Riders crush Challengers

An unbeaten 158 by wicket-keeper batsman Brendon McCullum coupled with decimating fast bowling helped Kolkata Knight Riders 140-run win over Bangalore Royal Challengers in the opening match of the Indian Premier League in Bangalore on Friday.

Chasing to Knight Riders’ 222 for three, Bangalore’s Royal Challengers were bowled out for 82 in 15.1 over at the Chinnaswamy Stadium. McCullum score was the highest individual score in a Twenty20 game, was adjudged the Man of the Match. He blazed 13 sixes – the most in a Twenty20 contest - and 10 fours in an incredible 73-ball innings on a jam-packed Stadium.

The Fireworks which began in Zaheer Khan’s first over continued till the last ball of the innings, when McCullum hit the medium pacer Praveen Kumar over the long-on ropes. McCullum used his feet, picked the length of the ball early. His was largely a one-man onslaught on the RC bowling; the next highest score in Knight Riders’ innings was Ricky Ponting’s 20.

Chasing an unimaginable target, the host was taken for a ride early by pacers Ashok Dinda and Ishant Sharma. Ishant took an early wicket of Rahul Dravid with an incoming delivery and the host could not manage a recovery.

Ajit Agarkar, who finished with 3 wickets, dented the middle-order. Praveen Kumar’s 18 not out was the highest score of the innings for the KKK

Knight Riders picked up two points while Royal Challengers are yet to open their account

Scoreboard

Kolkata Knight Riders:
Sourav Ganguly c Kallis b Khan 10
Brendan McCullum not out 158
Ricky Ponting c Kumar b Kallis 20
David Hussey c White b Noffke 12
Mohammed Hafeez not out 5
Extras: (b 4, lb 4, w 9) 17
Total: (for 3 wickets in 20 overs) 222

Fall of wickets: 1-61 (Ganguly, 5.2 overs), 2-112 (Ponting, 12.1), 3-172 (Hussey, 17.1)

Bowling:
Praveen Kumar 4 0 38 0 (1w)
Zaheer Khan 4 0 38 1
Ashley Noffke 4 0 40 1 (1w)
Jacques Kallis 4 0 48 1 (1w)
Sunil Joshi 3 0 26 0
Cameron White 1 0 24 0 (1w)

Bangalore Royal Challengers:
Rahul Dravid b Sharma 2
Wasim Jaffer c Ponting b Dinda 6
Virat Kohli b Dinda 1
Jacques Kallis c Kartik b Agarkar 8
Cameron White c Saha b Agarkar 6
Mark Boucher c Kartik b Ganguly 7
Balachandra Akhil c Ponting b Agarkar 0
Ashley Noffke run out (Agarkar/Saha) 9
Praveen Kumar not out 18
Zaheer Khan b Ganguly 3
Sunil Joshi c McCullum b Shukla 3
Extras: (lb 8, w 11) 19
Total: (all out in 15.1 overs) 82

Fall of wickets: 1-4 (Dravid, 1.1 overs), 2-9 (Kohli, 2.2), 3-24 (Kallis, 4.5), 4-24 (Jaffer, 5.2), 5-38 (Boucher, 7.5), 6-38 (Akhil, 8.2), 7-43 (White, 8.6), 8-57 (Noffke, 11.1), 9-70 (Khan, 13.1)

Bowling:
Ashok Dinda 3 0 9 2 (2w)
Ishant Sharma 3 0 7 1 (1w)
Ajit Agarkar 4 0 25 3 (4w)
Sourav Ganguly 4 0 21 2 (1w)
Laxmi Ratan Shukla 1.1 0 12 1

Result: Kolkata Knight Riders won by 140 runs
Man of the Match: Brendon McCullum (New Zealand)

Suresh Menon and Revathi Back Together

Suresh Menon is going to start a production of a Hindi film and his ex-wife Revathy is all set and getting ready to direct it. This sounds a bit unusal and strange because both of them had recently announced that they were going to split and came together SICA awards.

No OBC quota in IIMs, AIIMS

K Venugopal, one of India's highly respected lawyers told rediff.com on Thursday, "According to today's judgment, the Indian Institute of Management and All India Institute of Medical Sciences will not have any reservation for Other Backward Classes."

Venugopal appeared in this landmark hearing in the Supreme Court on behalf of the Junior Doctors Association of AIIMS, New Delhi.

Explaining the reason behind it, he said, "Justices Arijit Pasayat, C K Thakker and Dalveer Bhandari has clearly said in their judgment that you ceased to be OBC when you are educated and attain graduation. Test of the OBC is social and educational backwardness. It says "and", that means if you are not educationally backward you are not OBC. The court has accepted the argument that if you are able to graduate you are not entitled to reservation."

"Not only IIMs, but even AIIMS and such other centres of higher learning will not have any OBC reservation," Venugopal added.

While putting the entire judgment in perspective Venugopal said, "This balanced judgment has scaled down the huge volume of OBC to the core level of OBC. This judgment has upheld the economic criteria of 1993 depriving large number of members of OBC from benefiting from reservation. It is a serious setback to the government who wanted to fill up prestigious institutes with OBC quotas. Today's judgment has kept graduation as the 'cut-off' point that will reduce the numbers of beneficiaries of OBC reservation."

"The 1993 criteria to decide 'creamy layer' amongst OBC section says that people with landed property, all government employees above Class II, all OBC families with monthly income of Rs 20,000 (gross annual income of Rs.2.5 lakh and above ) etc. are barred from availing any reservation from now onwards," Venugopal said.

Just enough food to last 2-3 months

The world had just about enough cereal stocks to feed the global population for two to three months. With a crisis looming worldwide, food prices too are far from coming down, the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organisation revealed .The rise in prices of food commodities all over the world will not ease in the short term in view of supply-demand situation,FAO director general Jacques Diouf told reporters after meeting agriculture minister Sharad Pawar.Diouf said the world has 4-5 million tonne of cereals stocks that can feed the global population for only 8-12 weeks.

The world food situation is very serious today with food riots reported from many countries like Egypt, Cameroon, Haiti, Burkina Faso and Senegal. The fear is that this may spread to other countries.World food prices have risen 45% in the last nine months and there are serious shortages of rice, wheat and maize.

The increasing demand from developing countries, particularly in China and India, and diversion of food grains towards production of bio-fuels to rising commodity prices across the world.However, Pawar expressed confidence that India's food situation was comfortable."We have over half a million tonne of food grain surplus than the buffer norms as on April 1," Pawar said.

According to Food Corporation of India, the wheat stock as on April 1 is 5.5 MT against the buffer norm of 4 MT.

Yaaradi Nee Mohini Review

The freshness of the lead pair or their on - screen vibes light up the screen and the impact is sustained till intermission time.Yaaradi Nee Mohini (U), remade from Telugu, has gloss and glamour ,sheen and sophistication as represented by its heroine Nayantara.Looking chic and expressive ,she's Mohini indeed!.

Despite attending interview day in and day out ,vasu(Dhanush) is a happy-golucky guy till he falls hook line and sinker for Keerthi (Nayantara).That she is to marry his close friend Cheenu ,comes as a shock.At this juncture,the narratio gets trite mainly because there's nothing very new in what happens.The turn of events and pitfalls that rises their head now and then.

It is an excellant role (of Danush's Dad) and raghuvaran lives it to the hit.the dad-son bonding that runs through the relationship is unique .These are sequences in which Danush and Raghuvaran excel.Raghuvaran's utterance seem to convey a sense of forebonding about his real life end.Incedentally ,Selvaraghaven's dialog is a mojor plus of Yaaradi.......Healthy rumours in parts is platable ,yet certain village sequence in the name of fun are downright disgusting.

T.Santhanam's are deserves special mention 'Ponmegamae' is a littering refrain with worthy lyrics .Director Mithran Jawahar could have worked more with the screenplay writer on the consistency aspect.What begins with a breezy note ,dwindles down to the medicore again,but reaches an end that is rather vague.