Viewership and revenue could be an issue with WBBL as well. I don't think that it is brining in any profit for the Australian cricket board. But they keep continuing with this tournament, because it beings a lot of exposure and opportunity to the women players. The BCCI also could have done the same and it could have given a lot of media attention to the women's game. But they remain primarily concerned about the revenues.

The ICC should have continued with the suspension until they sort out their issues. Now they have the test status, and as a result they get around $100 million in funding for the 8-year circle. Better teams, such as Ireland and Afghanistan receive only a fraction of this amount. And the most tragic thing is that most of this amount is lost in corruption and bureaucracy.

The problem with Zimbabwe is that we don't know who are the players included in their squad one month from now. Every now and then, the players rebel against the management and travel to England or Australia to play club cricket. They have no stability in their team and this will be having a negative impact on the cohesion and team spirit. But all that said, they performed well against Pakistan.

I have talked to a lot many female cricket fans. Ironically, less than 10% of them have ever watched a ladies cricket match. That tells a lot about the popularity of women's cricket in India. I am not going to blame the women. In Australia, they have the WBBL, which gives the players a lot of exposure. But here in India, we don't have anything of that type.

Well.. Pakistan in some trouble here. They are 71/4 after 14.4 overs. Babar Azam is still out there and the required run rate is below 6 runs per over. Right now the match looks 50/50 for both the sides. Considering the fact that the Zimbabwe bowlers are inexperienced, Pakistan should be able to win this match. But first Babar should settle in and try to build a good partnership with Iftikhar Ahmed.

This is what happens when they go after the short-term benefits, by ignoring the long-term advantage. If the transaction fee remains high, then the revenue for the miners may increase in the near-term. But eventually this will force the users to move away from Bitcoin, and use cheaper coins such as Litecoin or Bitcoin Cash. After sometime, the fee reward will also drop as the number of transactions decline.

It has been almost 8 months since the pandemic spread outside China. The governments are doing their best, but the lack of knowledge about the virus is playing a negative role here. But I would put the blame on WHO. They behaved in a very uncompetitive manner in the beginning. The director general (Tedros) was changing his stance every now and then. I am quite surprised that this guy is not fired from his position yet.

I disagree when you say that the MI team combination is perfect. Their pacers (apart from Bumrah) have gone for a lot of runs. Trent Boult has taken the wickets, but he has conceded too many runs in pressure situations. There is nothing wrong with giving one match to Mitchell McClenaghan. Who knows? He may end like Lockie Ferguson in KKR. If they don't want to replace Boult, then Pattinson can be rested.

As usual, the experienced players are rescuing Zimbabwe. Sean Williams is batting with 57, while Brendan Taylor got out after scoring 56. They are over dependent on the 3-4 experienced players, with the others in playing XI just making up the numbers. They may end up with somewhere around 250, and it is not going to be enough to defeat Pakistan in this pitch.

That's right. NRR for Kolkata Knight Riders is -0.214, while that for SRH is +0.555. There is a huge gap in the run rate between both the teams. But in the end, it is the points that matter. If SRH get defeated today, then they'll end up with 12 points, which will allow KKR with 14 points to progress to the playoff stage. In that case, it will be RCB vs KKR in the first eliminator match.

Well, Jason Holder is known for power-hitting. But so far in this IPL, he has scored only 31 runs from 4 matches. But his performance with the ball was more than satisfactory, with one three wicket haul and two 2-wicket hauls. Anyway... today's match is do or die for SRH, and not so for the Mumbai Indians. MI can afford to lose today's match and still end up at the top of the table. But for SRH, if they lose this match then they are out of the tournament.

Well.. that's what they did in 2016. They nominated a candidate, who is not electable. If they had anyone else as the Democrat nominee, then I doubt whether Donald Trump would have won states such as Michigan and Wisconsin. This time, they picked a moderate in Joe Biden. But still, Kamala Harris as the VP pick was a mistake in my opinion. She is too far to the left. They could have chosen someone who is younger and charismatic.

I hope that MI change their bowling lineup. Bumrah needs some rest ahead of the playoff matches, and the other pacers (Boult/Pattinson) have been leaking a lot of runs. Players such as Mitchell McClenaghan and Dhawal Kulkarni deserve at least one chance in this IPL. Also, I would like to see Sherfane Rutherford and Chris Lynn in the top order. Maybe they could replace one overseas bowler with an overseas batsman?

LOL.. today is the election day and the vast majority of the Americans have already cast their ballots. Some 98.8 million people have voted till now (the turnout for 2016 was 136.7 million). Projected turnout is 150 million, that means we may witness some 50 million people casting their votes today. In almost all the battle-ground states, majority of the ballots have been cast already. There are two exceptions - Pennsylvania and New Hampshire. In these two states, the majority of the votes will be cast today, in person.

Jason Holder hasn't done anything extra-ordinary till now. Actually, I would have included Mohammad Nabi instead of Holder, as I believe that Nabi is a better batsmen compared to Holder, and he has depth bowling abilities. He didn't got any chances this season, but I heard that Nabi is heading to the BBL as a part of the Melbourne Renegades squad. Vijay Shankar has also performed well in the recent matches, but he is "volatile".

Things are clear now.

MI and DC have qualified for the playoff stage, with 18 and 16 points respectively. RCB will qualify, either as the 3rd team or the 4th team (depending on the outcome of the MI vs SRH match).

KKR will qualify, in case SRH loses against MI. On the other hand, SRH will qualify as the 3rd team in case they win against MI.

So here are the remaining matches:

Qualifier 1: Mumbai Indians vs Delhi Capitals

Eliminator 1: RCB vs KKR/SRH

Well.. I just checked the exchange rate on Bitstamp, and it is showing $13,519 per coin. These temporary spikes and dips are not unusual with Bitcoin, and I don't think that they have anything to do with the presidential election. You need to accept the fact that the long term trends look positive. During the last two months, the prices have increased from $10,300 to $13,500. It will continue to move upward, irrespective of who wins the election.

Disappointing performance from the RCB. With 5 overs to go, they were 112/2, with two established batsmen at crease (Devdutt Padikkal & AB de Villiers). But as it happened a lot many times in this tournament, the youngster got out at the worst possible time. And then there was a batting collapse. From 112/2, they ended at 152/7. During the last 5 overs, they scored 40 runs and lost 5 wickets.

Well.. Trump was the underdog last time as well. But he won the elections, since turnout was higher among the Republican voters. If you take the number of registered voters in the United States, the Democrats outnumber the Republicans by a huge margin. But they have two disadvantages. First of all, there are a number of deep-blue states such as California and New York, where Dems carry by very large margins. But whether you win the state by 1 vote or by 1 million votes, you get the same number of electoral college votes. And secondly, turnout is always low among the Democrats when compared to the Republicans. A large section of the Democrat supporters prefer to watch web series or drink beer with their friends rather than going to the polling booth.

I also voted for the same option.

Right now I can't purchase or store cryptocurrencies using the PayPal platform, because I am a resident of India. This option is available only for selected accounts in the United States. Even if it is available to Indian users, I need more details regarding the (additional) KYC requirement and deposit/withdrawal limitations before making any moves. Also, we need to see if some bug or vulnerability is found in the near future with their cryptocurrency storage, which may increase the chances of hacking.