Amazon comes to India

I have been a big fan of Amazon since I first shopped with them in 2004 (a week after reaching US). Now that I am into Online Analytics, I am a bigger fan obviously for their very great website (great design, personalization, recommendation engine, testing and optimization et al) which along with their supply chain is probably the two assets they have.

If you didn't already know, they now ship free to India (interestingly right now only from Amazon UK) - so lets get shopping. The only question in my mind is why did they take so long? http://www.labnol.org/india/amazon-free-shipping/19116/

SL - Don't deserve to be the champions anyways!!!

Not trying to kill a dead goose here, but still SL - the eternal cheaters!!! Remember Randiv bowling a No-Ball to ensure Sehwag doesn't get to a hundred a few months back. Technically not cheating. :-) It was just one example of unsportsmanlike behavior or cheapness or an act unbecoming of a champion team.

Promoting the chuckers - Malinga, Murali and Randiv through the years is another example. Anyway, maybe he's now thinking if only I had not cheated, what might have happened? Maybe we would have done better, maybe we would have won.

Dhoni's shake of the head after the second toss tells us how shocked and disappointed he is with the act.They surely didn't deserve to win the WC.

I think this is what happened from 0:32 Ravi Shastri - Now MS will spin the coin; Sangakkara - Tails; Crowe (reconfirming with Sangakkara) - Tails?; Sangakkara nodding; Crowe (points his hand to dhoni) - Its heads; Ravi Shastri - Heads it is; MS to Sangakkara - We will bat; (Sangakkara doesn't react); MS to Sangakkara - You said "Tails" right; (still no reaction from Sangakkara or maybe he said I didn't call at all like he was dreaming about the WC and forgot to call); This is outright cheating !!

What a Game?

Yaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyy!! We are the champions, we are the champions, we are the champions of the world!!!

While the victory and the fact that we are world champions is just sinking in, the bounty that the players are being offered is crazy. I can understand most of the others where CMs are rewarding their state players, Yediyurappa not wanting to be left behind and considering the upcoming by-elections, decided to come forward and offer residential plots for all 15 players (irrespective of the state). How magnanimous? Like he's offering something from his own pocket.

My take on the GAME itself: While Gambhir, Dhoni and Kohli (in that order) batted sensibly, my take is that the game was won in the first 10 overs. On a pitch that was as flat as can be with no movement of any kind, restricting Sri Lanka to 29/1 instead of probably something like 70/0 or 80/1 was the difference between the two sides. Zaheer Khan was the difference between the two teams. The fielding too made a difference in that we probably saved 15-20 more runs than Lanka and looking at how the pitch played and the dew towards the end, India would probably have even chased down 300-310 in probably what would have been a closer game.

Having seen the game and the post-game analysis on different news channels till 2am, we decided to catch up on a movie early on Sunday. In the spirit of the World Cup, the movie was what else, "Game" whose title song was "What a Gaaammmmmmmmmmeeeeeeeee". Of course, the Game wasn't cricket but a pretty complex murder mystery set in Greece revolving around Neil Menon a Casino Magnate (played by Jr AB). While at a high-level, the plot was too good to be original (my cynicism about Bollywood scripts coming out), the movie is a good one with Abhishek putting in a decent performance.

Surprisingly, partly due to the World-Cup hangover I guess, the entire movie theater had a total of 10 people in the audience. Who releases movies during the World Cup? They could probably have replayed a World Cup match between Kenya and Canada and got a bigger audience. What say?

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