Tillway Talk

  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...

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, ...

There is great  euphoria in Bengal about the victory of the Trinamool Congress - the Grassroots Congress Party.  Winning Bengal would have been a big step for the BJP.  Under British rule, there used to be a saying -  what Bengal thinks today, India  will think tomorrow.  However, this does not alter the fact that there is no credible challenge to the Bhartiya Janata Party, the so-called Indian People's Party,  at the national level in India. The country has seen such victories time and again at the state level since 2014, when Modi came to power as Prime Minister. The  BJP has lost elections in the non-Hindi speaking states. But it continues its vice-like grip on the cow-belt - the Hindi heartland. Ii is also in power in Karnataka  - the only South Indian state where it has a footing - and in quite a few North-Eastern states. The BJP is currently in power in twelve states, and shares power in six  other states in coalition with regional...