Search This Blog

Sunday 22 April 2007

Unlike us, the French do it all wrong but still get life so right

From The Sunday Times
April 22, 2007
Unlike us, the French do it all wrong but still get life so right
Simon Jenkins

Both France and Britain are about to change their leaders. The French will do so by ballot, the British by bistro.

The French are staging a raucous two-ring circus to elect their new president, involving a first vote today and another in two weeks’ time. The British have already been told who is to lead them. It was ordained 13 years ago by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown in the Granita restaurant in Islington, north London. Blair would be prime minister first provided he ensured Brown would follow him.

In never moving Brown from the security of the Treasury and packing the cabinet with wimps and half-wits, Blair has been as good as his word, despite regarding Brown as unworthy of the office. The voters can get stuffed. While France practises the politics of Wilkes, Paine and Mill, Britain borrows from Louis XIV.

Modern elections are festivals of indecent exposure. They display politicians in all their nakedness and in doing so reveal much about the countries they purport to lead. The French election has been no exception. It has not been a pleasant spectacle for Brussels oligarchs or Americans who like to lump all Europeans together as homogeneous. It has peeled away the skin and shown France worried, vulnerable, proud, vital, stylish and unlike anywhere else — in other words, French.

Two years ago the French (and the Dutch) did Europe a signal service by voting against a new European constitution. They thereby relieved Britain of the necessity of doing the same. We forget how those referendums shattered Labour’s establishment. Peter Hain, now running for Labour’s deputy leadership, deceitfully called the new constitution merely “a tidying up operation”. Peter Mandelson, Neil Kinnock and Jack Straw sat around after the French vote like Roman cardinals contemplating Luther’s Reformation, glumly demanding a “period of sober reflection”. Jos� Manuel Barroso, president of the European commission, declared a “risk of contagion” across Europe if the referendums continued. The French and Dutch should vote again and do so “until they get it right”. Only in Brussels is democracy considered a disease.

The French vote was, of course, peculiar. The vote against the new constitution was not (as it would have been in Britain) because it was too centralist and corporatist. The French “no” lobby’s case was that Europe was becoming too liberal, too open-market and thus threatening France’s cartelised public sector and restrictive labour laws. Worse, an expanded Europe would put French jobs at the mercy of east Europeans. France, co-founder of the new Europe, now rejected its pan-Europeanism. It was a reactionary vote but it worked. Indeed it may be called in aid again if the Anglo-German plan to revive the constitution as “just a treaty” goes ahead. Blair, eager for some European credentials before he retires, will argue that a treaty would need no referendums and can be slipped through before Brown takes over. Of course Europe needs a new constitution/ treaty, but not this one and not without a vote.

A similar chauvinism has been reflected in the election campaign. The contest between Nicolas Sarkozy and S�golãne Royal has only superficially displayed the new politics, where personality and vision are all and policy programmes unimportant. The right-wing Sarkozy’s desire to “get France back to work” is closest to Britain’s Thatcherite consensus, but Thatcherism is not something he would dare advocate. The left-wing Royal is corporatist, conservative and protectionist. She is pledged to maintain the 35-hour week, state benefits and guarantee employment and housing tenure, despite their contribution to a devastating 22% youth unemployment rate.

Both these candidates, along with the centrist François Bayrou, share a nationalism which, to outsiders, seems old-fashioned and Gaullist. Nervous about immigration, passionate for the public sector and defensive of the state, they could not be farther from the reform programmes being sought in Germany, Scandinavia and Britain.

None of them would suggest opening French agriculture to world competition. None would hint at multiculturalism in a country whose southern shores are besieged by Muslim and north African migrants. None would attack the scale of the public sector, which still owns or controls all public utilities and has half of all adults dependent on it. One of Sarkozy’s final rallies was in a boiler-making plant where he pledged to protect French manufacturing against foreign competition.

This conservatism evokes the derision of Britons eager to repay the smugness that France hurled at us during the horrors of the 1970s. They point to the 30,000 French who pour into Britain looking for work each year, drawn by a more open and dynamic economy. It takes two days to set up a company in Britain, three months in France. From the Huguenots and the Orl�anists to the Communards and the resistance, Britain has long been accustomed to accepting refugees from France’s political and military disasters. Today critics cite French businessmen building factories in Kent. They see Paris declining into a sort of Venice on dry land, industries awash in subsidies and stuck in the doldrums, French culture perpetually “en crise”.

Yet such derision rarely turns over the coin. It does not mention that more Britons now migrate to France than vice-versa (42,000 in 2005). They are drawn by the quality of life that attracts 7.3m British holidaymakers a year and 50,000 British second-home owners. There are few French pleasure seekers pouring the other way. France takes seriously the protection of its urban and rural environment. It values civic life: witness the cleanliness, security and confidence of municipalities there compared with Britain’s. Public services work. France’s trains run far and fast. Towns and cities, parks and museums are beautiful — as are even motorway service stations. The public realm in France has taste and bravura. In Britain it is grotty, largely because it is under the aegis of Whitehall and Westminster.

Europeans used to fight to get into Britain’s NHS hospitals. Not any more. Today the flight from these demoralised, MRSA-ridden places to France’s immaculate hospitals is becoming a flood. When last year Jacques Chirac warned that to pursue British policies risked having to accept Britain’s quality of life, his audience laughed. The risk was unthinkable.

A recent study of Anglo-French relations, That Sweet Enemy by Robert and Isabelle Tombs, delighted in the implacable polarity of these two cultures. It stretches back and forward through centuries of conflict to such piquant contrasts as the British official complaining that something “might work in theory but not in practice” while a French counterpart complains that “it might work in practice but not in theory”. Did not Sir Humphrey in Yes, Minister inform the baffled Jim Hacker that Britain’s nuclear missiles were targeted not on Moscow but on Paris? Have not the Royal Navy’s bases always faced the French coast and not Germany or the Atlantic?

This is all good clean fun. Where it becomes less attractive is when British comment on other countries takes as its basic premise that they would be better off if only they were run likeSite is currently unavailable .Please come back later

Wednesday 18 April 2007

PowerPointless

New research has found that PowerPoint, the ubiquitous computer software for business presentations, is a waste of time. Martin Waller welcomes its demise, while Michael Gove praises the power of oratory

At some stage, around the 38th minute, you were tempted to pinch yourself to ensure that you were still awake, and if not, that you had not slipped off into some hell devised solely for corporate man.

“We are DETERMINED . . . that we OPERATE . . . one of the most ACTIVE . . . and CUSTOMER-ORIENTED . . . delivery systems . . . for HIGH-VALUE fast-moving consumer goods . . . and that we RETAIN . . . a COMMANDING lead . . . over our COMPETITORS . . .”

The speaker was one of our most respected industrialists, whom I had better not name. The year was some time in the early 1990s. The style of delivery was more suited to a mass rally for a Third World dictator. The event was the presentation of his organisation’s annual financial results.

The organisation makes . . . again, shall we just say the sort of consumer goods you and I use every day. We had already LEARNT, as evidenced by an eye-straining array of coloured graphics, that the MARGINS in the grommets division had been LEVERAGED by a FULL THREE PERCENTAGE POINTS, while TURNOVER in bent widgets . . .

Enough. The whole bloody thing took up 55 minutes of my life, as I can testify, because my watch was easily the most fascinating object in the room. Every single utterance, every boast, every statistic, was accompanied on the screen behind him with a written repetition on his PowerPoint (the curse of business presentations launched by Microsoft in 1988).

After a cursory question and answer session — what more could even the most dedicated fact junkie possibly want to know? — we filed away, shellshocked, to be handed a copy of said presentation, in case any tiny aspect, any inessential detail, any jot and tittle of his organisation’s performance over the past year, had eluded us.

It was all made possible by what was then the latest technology, the PowerPoint presentation. It is an unacknowledged rule of emerging technology that the easier you make it to generate product, the more rubbish gets generated by said technology.

In the days when faxes were quite hard to set up, with a funny revolving roller that the paper had to be fixed around, you sent only essential faxes. Today, faxes are so easy to send that no one uses them any more. This is because the fax machine is permanently clogged up. And anyway, everyone uses e-mails and attachments.

Now e-mails are so easy, so omnipresent, that . . . well, you’ll have seen the results in your e-mail box. And don’t get me started on mobile phones.

It was the sheer ease of filling up his PowerPoint with so many facts and figures that allowed Sir An . . . our man to go on, at quite such a length, about the margins in the grommet division etc. Had he been restricted to pen and paper, or to those flip-over charts beloved of polytechnic lecturers, he would have been severely curtailed. The sheer effort of filling in each page, even if carried out in some basement by a team of corporate slaves, would have required a shorter version. And his presentation would in any event have been mercifully invisible to at least half his audience.

Instead he, or more likely one of the slaves, entered it all into Microsoft Windows with full-colour graphics so it could be regurgitated at length on a huge screen.

Now, research at an Australian university has proved that PowerPoint and the human animal are not the best of collaborators. Apparently, evolving on the savannah on a diet of half-rotted ox and at constant risk from sabre-toothed tigers did not provide us with brains properly wired to read and take in information that comes at you in a pincer movement, as the spoken word and as a series of letters, lines and graphs on a screen. It is the end, they say, for the PowerPoint.

The research, from the University of New South Wales, suggests that we process information best in verbal or written form, but not in both simultaneously. As so often, it has taken the best efforts of brainy academics to prove what most of us instinctively knew. Trying to follow what someone is saying while watching the same words on a screen is the equivalent of riding a bicycle along a crowded train. It offers the appearance of making extra progress but is actually rather impractical.

For our ape-like ancestors, it was either chowing down on the ox or watching for the sabre-tooth. Multitasking was inadvisable. This may even be why we evolved in groups, with tasks shared out. That or the sheer boringness of the average savannah.

One City communications specialist, who was untypically unwilling to be quoted by name, probably because his clients still insist on PowerPoint presentations, puts it thus: “It provides a comforter, really. It would be more sensible just to talk.

“Look at David Cameron, when he first became leader of the Tory Party. He just got up on stage and spoke beautifully, without any notes whatsoever. But not everyone can do that. With PowerPoint, people feel they can get away with practising less, if they have the words in front of them.”

The presentation also encourages screens full of as many words or data as can be crammed on, without any chance that they can all be appreciated or even read in time. Advertisers learnt a long time ago that the longer and more boring their ads, the less they worked. Corporate man, probably because he evolved in an environment dominated by meaningless management buzz-words and claptrap, has never quite grasped this.

Perhaps the only legitimate use is in the production of a series of paper pages as an aide memoire to a proper presentation or for a one-to-one briefing. This has occasioned an odd linguistic shift. “Now, if you will just have a look at the next slide.” No, it’s a piece of paper. Been around for centuries, you know.

Even here, there are pitfalls. I recall many years ago being deeply impressed at being invited to a private room at an expensive London hotel to meet another distinguished industrialist. Now, when two people are gathered together to break bread, there is a tacit assumption that this is an occasion for social intercourse, the equivalent of our primate ancestors huddled together picking off one another’s ticks. And we had not previously met.

As the tricolore salad was cleared away, his barely touched, I realised why he had been so keen on a private room. “I wonder,” he said, removing from his briefcase a familiar plastic-fronted folder, “if I could just show you how we have leveraged the margins at our grommets division . . .”

Professor John Sweller, of the University of New South Wales, says: “The use of the PowerPoint presentation has been a disaster. It should be ditched.” If only.

— Martin Waller

Why speechmaking is still the way to persuade

In the latest issue of The Spectator, the magazine’s political editor Fraser Nelson describes being invited to a “wonderfully conspiratorial” dinner at a London hotel by the Home Secretary. Nelson is properly circumspect, as a lobby correspondent should be, about what went on. But he does reveal that the evening was blighted by the presence of “the most unwelcome guest of all” — an overhead projector.

There are few words that have a greater capacity to chill than “I’ll just take you through this on PowerPoint” and thSite is currently unavailable .Please come back later

Thursday 12 April 2007

Triple Filter Test. - before you say something

In ancient Greece, Socrates was reputed to be held in high esteem because of his knowledge.

One day an acquaintance met the great philosopher and said, 'Do you know what I just heard
about your friend?'

'Hold on a minute,' Socrates replied. 'Before telling me anything I'd like you to pass a little test. It's called the Triple Filter Test.

'Triple filter?'

'That's right,' Socrates continued.

'Before you talk to me about my friend, it might be a good idea to take a moment and filter what you're going to say. That's why I call it the triple filter test. The first filter is Truth.
Have you made absolutely sure that what you are about to tell me is true?'

'No,' the man said, 'actually I just heard about it and...'

'All right,' said Socrates.

'So you don't really know if it's true or not. Now let's try the second filter, the filter of Goodness. Is what you are about to tell me about my friend ! something good?'

'No, on the contrary...'

'So,' Socrates continued, 'you want to tell me something bad about him, but you're not certain it's true. You may still pass the test though, because there's one filter left: the filter of Usefulness. Is what you want to tell me about my friend going to be useful to me?'

'No, not really.'

'Well', concluded Socrates, 'if what you want to tell me is neither true nor good nor even useful, why tell it to me at all?'

This is why Socrates was a great philosopher and held in such high esteem.

Friends, use this triple filter
each time you hear loose talk about any of your friends. We teach little by what
we say; we teach more by what we do; we teach most by what we are
....

Blair - the consummate liar

April 12, 2007
There’s one man who must take the lie-detector test
Matthew Parris: My Week

Politicians have come up with a great idea. They now plan to subject us in Britain to US-style lie-detector tests. If we telephone to apply for a welfare benefit, our voices may be monitored by a machine for signs of the stress that lying induces. A red fib-alarm light will flash — and our file will be marked “possible liar”, and set aside for special investigation.

Oh, fantastic. Which think-tank or focus group recommended this way to the voters’ hearts? If the lie-detector experiment is judged a success, think of where the technique might be extended. Tax returns, VAT inspections, parking appeals, hosepipe violations, Customs checks at airports (“Sorry Madam — your voice shook. Please go through the Red Channel”) . . . the possibilities are endless.

You know where it should end. So why not start there? Why not subject Cabinet ministers to lie-detection tests? If they’re prepared to make voters undergo them, and they’re confident of their accuracy, how can they object if Panorama or Question Time ask them to do the same? The technique will be easy to apply because the circumstances where politicians habitually lie — in broadcast interviews and on the floor of the House — are well-suited to the discreet installation of these machines: inside the dispatch box, for instance, or next to the guest’s microphone on the BBC Today programme studio desk.

Ministers have assured us that the lie-detection devices will not make the final decision on claimants’ applications; they will simply refer suspicious claims for further scrutiny. This is generous of them. Let us be generous in return. When the lie-alert buzzer sounds on the radio, TV or beside the Speaker’s chair, let us allow that this will not automatically mean they’re lying. It will simply invite us to think twice about the speaker’s honesty, and make some independent checks.

There are those, of course, who say the technology is unproven. At Prime Minister's Questions it will face the ultimate challenge. The most consummate confidence trickster on the planet v the most accurate fib-sensor American research can devise. If at noon on Wednesday the buzzer does not sound when Tony Blair speaks, then the whole technology can be scrapped as useless.

Monday 9 April 2007

Bacteria and depression

 

Bad is good
Apr 4th 2007
From The Economist print edition


An unexpected explanation for the rise of depression
BACTERIA cause disease. The idea that they might also prevent disease is counterintuitive. Yet that is the hypothesis Chris Lowry, of Bristol University, and his colleagues are putting forward in Neuroscience. They think a particular sort of bacterium might alleviate clinical depression.
The chance observation that Dr Lowry followed up to arrive at this conclusion was made by Mary O'Brien, an oncologist at the Royal Marsden Hospital in London. Dr O'Brien was trying out an experimental treatment for lung cancer that involved inoculating patients with Mycobacterium vaccae. This is a harmless relative of the bugs that cause tuberculosis and leprosy that had, in this case, been rendered even more harmless by killing it. When Dr O'Brien gave the inoculation, she observed not only fewer symptoms of the cancer, but also an improvement in her patients' emotional health, vitality and general cognitive function.
To find out what was going on, Dr Lowry turned to mice. His hypothesis was that the immune response to M. vaccae induces the brain to produce serotonin. This molecule is a neurotransmitter (a chemical messenger between nerve cells) and one symptom of depression is low levels of it.
Dr Lowry and his team injected their mice with M. vaccae and examined them to find out what was going on. First, they looked for a rise in the level of cytokines, which are molecules produced by the immune system that trigger responses in the brain. As expected, cytokine levels rose. They then looked directly in their animals' brains for the effect of those cytokines.
Cytokines actually act on sensory nerves that run to the brain from organs such as the heart and the lungs. That action stimulates a brain structure called the dorsal raphe nucleus. It was this nucleus that Dr Lowry focused on. He found a group of cells within it that connect directly to the limbic system, the brain's emotion-generating area. These cells release serotonin into the limbic system in response to sensory-nerve stimulation.
The consequence of that release is stress-free mice. Dr Lowry was able to measure their stress by dropping them into a tiny swimming pool. Previous research has shown that unstressed mice enjoy swimming, while stressed ones do not. His mice swam around enthusiastically.
This result is intriguing for two reasons. First, it offers the possibility of treating clinical depression with what is, in effect, a vaccination. Indeed, M. vaccae is considered a bit of a wonder-bug in this context. Besides cancer, and now depression, it is being looked at as a way of treating Crohn's disease (an inflammation of the gut) and rheumatoid arthritis.
Second, it opens a new line of inquiry into why depression is becoming more common. Two other conditions that have increased in frequency recently are asthma and allergies, both of which are caused by the immune system attacking cells of the body it is supposed to protect. One explanation for the rise of these two conditions is the hygiene hypothesis. This suggests a lack of childhood exposure to harmless bugs is leading to improperly primed immune systems, which then go on to look for trouble where none exists.
In the case of depression, a similar explanation may pertain. If an ultra-hygienic environment is not stimulating the interaction between immune system and brain, some people may react badly to the consequent lack of serotonin. No one suggests this is the whole explanation for depression, but it may turn out to be part of it.


Try Live.com - your fast, personalised homepage with all the things you care about in one place. in one place.

Thursday 5 April 2007

Cricket should look for a few good men with no stakes

Harsha Bhogle

Posted online: Thursday, April 05, 2007 at 0000 hrs IST


My father had a very interesting approach to people who came to him for, for want of a better word, “tuition”. He had two conditions. “I will accept no ‘money and you will come at 6 am,” he used to say, and we often wondered why. Much later I realised that this was his way of ensuring his independence. By not accepting money, he was not beholden to these students, and didn’t have to put up with them, and by asking them to come at 6 am, he ensured that only the truly committed came to study.

I remember this story for two reasons. Indian cricket needs help but first, it needs to find people who are not beholden to it and who are committed to it. When you have a financial stake in Indian cricket, your honesty can be threatened, your voice can be stifled. But if you have nothing to gain, and only integrity, pride and commitment to offer, you can speak up for what is right. The BCCI needs such people but I am not sure they are searching for them.

Instead, the BCCI waits while Indian cricket burns; it waits for this rare configuration of elements that will take place on April 6 and 7. For the last four days Indian cricket has been lying wounded with attack after attack made on it. But there has been no attempt to douse the fires, no damage control. If ever you wanted proof that an organisation cannot be run by committees, here it is. If someone finds worms in the chocolates you sell, you don’t wait for five days for people to arrive from different parts of the world to decide what to do. A leader, somewhere, takes ownership of the situation. Who then, leads Indian cricket?

That is why I believe the various vice-presidents and secretaries and holders of other currently irrelevant titles have let themselves down. Not just because they did nothing, but because they fanned the fires themselves by making statements all over the place. The obsession with the media, with the thirty seconds of fame and two days of notoriety, will be the eventual ruin of Indian cricket.

And so we need a dictator, a benevolent dictator, which is really what the head of a family is. Many years ago I had suggested that Indian cricket is a “poor little rich kid” desperately in search of parents. Little has changed to cause me to alter that opinion. The kid is hurt at the moment and has stumbled but is there someone to give it a hand, a warm embrace; is there someone to take ownership of the kid?

So then, who leads Indian cricket? Who is it whose chest puffs with pride and who says “this is my baby”?

And till we find this benevolent dictator, all these meetings will have little value. If, on April 6, many captains and many vice-presidents and many secretaries are going to sit around a huge table wondering what to do next, they might as well call it off now and save everyone a lot of time and money. One person has to decide where Indian cricket goes. He can seek help, advice, opinion, comment, whatever but one person has to decide. Alex Ferguson decides for Manchester United, Ali Bacher did for South African cricket and, at a vital moment, Indira Gandhi did for India in December 1971. Fifteen people talking together in a room will mean, at best, thirty cups of tea and coffee and five packets of biscuits. No more.

There are immediate issues to be decided. The coach, the captain and therefore, the future of many senior players. There are reports to be discussed and the perpetrators of leaks have to be identified and put on television as villains. And someone has to ask: why are the nine players, including, presumably, Sachin Tendulkar and Sourav Ganguly, so worked up? What does an admirable person like Rahul Dravid has to say? And most important; even if the manner of delivery of the coach’s message was unpalatable, was the message wrong?

Are we saying that the attitude of the players cannot be questioned? Were players playing to stay in the team? By taking the easy way and sacking the foreigner we cannot bury the questions he has raised for he might be right on many counts. If Chappell goes and there is no enquiry into player attitudes it means we are perpetuating the star system and creating the atmosphere for further decline in our cricket.

There are no overnight answers to these questions for the process must begin with identifying a full-time leader who will take responsibility for the situation. Then you need to appoint a captain, guarantee him freedom, look for a coach, ease tensions in the team and look for a cricket committee of no more than four or five people who have passion, integrity and humility, to meet six times a year to review where Indian cricket is going. Not to take decisions but to check if the plan is on stream for decisions can only come from one leader.

And to prevent hasty decisions, the tour of Bangladesh in May must be rescheduled forthwith. We can issue Bangladesh guarantees, if necessary payments, but a hastily put together team at this stage can do nobody any good.

Oh, and as a postscript, when Australian cricket was faced with a similar situation in 1985, they appointed two honourable, proud men as captain and coach, decided that players would be picked on attitude and that if it meant some good players had to leave, so be it. It served them very well but remember it was backed by a desire to do good. Can Indian cricket take a similar call?

Monday 2 April 2007

Kumble didn’t get a fair deal

 

Javagal Srinath
March 31, 2007































 Advertisement




It seems like I have known Anil forever. We come from the same state, from similar backgrounds and have more or less grown up together. We played our cricket together, were part of the same team in the under-19s and under-23s, right through to international cricket.
We have shared rooms and we have shared secrets, have celebrated the good times and consoled each other in times of disappointment.
We have also had some of our moments of enlightenment together. I remember once, in our early days, as a pair of excited newcomers to international cricket (in the times when players still shared rooms), we used to spend endless hours discussing the game and the people who played it.

We both had tremendous expectations from our seniors - we thought they would teach us, hear us out and generally be supportive. It did not work that way in an intensely competitive world, and we were both often terribly disappointed.
So we sat down and analysed our attitudes. We realised it was important to keep our expectations rational. We did so, trying thereafter to manage on our own.
Anil was instrumental in shaping my career at the international level at its most nascent stage. I learnt a lot from him, essentially that however great the odds, one should never give up. I learnt that no matter the state of the wicket, the level of the match, or the state of the game, one should never mentally surrender. The intensity with which he played rubbed off on everyone who came into contact with him.
I think the greatest lesson anyone can take from Anil's story is to never quit trying. Anybody who has ever had a lean patch and wants to bounce back should look at him. He has done it so many times. No one has more fighting spirit than Anil Kumble.
Across the years, I think Kumble's greatest disappointment has been the way he was treated despite being the country's highest wicket-taker. Time and again, he has not been given due credit for his performances; he has faced immense criticism despite his best efforts, and has had to come back and prove himself again  and again.
It has been unfair to him and is a shameful reflection on those who judged him. I think one big factor was that Anil Kumble never had a godfather. He is completely self made, unique in many ways.
What made him a great bowler was there was no parallel (in the way he bowls) in Indian cricket, perhaps Chandra being the closest. The rest are more  traditional bowlers. But his uniqueness was as much an insecurity (to him) as a strength. What worried him early on was that people would think him predictable, say that he would be read very well by the opposition. Whenever he was compared to Warne and found wanting, it really worked him up. It was only around the late 90s that he came to terms with it, realised that his uniqueness was his strength, figured what he could work on and what he could not.
The Anil Kumble you see in public, is also the Anil Kumble you see in private. He is a quiet, reserved, deeply intense man who doesn't open up with people he doesn't know, but is extremely sociable with those he does. He loves to talk, to sing.
We have a wonderful relationship. It is a relationship I cherish, despite the fact that we had our fair share of differences and arguments. Through it all, our friendship has endured. One thing that we understood early in our cricketing life is that you have to find your own footing without depending on someone; the people you know doesn't matter, performances do.
As the curtain comes down on one aspect of a fantastic career, I suggest we enjoy watching however much we can see of Anil Kumble. History is a harsh judge but I am willing to bet that in the years to come, he could well be deemed incomparable.
(Javagal Srinath is a former India cricketer)




Try Live.com - your fast, personalised homepage with all the things you care about in one place. in one place.