Seven Sessions Ain't Much of a Fight

It is highly instructive that the widely reported verbal response by Virat Kohli to David Warner during the recently concluded Australia/India Test match at Perth occurred...during the Australia/India Test match at Perth. The series was certainly still alive during the third Test but the fact that the response should be one of claiming that Australia would get sorted out when they toured India next shows us something quite remarkable about the extent of the defeatist attitude that has percolated down to even the newest members of India's Test squad - it shows us that, even with all to play for and the series in the balance, the conclusion that Australia could not be sorted out in Australia was forcefully, inevitably final.

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Three cricketing clichés that are so not true:

3. "That's a great decision by the umpire."

No, it's not. Maybe the umpire just guessed and dropped lucky about that ball that brushed the thigh pad at warp speed or that LBW that was clipping half a bail on the leg stump. Maybe he didn't give it out because it didn't "look" out. Isn't it shocking that, whenever humanly possible, umpires refer decisions to technology because they're just thankful that they don't have to make that decision? I'm astonished in the extreme that umpires aren't lobbying harder for DRS to be made mandatory and, if possible, for significant expansion in the scope of decisions that can be referred to technology.

2. "He knew exactly where the fielder was."

No, he didn't. Much like its football cousin "he picked his spot", I find it incredibly hard to believe that batsmen always know exactly where the fielders are - if they did, they'd get out caught much less. With the advent of Ultra Motion cameras, which demonstrate exactly how much the bat turns in the batsman's hand, it has become increasingly hard to accept that the batsman knew exactly where the fielder was and therefore placed the ball with any great skill because clearly, the batsman intended the ball to go wherever he did before the bat turned in his hand. I haven't yet seen a batsman say that he regularly accounts for the bat turning in his hand when deciding where to hit the ball.

1. "The reason he played so well is because he looked to play in the 'V'."

No, the reason he played so well is because he scored so many runs, the majority of which were most certainly not in your stupid 'V'. I am yet to see much credible evidence to support the hypothesis that players who play straight score more runs. In fact, to the contrary, players who play straight tend to get caught behind the wicket a lot more because they are actively looking to drive and therefore end up edging a lot more, whereas, especially in Tests, players who look to play behind the wicket ("if you flash, flash hard"; "through the slip cordon...there's no third man...another boundary"; "you cannot afford to bowl on leg stump, he'll keep picking you off to fine leg all day") tend to score a lot more because most teams tend not to heavily protect that area. I am also completely at a loss to explain why commentators gush over square cuts and pulls and backfoot drives and sweeps and leg glances without ever looking to reconcile it with the preposterous "playing in the 'V'" theory.

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http://twitter.com/uhohitsthebigo - What a guy.     

Tuesday's Two

Over the course of seventy-five engaging minutes this evening, I discussed enforced bonding, the four questions you should ask yourself about your friends, how travelling long distances for short meetings is often worth it, how the group of people you end up staying in touch with is entirely your doing, NG's 'simple but deep' lyrics, the kinds of plans you should try to avoid on Sunday afternoons, the mysteries of life, the universe and the purpose of meaning and, of course, whether the standard of the hypothetical addressee envisioned by Lord Reid at page 355 of Technograph v. Mills and Rockley [1972] RPC 346 is that of a skilled man or that of a nerd.

Alright, so I made up that last bit. But not by much, I'll have you know.

NR, thank you for letting me be me. :-)

Stumps, Day 2

I can feel a third-innings collapse coming on. Ugh.

Australia v India, 1st Test Match, Melbourne Cricket Ground, December 26-30, 2011

Brief scores, Stumps, Day 2: Australia 333 (EJM Cowan 68, RT Ponting 62, PM Siddle 41; Z Khan 4/77, R Ashwin 3/81, U Yadav 3/106); India 3/214 (SR Tendulkar 73, RS Dravid 68*, V Sehwag 67; JL Pattinson 1/35, BW Hilfenhaus 1/50, PM Siddle 1/53).

"The second 'W' in WWE"

Congratulations Bryan Danielson, for scripting the fairytale denouement of the little indy wrestler that could. You, sir, are an inspiration to everyone who has been told that it "just won't happen" for them. I was too emotionally spent after Bret Hart's shock career-ending to ever invest in the largely thankless pursuit of making a wrestling career a personal interest. However, I'm thrilled to declare today, after seven long years of following a career that seemed destined to resonate with fans for what it wasn't rather than for what it was, that Bryan Danielson was an effort worth making. In these times of professional wrestling's desperate poverty of talent that can actually "do what the marquee says", Bryan Danielson has meant as much to me as Bret Hart did in the glory days.       

CM Punk and Bryan Danielson holding the two lead titles in WWE in December 2011 - who's writing the scripts here? No pun intended, of course. :-)

Britpop, Bad Food, Statutory Interpretation - Story of My Life

I'm riding a wave called A Northern Soul. Now this is music, no pun intended.

The bruschetta at Nirula's is bad. Really very bad.

Section 30(4) of the Trade Marks Act, 1999 states:

"Sub-section (3) shall not apply where there exists legitimate reasons for the proprietor to oppose further dealings in the goods in particular, where the condition of the goods, has been changed or impaired after they have been put on the market."

For the life of me, I do not understand why there is a comma between 'goods' and 'has'. Someone 'explain me why'. Please.