Tillway Talk

 The Ides of March  is the 74th day in the Roman calendar, corresponding to 15 March. It was marked by several religious observances and was notable for the Romans as a deadline for settling debts.  In 44 BC, it became notorious as the date of the assassination of Julius Caesar which made the Ides of March a turning point in Roman history. Caesar was stabbed to death at a meeting of the Senate. As many as 60 conspirators, led by Brutus and Cassius, were involved. According to Plutarch, a seer had warned that harm would come to Caesar on the Ides of March. On his way to the Theatre of Pompey, where he would be assassinated, Caesar passed the seer and joked, "Well, the Ides of March are come", implying that the prophecy had not been fulfilled, to which the seer replied "Aye, they are come, but they are not gone." "Et tu, Brute?"is a Latin phrase literally meaning "Also you, Brutus?", often translated as "You too, Brutus?". The quote was m

  Today is the 50th anniversary of India's first test win in England. Ray Illingworth's team was seemingly invincible, and had played 26 tests without a defeat coming into the match at the Oval.  It was a record which was later broken by the West Indies under Clive Lloyd in the 1980s. The English unbeaten run was ended famously by India on 24th August 1971. Led by Ajit Wadekar, the Indian team won  the third match of the series. They thus  won the three-test series 1-0 and created history. England scored 355 in their first innings, with Bedi, Chandrasekhar and Venkataraghvan taking 2 wickets each. Solkar picked up 3 scalps, including Alan Knott for 90. In reply, India were tottering at 125-5 before Solkar and Engineer helped them put up a score of 284. Wadekar scored 48, Sardesai 54, Solkar 44 and Engineer 59 in that innings. Abid Ali and Venkataraghvan chipped in with 28 and 24 respectively.  The game turned on its head on the fourth day, when Chandrasekhar demolished  the Eng

  On the occasion of India's  75th Independence Day, a few random  musings:  India's per capita income is 38th in Asia  behind countries like  China, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Iraq, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia  The life expectancy in the country  is around  70.8 years.  India trails nations like Nepal,  Indonesia, Iraq, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Thailand and Sri Lanka. The Indian literacy rate 77.7%. It is less than that of Indonesia, Iran, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia.  So a lot remains to be done if India is to join the ranks of the elite developed countries. 

 It's time to move forward from the WTC defeat. In my pre-match analysis of the teams, I had said that New Zealand had a slight edge, because: 1. Their openers were better equipped to bat out England  2. Their pace attack was comparatively better. To add to this, New Zealand had a two-test warm-up series in England. This helped them get acclimatized and discover their best combination for the final.  The only area where India had the clear advantage was in the spin department. Ashwin and Jadeja were far better than Ajaz Patel, the Mumbai-born left arm spinner who plays for Yorkshire. But the rain, the weather and the pitch ensured that they had minimal impact. Ashwin did take 4 wickets in the match, but Jadeja went wicketless. New Zealand did not even bother to include Patel in the playing XI. One more thing  which went against India is Bumrah's lack of luck or form.  He had not been that effective after his back surgery.  In the final, he didn't take a single wicket and wa

  It is not often that a cricket match is remembered more for a decision taken by the umpire rather than the performances of the players on the field. Bombay has witnessed at least three such test matches, where the umpire is remembered even today: 1. In 1948-49, the West Indies was the first team to tour independent India. The first three tests ended in draws, but West Indies won the fourth at Madras by an innings. The last Test was played at the Brabourne Stadium in Feb 1949. India needed to win this test to draw the series. They were set a target of 361 to win. On the final morning, Rusi Modi and Vijay Hazare batted out of their skins.   Modi fell for 86 and Hazare was 6th out at 285. At that point, India needed 76 runs.  However, a lion-hearted  Dattu Phadkar batted with the tail as India inched towards the target. West Indies  resorted to blatant time wasting tactics. In those days,  there was no restriction on the use of bouncers per over, and no minimum number of overs to be bow

Today is the 76th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe.  On  May 7, 1945, Germany unconditionally surrendered to the Allies in Reims, France, ending the Third Reich. This marked the end of thee bloodiest war the world had ever seen. Its perpetrator, Adolf Hitler, the German Fuehrer, allegedly committed suicide on 30th April 1945 in s Berlin  bunker. Hitler led a charmed life. He had miraculously escaped death on the Western Front during WW I at least twice. During the second World War, there were at least six assassination attempts on him, but he survived all of them. It has been widely reported that Hitler did not die in 1945, but escaped to Argentina in a German submarine, where he lived out the test of his life. He supposedly passed away in 1962, three years before his nemesis Winston Churchill. Be that as it may, Hitler led Germany to a sphinx-like revival after a bitter defeat in the first World War. However, he plunged the nation into another great war, which saw the