CSK for more than a decade had a bunch of players who would regularly feature in their playing XI. I am talking about players such as Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Suresh Raina, Harbhajan Singh, Kedar Jadhav, Ravindra Jadeja.etc. When one or two players among this regular bunch becomes unavailable for the entire season, the team management struggles to find suitable replacements. And that's why they have performed so badly this time.

You are right. Some countries have done remarkably well to prevent the spread of the COVID 19 infection. For example, Vietnam is a huge country with a population of around 100 million. To this date, they have only around a thousand confirmed cases. Another example is that of Taiwan. They have reported only around 500 cases and 7 deaths. Now compare Taiwan to Peru (which is having a similar population). The total for Peru now stands at 874,000 cases and 34,000 deaths.

They are a long way away from getting termed as "hot favorites". They have won three matches in a row and seems to be in good momentum. But they need to win all of their remaining matches in order to qualify for the payoffs. It is theoretically not impossible. But given that their matches are against strong teams such as SRH, KKR, RR and CSK, I am not that optimistic.

Every argument has two sides to it. Those who predict a bull run claim that it is due in the next 1-2 years. They claim that the current prices are lower than the fair valuation, and a spike was due after the block reward halving. But at the same time, there is a real chance of a bearish movement. A lot of people have accumulated BTC in 2020, expecting a bull run. In case this doesn't realize, then we may witness a massive dump. And this can take Bitcoin back to four-digit prices.

Again the same old excuse of imaginary "dumping" from the bounty hunters. At the most, the bounty hunters receive 1% or 2% of all the tokens. If they are able to crash the exchange rates with this many tokens, then the real issue lies with the project. If the project is a good one, then the exchange rate will not go down if 1% of the total supply is dumped. Also, if the team is so much worried about this, then they should make the payment in BTC rather than handing out the rewards in tokens.

It is very difficult to prevent scams with social media bounty. I have seen instances where scammers were using 20-30 different accounts for the same campaign. You can't do much. If they are caught, then they will get banned from the campaign. But other than that, what we can do? Even if we manage to get their accounts pasted with red trust, they will just purchase another Bitcointalk account from the dark market.

KXIP lost a lot of their initial matches, because there was no one to score the required runs in case KL Rahul or Mayank Agarwal gets out. The inclusion of Chris Gayle has changed that scenario. The most important thing to note here is that he is scoring the runs at a good strike rate. With almost 9 runs needed per over, they can't afford to slow down when the wickets fall. Gayle and Pooran scored the runs at around 8-9 runs per over, and this gave the team a comfortable victory. BTW, Agarwal looks like he is out of form. KXIP can experiment with Rahul and Gayle as openers.

It is a very surprising statistic. Shikhar Dhawan scored 106 from 61 balls (strike rate of 174) against the Kings XI Punjab. The remainign batsmen scored a total of 54 runs from 59 balls (strike rate of 90). The difference is so stark. Every other batsmen (Shaw/Pant/Stoinis) scored at less than one run a ball. During their last match also (vs CSK), it was similar. Shikhar scored 101 from 58, while the rest of the team (excluding extras) scored 80 from 62 balls. But in that match, the difference between Shikhar and the rest of the team was not this large.

OK.. Let me try this. For this round, I have already locked all of my picks. Let me try this for the next round (Round 6). Normally, I make my picks 1-2 days before the match. But this time the toss is having such a big impact on the outcome, and if I can change my selection after the toss it may be a big help. But then the danger is that if somehow I miss to lock the selection, then it will automatically pick the default option.

This is a very old proposal. A lot of experienced bounty hunters demand that at least a small fraction of the bounty should be paid in either BTC or ETH, or even in USDT. But most of the bounty campaigns have rejected this proposal. The excuse being given is that, if the project team spends a lot of money on the bounty projects, then the development work will get stagnant. I never understood the logic in this claim. The bounty pool is around 0.5% to 1.5% of the total budget. If they make 10% of the bounty payment in ETH or BTC, then it may cost them just 0.05% to 0.15% of the entire pool.

Oh no.. please don't say that ETH 2.0 is the solution for everything. We don't know much about ETH 2.0, and therefore a real chance exists that it may contain a few bugs and vulnerabilities. And in case what you are saying is true, I am interested to know how ETH 2.0 lowers the transaction/gas fee. I want to understand the mechanism and know whether it is viable in the long-term.

I have posted this many times - DC is the most balanced team in this tournament. They have very good batsmen, all rounders, spinners and pacers. They have performed exceptionally till now, while the teams led by superstars such as MS Dhoni and Virat Kohli are not doing that great.

BTW, is it possible to place the bet after we know who won the toss? I tried this once (by then the match had started), but Superbru will not allow me to pick the side. So for that match I had to settle with the default pick. If we can pick after the toss, then it will be great. Because toss is having such an impact on the outcome this time.

Anyone checking the latest exchange rates? BTC is almost at 12K, and we had around 15% increase in the exchange rate during the past 3-4 days. It had nothing to do with any of the vaccine-related research. More interestingly, the Bitcoin dominance is about to hit the 60% mark after many weeks (right now it is at 59.8%). From this, we can assume that the development of the vaccine is having zero impact on the exchange rates.

Sachin is a legendary cricketer and he cares a lot about the future of the game. Participating in Olympic Games is like the biggest dream for any sports personality. But for people such as N Srinivasan and Sharad Pawar, the priorities are different. They don't have any emotional attachment with the sport of cricket and they are in the board only for their own vested interests. So they don't really care whether the popularity and globalization of cricket takes a hit or not.

I agree with the first part, but not with the second. The smaller boards such as SLCB and WICB would lose huge amounts of revenue if they are not allowed to play against the big three teams. But the big 3 teams are not gaining anything by playing against these sides. They will earn more revenue if they play against each other. And the argument that playing against weaker teams such as Zimbabwe is good for improving the statistics doesn't hold any ground. Because in the end it is the team performance which matters, and not individual stats.

Well.. stock index can't be the sole criteria for measuring the economic health, but it is among the most important parameters. But one of the disadvantages is that it doesn't take in to account the small and medium sized businesses which are not listed in any of the stock markets. The stock market indices should be taken along with other indices such as unemployment rate and GDP growth.

Agreed. Even in my country during the initial phases the doctors and other health workers didn't had access to protective equipment such as PPE kits. Now the situation has changed. Also equipment such as Oxygen cylinders and ventilators have become more readily available in the hospitals. Perhaps as a result of this the fatality rate has gone down in most of the countries.

Who is your favorite for today's match? King's XI Punjab has won two matches consecutively, but still I would assume that Delhi Capitals would win easily. But recent developments doesn't favor DC much. Rishabh Pant may not be able to play, and on the other hand KXIP middle order now looks strong thanks to the inclusion of Chris Gayle.  This time, both the teams have excellent depth bowling lineup. Nortje/Rabada for DC and Shami/Jordan for KXIP.

BTW, I just want to post some random stats related to the match. KL Rahul averages 9 with the bat against Axar Patel, while Mayank Agarwal averages 10 against Ravichandran Ashwin.

Well.. I agree that the cryptocurrency sector provides passive employment to a huge number of people. But it is very difficult to make the politicians aware about cryptocurrency. In their eyes, cryptocurrency is a tool which is used by criminals for tax evasion and other illegal activities. Here in India, there were repeated attempts to legalize Bitcoin. But nothing has realized as of now, because of stiff opposition from certain sectors.

I don't think that people who have lost their jobs will be much interested in bounty projects. They have expenses such as utility bills, rent, medicines.etc to take care of. So they will be looking for some job which pays fixed amount on time, even if the payment rate is low. I don't think that many will opt for bounty projects, where the rate of getting a payment is as low as 5%.