"Retired" no longer means retired. Playing one or two exhibition matches every two or three years is OK. But here they are planning a whole series that is going to stretch for a few weeks. Looks like the financial glitter of the T20 game proved too hard to resist for many of these oldies. Now I don't know who is going to watch these 50-year olds playing cricket.

They gave up the fight after the first day, when the Indian batsmen were smashing their bowlers all around the park. After the score passed 400 or so, the South African bowlers were not even trying to take wickets. They were bowling in a mechanical fashion, just waiting for the declaration from India. The morale was down and they never recovered from that.

Even the Japanese team is mostly comprised of expats. There are players from South Africa, Australia and Oceania in their team. But still it is a good way to improve the quality. By playing together with these players, the quality of the local players will also improve. Apart from Japan (ranked 10th globally), South Korea (31 in global ranking) and Hong Kong (ranked 24th) also have strong sides from Asia.

The Oman Pentangular Series was essentially a warm-up or preparatory tournament for those teams participating in the qualifying tournament for the 2020 T20 World Cup. So it doesn't surprises me that there were no knock-out matches.

A total of 14 teams are participating in the 2019 ICC T20 World Cup Qualifier. The venue is United Arab Emirates as usual, as none of the other countries have the capability to host such a big tournament. And I guess most of the matches will be streamed live by the ICC.

The qualifying tournament starts on 18th October (next Friday).

The way de Kock got out was really pathetic. I guess for a moment he thought that he was playing in a T20 match, and not in test. It was one of the worst shots to play, when your side is trailing by an innings and 200+ runs. I am watching the match live on TV, and the commentators made an interesting observation right now (Greame Smith?). He was saying that the South African bottom 5 have consistently scored more runs than the top 5, so far in this series. That's true actually. Senuran Muthusamy, Keshav Maharaj, Vernon Philander.etc have batted much better than some of the top order players like Aiden Markram and Temba Bavuma.

A lot of the users are commenting that Bitcoin will go up after the block reward halving. But I would like to remind everyone what happened to Litecoin after its block reward halving a few months ago. The LTC prices had gone up by quite a bit in anticipation of the halving. But once the block reward occurred there was a major crash in the exchange rates.

Your statement is very confusing. How the lack of regulation is going to bring down the crime rate? Although I am not a big supporter of regulation in the world of cryptocurrency, I am not very comfortable with all these scams and ponzis. In order to reduce them, some sort of government involvement is needed. For more than two years, scam ICOs have been causing huge losses to those who are unfortunate to invest in them.

Investing in altcoins is very risky nowadays, as many of them are going down continuously. And investing in Bitcoin may not bring you 10x or 20x returns, as it has already reached a level where such returns look unlikely. But even then, the chances are that any investment in Bitcoin may bring you better returns when compared to similar investments in stocks or bullion.

Well.. no one really cares whether Errol Spence Jr. has broken any bones or not. The only thing that matters for most of us is whether he will be ready for the fight against Manny Pacquiao or not. If he is not fit, then Manny would have to find another opponent, in order to get himself some practice before any potential rematch with Floyd Mayweather.

LOL.. Floyd running out of money? He has earned more than $1 billion till now. Not even legends such as Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield have earned anywhere near that amount. And perhaps that is also one of the reasons why he is very reluctant to commit to new fights. Dana White wanted a rematch between Floyd Mayweather and Conor McGregor, and Floyd was very cold to that idea. And this is despite the fact that this fight would have earned him somewhere in excess of $200 million.

What happened in Cyprus is going to repeat and I have no doubt regarding that. A lot of people assume that the money in their bank accounts is safe. Unfortunately, that is not the case. When the next recession occurs, there is a very good chance that the government can seize not only the money which lies on your savings account, but also your gold bars, stocks, mutual funds and ETFs.

You are right. Also, Floyd vs Conor happened two years back, when the market conditions were more favorable. On the other hand, Manny vs Floyd was in 2015 when the situation was a bit more difficult. There is a lot of hype for any potential rematch between Floyd and Manny and I am sure that the overall revenue this time will be much higher than what they got in 2015.

Well.. you have a point there. A ban hasn't been imposed yet and I haven't heard any rumors about the government considering such a step. But in case they decide to impose a ban, then there is a very good chance that the ordinary Bitcoin users may end up harassed by Maduro's goons. I could think of only one solution. If any Venezuelans have some coins in their wallet, then they should just immigrate to either Colombia or Brazil rather than residing in that god forsaken country.

Bitcoin has multiple advantages in regions such as Africa. First of all, the people can use it as a store of value, just like what they are doing in Venezuela. Many of the African national currencies are infamous for losing their value (Zimbabwean Dollar is the best example) and therefore a lot of the rich Africans store their money in the form of USD and GBP. Also, Bitcoins can help in the remittance industry, which is pretty big in Africa.

Well.. my country failed to qualify for the tournament. Rugby is not a very popular sport here in India and this time India didn't even sent a squad for the Asian round of qualification. World Rugby has spent a lot of money in India, but the returns were quite low. But at the same time, I don't want India to import players from South Africa and Oceania and qualify with their help (similar to what Japan has done). It will be better if we could qualify on our own.

BTW, I did enjoyed some of the matches. One example was the Uruguay vs Fiji match.

As long as de Kock was there, South Africa had a chance of setting up a respectable total and even a distant chance of avoiding the follow on. But since he is gone, I think that now a follow on, and later an innings defeat looks like a surety for South Africa. Senuran Muthusamy batted well during the first test. Let's see how good he is in the second test.

From what I have heard, they will not get the approval as long as they can prove that 2/3rd of the daily trade volume comes from exchanges that can't be manipulated. And with most of the trade volume concentrated in exchanges such as Binance, I don't think that it can be realized anytime soon. Perhaps we need to admit that the SEC is never going to approve any Bitcoin ETF and it will be better to spend that time instead on something productive.

From what I have heard, PMC is only the tip of the iceberg. People are not realizing that the real issue is with HDIL (Housing Development and Infrastructure Ltd). PMC Bank loaned around $1 billion to HDIL and it looks as if that amount is gone. And PMC is not the only bank that had exposure to HDIL. Other banks had also loaned huge amounts to HDIL.

I heard that during the initial few weeks, Bakkt attracted only a fraction of the investment that was originally expected. But still, I don't think that it played a large enough role during the recent slide in the exchange rates. My suspicion is that the recent senate hearing over Libra and the rumors of PayPal pulling out of the project might have played a larger role in the recent downturn.

South Africa is looking clueless out there and today only one of their players (Rabada) looked like he could compete against the Indians. I am not sure about their recent drop of form, but I still remember the time when South Africa was regarded as one of the heavyweights in cricket. When cricketers such as Shaun Pollock, Lance Klusener, Jacques Kallis.etc were playing, South Africa was almost invincible. And look at the current state of affairs. I feel bad for them.