Democratic countries, if they don't change the current trajectory, are doomed to fail. Because almost all of the democratic governments are being forced to follow populist measures to maintain their support levels. Now this is not viable in the long term, because as a result of the populist measures the federal debt will increase to unsustainable levels. China, being an authoritarian country doesn't need to go through these foolish steps.

Not entirely true. Everyday I am witnessing pump-and-dump cycles occurring with medium-sized and lesser known altcoins. I am not sure whether this is happening solely due to the market manipulation. There must be some interest from the ordinary investors as well. Because it is not possible to conduct pump-and-dump from market manipulation alone.

Well.. I can agree that he is a very cunning and experienced politician. But he was the ICC president for a long time, and I can't recall a single contribution from him to the sport of cricket during that time period. Even he was absent from the ICC meetings most of the time, and was solely concentrating on the Indian politics. Jagmohan Dalmiya was a thousand times better than him.

For me, it looks like Trump want the rioting to continue. He is threatening to deploy the armed forces, but I am sure that it is never going to happen. Trump wants the riots to go on for a few days. There will be a lot of damage to public and private property and then there will be a sentiment among the working class against the rioters. Then he will suppress the rioting with an iron hand, and it will win him additional supporters.

Don't even debate on this.
IPL this year is 100% impossible, unless they move it to Australia or some other country that is not affected by the pandemic.

eaLiTy has already posted the details, so I don't need to explain. In short, the situation here in India became much worse during the last week or so. There have been a huge jump in the number of cases, and those regions which remained mostly unaffected earlier (such as Kerala, Goa and North-east) are witnessing a huge jump in the number of new cases.

Ethereum used to be the best altcoin in the market, but that is no longer the case. And the Ethereum developers can blame themselves for this. Back in 2017, there were even talks about ETH overtaking BTC. But then the ICO market crashed and ETH lost as much as 95% of its value. Then even the developers abandoned the work and the failed to fix the bugs and security issues on time.

^^^ ROFLMAO. Sanjeev Chawla is desperately trying to remain in media limelight. Match fixing is very rare nowadays, when compared to the situation we had 1-2 decades ago. Now the players are getting millions of USD in salary, and very few would take the risk of ruining their career by colluding with the gamblers. Those days are long gone. Chawla is trying to stay out of jail, and we don't need to take his words seriously. 

There is a gap between the T20I series and the test series, and I guess they have kept it so, to accommodate the T20 World Cup. So the BCCI is indirectly hinting that the T20 World Cup would go ahead as planned in November 2020 and the IPL 2020 would be postponed (or rather cancelled). It is not practical for the players (both Indian and Australian) to travel from Australia to India in mid-October (for the IPL) and then return again for the test series.

So this fixture list answers a lot of our questions.

All this said, I am disappointed that the Optus Stadium in Peth has been overlooked for hosting test matches. I would say that it is the best stadium in all of Australia where cricket matches can be hosted. Really disappointed.

Recent opinion polls show Trump trailing badly in crucial states such as Florida and Arizona. The polls may be wrong (just like the case in 2016), so I am not going to comment about them. I would still say that Trump is not getting any boost from this pandemic. 


I would agree with you on this. One of the plus points with the Trump presidency is his tough handling of China. The Chinese have been put under a lot of pressure, and they were forced to make concessions.


Even now he is not changing his stance. He is in favor of opening the churches, despite the warnings from experts. Blaming China won't save him, if the virus continues to kill thousands of Americans every day.

There is no quickfix solution for the issues faced by the PCB. They date back to at least two decades. No other team wanted to tour Pakistan during this period, because of security risks. As a result PCB was forced to stage the matches in UAE, and as a result of that they lost a large part of the revenue. As the PCB was running short of funds, the domestic cricket suffered. The quality of the domestic competition went down, and it stopped producing quality younger players.

Now we have some good signs, after the successful tours by teams such as Sri Lanka and the highly successful PSL. But when everything was looking good, the COVID 19 pandemic struck.

That's true. Politics is the reason why someone such as Sharad Pawar, with zero skill and experience even managed to become the president of the ICC. Even now, the BCCI is filled with political appointees. Jay Shah is the Secretary of the BCCI, and he happens to be the son of the Indian home minister (Amit Shah). Arun Singh Dhumal is the BCCI treasurer, and he happens to be the brother of Anurag Thakur (Mos Finance). And then we have the TNCA, which is filled with corrupt proxies such as Rupa Gurunath.

^^^ Fiat currency do leave behind tail, but then whether the authorities will be able to go after the tail or not depends on the jurisdiction where the match fixing takes place. The GCC nations, with UAE in particular are known to be hotspots for cricket gambling. Fiat transactions done through the GCC banks, or even in hard cash (using the United Arab Emirates Dirham) is outside the purview of the authorities in India and Pakistan.

Actually this is very surprising. Republican presidents are expected to cut down on welfare spending, and reduce the federal debt. However, for the last 3 decades or so the opposite has happened. The federal debt increased under George W Bush, and it increased further under Donald Trump. Even in terms of debt-to-GDP ratio, it has increased significantly under the Trump presidency.

I have a feeling that Sourav Ganguly as the president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India, and Kumar Sangakkara as the president of the ICC can together do wonders to the sport of cricket. There is a good understanding between these two guys, and as far as I know they are good friends. And both of them are very ethical and care more about the sport than money.

On the other hand, if the oldie Colin Graves becomes the ICC president, then it will be a disaster for cricket. He is one of those guys, who cares only about money. He'll try to bring back the Pig 3 formula, which benefits no one.

Two different cricket leagues are ongoing right now. First one is the Vincy Premier T10 League 2020, which involve some of the familiar names in West Indies such as Kesrick Williams and Sunil Ambris. The format is T10, and the matches take place in the island of St Vincent. The second league is in little-known island nation of Vanuatu, called Vanuatu Blast T10 League. 

Many of those who post here have little knowledge of USDT. You should never trust an asset, if you don't know about the details. First of all, Tether was formerly known as Realcoin. In 2017, it was revealed that Philip Potter and Giancarlo Devasini of the Bitfinex exchange owned Tether Holdings Limited. Do you really trust a token issued by an exchange such as Bitfinex? If you still trust them, then what about this - on April 2019, the Tether officials admitted that only 74% of the value of Tether is backed up with real assets. The remaining 26% are not backed up.

The infection rates are declining, and the stock markets are now stable. The impact from this pandemic may not be as worse as it was feared before. If the situation can be contained within the next 2-3 months, then we may actually witness a major economic boost instead of recession, as a result of the stimulus measures that were announced by various governments around the world.

1. Darkweb usage can't be discounted. There are still dark markets, that are very popular
2. USDT can't be trusted, as proven in 2019
3. For each of the niche domains, we have 50 or 100 different altcoins and this is leading to market fragmentation. Unless a consolidation occurs, I don't have much hope with them
4. This was done during the early days, in 2011 and 2012. Now it is too late for all these antics.

Back in 2016, it was Hillary's election to lose. And this time, it is Biden's turn. The Demography within the United States has changed so much to the extent of giving a major advantage to the Democrat candidate. Unless Biden makes some big blunder, he should win. But as you pointed out, if he makes some political gaffe, then it can turn around the election narrative and give advantage to Trump.

There was some confusion regarding the fixtures. I was thinking that the matches were scheduled for July. I checked the Wikipedia page dealing with the series, and they are saying so:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Indian_cricket_team_in_England_in_2020

Then I checked the fixtures in ESPN Cricinfo, and they are saying that the matches are scheduled for June:

https://www.espncricinfo.com/series/19430/game/1198232/england-vs-west-indies-1st-test-icc-world-test-championship-2019-2021

I guess there is a mistake with the date given in Wikipedia.