Australia and England are very strong as far as women's game is considered, because the cricket boards (CA and ECB) have invested heavily in to the women's game. England has both the franchise T20 tournament at county level and Hundred trophy for women, while the Australians have BBL. On the other hand, the BCCI has refused to start WIPL, because they believe that it will have a negative impact on the popularity of the IPL. Under such a scenario, I guess Australia and England would continue to dominate the women's game.

You mean England drawing by 2-2? England would have won the matches, but they lost their composure in between. They got excellent starts in all of the matches so far, but at crucial stages they floundered and gave away that advantage. Giving away 100 run partnership for 9th wicket happens once in a while to all the teams. But for England it happened multiple times so far in this series. That shows a lack of planning and poor captaincy. Kohli was under fire before this series. But he has made a strong comeback (I am talking about captaincy, and not about batting).

Usually there is a lag in the market prices of Bitcoin and the important milestones. Remember what happened after the block reward halving? The halving happened in May 2020, but the rally occurred in October (and even then it was due to the trigger from PayPal). So I am not expecting another rally sometime soon. Maybe that will happen after a few months, by 2022. For me, it doesn't matter much. I am OK even if the rally occurs in 2023 or 2024. Because I can wait for a few years.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is a fiat-based organization. It will be ridiculous to expect them to approve this initiative. And this is also the reason why I was surprised when El Salvador asked the World Bank to help them with the implementation of Bitcoin as the legal tender. IMF, World Bank.etc are organizations that deal with fiat currency. What is the point in asking them to get involved with cryptocurrency?

Now regarding the Bitcoin purchase by El Salvador, in the long term it will obviously bring benefits for them. But I am more worried about short term fluctuations. The next presidential election is due in 2024. Hopefully BTC will be in six digits by then.

The government can't provide jobs and livelihoods to billions of people. Maybe for a limited period (up to 3 months), they can provide some form of unemployment benefit. But the individual need to find a new job during this time frame. I have noticed that a lot of people just refuse to do jobs that require hard-work, even if they are unemployed. For such people, it is not the responsibility of the government to provide jobs. They have made a choice on their own, and now they are solely responsible for their actions.

I was quite happy when I learnt that Portugal now tops Group A. Before yesterday, they were at the second place, behind Serbia (due to goal difference). Now they have 13 points and Serbia is having 11. It would have been unimaginable, if Portugal somehow misses the qualification to Qatar 2022. Because this is supposed to be the last world cup outing for Cristiano Ronaldo. Hopefully Serbia can still qualify for the world cup even if they get relegated to the second position (3 out of the 10 second placed teams would qualify).

For Italy, it is going to be easy, as Lithuania has not been performing up to the mark recently (they have lost all 4 of their group matches so far). But Finland is a strong side and they have a history of upsetting top sides. On top of that, France also seems to be in poor form, and that was evident during the Euro cup as well. They had a draw against Ukraine in the first match of the qualifiers, and then managed to defeat Bosnia and Herzegovina by the narrowest of the margins (before drawing against them at home). The last match also ended in a draw (away match, against Ukraine).

Gambling joints generate jobs. Do you have any doubt regarding that? And in all probability, the jobs generated by these joints will be taken up by the residents, while a majority of the gamblers will come from outside these neighborhoods. Opposing each and every productive activity is not going to work. You can't drive away the few industries that are willing to invest their money in these areas. If legal gambling joints are not set up in these places, then the illegal joints will replace them and they will cause much more harm to the residents.

Caleb has an enviable record in professional boxing until now (12 KOs out of his 21 wins, with no losses). But he has never faced an opponent of the caliber of Canelo. His last three opponents were Caleb Truax, Vincent Feigenbutz and Mike Lee (all three faced him for the IBF super middleweight title). These opponents can't even be compared to Canelo. And Caleb has again made some controversial statements. It is interesting that I haven't heard much from Canelo for the last few days. Caleb has been doing all the talk.

Those are the standings as of now. By the time the group stage comes to an end, I expect Portugal to top the Group A (right now both Serbia and Portugal have 10 points from 4 matches, but Serbia is ahead as a result of better goal difference). If Portugal somehow misses the boat to Doha in 2022, then a lot of people will be disappointed. As you have correctly pointed out, it may be the last world cup appearance for Cristiano Ronaldo. He's already 36 years old and I don't think that he will continue playing until 2026.

Sri Lankan curators have prepared spin-friendly tracks to help the local spinners and I don't expect either of the teams to score in excess of 300. In both the matches, South Africa made 280 plus. They lost the first match and won the second one. For the Sri Lankans, this presets a dilemma. If they make the pitch too much spin-friendly, then Tabraiz Shamsi and Keshav Maharaj will destroy their batsmen. If they make them too flat, then Janneman Malan and Aiden Markram will destroy their spinners.

Biden is already 79 and he is not thinking about a re-election at this point. But he needs to be careful with his policies on the Taliban. Because senate and house elections are due in 2022 and Democrats need a strong performance in these elections because they want to fill the SCOTUS vacancies with far-left judges. Actually they were in a strong position, especially in states such as Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada. But recent debacle in Afghanistan just swung the momentum towards the GOP.  

It is foolish to expect that these guys would take a favorable stance towards Bitcoin and cryptocurrency, when they have banned even music, dance and sports. When Islamic state conquered vast swathes of Iraq and Syria, they tried to replace fiat currency (Syrian Pound/Iraqi Dinar) with gold, silver and copper coins, since the ISIS regarded fiat currency as un-Islamic. I am not sure whether Taliban would try to the same or not. From what I can say, there is not much difference between the two groups.

Lack of liquidity has been one of the issues with gold investment. And that is the reason why I always invest in gold ETF instead of physical gold. Also, with physical gold you have to worry about your coins and bars getting stolen. Bitcoin is perhaps the only asset that is 100% portable and 100% liquid. But the issue is with it's high volatility, which decreases its attractiveness during tough times. And in difficult economic conditions, Bitcoin behave the same way as the stock market and the exchange rates may go down. That is not the case with gold. 

BNB was one of the best investment options 6 months ago, but I doubt whether that is the case now. A coin, that is still regarded by many of the users as an "exchange token", is currently being valued at $83 billion. There are quite a few drawbacks with BNB when you compare it to competitors such as Cardano. First one obviously is the association with the Binance exchange. Binance has seen a spike in their hostile interactions with the authorities recently. And the second concern is that BNB is centralized (which is not true, IMO).

At this rate, they can easily get a lead of 300. The 7th wicket partnership is worth 51 already and the total lead is 264 runs. They have 4 wickets in hand, so I guess we can expect the target for England to be in the 340-350 range. Once again Shardul Thakur has played a crucial role with the bat. Unfortunately that also means that both Ravichandran Ashwin and Ishant Sharma will be out of the playing XI for sometime. And 60 plus overs remain for today (4th day). So I don't expect the declaration to come anytime soon.

Israel has been the surprise package in this tournament. I never expected them to get to the second position (behind Denmark). However, the problem for Israel is that their next match is against the top ranking side. Austria is also having a tough match on 7th September against Scotland. Group F is very interesting actually. Denmark is almost assured of the qualification, and the second spot is hotly contested by Israel, Austria and Scotland. Hopefully, we will get a clearer picture by Tuesday.

Looks as if it is all over for Bangladesh. The New Zealand spinners took wickets at the right time. Bangladesh is reeling at 47/6, with Mushfiqur Rahim still in single digits. Ajaz Patel was just unplayable (4/11 in three overs so far), with the other spinners (Rachin Ravindra and Cole McConchie) also providing good support. Preparing a spin-friendly wicket seems to have backfired on Bangladesh as the New Zealand spinners have taken all the wickets so far in the second innings. The required run rate is now 9 runs per over, which I don't think Bangladesh can manage in such a surface.

Here in India, I have heard about multiple incidents of people committing suicide after getting infected with COVID. Some of them are uneducated and go by the rumors that COVID is a very deadly disease like HIV or cancer. That is not true, and the mortality rate is very low if you are not in the elderly age group, and in case you don't have any comorbidity like diabetes or hypertension. Infected individuals need to maintain a stress-free mental state, or else it will result in additional complications.

LOL.. 400 runs means a lead of 301. They can easily win, IMO. Even 240-250 is going to be enough (and India already has a lead of 230 runs). England is on backfoot here. Any runs from now on would be a bonus. And despite the initial hiccups, it looks as if Rishabh Pant and Shardul Thakur have settled down. Partnership between these two have so far added 17 runs in 7 overs. Another 15-20 runs should be enough for India to win this match. Honestly, I don't think that England would be able to chase anything above 250.