That is really strange logic. The best teams need to win the trophy right? At least during the group phase, Mumbai City and ATKMB were the best teams, by a distance. FC Goa performed pathetically during the initial matches. It will be ridiculous if they end up in the final match. In particular, ATK Mohan Bagan was impressive. They made the transfer from I-league to ISL, and despite all those issues they performed well. IMO, they deserve a spot in the finals.

Washington's style of batting is suitable for the flat Indian conditions, but I don't know how he will fare in England, where there is a lot of swing, seam movement and bounce. Among the Indian batsmen, I have only seen Virat Kohli who is consistent in such conditions. None of the other batsmen have a good record in SENA nations, on a consistent basis. And New Zealand do have some very good fast bowlers who can exploit such conditions.

That is the problem when people politicize everything. In most of the countries, the political parties used the pandemic to shore up support (possibly at the cost of thousands of lives). Take the case of the United States. The two main political parties took diametrically opposite approaches towards restrictions. The republicans refused to wear masks and conform to social distancing, while the Democrats went too far by shutting down businesses. During this diffiuclt time, unity in administration was needed. But that never happened.

Which country you are residing in? Even if the tax rates are increased, that should not have much impact on the food prices. Because the governments almost never increases the tax on agricultural products. However, increasing oil prices may cause additional expenses in transporting food products. Here in my country there has been no increase in the food prices. We are paying the same rates that we used to pay before the pandemic.

I was following this thread closely, but now the OP seems to have abandoned it and moved on. He has made some posts in the Turkish section of this forum, but no updates here for the last two months. From his updates for the 6 weeks up to January, I could see that he spent a total of €420 to purchase BTC0.015054. He should be in profit right now. As per the current exchange rates, the net worth of his coins stand at €612, which represents an increase of +46%.

Institutions are there for the long term, and I don't think that they will sell their coins after 3 months or 6 months, irrespective of the prices. And regarding individual investors, they are aware about what happened when Bitcoin went down previously. Those who sold their coins back then incurred huge losses. So I don't think that a lot of the individual investors will commit the same mistake this time, if the prices go down.

Many of the countries allow international travellers to carry up to $10,000 in cash with them (that limit may vary from country to country). Purchasing Bitcoin is going to be one of the most attractive options. Also, there are other options, such as purchasing gold coins, luxury items.etc. Another option is to purchase prepaid debit cards, which require no KYC. There are hundreds of options and unless the individual in question wins millions of USD in prizes, it is not going to be an issue. 

Tesla reminds me of the Yahoo stock during the dot com bubble. Back in the late 90s, Yahoo had some sort of monopoly in the search engine market. The stock price went up like a rocket during 1998-99. The P/E ratio was in high hundreds . And when the dot com bubble burst, it all came crashing down. Yahoo never recovered, as Google quickly became the most popular search engine. There is a strong possibility that the same can happen with Tesla. Right now they have some sort of monopoly in the EV sector. But competition is also increasing. And the current P/E ratio of 700-800 looks extremely high for me.

Vaccination definitely had a big role in reducing the fatality rates in countries such as United Kingdom and Israel. But that may not be the only factor. Currently the United Kingdom is experiencing the third wave. Before this, there was the first wave (April-May 2020) and the second wave (October-November). And in both cases, the peak lasted for 30 to 45 days. For the third wave also, the peak levels were reported only for around one month or so. So along with the vaccination, the natural progress of the pandemic may have also played its part.

And it needs to be seen how effective the vaccination is against some of the more resistant strains.

How much more? We are in to 13th year or existence. Are you proposing to wait for another 10-15 years? BTW, there is another side to this argument as well. Bitcoin was never supposed to be used for instant payments. If that was the case, then there would not be average 10 minutes interval between the blocks. So we can say that from the beginning onwards, Bitcoin was used only for those transactions that are confirmed after some waiting period.

That was really surprising, because we are not seeing Sehwag in the cricket field that often. Still he managed to overshadow Sachin Tendulkar!!! Sehwag is 42 years old, but despite that he looked extremely fit. Khaled Mahmud used to be one of the heroes for Bangladesh in the 90s. He ended up conceding 32 runs from his 2 overs. Also, I need to mention Pragyan Ojha and Yuvraj Singh, who bowled really well.

The England bowlers did really well (especially the pacers) in the first two sessions, but had a complete meltdown in the third session. They got India at 146/6. But after that India managed another 150 runs or so, losing only one wicket. The spinners were disappointing from the very start, but Stokes and Anderson ran out of their steam after tea. They looked really tired. Not surprising, taking into account the fact that Anderson is 38 years old and Stokes is bowling in test after such a long time.

It is surprising to see Indians struggling against the pace of Anderson and Stokes, while playing very comfortably against the spin of Bess and Leach. Anderson has conceded just 11 runs from his 14 overs and he has picked up 2 wickets. Stokes got the wicket of Kohli. On the other hand, the England spinners conceded 58 runs from their 17 overs, and got just 1 wicket.

Even when the Pakistan team toured New Zealand, some of the players disregarded the bubble protocol and a full blown diplomatic faceoff between the two countries happened as a result. PCB should make an example out of this incident and suspend the players who broke the rules for at least one year. They need to send a strong message, or incidents like this will get repeated in the future.

Mumbai was almost unbeatable in the early stages, but they lost the momentum in the last phase of the group matches. And the exact opposite happened with FC Goa. They regained their form in the end. So this match is going to be very competitive. I would say that the advantage is with FC Goa (although the gambling sites have given better odds for Mumbai City FC).

I was suspecting this ever since Fawad Ahmed tested positive. Feels bad for the Pakistani cricket fans and the PCB. This time the PCB worked really hard to establish the biosecure bubbles and to arrange logistics. But all that effort was undone due to the arrogant nature of a few players. Despite strict instructions, a number of star players went outside the bubble and some of them tested positive later. And from them, more individuals inside the bubble got infected. Don't want to start a blame game, but irresponsible behavior from a few players resulted in tens of millions of USD in losses to the PCB.

From what I have heard, a total of 7 individuals have tested positive for COVID 19 (including 6 players). I understand that some of the overseas players have also tested positive for COVID 19. And a curious case will be that of Sandeep Lamichhane. He arrived in Pakistan yesterday, to take part in the PSL. Now the tournament is cancelled before he could even play a single game.

The pitch seems to be more conductive to batting this time. The spinners (Ashwin and Axar) didn't got any unusual support from the surface. That is the reason why I think that the performance from England was below par. They could have scored at least 250-300 on this surface, but fell short by some 50 runs. This total is not enough to challenge the Indian batsmen, who are well suited to these conditions.

I was really skeptical when they went to the match with just one full time pace bowler. But now it looks as if that was the right decision. There is no point in including Broad or Archer, when they are not going to bowl a good number of overs. Anderson is someone who can take wickets in the most hostile conditions, and Ben Stokes is there to support him. Advantage is with India, but England is still competitive in this match.

It is not logical to provide healthcare or education based on the skin color. Let's assume that the government want to improve the healthcare facility in a predominantly African-American neighborhood. Let's assume that 80% of the population is African American, 10% is white and 10% is Hispanic. The government constructs new healthcare/educational facilities. Are you saying that these facilities should be open only to the 80% African American population? If that is the idea about repatriation, then it is plain wrong. I would instead extend these facilities to the remaining 20% as well. But in the second scenario, it won't be called as repatriation.

It's the usual story. Ollie Pope and Ben Foakes got out in quick succession and now they are struggling at 174/7. Dan Lawrence looks to be in good touch, but he is about to run out of partners. The tail has started and now Dom Bess is at the crease. Jack Leach and James Anderson to come next. England can consider themselves lucky in case they manage to get past 200.