 48 in Mumbai. It's a big leap, in 2005, the charter fleet in India was only half the present size and about 60% of aircraft were in Delhi. 

Elsewhere in India, small planes parked in small airports spell convenience. "When it comes to chartering, there is a wider choice of aircraft now,'' says Manish Kalani, Indore based managing director of Entertainment World Developers Pvt Ltd. 

"Also, till about five years ago, aircraft had to be chartered from either Delhi or Mumbai. The local charter companies play a significant role in everyday decision-making: I can take a last-minute decision to fly to, say, Nanded and be airborne in a couple of hours.'' 

With flying training schools too putting out their aircraft for charter, not only has the cost of chartering an aircraft come down greatly, the choice too has become varied. "Four-seater Cessna 172 aircraft are available for as little as Rs 50 per kilometre. The minimum booking charge would come to Rs 10,000 and that would be for a 200-km trip,'' says Capt Dipti Goenka, director of OneSky Aviation, a company that provides consultancy and handles 60 charter aircraft across 12 cities. 

Dirtcheap aircraft like Cessna 172s are generally not available for charter from metros, but Delhi does have a six-seater Piper Seneca which goes for Rs 100 per kilometre. With the availability of charter aircraft across the country, ferry fees too have been done away in the fare equation. 

"Earlier, if a person from, say, Ahmedabad needed to fly to Jaipur , the aircraft would fly in from Mumbai or Delhi. So the customer ended up paying for the to-and-fro flight of the aircraft from its base station,'' says Capt Goenka. The other factor is the ready availability of aircraft. This is probably because the demand has not picked up greatly—for instance, the Commonwealth Games have not brought even a single order for chartered aircraft. 

"We charter aircraft to fly between non-metros, and in the last two years particularly we have never had problems procuring an aircraft even in places like Banswaada, Rajasthan,'' says Mukesh Patel, who charters aircraft for spiritual guru Asaram Bapu. 

However, not all aircraft listed under the NSOP category are available for chartering. "There are quite a few aircraft registered under NSOP, especially jets, but which are never available for charter,'' says a charter company executive based in Mumbai. 

"Those aircraft are kept for private use, though registered under the NSOP category to evade octroi.'' Therein lies one of the biggest problems facing the charter industry. "Octroi evasion tactics by a handful of corporates brought all the charter companies under the government scanner in the last three years,'' says an operator from Mumbai, adding that genuine charter companies which have been around for over a decade were hauled up by the government officials. 

"Several companies had to produce hundreds of documents to prove that they are genuinely into charters,'' he adds. The other problem is the lengthy two-to-three-day procedure involved in getting permission for operating an international charter.

Fwd: Meet the lone Pakistan woman at CWG

Meet the lone Pakistan woman at CWG

By Manik Banerjee  | 2010-10-09 12:35:31

New Delhi: She is a lone woman among the 75 member contingent from India's Islamic neighbour where women are not too dominant in the sporting arena. The 32-year-old may be the only woman competitor among the Pakistani contingent that is participating at the ongoing Commonwealth Games here, but is at ease even being a lone ranger among the all male group. Tanjeem, a captain in Pakistani army, is busy shaping her 'weapons' for the killer shot. Tanzeem is the seventh child in a family of landlords and now lives in Islamabad. Her tryst with shooting began five years ago when she joined the Army and she has already bagged a silver in SAF games. An exuberant Tazeem, chronicling her journey to the Commonwealth, said, "I saw an advertisement about this competition and appeared for the selection trial along with 29 other women. " Though two of them were selected to represent Pakistan, the other Pakistani woman shooter has not joined the contingent.  "In Pakistan we don't get any formal coaching . Most of us train on our own. I am grateful to my family who had supported me in my endeavour", she informed. Asked how does it feel being the only lady in the Pakistani contingent during the opening ceremony, Tazeem said: " It's not that there was any problem, since we generally do practise at the range back home. But there are other girls too. Here it did feel a little strange,'' she admitted.  "I am very happy to be here. I don't feel that I am out of home. Everybody here has been very nice,'' she added, her face beaming with excitement.  Tazeem said that after watching Anisa Sayyed of India , who is a friend since SAF Games, and her partner Rahi Sarnobat, she is determined to practise harder and do well.  She would like to come to India for practice, if she gets a chance, Tazeem said.

MyReview : Robot

• Probably the best Indian effort in terms of Special Effects
• Simple but interesting story line...good fun to watch
• A tad too long
• While the translated songs in Roja and Bombay sounded so good, not one song in this Rahman score register
• destroys the old belief that married heroines do not get viewer acceptance...Aishwarya Roy gets a reasonably long role too
• This film will generate a lot of cash !

RSK

What is intelligence, anyway?

By Isaac Asimov When I was in the army, I received the kind of aptitude test that all soldiers took and, against a normal of 100, scored 160. No one at the base had ever seen a figure like that, and for two hours they made a big fuss over me. (It didn't mean anything. The next day I was still a buck private with KP - kitchen police - as my highest duty.) All my life I've been registering scores like that, so that I have the complacent feeling that I'm highly intelligent, and I expect other people to think so too. Actually, though, don't such scores simply mean that I am very good at answering the type of academic questions that are considered worthy of answers by people who make up the intelligence tests - people with intellectual bents similar to mine? For instance, I had an auto-repair man once, who, on these intelligence tests, could not possibly have scored more than 80, by my estimate. I always took it for granted that I was far more intelligent than he was. Yet, when anything went wrong with my car I hastened to him with it, watched him anxiously as he explored its vitals, and listened to his pronouncements as though they were divine oracles - and he always fixed my car. Well, then, suppose my auto-repair man devised questions for an intelligence test. Or suppose a carpenter did, or a farmer, or, indeed, almost anyone but an academician. By every one of those tests, I'd prove myself a moron, and I'd be a moron, too. In a world where I could not use my academic training and my verbal talents but had to do something intricate or hard, working with my hands, I would do poorly. My intelligence, then, is not absolute but is a function of the society I live in and of the fact that a small subsection of that society has managed to foist itself on the rest as an arbiter of such matters. Consider my auto-repair man, again. He had a habit of telling me jokes whenever he saw me. One time he raised his head from under the automobile hood to say: "Doc, a deaf-and-mute guy went into a hardware store to ask for some nails. He put two fingers together on the counter and made hammering motions with the other hand. "The clerk brought him a hammer. He shook his head and pointed to the two fingers he was hammering. The clerk brought him nails. He picked out the sizes he wanted, and left. Well, doc, the next guy who came in was a blind man. He wanted scissors. How do you suppose he asked for them?" Indulgently, I lifted by right hand and made scissoring motions with my first two fingers. Whereupon my auto-repair man laughed raucously and said, "Why, you dumb jerk, He used his voice and asked for them." Then he said smugly, "I've been trying that on all my customers today." "Did you catch many?" I asked. "Quite a few," he said, "but I knew for sure I'd catch you." "Why is that?" I asked. "Because you're so goddamned educated, doc, I knew you couldn't be very smart."