Big-names in the INDIAN CRICKET team became big flops in the IPL

Pakistan's Sohail Tanvir hit the winning run from the final ball of the innings to seal the victory for the Royals.Eight city-based franchises took part in the Twenty20 series, with the world's top players joining home-grown stars and novice Indian players.A total of £368m was spent on the teams by Indian investors.

One of the wonderful results of the IPL is the mixing together of players of all nations, who then share their skills and experience with each other. As an Australian with strong connections with India, it's been a pleasure to watch, after the truly toxic Indian tour of Australia. The IPL is having many other delightful unexpected results -including: - requiring the national Boards to lift their game as they no longer hold the monopoly, - introducing a more merit-based approach to players in Indian cricket - and as a platform for India to move onto the world stage as a major player in all sectors. Suddenly India as a country and as a culture is being scrutinised and held to the same standards as everyone else!!!

The IPL has delivered action, excitement, breathtaking moments and powerful hits to the galleries, and even out of the park … agreed! So far so good. The cricket carnival has given the viewers what it promised in the beginning. With the Bollywood stars and the bouncy cheerleaders adding glamour to the occasion off the field, Indians are indeed celebrating the IPL. But one worrying factor in the tournament is that the majority of the teams are excessively dependent upon their overseas players for their dominance, spirited fightback or even mild resistance. Barring the dark horses of the tournament, Rajasthan Royals – led by the spin magician, master tactician and inspired captain Shane Warne – all the other teams seems to be struggling to survive in the race without their overseas stars whom the sponsors spent big money on.Unearthing young Indian talent was one of the main aims of IPL, other than just countering ICL. Not that there haven’t been some real diamonds unearthed. Manpreeth Goni and Vidyut Shivaramakrishnan from Chennai Super Kings and Swapnil Asnodkar from Rajasthan Royals have been among the finds of the series. But the fact that teams are huffing and puffing in the absence of the all-stars from abroad is very much evident in the recent defeat of the Chennai team, which was once topping the chart with four consecutive victories. The departure of the overseas trio of Michael Hussey, Mathew Hayden and Jacob Oram for their international assignments was too much for the Chennai captain Dhoni to handle. Now they have crashed to the final defeat in the tournament. Young Palani Amarnath and S. Badrinath have done their best, but the sense of security and strength that the overseas trio gave the captain, team and sponsors cannot be replaced.Kolkata Knight Riders have also been badly hit by the departure of Ricky Ponting and Brendon McCullum half way through the tournament. They were off to a roaring start but lost focus on the way and internal struggles and lack of co-ordination within the team have taken their toll, with Umar Gul coming out with damaging comments on Sourav Ganguly’s captaincy.The Laxman-led Deccan Chargers and Yuvraj-lead Kings X1 Punjab are also not free from the clutches of dependence on foreign talent. It was extremely difficult for Yuvi to dream of victory without their batting mainstay Kumar Sangakkara and bowling mainstay Brett Lee. Mumbai Indians started tasting victory when they had South African Shaun Pollock as captain. With the ban imposed on the short-tempered Harbhajan Singh, the team as a whole started looking more disciplined. Apart from Dhoni, all the players with Icon-status have been a huge disappointment so far. Rahul Dravid and Ganguly are far from impressive, while the great Sachin Tendulkar could take the field only in last few matches. The lesser-paid overseas players are hogging the limelight while the heavily paid Icons have been found wanting.Rajasthan Royals are the only team in the tournament so far, free from all controversies and, above all, “FREE FROM DISAPPOINTING ICONS”. They are indeed led by Australian Warne and are very much dependent on his innovative captaincy. But the young Indians, like Munaf Patel,Yusuf Pathan and Asnodkar, are benefiting greatly from his leadership. Warne is a captain-cum-coach for them and the team is responding well to his ideas and objectives. And hence they deserved to be strongly for the title. They didn’t have the threat of losing players as they have young Indians at the heart of the side. The team is free from many big names in international cricket who could be called back any moment for their international matches.Right from the beginning, foreigners have taken centre stage in the mega event with their magnificent performances, be it the explosive century by McCullum for the Knight Riders and the six-wicket haul by Sohail Tanvir for Rajasthan Royals against Chennai. It has been the overseas players all the way, with rare flashes of Indian brilliance in the form of Dhoni’s captaincy, Asnodkar’s batting and Goni’s bowling.But atlast it was the Royals who deserved the title.

Stopping murder in Darfur

The West shows renewed interestAPPARENTLY, according to Sudan's president Omar al-Bashir, everyone has been getting all steamed-up about nothing in Darfur. In fact most of Sudan's western region is "secure and enjoying real peace", he announced after a rare visit to Darfur last weekend. "People are living normal lives", he said. That will come as a surprise to more than 2m desperately poor, vulnerable and hungry internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Darfur itself, and to the 200,000 or so refugees who have fled over the border to camps in neighbouring Chad. Their misery comes on top of an estimated 200,000—400,000 people who have died since 2003 when fighting erupted in Darfur; many of the deaths have been caused by forces controlled by the Sudanese government. But then Mr Bashir and his ministers have spent much of the past year leading a concerted campaign to downplay the severity and significance of what the UN calls the "worst humanitarian disaster" anywhere. Instead, Sudan's rulers have been trying to get outsiders to focus on the investment opportunities in the oil and financial-services sectors in the booming capital of Khartoum. So, as ever, the Sudanese government has been trying to weaken foreign efforts to intervene in Darfur to protect the IDPs and the humanitarian workers who largely keep them alive. They have faced what is widely reported to be a rising tide of violence and lawlessness since a failed peace agreement of just over a year ago. Having finally agreed in principle last month, after over a year's worth of unremitting diplomatic pressure, to let in a "hybrid" African Union-UN force of 26,000 troops and police, the Sudanese government and its allies at the UN have been softening the new resolution that would actually allow the deployment of such a force. The UN and DarfurThe UN's inaction on DarfurAT A summit in 2005, all the member countries of the United Nations agreed on a principle of a "responsibility to protect" civilians from atrocities. The fine idea suggested that if a state would not protect its own, outsiders must step in, with force if necessary. That same UN summit created a new Human Rights Council which would replace a discredited predecessor, and name and shame abusers of human rights. These facts could give the impression that the world in general, or the UN in particular, has grown serious about putting an end to murder and repression in Darfur, in western Sudan. Yet almost nothing has changed there, except for the worse. International aid agencies reckon that the humanitarian situation has deteriorated markedly since last year's partial peace deal. (Only one big Darfuri faction has signed on, and may now be helping the Sudanese government carry out its crimes.) The Sudanese government continues to refuse the actual deployment of the UN force. Rape and murder remain commonplace, along with the slow starvation of many more victims.…

The worsening chaos of DarfurInternecine fighting makes peace look even less likely than before
As usual in the shadowy world of the Darfur war, what is certain is that plenty of people have been killed and many more displaced in these incidents, but no one can be sure who the attackers were or what their motive was. The AU peacekeepers' Nigerian commander in Darfur blamed a splinter group of the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA), one of three main rebel groups fighting against Sudan's government in Khartoum, for killing the AU men. Others suspect another splinter of one of those rebel groups, the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM).

Why would Sudan's government want to collude in killing AU peacekeepers? Because, so the argument goes, Mr Bashir may want to stymie peace talks due to take place in Libya at the end of this month and discourage foreign peacekeepers from venturing into the Sudanese maelstrom. He has reluctantly agreed to accept a "hybrid" peacekeeping force of AU and UN troops, totalling some 26,000. At present, the AU's 6,000 or so troops plainly cannot cope. Letting a bunch of them be killed may deter others from coming along.In any event, the government is still sponsoring groups of janjaweed (Arab militiamen on horseback) who continue to rape and pillage in Darfur and southern Sudan, where a separate shaky peace between the Arab north and the black African south is holding up, just. Amnesty International, a human-rights lobby, says it has evidence that the Sudanese government is preparing a military offensive in north Darfur, with troops readying themselves in at least six towns.But the Darfuri rebels, now split into as many as a dozen factions, may themselves be increasing the chaos. If a rebel group did kill the AU peacekeepers, it would not be the first time. Since the AU troops arrived in 2004, they have increasingly come to be regarded by the rebels as instruments of the Sudanese government rather than as even-handed. Sudan is a prominent member of the AU, and is seen as having a big say over its deployment of troops. So what started as a fight between Darfuris and Arabs may be turning into a free-for-all, not least for profiteers. Quite a lot of the violence, such as the frequent attacks on aid convoys and UN food dumps, is now sheer banditry.This stalling will, at the least, delay the deployment; at worse, it may undermine the force's capacity to operate effectively at all, as happened to the AU force. For frustrated Darfur-watchers, it is an all too familiar situation.

For the rural poor, cellphones come calling

Camel-drawn carts, tractors and brightly clad women carrying shallow bowls of fuel and food on their heads usually dominate traffic in this northern Indian village.
But Mundawar(Rajasthan) played host to a jarring new visitor: Nokia's traveling mobile phone van. Hundreds of spectators, most men and boys between the ages of 15 and 50, gathered outside or squeezed into the van, hoping to win free merchandise like a Nokia-branded hat.
The Nokia van may be an anomaly but it is just the latest sign of the communication blitz about to overtake rural India.
Mobile phone usage is rising faster in India than anywhere else in the world, with some six million customers added every month. Large cities and many medium-sized towns are already blanketed with retail outlets, and competition among manufacturers and carriers is fierce.
Rural India has become the next frontier for the industry's biggest players. About 70 percent of India's 1.1 billion population, 770 million people, live in villages and rural areas.

Nokia has sent two dozen vans staffed with sales representatives on continuous six-month treks through the countryside. The sales reps don't take orders and they don't sell phones; instead, their task is to explain why anyone in a small farming community would want a mobile phone in the first place, and a Nokia in particular.
"The object is to establish the concept of phones, and the need for phones," said Suresh Sundaram, Nokia's national retail marketing manager in India, who was in Mundawar with the van.
The vehicle resembles the trucks that carry carnival games to country fairs, but with cellphones behind glass instead of balloons and darts. When it rolls into a small village, it creates a circus-like spectacle, starting with a skit about why mobile phones are necessary. Then the van's canopies unfurl as Bollywood music blasts from the speakers.
Television advertising seems to have already done some of the groundwork; many of the villagers visiting the van were quick to name their favorite model of Nokia mobile phone, even if they didn't actually own one. The features they praised weren't color graphics, the latest cameras or texting speed, though.
"Nokia is better because the batteries have a longer life," said Rajaran Yadav, who carried a Nokia 2030 model in his front shirt pocket on a strap.
Lalid Kishore, 36, said he was shopping for his sixth phone in two years, after having problems with some and trading in others for new features. Kishore said he wasn't in the market for the newest camera phone, though, because the camera would weaken the battery.
Other visitors to Nokia's van cited the built-in FM radio as an important feature. Radio reception, which comes from towers in New Delhi, is spotty; most people take their phones to the rooftop when they want to listen to the radio.
Phone manufacturers have begun introducing new products that will be targeted at rural markets. Reliance, the Indian mobile phone service provider, said it would sell a Chinese-made phone that would retail for 777 rupees, or $19. Nokia also unveiled seven new models targeted at emerging markets to be priced at $45 to $120. In November, Motorola introduced the ultra-low-cost Motofone in India, costing about $40.
Despite the new products' emphasis on price, early indications are that it isn't the most important criterion. In Mundawar, a district that has a population of 10,000, about 80 new Nokia mobile phones a month are sold through four independent retail outlets, Sundaram said. This doesn't take into account a strong second-hand market.
"The reality of the Indian market is that people actually generally pay more like 50 to 60 U.S. dollars" for their phones, said Carolina Milanesi, research director at Gartner's mobile device group. Nokia's new 2650, unveiled , has a "nice design and should do well" in India, she said.
While fields dominate the landscape here, cellular connections are not a problem. "We can't catch up to the rate that towers are set up," Sundaram said.