Missed the opening match of the Pakistan Super League 2023, because I was travelling. Later watched the highlights. This time the competition has started with a bang. You can't have anything better for inaugural match. It went down right to the wire, with the Qalandars winning by just one run in the end. 15 from the last over is going to be tough, especially when a talented player like Zaman Khan is bowling. Khushdil Shah did his best, but the outcome was clear when Kieron Pollard in the second ball of the over. Hussain Talat at deep midwicket fielded the ball really well and the moment Pollard found himself short of crease, it was all over for the Sultans.

You can't expect a lot of global interest in a competition where only European nations are competing. But then the question comes about why do you want global audiences for a regional competition? If the song is really good, then it will get fans from all over the globe. I can give a few examples, such as Satellite from Lena (Germany) in 2010, Euphoria by Loreen (Sweden) in 2012 and Heroes by Mans Zelmerlow (Sweden) in 2015. But if the winners are selected for political considerations within Europe, then you can't expect the song to become viral in regions outside the EU.

Don't know what happened to the New Zealand women. They are regarded as one of the top sides in women' cricket, but so far they have lost both the group matches by a big margin. First they lost to their trans-Tasman rivals by a margin of 97 runs, and yesterday they lost to the hosts by 65 runs. As things stand, Sri Lanka is having the maximum chances of qualification from this group. But it is still unpredictable, as we are not even at half-way mark. It can be any two teams from the following - Sri Lanka, Australia and South Africa.

As things stand, Pakistan has no chance of a win against India (despite the absence of Smriti Mandhana). There were rumors that Harmanpreet Kaur is also injured, but she has been included in the playing XI for today's match. And it will be interesting to know who will be India's third pace option, apart from Renuka Singh and Pooja Vastrakar. Either they can go for the inexperienced Anjali Sarvani, or bank on experience in the form of Shikha Pandey. The morale seems to be high after Ramesh Powar was replaced as the coach by Hrishikesh Kanitkar.

There is another match between Bangladesh and Sri Lanka today. Sri Lanka has already one win to their name and in case they get a second one today, then there is a good chance that they may qualify for the semi-finals. And agreed on the Kiwis. They lost the match by almost 100 runs yesterday against Australia. The match outcome was decided in the first innings itself, when Alyssa Healy, Meg Lanning and Ellyse Perry took Australia to a massive total of 173/9. And then Ashleigh Gardner wrapped up the New Zealand innings with a 5-wicket haul.

South Africa's chances look very slim now, after their upset defeat to Sri Lanka yesterday. Given that only two teams can qualify to the knockout stage from each group, they need to defeat both New Zealand and Australia to qualify. And another poor performance against Bangladesh will make it impossible to proceed to the semi-final stage. Only two out of the three in Group 1 (New Zealand, South Africa and Australia) can qualify for the next phase, since the tournament format is designed that way. BTW, tomorrow we have the most important match of the tournament, between India and Pakistan.

If India gets to 400, then there is a 80% to 90% probability that they don't need to bat again. The track is already giving a lot of assistance to Todd Murphy (although the incompetent Nathan Lyon didn't managed to use any of that). The combination of Ashwin-Jadeja-Axar is going to break the back of Australians when they come to bat again (today second session?). Australians didn't prepared well for this tour. It was surprising to note that they refused to play even one warmup match before the first test, citing packed schedule.

The split looks fair to me. Mexico maybe having more football fans when compared to the United States, but the facilities are much better in the US (not denying the fact that Estadio Azteca has the maximum capacity out of all the venues). Also, Mexico has limited matches to three of the cities due to safety concerns - Guadalajara, Mexico City and Monterrey, while the US will be hosting the tournament in 11 venues. Most of the heavy lifting (in terms of financials) is being done by the United States and therefore it makes sense if they host the vast majority of the matches.

Matches involving the so called "European" clubs have been under radar for some time. Match fixing was reported at least a dozen times in the last 2 years or so, and I won't be surprised if that was the case on this occasion. The ICC needs to be blamed. In order to give a false perception that cricket is expanding, they made a mockery of eligibility laws and allowed foreigners on tourist visas to represent the national teams in Europe. Asian and African teams with native players are sidelined and fund allocation is being reduced, but the ICC continues to provide big funding to these foreigner teams. Since the players are not the citizens of that particular country, they don't have any motive to play fairly. The only motive is to earn money and now that is evident in these club matches (apart from the national team matches). ICC should be happy. They got guys who are equally greedy about making money.

On 12th February, we have the India vs Pakistan match at 6:30 pm Indian time. The ICC is also quite cunning and they have therefore put both the teams in the same group. So at least one match between the two teams is guaranteed. And if both the teams qualify for the next round, then there is a chance for one more match. BTW, we have the WPL player auction the next day (13th February). A total of 409 players have been shortlisted, and big names are there including Ellyse Perry, Tahlia McGrath, Smriti Mandhana and Ashleigh Gardner. 

The 8th wicket partnership between Ravindra Jadeja and Axar Patel is now worth 81 runs. From a position of 240/7, they have reached 321/7. Spinners have taken 6 wickets to fall so far, with Todd Murphy having figures of 36-9-82-5 and Nathan Lyon 37-9-98-1. I am yet to see Scott Boland bowling in tandem with Todd Murphy. Boland was impressive, although he is yet to take a wicket. He has figures of 17-4-34-0, and Smith dropped a difficult chance from Jadeja off the bowling of Boland earlier. BTW, it would be a good option to give some overs to Steve Smith. 

^^^ In December 2022, Indian refineries imported 1.20 million barrels per day of Russian crude. In January it went up to 1.27 million barrels. A part of it is refined and exported to the US/EU. Indian refined product exports for January 2023 stood at 93,000 barrels per day to the US and ~300,000 barrels per day to the EU. Now coming to the economics, you can check the difference between Brent and Urals here:

https://www.neste.com/investors/market-data/urals-brent-price-difference

At this point, the discount stands at ~$32 per barrel. Brent is trading at $80 per barrel and Urals at $48.

That said, India is not benefitting from Russian LNG imports. Most of it goes to China. However, this month some of the Indian gas companies have entered into discussion with Gazprom and Novatek, to explore the possibility of LNG imports to India.

I completely forgot to mention that Al Nassr has played one less match when compared to Al Shabab. Thanks for reminding that. Al Hilal is at 4th position, and there were rumors that they are in talks with Lionel Messi, to bring him to the Saudi League.

And now coming to Ronaldo, it should be relatively easy for him. When he was playing in the English Premier league for Manchester United, he needed to score goals against extremely strong teams such as Arsenal and Manchester City, which have some of the best defenders in the world. But now he is against Saudi defenders, who are a few levels below what we have in EPL (no disrespect to the Saudis).

There is no dearth of talent in Brazil. Even for the 2022 Qatar edition, they were the bookmaker's favorites by a long distance. But then, one mistake during the knockout phases can result in the team failing to qualify for the next round. And this time it was Croatia, which surprised Brazil during the quarter-finals stage. BTW, Argentina has only failed to qualify just once. That was in 1970, when Peru and Bolivia finished ahead of them in CONMEBOL qualifiers Group 1. Peru, Brazil and Uruguay qualified during that year from CONMEBOL.

Did I missed something? Rambo was replaced with Najam Sethi. You are saying that he got back his position, which I am not aware of. As far as I know, Ramiz is working with some of the TV channels to cover Border Gavaskar Trophy and he doesn't hold any position with PCB at this point. But his absence would be a big blow to the PCB. During his stint, he made so many revolutionary changes (although some of them like the Pakistan Junior League were not very successful), and also increased the PCB revenues by manifold.

This is completely unexpected. Todd Murphy gets his 4th test wicket on debut, as he ousts Virat Kohli for just 12 runs. So far Rohit Sharma has stood like a pillar on one end, and he is rapidly approaching his century. But none of the other batsmen have been able to give him any support so far. Suryakumar Yadav has come out to bat, and this is his test debut as well. BTW, the captaincy from Pat Cummins have been below par so far. Scott Boland has bowled well (9-4-7-0), but Cummins seems to be reluctant to give him extended spells. Instead he is sticking with Lyon from the other end.

Todd Murphy is having a good outing so far and he has picked up his third wicket in the form of Cheteshwar Pujara. He has figures of 15-2-35-3 at this point, while Nathan Lyon has 20-4-66-0 to his name. The two relatively inexperienced bowlers (Todd Murphy and Scott Boland) have so far stood out among the Australian attack and this is the first time that they are playing against India. On the other hand, the Indian batsmen are handling Cummins and Lyon with relative ease. Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli at the crease. Australia need some quick wickets now. 

The first match in ICC Women's T20 World Cup will be played today between the hosts (South Africa) and Sri Lanka at the Newlands stadium in Cape Town. South Africa is included in a tough group along with Australia and New Zealand and therefore wins against the two weak teams (Sri Lanka and Bangladesh) is absolutely necessary for them to qualify for the next round. Group B is a bit more easier, with India and England being the only strong teams (other teams in this group are West Indies, Pakistan and Ireland).

Finally the Australians managed to get Ravichandran Ashwin out, but he had scored 23 by then. Todd Murphy gets his second international wicket in his debut. So far the two inexperienced bowlers (Todd Murphy and Scott Boland) are the ones who looked more threatening from the Australian bowling attack. Rohit Sharma and Cheteshwar Pujara are at the crease and they are being a bit cautious now. The more experienced Pat Cummins and Nathan Lyon have gone wicketless and so far they didn't looked threatening at any point of time.

I agree with the current age criteria. Olympic competitions are not intended to showoff the star power, but rather it needs to showcase the popularity of the sport and talent from all around the world. Given this, I would agree with the current criteria of U-23 players + 3 members of the senior side. In this way, the clubs also don't have much to worry about losing their players (I really don't know what is their problem in releasing the players for a couple of weeks, for a competition that occurs once every four years). And regarding 5-a-side soccer - strict no. We don't need these sham competitions in Olympics.

I can actually agree with you. I went to watch the Avatar (the first part) with my friends. I found it mostly boring, although the visual effects were impressive. But everyone else in my group was praising the movie and there was a guy who labelled it as the best movie he ever watched in his life. And for Avatar 2, when my family members booked the tickets, I told them that I am not interested. Tickets are quite expensive as well ($15 per head for IMAX). I thought it was not worth the time or money. So in this case, I can agree with you.

And regarding the voting preferences of the jury, I don't want to comment on it before the results are out. But the "preferential voting" system doesn't sound fair to me.