During
lockdown almost all the Sales Force are unhappy – vehicles have not been sold,
there are so many things which people have not been able to market – some like
masks, sanitizers, hand-wash, and the like are selling hot .. and State Govt
has added one more to the list with roaring success !! Remember
with tinge of sadness that ODI 931 at Nahar Singh Stadium, Faridabad o Oct 17 1994 -
Stuart Williams, Shivnarine Chanderpaul & Cameron Cuffy made their
debuts. Windies scored 273/5 and India
chasing made only 177, losing the match by 96 runs.
The
first price of popularity is that one is hounded quite often of ‘retirement’………
the great genius writer Sujatha in his heydays was confronted in a student’s
forum with the Q : Sir, when will you
stop writing ? Pat came the reply – ‘in the night ~ when I feel too sleepy’…………
~ one need not be guided by the Q and can have one’s own way !! The Genius
Little Master SAchin Tendulkar was haunted
with the Q of his retirement .. .. and so many critics were speaking of the
retirement of the mercurial Mahendra Singh Dhoni.
The mercurial
MSD surprised everyone on 30.12.2014 – the boxing test had just been drawn and
Dhoni was 24* - 4 overs left with 4 wickets in hand – MSD made no mention
during the customary Captain’s press conference at the end of the match. Then a BCCI release stated that MSD had
resigned citing the strain of playing all formats. We thought that 2020 will
see MSD striking it rich in IPL and turn for India in T20 WC 2020 – but Covid-19
has changed lives.
No. ‘199’ gained so much of attraction – it was a
test match at Eden Gardens – Rohit Sharma fresh from the euphoria of a double
ton in ODI got his Test cap from Sachin, after having played 108 ODIs – getting
the nod over Ajinkya Rahana. Alongside
also debuted Mohammed Shami preferred over Ishant. No. 199 :
is an Odd Number; it is a
deficient no. as 1 is less than 199; it is a prime number; it is the sum of 3
consecutive primes 61 + 67 + 71; it is also the sum of 5 consecutive primes ……
31+ 37 + 41 + 43 + 47 ~ no point in trying to attach some more
values ….. the badshah of Cricket – Sachin Tendulkar decided to retire – the
swansong was to be at Wankhede and the one at Eden Gardens, Kolkatta – the
penultimate was his 199th Test……. He has
been a marketing icon – a premium product and Commercials are trying to exploit
this number and mint more money, and there were talks that the Series itself
was to allow him select his retirement at his home ground.
Sachin Tendulkar
announced his decision via a BCCI statement, like he had done when he retired
from ODIs in Dec 2012. "All my life, I have had a dream of playing cricket
for India. I have been living this dream every day for the last 24 years,"
Tendulkar said in a statement. "It's hard for me to imagine a life without
playing cricket because it's all I have ever done since I was 11 years old.
It's been a huge honour to have represented my country and played all over the
world. I look forward to playing my 200th Test match on home soil, as I call it
a day. .. .. the bowler off spinner Narsingh Deonarine walked himself
to Quiz questions though he has taken only 24 wickets in his Tests career, in
the same way Eric Hollies is part of cricket folklore as the man who is
remembered mainly for dismissing Bradman in his last Test innings.
After
a six week-long ‘dry period’, liquor outlets in Tamil Nadu, barring Chennai,
opened on Thursday and thirsty men and women bought about 20 lakh litres worth
Rs 170 crore. The liquor consumed across the state in a single day was just
four lakh litres less that the 24 lakh litres of milk supplied by state-owned
Aavin across the state.
Official
sources said 3,700 of the 5,300 outlets of Tasmac, the liquor monopoly in the state,
sold approximately two lakh cases of Indian Made Foreign Liquor (IMFL) (each
containing 48 bottles of 180 ml) and about 50,000 cases of beer (each
containing 12 full [650 ml] bottles). This translates into tipplers
collectively buying more than two million litres of IMFL and beer on a single
day. On a normal day, about 1.6 lakh cases of IMFL and beer are bought in a day
in the state including Chennai.
“The
beer sale was relatively less as there was a cap on selling only bottle to one
customer,” an official said. The state
government requested the Madras high court to relax stringent conditions
imposed for retail liquor sale, saying insisting Aadhaar for sale of liquor
goes against privacy of customers. “Many customers have complained that
insisting Aadhaar is adversely affecting their privacy. Moreover, the
conditions imposed by the court for sale of liquor are onerous to follow.
Therefore, we request the court to relax some of the conditions,” government
pleader said in a memo filed on behalf of the Tasmac on Thursday.
When
crowd surged in front of a Tasmac outlet in a village in Salem district on
Thursday, the official machinery thought it fit to shift token distribution for
the tipplers to a government school about 500 metres away. The tipplers were
asked to queue up inside the panchayat union primary school at Kamalapuram near
Omalur, where Tasmac staff issued them tokens. The official apathy, which
resulted in the school being put to such use, irked the residents of
Kamalapuram. A group of agitated villagers took up the issue with police and
Tasmac staff, who stopped after issuing tokens to about 300 people.
The post started
about retirement .. .. .. a peaceful happy retirement is what most office-goers
would yearn .. this simple act which would occur to every living person in Govt
/ PSU is not all that easy in Private sector, is what experience has shown. Call
it Covid-19 effect, a cash-strapped TN government on Thursday increased the
retirement age of its staff from 58 years to 59 years to defer an outgo of ₹5,000
crore towards retirement benefits for the current fiscal. More than 25,000
government employees were set to superannuate this financial year.
The order has come
into immediate effect and will be applicable to all government employees, teaching
and nonteaching staff in government and aided educational institutions, and
employees of constitutional statutory bodies, PSUs, corporations, local bodies,
boards, commissions and societies. Those who are due for retirement on May 31
this year will now retire on May 31, 2021. The move is also aimed at appeasing
the 12 lakh-odd government employees and teachers, whose DA increase and leave
surrender facility have been frozen for a year.
Though some Unions
have welcomed this, some others like Joint action council of Tamil Nadu
teachers’ organisations and government employees’ organisations strongly
condemned the move, saying it would adversely affect job opportunity of
youngsters and delay promotions of senior employees. “It is an indirect attempt
to ban recruitment for a year, akin to the fiveyear ban on direct recruitment
enforced in 2001,” Jactto-Geo state coordinator
said. The Tamil Nadu government
employees’ association has announced a state-wide protest on Friday in front of
government offices seeking withdrawal of the order.
The MGR government
raised the age of superannuation from 55 to 58 years in Tamil Nadu in April
1979. “We needed to cut expenditure drastically. By freezing dearness allowance
and leave surrender facility and lowering PF interest rate (to 8%), we saved ₹7,850
crore annually, which is roughly 12% of the total salary bill of ₹64,208
crore for the current fiscal. As regards ₹5,000
crore retirement benefits (₹2,764 crore towards
gratuity and ₹2,221 crore for leave surrender), of
25,000 people who were expected to retire this year, we are only deferring
payment by a year. It gives us some breathing time. It is not savings,” said a
senior official in the finance department.
Kapil,
the greatest all-rounder for India played 131 Test matches, scored 5248 runs in 184 innings at an average
of 31.05 with 8 hundreds and 27 half-centuries. In 131 tests, he took 434
wickets at 29.64 with 23 five-wicket hauls and best bowling figures of 9 for 83
against the West Indies. In One dayers
(always remember WC 1983) he scored 3783 runs (175* highest) and took 253
wickets in 221 innings.
On
that day at Faridabad – Kapil Dev was not given the new ball – Manoj Prabhakar,
Javagal Srinath, Anil Kumble and Rajesh Chauhan bowled 10 overs each – while
Sachin bowled 5. It was sad and
sickening and even made me cry when Kapil walked from deep square leg was
unceremoniously sent back by the Captain Azharuddin. Kapil in his normal self having completed 5
overs walked towards the Umpire, but the ball was sort of snatched by the
Captain. For me in someways, Cricket was never the same thereafter ! –
exceptional wrong treatment of a Senior on his retirement.
With
regards – S. Sampathkumar
8.5.2020
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