Really shocked to hear this about Shahid Afridi? Did he really beat up his girls just because they watched TV? What sort of lunatic would do something like that? I liked him for his power hitting and funny behavior.. but this was something completely unexpected. We are living in the 21st century and such behavior has no place in modern human society. Being a female I am profoundly offended by this behavior. Forget about the PCB, this guy should not be allowed even to contest as the president of the local cricket club.

Being a decentralized asset, ideally the exchange rate of Bitcoin should not get impacted by any such selling event in the long term. IMO, the decision from Tesla to invest in Bitcoin caused more harm than good so far. Initially, there was a spike in the exchange rates, and it lasted less than a month before Elon made some negative comments against Bitcoin. And after that, the focus shifted to carbon footprint of Bitcoin and it's energy usage. Now there is added pressure on Bitcoin miners (who are reeling from low prices) to use renewable energy.

Even more funnier is the fact that now Russia is earning more thanks to the sanctions. As a result of these sanctions and embargoes the gas prices have gone up by multiple times and the crude oil prices have reached a level not seen since 2014. They maybe selling less amount of oil and gas, but from these exports, they are earning more revenues. For the year 2021 Gazprom alone earned a profit of close to $21 billion (almost 20x higher than the level from 2020). For the year of 2022, the profits are going to be even higher.

They have a victory day parade on 9th May. Any decision regarding the war may come after that. But there are rumors that Putin may announce a general mobilization on 9th. Right now Russia has around 150,000 soldiers in Ukraine, which is not sufficient to capture large areas outside what they already control. Even in the eastern part (East Kharkiv, Donest and Lugansk), most of the gains were made by the militia of DPR and LPR, who are more knowledgeable about the terrain. Russian forces have struggled to make gains in areas which they control and are constantly losing territory (North Kharkiv, Kherson, Zaporozhia.etc).

If an organization pays for annual subscription or premium services (trust me, most won't mind a $9.99 per year fee), then they will demand something in return as well. It will be difficult for Twitter to suspend pages without sufficient reason or shadow-ban accounts. On the plus side, spamming by bots are going to get reduced. Elon already announced that this is one of his priorities and we need to wait and watch his plan for implementing it. But ideally, Elon should concentrate on the advertisement revenue rather than the subscription revenue.

Not much surprised regarding Shahid Afridi's behavior. He will make up a good politician in the future, as he seems to be an expert in all the political tricks. Anyway, if Imran Khan can become the PM, then what prevents someone like Shahid Afridi or Wasim Akram from trying their luck with politics? But a better option for Shahid Afridi would be to get involved in PCB or the ICC (similar to what Sourav Ganguly has done in India). First let him gain some experience by taking up a position in the PCB. After that he will realize whether politics is suitable for him or not.

There is bad news for the cricket fans in Asia:

https://www.espncricinfo.com/story/crickets-return-to-asian-games-2022-delayed-after-covid-19-outbreak-in-china-1313748

Cricket's return to Asian Games delayed after Covid-19 outbreak in China


Cricket was part of Asian Games in 2010 and 2014, but was scrapped in 2018. This time the sport was included once more, but now we need to wait until 2023. As usual, the BCCI has refused to send teams to multi-sports events such as Asian Games. Back in 2010, Bangladesh and Pakistan won the gold medals and in 2014 it was Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

Also, I learnt that the BCCI had banned the women's players from taking part in the ongoing Fairbreak Invitational Tournament. Players from all around the world are taking part in this tournament and the Indian players are the only exception. Anyway, no one actually cares. I watched one of the matches yesterday and thoroughly enjoyed it.

I am not surprised by this, and such discounts are given to the citizens of the host nation every time they stage the world cup. And in case of Qatar, it should not matter much. Do you know why? Because Qatar do have only around 300,000 citizens (and all of them may not be interested in watching football). Millions of tickets are available for sale and the number of tickets is greater than the number of Qatari citizens (only around 10% of the population of Qatar is made up of nationals). Some of the stadiums in Qatar can accommodate the entire Qatari national population in one go.

Yeah... T10 requires only one skill. It will be repetitive and in the long run people will lose interest. There should be an incentive for keeping the wickets. Right now in T10, the teams can afford to lose up to 10 wickets in 60 balls. So they don't try not to get out. If the number of batsmen are reduced to 5 or 6, then they won't be having this freedom and we will see a mix of power hitting and good strategy.

And then regarding the second point, the ICC should get cricket included in the Olympics if they really want to promote the sport. They had an opportunity in 2008, but they wasted it. And even now, I am not witnessing much of an interest from the ICC regarding this topic.

Well.. I am glad that Mumbai finally managed to win one match. Now they have two wins from 10 matches, and the good thing is that they have won all two of their last matches. Along with CSK and KKR, they don't have any chance of qualifying to the next stage. But whatever they get in the next 4 matches will be useful for planning a strategy for the 2023 IPL season. Ishan Kishan and Rohit Sharma made 40s, and this time batted with confidence. Tim David also scored a 44, which included 4 sixes. Bowling is still a worry for them, as Bumrah went for 48 runs without a wicket in his 4 overs.

LOL.. it is too early to talk about Kohli's retirement. He has another 4-5 years left with the national team and a few more years with RCB. The situation is different from what we had a few years back, when Mahendra Singh Dhoni was the captain of the national side and the BCCI was looking forward to replace him with Kohli. As of now, there are no good replacements for Kohli. Rohit and Rahul were given their chances, and both of them failed. The BCCI maybe looking forward to having either Shreyas or Rishabh as the captain in the long term, but these two doesn't have the experience as of now.

Well.. what to say? The situation in your country is just shit. If people are getting arrested for just keeping a few lines of code (that is what Bitcoin is) in their laptop, then I have to say that the country is pretty fucked up. Here in India, most of the trade occurs through P2P platforms such as LocalBitcoins, and the government has no means to track the trade. There are a few centralized exchanges, but they are constantly harassed by the government agencies and people are not very comfortable in using them. The governments around the world needs to understand that authoritarian behavior will not lead them to anywhere. We are living in the 21st century. The politicians can't expect us to dance as per their whims and fancies.

Well.. I agree, to some extent. Previous attempts to replace the USD with other fiat currencies such as EUR and CNY has ended in failure. Because in these cases, the alternative was deemed to be even worse than the primary option. The case with Bitcoin is different. It is protected against inflation as a result of controlled supply algorithm, and there is hardly any chance that one of the governments or some other external actors will be able to take control of it. One of the drawbacks of USD is that the western nations decide when to freeze your funds, as Russia just found out.

Big fan of T20 format here. But still I would say that T10 is not my cup of tea. When you have 11 players in each of the teams, 10 overs is just too little. That is just around 5 balls per player. I just hope that we refrain from further reducing the duration. T20 match lasts for 3 hrs on average, and that is fine with me. Slightly longer when compared to average football match, but it is tolerable. T10 needs a few changes to its format. If we want to make T10 more interesting, then there should be only 6 players per side. You can't have a 10 over match with 11 players on each team. 

We should thank Fairbreak Global. They went through a lot of hardship in arranging and organizing this tournament, and they received zero support from the ICC. Fairbreak Global is an organization which strives for gender equality. And I watched one of the matches live on EUROSPORT yesterday, and found it very interesting. The match was between Barmy Army Women and Spirit Women. Barmy Army had star players such as Deandra Dottin, Laura Wolvaardt and Heather Knight in their squad, and to add to the diversity they had players such as Laura Cardoso (Brazil), Roberta Avery (Brazil), Tara Norris (USA) and Henriette Ishimwe (Rwanda). For the first time, I completely enjoyed watching a women's match.

LOL... this tournament (FairBreak Invitational Tournament) has nothing to do with the ICC. This is a privately organized tournament and the credit should go to Shaun Martyn of Fairbreak Global. ICC has zero interest in globalizing the game and they don't have much interest in women's cricket either. The ICC didn't even offered any coverage regarding this tournament on their website. A total of 90 players (divided in to 6 franchises) are taking part, and the majority are from associate nations. Even players from countries such as Rwanda, Brazil and Philippines are present.

Two decades back (during my college days), I used to watch test matches live. Back then I had spare time to do so. But nowadays it is unthinkable to spend that much time on watching test cricket. I am having a full time job, and family responsibilities. Once in a while I watch for 1-2 hours, and that too happens only when one of the big 3 teams are playing against each other. Even ODI has now become uninteresting for me. A typical 50 overs match lasts for 6-7 hours and unless it is a holiday, I hardly get enough time to watch. So irrespective of whether I like the format or not, T20 suits me.

A lot of people around the world seems to have realized the truth behind the US Dollar. The USD is the biggest financial fraud in the world, which enables the American government to take tens of trillions in loans from the creditors, at near zero interest rates. The usage of USD as the reserve and trade currency means that people around the world are funding the Americans at the expense of their own interests. With Bitcoin at least, the possibility of someone taking undue advantage of it's widespread usage is slim.

Too early to say whether Kohli is back in form or not. Right now what matters is that RCB is at the 4th position, with 12 points from 11 matches. But we need to remember that the 5th and 6th placed teams have played lesser number of matches when compared to RCB. SRH has 10 points from 9 matches and Punjab has 10 from 10. So there is no guarantee that RCB will manage to qualify for the next stage. And as far as Kohli is concerned, his overall stats are not yet satisfactory. Till now he has scored 216 runs at an average of 21.60, and strike rate of 111.91.

Some of the journalists in India have a habit of behaving like emperors. Perfect examples are Suhasini Haidar and Barkha Dutt. The NDA government has managed to cut them down to size, but some exceptions remain, such as Boria. He is not just a journalist, and his influence is spread over the political and movie circles as well (similar to some of the other journalists mentioned earlier). In the end, Wriddhiman decided that enough was enough and came out with a complaint. Boria got a two year ban from the BCCI as a result. He can't enter cricket stadiums or contact players for a period of 24 months.