Arun Blog

Test series in India a big challenge: Brett Lee

Australian cricket team’s fast bowler, Brett Lee on Tuesday said that the upcoming Test Series in India would be a big challenge for the young Australian side.

Addressing a news conference in Jaipur, where the Australian cricket team will be training for a week, Lee said that it would be good for the Australian side to face India.

“The younger guys have to start somewhere and what better stage than to play here in India. It’s a wonderful place to tour - the country, the people, the culture, the cricket’s pretty hard work, so we have to make sure our plans are in place.”

The Australian team will fly to Hyderabad for a four-day match against the Indian team from October 2.

The team landed in Mumbai on Monday and then flew to Rajasthan.

Brett Lee also added that All-rounder Andrew Symonds would be missed and added, “But we surely have other great players here who can hopefully almost step into Andrew’s shoes.”

Andrew Symonds was dropped from the team for the one-day series with Bangladesh in Darwin earlier this month after he missed a team meeting and went fishing instead and was not included for the India series as well.

Australia will be counting on their pace attack, not spin, to beat India in the four-test series that begins next month, chairman of selectors Andrew Hilditch had said on Friday.

The Kiwis named the uncapped Doug Bollinger and Peter Siddle in their 15-man squad to provide back up to the front line trio of Brett Lee, Stuart Clark and Mitchell Johnson for the series.

Captain Ricky Ponting and opening batsman Matthew Hayden have been included after they returned home injured from West Indies tour.

Ponting had surgery while Hayden underwent an extensive rehabilitation programme, with both missing the recent one-day series in Darwin.

The first test begins in Bangalore on October 9, followed by matches in Mohali (October 17-21), Delhi (October 29-November 2) and in Nagpur (November 5-9).

Hilditch said the series was becoming as important to Australia as the Ashes series with England.

Deciding on anti-terror law is ‘complex’ issue: PM

On Board PM’s Special Aircraft: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Tuesday described as “complex” the issue relating to the demands for a tough anti-terror law in the wake of recent bomb explosions in the country.

“It is quite a complex issue. It is not the question of having a law alone,” he told journalists accompanying him to New York for the UN General Assembly.

Singh said he had not reached a conclusion yet on having a new anti-terror law.

A committee of officials has been asked to look into the recommendations of the Administrative Reforms Commission (ARC) regarding a legislation to deal with terror, he said.

When pointed out that more states were desiring a separate anti-terror law, Singh said he would not like to be dragged into the debate related to Centre-state relations.

He, however, said the Centre has the responsibility to decide whether or not a state required an anti-terror law.

Singh’s comments came in the backdrop of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s plea to the Centre not to keep the anti-terror law GUJCOCA pending. The law is still awaiting clearance of the Centre.

BCCI victimising ICL players: Kapil

Former captain Kapil Dev lashed out at India Cricket Board for victimising cricketers who joined Indian Cricket League by treating them as “untouchables”.

 
“I don’t understand why the Cricket Board is treating cricketers who joined our ranks as untouchables. We were providing the youngsters an option to cricket and to life. They (the board) are victimiing the cricketers for no fault of theirs (by banning them),” an angry Kapil told reporters here at the launch of second season of ICL.
 
“We are for the betterment of Indian cricket and I always think I am a part of the Cricket Board but why are they trying to monopolise the game. They should have beeen big hearted.
 
“Moreover, I would never have thought of fighting a case against my own players,” he said while referring to court cases between ICL players and their boards.
 
Without naming anybody, Kapil blamed a “particular person” for being victimising ICL players.
 
“Today, if there is such a victimisation of ICL players it is because of one particular man. I don’t need to name him here everybody knows him,” he said.
 
“Despite the obstacles to make us small we have grown from strength to strength. We will keep on giving a better platform for youngsters to cricket,” added the World Cup winning captain after announcing a new team, Dhaka warriors.
 
He praised the 13 Bangladeshi players, which included former captain Habibul Bashar, for joining the ICL.
 
“We would encourage them to play for their country. In the free time when they are not playing for their country they can play for ICL. What is wrong in this. If they are banned by their board for joining ICL that is not their (players’) fault,” said the former captain.

CERN Big Bang experiment: Celebrations after first test

big bang

big bang

GENEVA: The world’s largest particle collider successfully completed its first major test by firing a beam of protons all the way around a 17-mile (27-kilometer) tunnel on Wednesday in what scientists hope is the next great step to understanding the makeup of the universe. ( Watch )

After a series of trial runs, two white dots flashed on a computer screen at 10:36 am (0836 GMT) indicating that the protons had travelled the full length of the US$3.8 billion Large Hadron Collider. ( Watch )

”There it is,” project leader Lyn Evans said when the beam completed its lap.

Champagne corks popped in labs as far away as Chicago, where contributing scientists watched the proceedings by satellite. Physicists around the world now have much greater power than ever before to smash the components of atoms together in attempts to see how they are made.

“Well done everybody,” said Robert Aymar, Director-General of the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, to cheers from the assembled scientists in the collider’s control room at the Swiss-French border.

The organisation, known by its French acronym CERN, began firing the protons - a type of subatomic particle - around the tunnel in stages less than an hour earlier.

Now that the beam has been successfully tested in clockwise direction, CERN plans to send it counter-clockwise. Eventually, two beams will be fired in opposite directions with the aim of recreating conditions a split second after the big bang, which scientists theorize was the massive explosion that created the universe.

The start of the collider - described as the biggest physics experiment in history - comes over the objections of some skeptics who fear the collision of protons could eventually imperil the earth.

The skeptics theorised that a by-product of the collisions could be micro black holes, subatomic versions of collapsed stars whose gravity is so strong they can suck in planets and other stars.

“It’s nonsense,” said James Gillies, chief spokesman for CERN, before Wednesday’s start.

CERN is backed by leading scientists like Britain’s Stephen Hawking in dismissing the fears and declaring the experiments to be absolutely safe.

Gillies said the most dangerous thing that could happen would be if a beam at full power were to go out of control and that would only damage the accelerator and burrow into the rock around the tunnel.

Nothing of the sort occurred on Wednesday, though accelerator is still probably a year away from full power.

“On Wednesday, we start small,” said Gillies. “A really good result would be to have the other beam going around, too, because once you’ve got a beam around once in both directions you know that there is no show-stopper.”

The project organised by the 20 European member nations of CERN has attracted researchers from 80 nations. Some 1,200 are from the United States, an observer country which contributed US$531 million. Japan, another observer, also is a major contributor.

The collider is designed to push the proton beam close to the speed of light, whizzing 11,000 times a second around the tunnel. ( Watch )

The CERN experiments could reveal more about “dark matter,” antimatter and possibly hidden dimensions of space and time. It could also find evidence of the hypothetical particle _ the Higgs boson _ believed to give mass to all other particles, and thus to matter that makes up the universe. ( Watch )

Paes and Black win US Open mixed doubles

New York: India’s Leander Paes won his second US Open and fourth Grand Slam mixed doubles title here at the Flushing Meadows on Thursday when he and his Zimbabwean partner Cara Black beat Scotland’s Jamie Murray and American Liezel Huber in the final 7-6 (8-6) and 6-4.
 
Leander, who won two Grand Slam mixed doubles titles with Martina Navratilova and another with Lisa Raymond, partnered Cara for the first time, but the two gelled so well that it looked as if they were regular partners.
 
Both Paes and Cara showed excellent hands as they complimented each other with their deft touch play. The fifth seeds did not face a break point in the entire match, but they were in real danger of losing the first set when they were down 2-5 and then a set point in the tie-breaker. Cara produced two great volleys to pull them out of a tight corner. They went on to clinch the set, taking the next two points, Paes putting away a customary volley.
 

IPhone in India

Ever since Airtel announced the launch of the Apple iPhone 3G, the market has been abuzz with speculation about pricing. Even though we reported earlier that Airtel was planning to price the handset at an aggressive Rs.12,000, we talked to a source in Delhi who told us that Airtel will price the iPhone 3G anywhere between Rs 20,000 and Rs 25,000.

Another source close to a major network carrier has told us that there is no way it would make sense for either Airtel or Vodafone to price the iPhone 3G at Rs 12,000. “Given the duty component and other taxes, it won’t be viable for any service provider to price it at Rs 12,000. Rs 20,000 to Rs 30,000 should be more like it,” he said.
Moving on to the pricing at parallel markets, our source at Heera Panna, Mumbai, is offering the iPhone 3G for Rs. 55,000. He also claims to have sold 12 pieces till date. Another seller in Irla, Mumbai, has the 16GB iPhone 3G for Rs 32,000.

First ODI series win for India in Lanka

India prized out a hard-fought 46-run victory in the fourth one-day match against Sri Lanka to take an unassailable 3-1 lead in the five match series and register their first ever series win over the hosts in a bilateral series played out in the Island nation.
 
Set to score 259 runs for a series leveling victory, the hosts could manage only 212 runs as the Indian bowlers kept taking wickets at regular intervals. Though the Lankans were theoretically never out of the game, loss of wickets at regular intervals hampered their run-chase.
 
The Indian bowlers began well as Munaf Patel remove opener Malinda Warnapura and Kumara Sangakkara in quick succession though Sanath Jayasuriya kept the momentum going with a quick fire half century. However, with Jayasuriya’s dismissal, things turned in India’s favour conclusively.
 
Though the top and middle order did not fire for the hosts, batsmen lower down showed much better pluck than their Indian counterparts with the last five players adding 70-plus runs between them. Thushara has been quite a revelation for the Lankans as he once again thwarted the Indian bowlers with great courage.
 
India has won two series in Sri Lanka since they played each other for the first time in the Island nation way back in 1985. However, both these wins came in multi-team competitions. India won in 1994 and 1998, the other teams being Pakistan and Australia and New Zealand respectively. India and Sri Lanka shared the Champions Trophy in the 2002-03 season.

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Sushil kumar wins bronze in wrestling

BEIJING: Freestyle wrestler Sushil Kumar gave India its second medal in the on going Olympics when he defeated the Kazak opponent.

Earlier, Sushil Kumar lost to Ukrainian Andriy Stadnik on points after being pegged down 3-8 on technical points.

While the luck of the draw gave Sushil a bye in the first round, giving him a start straightaway in the quarterfinals, Standnik had to beat 2007 world no. 5 American Doug Schwab in the round of 16 to move further.

In the quarters, Stadnik, a former World Cup winner and 2006 World Championship bronze medallist, out-played the Indian. As Stadnik, quarterfinalist at the 2007 World Championships, moved into the final, all those who lost to him came through to the Repechage, which will decide the two bronze medallists.

In the Repechage first round, Sushil meets Schwab and their winner will meet Belarussian Albert Batyrov. Sushil will need to win a third bout after that to get himself a bronze.

Schwab was fifth at the last World Championships, where Sushil was seventh.

Coming through to the final from the other half of the category is Turkish wrestler Ramazan Shahin, who won the gold medal in the 2007 World Championships, besides claiming the first place in the 2008 European meet.

Zero Watt Monitors From Fujitsu

Here’s something for the eco-conscious hardware enthusiast to cheer about! Fujitsu has just introduced a range of LCD monitors that shuts off power entirely to the monitor when it’s not in use. Normally, monitors in standby mode still draw little amounts of power - ranging between 1 to 6 watts. The latest range of Sceneview premium ECO monitors simply powers off the display when you’re not using it. The new models have this feature enabled by default.
 
The technology aims to cut down on ever-increasing electricity bills and according to a company calculation, businesses can save up to 168,000 pounds per year just by switching to these monitors. It works on a simple, patent-pending technology that power off the display when you log off. Power is returned with the help of an electric pulse that is sent to the monitor once the PC is active again.
 
The range includes the 20-inch P20W-5 ECO and the 22-inch P22W-5 ECO - both of which are premium segment models that are packed with nearly every feature you’ll ever need. The features include a 5ms response time, up to 1680×1050 resolution, HDMI, automatic brightness control and a maximum brightness of 300cd/m2.
 
Larger 24 and 26-inch models will follow these two models in September.
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