Tendulkar, the entertainer par excellence

By the time Sachin Tendulkar made his debut in one-day internationals in 1989, the format had been in existence for 19 years, but it would not be an exaggeration to say that the little dynamo provided the impetus for the tremendous growth of the format.

Tendulkar redefined the rules of the shorter version and took it to new frontiers, setting milestones at every conceivable distance in the 20 years he has been around. He has been an inspiration for generations of players to follow.

The popularity of ODIs soared in the subcontinent when Tendulkar was at his peak. And in India, Tendulkar acquired the status of a demigod. Each time he walked down holding his bat, the nation of a billion waited in anticipation. The colour of the clothing fades and the bright stadium floodlights get hazy with Tendulkar’s electrifying presence out in the middle. And the administrators of the game went to the banks laughing every time Tendulkar played in an ODI.

The 45 centuries that he has cracked in 436 ODIs came in a torrent once he got his first hundred five years and 79 matches after his debut, against Australia. Remarkably, 32 of his hundreds carried India to victory.

He was also the first player to score 10,000 runs in the ODIs, and after that every 1,000 he added was part of history, surpassing his own record.

He is the only player to post nine centuries in a calendar year in 1998 and also the only batsman to amass 1,000 runs in a calendar year seven times. No other batsman has contributed to as many runs as he did for a winning cause -- 10360 (ave.56.92) in 217 matches.

Tendulkar’s stats in ODIs (as on Nov 15, 2009)

Milestones

1st Match: vs.Pakistan at Gujaranwala on Dec 18, 1989

100th Match: vs.New Zealand at Pune on Nov 24, 1995

200th Match: vs.Zimbabwe at Harare on Sep 30,1998

300th Match: vs.Sri Lanka at Colombo,RPS on Sep 30,2002

400th Match: vs. Australia at Baroda on Oct 11,2007

ODI career highlights l At 16 years 238 days, he was the youngest Indian player (vs. Pakistan at Gujaranwala on Dec 18, 1989) l Holds an Indian record for the longest career (19 years and 325 days) l Most consecutive matches (185between April 25, 1990 and April 24, 1998) l Holds a world record for aggregating most runs - 17178 (ave.44.50) l Most matches (436) by an Indian l Most Innings (425) by an Indian l Most Centuries (45) l Most Fifties (91) l Most Nineties (17) l Holds a dubious distinction of being the only player to have been dismissed on 99 on three occasions. l Holds the record for aggregating most runs in a calendar year - 1894 (ave.65.31) in 34 matches. l Only player to post nine centuries in a calendar year (1998) l Only batsman to amass 1000 runs in a calendar year seven times. l Most runs for a winning cause - 10360 (ave.56.92) in 217 matches. l Most Man of the Match awards (60) l Most Man of the Series awards (14) l Only all-rounder to complete the triple of 15000 runs, 150 wickets and 100 catches. l Holds ODI partnership records for the second and third wickets - 331 (2nd) with Rahul Dravid vs. New Zealand at Hyderabad on 8.11.1999 and 237* (3rd) with Rahul Dravid vs. Kenya at Bristol on 23.5.1999. l Only player to hit nine centuries against one opponent - Australia l Only player to have aggregated 2000 runs or more against three nationsAustralia, Pakistan and Sri Lanka l His run-aggregate of 3005 (ave.46.23) is a record by any player against Australia l His run-aggregate of 2749 (ave.44.33) is a record by any player against Sri Lanka l His 186 not out against New Zealand at Hyderabad on 8.11.1999 is a record for the highest individual innings for India l He is the only player to aggregate 500 runs in a single edition of the World Cup twice. His run-aggregate of 673 (ave.61.18) in 11 matches in 2002-

03 is a World Cup record for one edition l His run-aggregate of 1796 (ave.57.94) in 36 matches is a World Cup record

Holds the record for taking the least number of matches from 10,000 to 13,000

The nation celebrates Sachin Tendulkar’s 20th year in cricket

NIA team searches

Mumbai to trace Headley’s terror links

INTENSIFYING ITS PROBE into suspected Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) operative David Coleman Headley’s role in the Mumbai terror attacks, a team of National Investigation Agency (NIA) sleuths have conducted raids at several places in Mumbai. Bollywood filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt’s son Rahul is likely to be questioned over his alleged friendship with the Pakistan-born American who is in US custody.

According to home ministry sources, the NIA team carried out searches at various places in south Mumbai and suburbs of the city, including Goregaon, Malad, Khar, Pali Hill and Lokhandwala.

Sources said that NIA sleuths searched the Goregaon house of arrested LeT operative Faheem Ansari, who is in jail with another suspect Sabahuddin Mohammed for conspiring in and preparing maps for carrying out the Mumbai terror strikes, in which over 170 people were killed.

Records were scrutinised in two south Mumbai luxurious hotels - Taj and Trident where Headley had reportedly stayed before last year’s terror strikes. The two hotels were among the iconic places attacked by the 10 terrorists who sailed into Mumbai from Karachi.

Investigators believe that Rahul Bhatt will help them gather more details on Headley’s visits to Mumbai. Mahesh Bhatt has denied that his son had any links with terrorists, but he admitted that Rahul, a fitness instructor, had indeed met Headley in a gym. Rahul had also helped him rent a flat near Breach Candy Hospital.

Sources said that NIA sleuths have recovered some “incriminating documents” from a hutment colony in Goregaon suburb. But there were no details available on what the documents were about.

Sources said the NIA team in Mumbai will also question three friends of Rahul Bhatt, who was earlier let off after brief questioning by Mumbai Police as he was said to be unaware of Headley’s terror links.

But it was made clear that nobody had yet been given a clean chit in the case. Security agencies in India went into a tizzy after it was known that Headley, who visited India nine times over a three-year period since 2006, was planning major terror strikes in the country on behalf of the LeT.

Headley is said to have operated a visa agency in Mumbai for almost two years until July 2008 and had travelled to various Indian cities including Jaipur, Delhi and Bangalore, which were rattled by bomb blasts last year.

Headley’s alleged accomplice Tahawwur Hassan Rana, a Canadian of Pakistani origin, were arrested Oct 3 by US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for planning terror strikes in India and Denmark. The NIA has registered a case against both Headley and Rana.

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Biggest Indian-Canadian landlord eyes India’s ‘dream’ market

CANADA’S BIGGEST Indian landlord Bob Dhillon, who started his company from the back of his car and now owns more than 6,000 rental properties across the country, is set to enter the Indian real estate market.

Dhillon, who was been invited by Prime Minister Stephen Harper to join him during his visit to India that is currently on, is

Continued on page 30 bullish on the Indian market.

“Despite the current slowdown, I am sure the Indian real estate sector will take off in a big way. We are ready to come here next year,” says 43-year-old Dhillon whose Mainstreet Equity is the first Indian-owned company to be listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

Dhillon, who started selling homes at the age of 19 and became a millionaire at the young age of 21, says: “Today, India is a realtor’s dream. It is the fastest growing real estate market in the world after (western) Canada”.

Three things make India a dream destination for him, he says.

“One, 50 percent of India’s population is below 25 and they will spur demand for housing. Two, a vast majority of Indians live in rural areas which are set to see a huge housing activity. Third, as prosperity increases, people’s hunger for home ownership will also increase. These three things are any real estate man’s dream”.

Dhillon, who was born in Japan and educated in India, keeps a close watch on the Indian real estate market and has made many presentations on it at various fora.

About his inclusion in the prime minister’s delegation, he says: “The prime minister wants to focus on economic ties with India... He sees that Canada and India have a huge economic future.

We have a new generation of Indian businessmen in Canada who will bridge these two great economies. We will bring financial and intellectual inputs into this relationship.”

Dhillon says the visit of the Canadian prime minister could not have come at a better time as the worst of the economic slowdown seems to be over.

“We have two great like-minded prime ministers. Stephen Harper and Manmohan Singh are both economists and policy driven. The visit will definitely boost our business relationship,” he says.

Interestingly, Dhillon’s company has boomed even in these troubled economic times. In fact, he has smartly leveraged the current crisis to expand his company to take its fortunes to well over $1 billion.

Explaining it, he says: “We have flourished because of the type of real estate business we do. We own mid-segment apartments mostly in western Canada which was not that badly hit. Then we had a lot of cash flow which we used to buy back 40 percent of shares. Further, we have taken advantage of low prices to buy more properties.”

The Indian king of the Canadian real estate considers his upcoming 2,300-acre island in Belize (Central America) the jewel in his crown. He is developing it into a world-class tourist resort for Hollywood celebrities. The island amid pristine blue sea waters will have hotels, golf clubs, casinos, condominiums, high-end houses and other facilities.

The likes of Madonna and Leonardo DiCaprio will be its residents, says Dhillon whose family first emigrated to Hong Kong, then Liberia and finally Canada from Tallewal village near Barnala in Punjab.

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Police nab burglar ring targeting Washington desis for gold

LAW HAS FINALLY caught up with a ring of picky burglars who had been targeting South Asian families in a Washington DC neighbourhood for their gold.

Indian American residents of Fairfax, a suburb of the national capital in neighbouring Virginia, expressed relief as the police arrested two men and a woman from the New York City area in Centreville.

Police suspect the burglars hit 26 homes in Fairfax and three more in Loudoun County since January. Each time, the burglars struck they ignored silver, gems and electronics, taking only gold jewellery, saris with gold threads and gold statues.

Police said they believe gold was being stolen because it is selling at more than $1,000 an ounce. But they don’t know how or why certain houses, mostly in the Fair Oaks, Reston and Centreville areas of western Fairfax, were targeted.

Three suspects, Francisco Gray, 39, of Nassau County, New York; Dagoberto Soto-Ramirez, 27, and his wife, Melinda Soto, 33, both of Queens, New York have been charged with nine counts of felony. They are being held without bond in the Fairfax jail.

The burglaries generated intense concern in the South Asian community, and three town hall-style meetings were held, first with elected officials and then, last month, with Fairfax Police Chief David M. Rohrer. Residents were pleased by the arrests.

“The community is excited,” said Raman Kumar, an IT professional, one of the early victims whose home in Centreville was burgled way back on Feb 27.

“They are also thankful for the awareness the media put on this,” because neighbours who learned of the burglaries might have provided information that led to the arrests, Kumar, who had mobilised the IndianAmerican community over the issue, told IANS.

The arrests came after US marshals working with the police burglary task force spotted a sport utility vehicle with two men and a woman inside who fitted the description of suspects in the burglaries.

After a search of the sport utility vehicle, investigators found a lap top computer, a GPS unit, and a police scanner tuned to Fairfax County police radio channels.

A police spokesperson declined to say how investigators linked the suspects to the four Fair Oaks burglaries. She said police hoped the search of seized items such as the laptop computer would lead them to more property or more suspects.

Sikh becomes first mayor of Yuba City in US YUBA CITY, which became the first Indian settlement in the US and is now known as the first Punjabi village in this country, got its first Sikh mayor this month.

Forty-four-year-old Kash (Kashmir) Gill was sworn as the new mayor of the city as hundreds of Indians attended his oathtaking ceremony. People were treated to Indian delicacies, including samosas, chana masala and sweets, amid Punjabi music. There are about 15,000 Punjabis, including Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims, in this city of 65,000. Gill will be the first Sikh mayor in California.

“We have made history tonight, and everyone is part of that history,” said Gill as outgoing mayor Leslie McBride passed the gavel to him.

“I am elated to be honoured with this position. We Punjabis have been here for more than a hundred years, and to be the mayor of this city is a privilege for the whole community,” Punjab-born Gill told IANS.

“I feel really great ...I have spent all my life here and to represent Yuba City is a great honour,” said Gill, who came to the city in 1967 with his family as a two-yearold.

His family is related to the city’s worldfamous peach farmer Didar Singh Bains. “We came from Lakhsina village in Hoshiarpur district of Punjab when my uncle Bains sponsored us,” said Gill, who will now command the city’s $80-million budget.

A banker by profession, he served as the vice-mayor before becoming the mayor. The position is held in rotation by the top two vote getters in city council elections. Interestingly, the five-member city council has another Sikh member Tej Maan. Punjabis first came to this city in the late 19th century.

“Gill’s elevation as the mayor means that the city has adopted its immigrant children whose forefathers landed here more than a century ago,” said the city’s famous resident and physician Jasbir Kang.

He said: “Originally 10 Punjabi families settled in this area. Today, we make up about 12 percent of the city population. Apart from Yuba City, our people also live in the outlying towns of Marysville, Live Oak, Gridley, Colusa and Wheatland.”

Famous for its annual Sikh Parade which attracts Punjabis from around the world, Yuba City has five gurdwaras, one Hindu temple and a mosque.

Punjabi is taught as a second language in the three major schools of the city. “I look forward to visiting India next year to share my joy with folks back in my native village,” said the new mayor.

Gordon Brown ‘launches poll campaign’ in Indianmajority constituency

BRITISH PRIME MINISTER Gordon

Brown has chosen an Indian-dominated London suburb to give his nation a longawaited speech on immigration, setting off speculation this was the launch of his 2010 election campaign.

“When both the prime minister and the home secretary make their first major speeches for some time on immigration you can be sure that the election campaign has started in earnest,” the Home Affairs editor of the Labour-supporting Guardian newspaper wrote recently.

With general elections due by early June, Britain is in the midst of a heated and rancorous debate on immigration, with almost every other important issue sought to be linked to it - including health, education, jobs, terrorism and population growth.

With India’s economic rise on the global stage and Britain struggling with a recession, much of the debate recently has centred around what to do about the highlyskilled jobs that Britain badly needs but doesn’t have.

Brown chose Southall - a west London neighbourhood where Hindu and Sikh Punjabis dominate - as the venue of his first major speech on immigration since being made Prime Minister in June 2007.

In his speech, made in the presence of Punjab-born Southall MP Virendra Sharma, Brown made it clear that while migrants continued to make “enormous contributions” to all walks of life in Britain, they had the duty and responsibility to share in the values of the host nation.

And, he added, immigration was a subject that could not be left to racists and fringe parties - a reference to the recent rise of the anti-immigrant British National Party (BNP), which has won two seats in the European Parliament and many in local authority bodies across Britain.

Brown claimed Britain will keep its doors open to highly-skilled migrants from outside Europe - a group that is dominated by Indians - but conceded that people’s attitude to migrants might differ according to their economic and social circumstances.

Britons who are poor, competing for lowlypaid jobs at a time of recession or living in an area with few migrants might see migrants very differently from those who are working for a multinational company in a big city, he said.

Brown sought to set the record straight on some widely-held myths about immigration in Britain.

Net immigration, Brown said, was falling, not rising; a tax levied on nonEuropean immigrants meant they were paying extra into a 70 million pound fund that was paying for everybody’s local education and healthcare in some areas; and putting a cap on overall levels of immigration would only damage the British economy.

Coming amid a rising tide of anti-migrant violence in urban centres across England, the speech was welcomed by the local MP Sharma, who said it put the record straight. “The Prime Minister has taken on the Conservatives and the fringe parties with this speech, which shows that the government is determined to have a fair and firm immigration policy,” Sharma said.

Keith Vaz, the senior Indian-origin MP in Britain, agreed, saying: “People have a problem with illegal immigrants, not those who are here legally. A lot of the problem is the product of bad administration at the UK Border Agency.”

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Obama names Indian American Rajiv Shah as USAID chief PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA has named Rajiv Shah, an Indian American official at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, to head USAID, an agency charged with spurring development around the world.

“The mission of USAID is to advance America’s interests by strengthening our relationships abroad,” he said of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which has more than 6,800 people working in some 80 countries worldwide.

Rajiv Shah, 36, “brings fresh ideas and the dedication and impressive background necessary to help guide USAID as it works to achieve this important goal,” he said. “I look forward to working with Rajiv in the months and years ahead.”

The Obama administration has been criticised in some quarters for not nominating someone sooner to head USAID, formally part of the State Department, which manages the bulk of US international aid with a budget of some 53.9 billion dollars for 2010, up nine percent over 2009.

Shah, a medical doctor, currently serves as chief scientist for the US Department of Agriculture and previously worked as director for agricultural development at the foundation headed by Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates and his wife. By nominating Raj to lead the USAID, Obama has reaffirmed that development must be a core pillar of American foreign policy, said Secretary of State Hillary Clinton welcoming the long-pending nomination.

“If confirmed, Raj will bring an impressive record of accomplishment and a deep understanding of what works in development to his role as USAID Administrator,” she said. “I look forward to working closely with him to advance the President’s agenda and to elevate and integrate development in our foreign policy.”

Having championed Obama’s global food security initiative, Shah is “a leader in the development community, an innovative and results-oriented manager, and someone who understands the importance of providing people around the world with the tools they need to lift themselves out of poverty and chart their own destinies,” she said.

“A trained medical doctor and health economist, Raj has the skills and experience to lead a reinvigorated USAID in the 21st century,” Clinton said. “He has led and worked with many of the initiatives that are defining best practice in the field of development.”

He has a record of “delivering results in both the private and public sectors, forging partnerships around the world, especially in Africa and Asia,” she added.

Prior to his work at the Gates foundation, Shah worked on health care policy for the 2000 presidential campaign of former vice president Al Gore.

He is a co-founder of Health Systems Analytics and Project IMPACT for South Asian Americans. In addition, he has served as a policy aide in the British

Parliament and worked at the World Health Organisation.

Dr. Shah earned his MD from the University of Pennsylvania Medical School and his Master of Science in health economics at the Wharton School of Business. He has attended the London School of Economics and is a graduate of the University of Michigan.

‘Indian software industry will hold out against competition’

THE $60-BILLION information technology industry in India will continue to attract overseas business, despite competition from other emerging markets that also offer lower costs, says the India head of global software giant Computer Associates.

“Our costs will still be competitive. There are markets like China, Singapore, and the Philippines which offer lower costs. But they are not in the same league as India,” said the software giant India chairman Saurabh Srivastava.

“China has an issue with language, a lot of other countries don’t have the same levels of competency and, moreover, a lot of them are still in process of learning business norms,” Srivastava, an industry veteran and noted venture capitalist, told IANS.

According to him, the average spending on information technology by a fair-sized firm was usually two percent of the entire budget. “You will not risk saving on this two percent and endangering the rest of the 98 percent.”

Though the sector, which has been hit by the global financial crisis, will grow at a modest 4-7 percent this year, Srivastava contended a turnaround should happen by next year when companies start loosening their purse strings.

“You may not see the 30 percent growth rates of the past. But for the next few years, the growth certainly would be in the range of 15-20 percent,” said the alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) at Kanpur and Harvard University.

Co-founder of such companies as software major IIS Infotech and venture capital fund Infinity Ventures, Srivastava is not quite perturbed by the slowdown in the business. In fact, he is optimistic about the trajectory of the Indian IT growth story.

“We will grow from the current $50 billion to about $200 billion by 2020. However, companies will need to shift their stance and become more focused on intellectual property and have an increased global presence.”

According to him, Indian educational institutions will also have to produce quality graduates to fuel this growth rather than creating thousands of engineers whose knowledge and skill levels are, at best, mediocre.

“In India, there is an employability factor. There are engineers who pass from second string institutions, whose quality is low, and that is a problem,” said Srivastava, adding that 10 years down the line, big cities alone will not house global Indian firms.

“As infrastructure develops and connectivity increases, you will see IT companies set up shop in more tier-2 towns. But it’s not just the cost factor that will drive this movement,” he said.

“Realty prices will be lower. It will be easier to retain talent. Folks in India like to live closer to home, not always possible in large cities,” said Srivastava, founding member of the National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom). IANS