Not sure if he ‘got’ or if he ‘took it and never returned’.

Bottomline is that he has a Superbowl ring! :-)

Pics from Wimbledon.Org - Venus pic and Sharapova pic.

I did not expect this result, forget the apparent one-sidedness. I really thought Sharapova would eat up Venus. But it was quite a match, looks like. The headlines on Wimbledon.Org (where I got the pics from) were Venus Blasts Past Sharapova.

Davenport is on top in the other semi, after a roller coaster 2 sets. There were huge leads and big breaks of serve, but in the end I think Mauresmo was overcome by nerves more than anything else. It is not over yet, and given the way things have gone in that match, I would not put my money on Davenport yet, but I think she has more control on the match now than Mauresmo has.

I downloaded and played with Google Earth yesterday. I must say, it is fantastic. Once they texturize the images of the buildings, it would be virtually a tour of the various cities they have mapped. I did a fly-by tour of downtown San Francisco and could feel it.

Way to go. But how are they going to make money off it?

Update: Looks like they have stopped downloads of the application … luckily I saw it before they shut everyone out.

Michelin has announced that even though they were not legally asked to do so, they are going to refund all the tickets for this year’s Indiananpolis GP. And in addition they are going to give 20K tickets to next year’s race.

I think this is a wonderful gesture from the company to pre-emptively refund the tickets. They obviously know that they were the main reason the cars pulled out of the race. Rather than wait for the legal push-pull, they decided to go for it and regain some of the fans.

I think this step has made me take a lot of my anger towards Michelin away. I still think they are the ones to blame mainly for the fiasco, but what they have done has made me give them some respect. They are hurting right now with the potential losses and perhaps losing out the battle for tire supplies to F-1 if and when it becomes a single-tire championship.

It is always great to admit your faults and step up and apologize and do what is necessary to get the other party’s respect. They have mine. Good job, Michelin.

And that’s the proof, or whatever you make of it.

Of course, this is the ‘easy’ version but now that I have done that easy one, I will move on to the next levels :-)

Not sure if I missed it earlier, but for some reason, the new rules that the ICC pushed out recently are going to change the strategies of captains and teams all over.

Sachin Tendulkar recently said the same thing.

1. Fielding restrictions will be on for 20 overs now, but in chunks of 10 (compulsory at the beginning), 5 and 5. I guess from the spectators' perspective, it will make the middle overs exciting if the fielding captain decides to use the chunks say from 25-30 and 35-40 overs.

2. Substitutes like soccer. You can replace a player, and that replacement will be permanent for that match. So possibly you could use up a bowler’s 10 overs at the beginning and throw him out and get a new bat. Or if the opposition has scored big, you can bring in an extra bat at the half time. If the pitch seems to be turning square, a pace bowler could be replaced with one of the backup spinners. A lot of possibilities.

Can’t wait to see the Aussies and the Kiwis use these rules as part of the strategy. They are the best in expoiting such rules. India will lag behind, but who knows, Greg Chappell may have already starting chalking out some plans.

Yea, right!

Australia crushed Bangladesh, as was originally expected.

And the matches where Symonds has played, he has shown how critical he is to the side. But what made his lose it at the beginning of the tournament??

His team was one of the teams that ran the race and now he is starting to act like a socialist, with threats of strikes and further boycotts.

What is his agenda? He is at the bottom of the pile and no matter what he does, his budget is not going to come close to the upper echelon teams. He has to find a way to get more interest in his team and make sure he gets the job done for the team.

Threatening to boycott more races is just not the way F-1 is going to increase its popularity.

And if he wants Max Mosley’s job, he needs to maybe try some other angle and not let the sport be harmed because of his desires.

Shame on you, Paul.

I check Blogger Buzz all the time. And after I made my post, I saw the post on Blogger Buzz announcing the new feature.

Phew. I thought I was not paying attention to what is on the screen! :-)

–photo from nba.com

Alright!

Now I will talk. I loved it. It was such a beautiful second half performance by the Spurs. And Tim Duncan was phenomenal in this game, and most importantly, in the second half. His dominant performance in the third quarter brought the crowd back into the game and got the Spurs fired up for closing it out.

Robery Horry got yet another ring. He is so good and such a clutch player at all levels, he was probably the most underrated in this year’s finals.

Well played Detroit Pistons. I am not going to call your last year’s win a fluke, and I feel we will see a few more SA/Det finals in the next few years.

Good luck, Coach Brown. Hope your health gets better and you come back to the game in one way or the other.

I have not noticed the toolbar much because I usually type straight and maybe put some links. I noticed this morning that there is an ‘Add Image’ button on the toolbar within the compose post window.

Looks like I don’t need Hello necessarily to post an image to the blog post. That would be nice. Haven’t tried it out though.

It was long expected, what with all the pushing and pulling between Williams and BMW.

Vill is lucky to get BMW next year, but is he lucky enough to be with them next year?

Not sure if Williams will continue using BMW. If not, who else is willing to step up?

From BBC Sport.

He makes a point that I keep making in his defense:

“The problem was some teams had brought the wrong tyres. It would be like making all the athletes in a 100m sprint run barefoot because some had forgotten their shoes."

Borrowing the term from jiblog, another blog I read, I wanted to let everyone know that it has been a long but eventful year for me.

I can’t believe what started out to be a dibble-dabble in the world of blogging has turned out to be such an enjoyable journey.

Thanks to all the readers who keep coming by and dropping comments here and there. I am at 10,000 hits for the year and am really proud of that. I did not really think it would have been possible because I did not intend to continue for so long.

Thank you all once again. I hope to put links to some classic conversations of the past year. No time right now, unfortunately. :-(

What was that at the end of the 4th quarter? It was going well till the end when the Spurs just collapsed and gave in.

By the way, I must tip my hat to Detroit Pistons. Much as I hate the team, they just keep coming back. They don’t give up at all and you can NEVER write them off.

The Spurs now have to crawl back out of the hole. Let’s see what happens tomorrow.

Thanks to anti, whose blog I frequently read, I was pointed to a great article on planetf1 which made me change my mind a little bit about who is to blame for the farce at Indy.

Looks like there was in fact a precedent to such a situation. At Interlagos. The race was delayed because of rain and that some cars did not have full wet tires.

If that were the case, then changing some other ‘race rule’ should not have been a problem. I don’t quite agree with the article writer who thinks it was a Ferrari agenda to get 18 quick points, but I do agree that something could have been done to let everyone race.

So even though it is mostly Michelin’s fault for not having the right tire, Max Mosley is to blame somewhat too.

I have tried twice in the past two weeks to have Red Bull an hour before playing. I must say, the first two games were quite good. The heart was pumping and I felt that I was working out well. But as soon as the caeffine (or is it the sugar?) effect dies down, it gets very sucky. You suddenly slow down and you don’t like it because you get whooped.

And getting whooped twice is worse.

No more Red Bull before squash. Maybe after ;-)

Over the weekend, the wife and I went to Cinema Savers and saw movies back-to-back.

The Interpreter was actually quite good. I was not expecting it to be that gripping or anything, but it turned out to be quite alright.

Kicking & Screaming was not as funny as I thought it would be.

Overall, not a bad deal @$3.50 per movie per person.

First of all, Michelin’s stock takes a beating.

The teams are called for disrepute.

And of course, like everything US, there are lawsuits coming.

Who is going to pay?

1. FIA
2. Indianapolis Speedway
3. Bernie
4. The teams that pulled out
5. Michelin
6. The cars that ran (!)

Whatever be the case, I am not sure if Indy is going to welcome Formula 1 in the future. And that is sad.

If you want to tease your brain a bit, try Sudoku. I had not heard of it, but looks like it is becoming quite popular all over.

Seems like it was a rollicking innings by Pieterson. Good job.

What’s up with the Aussies? They are playing so un-Aussie. They are not able to put up decent totals, they are not able to defend their totals, they are showing signs of indiscipline. What is going on?

I hope they wake up in time for the tests because ultimately, that’s what counts.

I felt like blogging live during the race because of the controversy that unfolded before and during the race. It was unreal. There were only 6 cars racing ultimately. Everyone started the formation lap, but all Michelin cars went back to their garages.

What seemed confusing was:

1. Why did they even take the formation lap? If attempting to race was a requirement, does formation lap count, or you have to start the race?
2. Why were the drivers still sitting in the cars even after the cars were pushed back in the garage?
3. Why was the Formula 1 sport being blamed for this farce? Wasn’t it Michelin’s fault that they did not build an appropriate tire for the race?
4. Since when did the tire manufacturers start showing so much power? I understand that they were cautioning the teams and I totally understand that the drivers' safety is primary concern, but how come the teams are not flaming Michelin?
5. What would have happened if Bridgestone had announced a similar warning but Michelin had not? Would pulling 6 cars out of the race be made into such a huge deal? I doubt it.

Michelin needs to pay up. They were just found underprepared for this race. Creating a new chicane on the race morning just to accomodate their shortfall is unrealistic. They should be penalized by the teams for the loss, both financial as well as positional.

Suddenly, Ferrari is tied for #2 with McLaren. Suddenly, Schumacher is #3, just 3 points off Kimi. All this would have been different if there were more drivers.

As a sidenote it was interesting to see how excited Monteiro was to be on the podium. You could argue that he was 4th from the bottom, but he was still 3rd from the top and he was enjoying his 15 seconds of fame.

And another sidenote - Karthikeyan scored 5 points! Yay!

Happened to catch the new ‘reality’ show the other night. I must say, this ‘revival’ summer is on full swing. The other show that we sometimes watch is Hit Me Baby 1 More Time with the one-hit wonders and have-beens coming in and singing one of their songs and one of the current hits.

Dancing With the Stars has some relatively have-beens dancing and voters vote to keep the best on for the next round.

I am impressed that some of the “stars” can dance so well with such little practice or knowhow. Kudos.

Ralf is not racing this weekend because of an accident in practice. As was the case last year.

What’s important is that Michael Schumacher and Alonso are on the same row. I think Alonso is going to kick Schumi’s butt at the start. The Renaults are just too good with their launch controls.

But on the other hand, with the tyre controversy going on, I am not even sure if the race is going to happen. Michelin supplies to all but two teams.

Meanwhile, Trulli on pole is a good sight. Some consolation to the Toyota team, after losing Ralf for the weekend.

What’s wrong with the Australian cricket team? Is this a joke? Ever since they landed in England, they have lost badly.

One was against the English team in the Twenty20 game.

Then, they lost against Somerset. Somerset???

And today, as if to prove that those were not flukes, they let Bangladesh restrict them to 249 in 50 overs and Bangladesh won quite handily.

I don’t want to start making predictions yet, because its still early days, but the hype that is surrounding the English team and the dreams that they may actually win the Ashes this year may start becoming more and more real.

As readers of this blog may know, I don’t like the English cricket team. I think it is a lot of hype surrounding a decent team. So I hope I don’t have to eat my earlier words.

But then again, even if I have to, I will eat my words because there is nothing wrong in accepting that I was wrong.