This was a match between two of the weaker test nations and I haven't seen anything in this match that could change my opinion about both the teams. Sri Lankan bowlers could pick just 4 wickets, despite bowling for 100 overs in the 4th and 5th days of the match. And they were blasted out for just 169 in the first innings. The partnership between Pathum Nissanka and Niroshan Dickwella gave them respectability in the second innings, but they need to perform consistently. The West Indies bowlers on the other hand were toothless against Nissanka and Dickwella.

I am not talking about the current scenario. I am talking about the situation in late 1980s, then the Indian government prohibited internet for ordinary people. It took many years for the citizens to receive access to internet. And for almost one decade, the only internet provider in India was the BSNL, which would provide dial up connections with a maximum speed of 28 Kbps. What I am trying to say is that, the mentality hasn't changed much.

In the cryptocurrency market, every year we normally have a few bearish phases during the last 2-3 weeks of March. I am not 100% sure about what causes this, but the fact that March is the last month of the financial year plays a large part in this price correction. I expect the markets to recover by the second week of April. Those who sell their coins now are going to regret when the next rally start in a matter of weeks.

Turkey's win was not entirely unexpected. I had posted before the match that the sportsbooks are underestimating Turkey. Here is my original post about the match:


Anyone following my advice would have ended with a handy profit yesterday. I made two bets totalling $50 and received $108 in my account. You guys need to be patient and look for mistakes from the part of sportsbooks.

What is the point of all these good memories, if they can't qualify? Ideally they should be able to qualify after getting such a good start. No one really thought that they had a chance against the Dutch. But they managed to beat them by a big margin. Norway is not as strong as Netherlands and the other teams are below Turkey as far as the FIFA ranking is concerned. They should be able to qualify in normal circumstances.

Maybe a blessing in disguise for the England team. So far Eoin Morgan has played 6 matches in the Indian tour (5 T20Is and 1 ODI) and his highest score is 28. His poor form was one of the reasons why they struggled after getting so many good starts. Dawid Malan was really good in the T20 series, and I guess he will be able to boost the English batting in the remaining matches. Also, Liam Livingstone is a promising young player.

Portugal was also unimpressive against Azerbaijan, but they have three points. Now both Serbia and Portugal have 3 points each with same goal difference. Ireland and Azerbaijan at a disadvantage here. In Group D, both the matches ended in draw and therefore four teams have one point each - France, Ukraine, BiH, and Finland. Group H is unclear, because Russia got 3 points against minnows Malta and Slovenia got 3 against Croatia. Next round will get the clear picture.

The most interesting group is G, and now Norway and Turkey are on top with 3 points each. Montenegro also got three points against Latvia. Netherlands has reasons to be worried.

Azerbaijan is not a bad team and for Portugal most of their players seems to be out of form (with the exception of Anthony Lopes). Cristiano Ronaldo has failed to score a goal for 5 consecutive games now. Anyway, in the end Portugal received three valuable points from this match (thanks to a generous own goal from Maksim Medvedev). The Azerbaijan goalkeeper(Shahrudin Mahammadaliyev) was very impressive.

BTW, here is one funny moment from yesterday's match (Joao Moutinho vs Ali Ghorbani).

Sri Lanka has some very good spinners so Idon't think that there is much of a chance of a West Indies win. Also, John Campbell got out yesterday and therefore they need to survive 90 overs today with just 9 wickets in hand. The track is offering lots of support for the spinners, and Sri Lankan spinners seems to be in good form - especially Lasith Embuldeniya and Dhananjaya de Silva.

I think it will be better for him to skip the IPL for this season, even if he is declared fit for the last round of matches. Right now Shreyas need to concentrate on his role with the national team. His target should be to replace Virat Kohli as the Indian captain after 3-4 years. Among the younger players in the Indian team, I believe that Shreays is the person who is most suitable for this job. So my opinion is that he should give a lower priority to IPL right now.

The Netherlands defense was in bad shape. They had almost 65% possession and after Burak Yılmaz scored the first goal the Dutch were so desperate to make the scores level that they ignored their own defense. On top of that the Dutch defenders took out their frustration in the form of fouls. And that gave Turkey the second goal in the form of penalty kick. And when Netherlands got the penalty kick, they wasted it.

But why Zimbabwe, when there are more deserving sides out there? Why India and the other big 3 nations need to play against Zimbabwe, when they never give that opportunity to the smaller teams. If the BCCI can organize a tour of 3 T20Is and 3 ODIs against Zimbabwe, then why can't they give just one game to Nepal, Kenya or Papua New Guinea? Even that one game would be life changer for these countries.

The last time India has played against Kenya was in 2004. And India have never played against Nepal or PNG. On the other hand, India and Zimbabwe have played against each other in ODI a total of 63 times.

Iceland have defeated big teams before and they have a reputation as giant killers. But Germany? I would love to see Iceland thrashing Germany. But it sounds so unrealistic. Germany remains one of the best teams in the UEFA region. More realistically I would expect Iceland to put up a good performance against Romania, which would give them a chance to advance to the second round.

BTW... around 10 minutes remain for the Turkey vs Netherlands match. It's going to be super-exciting!!!

Even before arriving in India, the England team was in Sri Lanka, where the climatic conditions are not very different from that in India. They made the preparations in a planned manner before the tour and they even had a very promising start (by winning the first match). Normally the visiting sides are have bad starts during the tour, but in England's case their performance deteriorated as the tour progressed.

Those who still believe that Ethereum is having a good future potential are living in fool's paradise. Ethereum is continuing as the no.2 cryptocurrency just because of the monopoly it had on smart contract platforms in the beginning. But that scenario is now changing, with a number of competitors posing stiff competition to Ethereum in this field. The ETH developers are trying to delay the decline, by creating hype related to ETH 2.0. But in due time, everyone will understand that ETH 2.0 is just an eyewash.

Things are much better now, when compared to the situation we had two decades ago. Back then there were only two or three news channels and they could churn out fake news as per their liking. But nowadays we have dozens of news channels and on top of that social media platforms are also quite active. Dishing out fake news nowadays work only among illiterate people. And Bitcoin represents another step towards eliminating government inspired fake news.

Their morale seems to be down. The way they lost the first match is the perfect testimony to this. The current England side doesn't have the ability to perform under pressure. If things go against them, they quickly lose motivation and end up losing the match. And this is happening regularly despite the presence of experienced players such as Eoin Morgan and Ben Stokes in the team.

As a foreigner having business interests and family connections in India, I would say that doing business in this country is extremely difficult. You have to deal with all sort of shady characters. The bureaucrats are not only ignorant and corrupt, but they are also unethical and immoral. The so called standoff between the ignorant people in government/bureaucracy and educated entrepreneurs you have mentioned has existed ever since India came in to existence in 1947. You need to understand that this is a country which tried to ban computer and internet. And before that owning foreign currency without special permit was a criminal offense in India (even for Indians traveling to foreign nations).

Two months back, when Tesla purchased Bitcoin from the open market, they had used Coinbase. And in February, Tesla had made it clear that they will purchase Bitcoin at frequent intervals. So I am 80% sure that this was another purchase being made by Tesla. I know that a few other corporations have expressed their interest in accumulating BTC. But I don't think they are ready for Bitcoin yet.

I don't know what is wrong with these people. Check the last block that was mined (#676087). Transactions with a fee of 10 Sat/Byte got confirmed instantly. What is the need to pay a higher transaction fee, when it is not required? It is very rare to see someone paying BTC0.100 as fee for a single transaction. I just hope that he didn't accidentally put the fee as BTC0.100 instead of BTC0.010. Anyway, the large size and huge number of inputs mean that the sender had accumulated coins over a long period of time.