The Future Of Bangladesh Cricket

Pessimists predict that this can be the future of Bangladesh cricket - when everybody will lose interest in the game and the cricket bat, ball and stumps will be put in good use - nothing will be wasted.

However, lets hope that this never happens.

(Image received in a chain mail)

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India: The IPL Extravaganza

The game of cricket is now almost a religion to the Indians. The glorious era of Indian cricket started from its 1983 world cup win. Other popular games like hockey and football lost their popularity and cricket become a widely loved and followed sport in the country. In 2007 India became the world champion of the shorter version of the game - Twenty20 cricket. The result of this victory prompted Indians to take a great interest in this format of the game. India pushed Twenty20 cricket to next level by organizing a domestic tournament containing international stars called The Indian Premier League (IPL), which was initiated by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and supervised by BCCI Vice President Lalit Modi, Chairman & Commissioner for IPL.

The tournament started in 2008 in India but in 2009 the venue of the 2nd season was shifted to South Africa for security reasons. In 2010 IPL has come back to India and the 3rd season was inaugurated today with a spectacular opening ceremony.

Indian bloggers have been abuzz about this extravaganza much before the tournament as it created a number of controversies with incidents like ignoring Pakistani cricketers in its first auction and irking the media people. Many Netizens were eagerly waiting for the tournament.

Kunal Mudgal at Just a slice of life writes:

Its time for the madness to begin!!

IPL is back in its 3rd season. Its bigger, better and now back in India. This year will be the true test of this carnival on whether it can sustain itself in this format.

When IPL started out, it was a unique concept in India. But in essence, it was trying to recreate the fanaticism found in football leagues across Europe.

Greatbong at Random Thoughts of a Demented Mind weighs on the entertainment part the tournament offers and asks:

Will all this be worth the Rs 1200 I will shell out for my ticket—-around the same price one would pay, once upton a time, to watch 5 days of Test cricket?

Shubhashish is at the stadium to watch the opening ceremony and the first match between Kolkata Knight Riders and Deccan Chargers. He posts this picture at Twitpick.


Abhinav notes the IPL craze in India:

TV, Internet, Newspapers… Every medium is flooding with DLF IPL, a private event; that above all, explains the success of Indian Premier League. For a private event, entire media is fighting to give free of cost coverage! Strange, but Interesting!

The bloggers lists the marketing and branding strategies which have worked in favour of IPL to hype this craze. To highlight a few:

• “Packaging of the Event” from day 1 as entertainment is the biggest strategic hit. Cricket just happens to be there!
• To keep it focussed in 20 overs and inviting International players, not only enhanced the entertainment value but also factored in the fastest growing segment of high income youth.
• Attracting the movie stars like Shah Rukh Khan, Preity Zinta and Shilpa Shetty along with highly placed industrialist as team owners, ensured ample media and public interest which further contributed to the success of the event.

Prem Panicker at Smoke Signals sheds a light on IPL auction’s bidding process and the various pros and cons of the process.

JS tells everybody to enjoy IPL shunning all controversies:

Nothing other than the ODI and T20 World Cups, not even the Champions Trophy, has maintained the anticipation levels as high as the Modi juggernaut called the Indian Premier League (IPL). And if we may take the liberty, even the ODI World Cup has its interest dwindling since the last couple of editions, albeit ever so slightly.

But it’s not the time to ponder anything else; rather just grab a drink, dig into your couch and get immersed into the IPL. It’s that time in the cricketing calendar when all the soaps take a backseat and the desperate housewives either get remote-controlled or join the gang.

WATBlog reports that YouTube is promoting IPL by showing all 60 matches live via its official IPL channel and it has already bagged 200 million Indian Rupees (4.4 million USD) from sponsorships.

Yesterday at the digital media awards night I was part of a discussion with a couple of agency folks who updated me that Youtube was doing exceedingly well when it came to sponsorship monies. One of them stated that Youtube had garnered 20 crores worth of sponsorship for the entire IPL series with individual sponsorship amounts from some sponsors going upto 2 crores as well.

This makes youtube more expensive from a cost per reach perspective when you consider the number of viewers TV will reach vs the no of viewers youtube will reach in India. All in all most agency folks said that this was a big win for digital in India and a lesson for all of us in how to sell digital.

Meanwhile, IPL became a trending topic in Twitter today. Here are some of the Twitter reactions especially highlighting the opening ceremony which featured live performance from international rock stars like UB40, ABBA, Lionel Richie etc.

smokeysunny: The Official #IPL Community created by #ORKUT http://www.orkut.co.in/Main#Community?cmm=99087253

seopatel: #IPL #MATCH #CRICKET #MUMBAI are in the latest top 10 trends on twitter. India really uses twitter.. do you?

gynelwazlib: The DY stadium looks so beautiful. Feel uncharacteristically proud right now. One of those chairs is my indirect contribution. #ipl

pradeepto: OMG! An #UFO!!! White floating Ufo sighted at DY Patil stadium. #Aliens with funky fluorescent head-wear walking around the ground! #ipl

cricscoreapplet: #cricket #ipl Bollywood beauty, the sizzling Deepika Padukone is on stage now, sending the crowd into a tizzy with her moves

raknair07: Like always..what a crappy opening ceremony ...how much more do i have to bear this :( #fail #IPL

pranav_marathe: THE LASER SHOW IN #IPL #OPENING #CEREMONY IS ABSOLUTELY STUNNING. DEEPIKA'S PERFORMANCE WAS GOOD.

vedantvarma: Am thrilled with the IPL bashing so far. Sheer bliss. :-) they deserve it #ipl

The Indian blogosphere will continue to be flourished with IPL related stories. There will be regular predictions, analysis and gossip among other things. Amidst all the money, controversy, media hype and entertainment, here is hoping that cricket does not become second fiddle in IPL.

First published in Global Voices Online.

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The State Of The Twittersphere 2010

After the state of Blogosphere here comes the state of the Twittersphere.

HubSpot released a new report that captures the state of the Twitterverse, opening a window that instantly transforms speculation into analysis and setting the stage for informed discourse and exploration. (Via Brian Solis)

Some salient features of the report:

• Twitter’s user growth peaked at 13% in March 2009 falling to just 3.5% in October 2009.
• The average user is following more people, followed by more people and posted more updates.
• Although user adoption is slowing, existing users appear more engaged.
• The average user is following a greater number of people and earning a greater reach through an increased number of followers. Existing users are also posting more content.
• Twitter is a rich network of opportunity to increase stature as measured through online social capital. Experienced users realize that the value of participatory media is powered by so much more than just simple tweets or conversations.

• Users are self-branding by presenting ourselves through bios, locations, and outbound profile links
• In July 2009, mainly the US, UK and Australian locations of Twitter users made it in the top 20. In Jan 2010 report we see many countries going up in the top twenty, notably, Brazil, Germany, Singapore, Indonesia and India.

• 82% of Twitter users maintain a network of less than 100 followers and 91% follow less than 100 people.
• Thursday and Friday are among the most active days on Twitter, with each accounting for 16% of total tweets. Furthermore, 10 – 11 p.m. is the busiest hour on Twitter, accounting for 4.8% of the tweets in an average day. 
• In 2007, Twitter hosted 5,000 tweets per day. In 2008, the number climbed to 300,000 per day. In 2009, Twitter was publishing an astounding 2.5 million per day and over the course of the year, it soared to 35 million, up 1,400%. 
• Today, we are seeing 50 million tweets per day—that’s an average of 600 tweets per second.

• Twitter is now serving more than one billion tweets per month – crossing over for the first time in December 2009.
• In the last three months, Twitter experienced month-to-month growth close to 17%.

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Photo Of The Day

Mall Culture: Mall Of Indonesia, Jakarta

"One can say that malls have replaced churches, community centres and brothels all together." - Sunday posts

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England vs. Bangladesh 3rd ODI in Chittagong

Click here for live cricket. (Embedding disabled because of annoying popups)

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Bangladesh Police Arrest Facebook stock tipster

I know many would raise their eyebrows reading this news:

A Dhaka-based Facebook stocks tipster with over 10,000 followers has been arrested on charges of illegally manipulating Bangladesh's overheated stock exchange, police said Thursday.

Mahbub Sarwar, 26, a prolific blogger who provided online stock tips through the popular social networking site, will be charged with market manipulation, Mohammad Sohel, spokesman for the Rapid Action Battalion police force told AFP.

'His Facebook account has 3,000 members and he has a number of blogs... we believe around 10,000 or more people have been acting on his tips for the last few months,' Sohel said.

'His tips could trick thousands of people into buying certain shares on certain days,' he said, adding that Sarwar would also be charged with providing market advice without a license.

Regulators said they had been investigating Sarwar for months. Membership of his Facebook group costs up to 70 dollars a month and he would also charge for individual tips, police say.

He is also accused of running an unauthorised portfolio management services company - advising clients on which investments to make - for which he charged 20 percent of profits.

However this news has some anomalies which even a reputed news agency like AFP did not verify. I think the journalist who reported do not use Facebook - so it is unknown to him that there is no facility in Facebook to earn money from group subscriptions (what was the basis of the 70 dollar fact - how the money was realized?). There is an option of a secret group by choosing individual members, but that group do not appear in the search engine - so there is no question of influencing thousands by it.

While searching Facebook I found Mahbub Sarwar's account, whose nick name is Shoikot. He has a blog, where I see posting of some stock related news. In his blogs he states that he is a capital market investment analyst and he provides some value added service and monitoring for clients (for apparent fees).

Its a personal blog created to educate the capital market investors of Bangladesh and to share the blogger's personal views on different issues. Is Mission is to develop an educated and learned investors community. (source)

So in fact he is actually gathering stock exchange related news from online sources and sharing it with public. Now what has he done to deserve this arrest? How his tips could influence thousands of people with those 2nd hand data which is anyway available in the internet? If it is for his value added personal services - I have no comment. But why making Facebook and his blog the villain? He is just expanding his client base using social media (traditional brokers - take note).

He has 2697 friends and he has a Facebook page containing mainly feeds from his blog posts where some his 743 fans are sporadically asking "what can i buy tomorrow?" "what abt gp today????" etc.

Now the question is all of this is public. You and I can see those. How he has influenced some and not all of us? And by providing Market information to public whom has he hurt? The professional brokers? Is there a group trying to keep the information away from public?

According to the news:

Bangladesh's bourse, one of Asia's smallest, is vulnerable to manipulation and regulators have struggled to stop a slew of online scams, publicly warning investors in January of a rogue Facebook group providing bogus tips.

So an alert was on. If the public still falls for alleged bogus tips (for money or free?) then who is to blame? There are other Facebook group like Dhaka Stock Exchange who are providing stock related tips (its a public group - you can join and participate). So why Mahbub Sarwar only?

I think the authorities got the battle wrong. They need to bolster their online presence to protect the investors. They have got a static page with databases. But there are no news aggregators, no presence in the social networking sites, no interactivity with the potential investors. It must be noted that they do not have Bangla version of their site which can target a lot more audience.

I have seen a few efforts online to educate the Bangladeshi investors, like this blog post where an analyst writes how to minimize risk in trading. The authorities should stop seeing devil in the Internet and act wisely.

I think the arrest of Mahbub was the result of some personal rivalry. Any attempt to control public information is a direct violation of freedom of speech which is protected in our constitution. Today there is Mahbub and tomorrow there will be more people harnessing the power of social media to inform people (or to manipulate to some extent). If the authorities do not joint the bandwagon of social media, they will never win the battle.

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Trolley Bags of domestic helps from Jakarta bound to Jeddah

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