Anand Krishna’s musings

At the SCG today, India took a 1-0 lead in the Commonwealth Bank ODI finals. They beat Australia by 6 wickets, on the back of a brilliant unbeaten century by Sachin Tendulkar (117 runs off 120 balls) and an equally valuable 66 (from 87 balls) by fellow Mumbaikar Rohit Sharma. Earlier, Praveen Kumar started the Aussie collapse (they were 24 for 3 wickets). Hayden top-scored with a breezy 82. Thereafter, Hussey’s 45 and Brett Lee’s aggression in the last couple of overs against a hapless and listless Irfan Pathan ensured that Australia posted a decent total of 239.

Sachin was determined to see off Brett Lee and that’s exactly what he did. Robin Uthappa was playing well, when a rush of blood combined with a brilliant catch by Hussey off Hopes’ medium pace ended his innings rather prematurely. A horrible mix-up between Gambhir and Sachin resulted in Gambhir being run out (it looked like he was to blame for his own dismissal, as he seemed more intent on watching the fielder than his partner Sachin). Luckily for India, Sachin delivered today; else, this dismissal may have proved very very costly.

The second match in the “best of three finals” is scheduled for Tuesday at the Gabba (Brisbane). I am surprised that the two Boards did not allow for more than a day between the games. Wednesday would have been better for the second match, with next Saturday ideal for the third and last match. Both teams would have got some time to recoup. As things are, India will have to deal with Ishant Sharma’s injury to his finger. Reports suggest that he has not factured his finger, but there is some fluid accumulation inside and a painful/swollen finger is not conducive to playing cricket- especially if you are a pace bowler.

In addition to winning the match for India, Sachin carried his bat, scored his 42nd ODI ton and recorded his first ODI century on Australian soil (the last statistic must come as a surprise to many, given that this is his 4th tour of Australia and he has always done quite well Down Under). Finally, this was India’s first ODI win at Sydney in 12 matches.

Overall, Dhoni and his men have done a great job. All that remains is to continue the good work at Brisbane and make sure there is no need for the third match. To paraphrase Ponting (he expressed these thoughts in a syndicated newspaper column): whoever wins the first match at Sydney will win the second game at Brisbane and win the finals 2-0. He probably wrote this column yesterday, and I wonder if he still feels the same way.

India’s “Under 19″ cricket team today beat their South African counterparts to win the World Cup at Malaysia’s Kinrara Oval. The match was interrupted by rain, but given that we were defending only a modest total of some 160 runs, our bowlers did a great job. Some of the U-19 players seem much more aggressive than the youngsters in the current “seniors” team. While aggression and “positive attitude” in the game is good, but I am afraid when this “attitude” spreads to sledging and other on-field chatter, things can quickly go out of hand. I thought some of our boys were guilty of crossing the line today.

Again, it looks like Dav Whatmore has been able to weave his magic. Just a few months of his taking over as Ops Director at the NCA and more recently, as coach of the Indian U-19 team, he has delivered tangible results. Before today, South Africa had lost only one match in the tournament- and that was their league match against India. And India has the distinction of remaining unbeaten through the entire World Cup.

Chak de India U-19!

Finance Minister (FM) P C Chidambaram is only the second FM in the history of our country to present all 5 budgets of the government (after Dr Manmohan Singh, who was the first when he was FM in Mr P V Narasimha Rao’s cabinet).

Clearly, one eye was on the upcoming Lok Sabha elections, for he has presented a fairly populist budget for 2008-09. Over the last three days, experts have devoted hundreds of column inches in newspapers/magazines and hundreds of programming hours on TV, to discuss  the budget- fine print and all.

I do not have any specific opinion on specific proposals. However, the one big concern I have as a citizen of India is this: where will the government get Rs20,000 crores each year for the next 3 years to pay the PSU Banks to make good their loan write-offs to farmers? I am not questioning the decision per se- small, marginal farmers have been badly affected over the past several years and relief is welcome. But given the likely slowdown in the US economy and election year rhetoric against outsourcing, the IT services and ITES sectors are likely to slow down. This may well have a downstream effect on other sectors like banking, retail, automotive and so on (agreed there are others that consume these goods & services as well, but employees from the IT/ITES sectors have been quite conspicuous in their consumption and spending patterns). In turn, corporate and personal income taxes may not remain as buoyant as they have been in the last 2 years or so. And with inflation fears likely to force cuts in excise duty/levies on petroleum products and non-petroleum indirect tax collection not meeting targeted levels, I am very very worried about meeting the huge burden imposed by the write-offs.

I hope the thinking was not on the lines of “let me look good now. If we win the elections, we will raise taxes next year to meet the deficit and if we lose, let the next FM worry about financing the write-offs”.