GQ2019 - Of Reads & Dollars & Rupees

Apologies for not getting back earlier.

GQ2019, ended after that fabulous final!

Quiz Prizes

My favourite part is always the quiz & due to unforeseen circumstances, we could do only a handful of questions this time around - 11 only :(

While I love all the questions, the Roewe & Loewe gave me a bit more fun!

As promised, the winners - Manikandan P, Arun Jayaraman, Sivamani K, AngelAsh - get books! Hope you enjoy it!! Look out for some couriers...

Settlement:

Thanks to all the winners for having donated all their winnings to the charities of choice & others who had donated over and above what they had to contribute!

With 44 people taking part in the #GuessWorks, this has been the biggest GQ that I have ever conducted.

In all we collected had SGD 900/- & INR 9,000/- that got donated to Morning Star Community Services and Kalki Krishnamurthy Memorial Trust 

Initially, we thought that we would donate only to the SG-based charity; but then due to FX issues, we decided that we will get an Indian charity in as well.

Thanks to Manikandan P for fronting the Indian donation part.

The receipts are shown below.

And the details of the individual donations. 

Forgive any miscalculations.

But I think I have erred on the positive side :)

THANKS A LOT FOR YOUR FANTASTIC PARTICIPATION!!

Final: You Make Your Own Luck!

I want to write about Air India.
I want to write about #CWC19Final.

For a change the Air India was on time - if  you consider 30 minutes delay as within tolerance limits :)

But New Zealand could score not many more than their semi-final attempt.

The service was good. Food better. Stewards were pleasant. A bit of banter with the passengers as well (Whiskey se kya loge? with a tinge of wink in the voice)...

The Fielding was good. Bowling better. Kane was pleasant. A bit of banter with the umpires and Stokes as well (I have to apologise to Kane forever for that boundary! said Stokes)

Apologies. I really did not want to write about cricket. But it crept in without my knowledge. 😃

Such was the beauty of the game. So many fabulous ironies and delicious what-ifs which could have changed life throughout the tournament.

What-If...

...Trent Boult had touched the rope while completing that Brathwaite catch just like he did yesterday for Stokes?
...Guptill had thrown that ball at MSD's bat instead of pinging the stumps a la yesterday? 
...Kohli had the 'Umpire's Call' in his favour than Boult's - just like Jason Roy did?
...Dharmasena could have discerned the act of throwing more accurately?
...Stokes did not have the bad Karma from the WCT20 final where he conceded 4-sixes to Brathwaite (yup, remember the name! Thanks Bishop)


And please do not blame the rules. After Ben Johnson was stripped off his 1988 Olympics 100m Gold for having consumed stanozolol, the great decathlete Daley Thompson commented: 'Don't bull shit around. Ultimately, you are the one who shows your bum for the injection. (Therefore, you better know what goes in!)'

Similarly, the rule has been there for more than 8 years if I am not mistaken. So far, no one even bothered to raise a whimper about it. Now, all and sundry wants to comment. May be it is not right. But to call @ICC names is classic keyboard-warriorism!

England made their own luck. Stokes is a beauty - What a great REDEMPTION!
Archer, Plunkett and Wood were amazing; not to mention the JasJon pair & don't forget those 17 sixers by Morgan ;)

And as everyone including that great astrologer from India said, Kane Williamson is the man to be emulated. May be New Zealand should be anointed the Happiest Nation in the World! Move over, Tibet! Imagine Kane and MSD in a team!! #CoolMax

An unforgettable end to a fabulous tournament. As usual, everyone had their own opinions on how the tournament had to be run (reserve days! head-to-heads and not net-run-rate! favouritism!...) Easier said that done, in my opinion. I might sound establishmentarian (I wanted to use that word for so long now!) - but it takes so much planning and foresight to execute such tournaments & you simply can't please everyone. The simple fact that ICC managed to get the Mathur family semi-final tickets makes them ok in my books!

I enjoyed the tournament as much as life allowed me to. 🙏


Guess Section

The unexpected results of the final match threw the guess section into a bit of a disarray.
Yet, just like ICC, I had to stick to the rules and as a result, quite a few got to share the moolah including the $25 bonus.

The final status is shown below.

A fabulous run by Arunsankar who was languishing in red for a number of matches. Then Lady Luck smiled on him - only for him to top the table. It ain't over until...

Quiz Section

The eleventh question was a good stumper.

The five sequences of letters and numbers are indeed addresses as several of you guessed.

They are:

NN12 8TN - Silverstone - F1 British GP location

SW19 5AE - Wimbledon - Where Joker won over Fedex yesterday (another cliffhanger!)

NW8 8QN - Of course the Mecca of Cricket - The Lord's!

K56 A022 - Rush in Dublin, Ireland; Eoin Morgan grew up there.

3112 - Tauranga, a city in North Island, New Zealand; Kane W is from there!

Naturally, with all of the sporting events/personalities associated with July 14th 2019, i.e. yesterday, the odd one out that I had chosen was 3112 - due to the address being not in the UK.

Manikandan (5) got it right after a few taps here and there; ArunJayaraman (4), K Sivamani (3.5), Siva* (3) gave partial answers and rounded up the Quiz portion of GQ2019. Well done, folks.

With that the final Quiz status is:

Congratulations to the top 4 (with a tie for the third place!)

I was expecting a tough fight between AngelAsh & Manikandan - but it was not to be. Impressive work by ArunJayaraman, Hardy Jadeja and K Sivamani too. 

More details on the book prizes later.

It was one heaven of a ride! Thanks for the support & as I always say...

Keep Smiling & Have Fun!!

Semi#2: When Rolls Royces flow!

It was always on.

While Australia was running on fumes (what they call as kaali perungaya dabba காலிப் பெருங்காய டப்பா in Tamil), England was purring like the proverbial cyan Rolls Royces.

Whether it was bowling, batting or fielding or even supporting (was I sensitive or what? whatever the Aussies did well drew ZERO applause!), England was not just streets but towns ahead.

And like true sour-grapes-foxes, the Aussies immediately said that they are more worried about the Ashes than the World Cup. Pchaaah!

It is definitely England’s WC to lose. But the BlackCaps should never be written off, especially if you believe that astrologer from India who predicted the semi-finalists accurately in January itself & said that NZ will win it with Kane Williamson being the man-of-the-series!! WOW!

Indians can lick their wounds by saying that they only lost to the eventual finalists – so, whatever the ICC ranking says, they are technically No. 3 only 😊

Guess Section

Not much of a crowd after the bumper crop of the SF1.

Yet…

Tomorrow’s Guess will cost $4 again; but there is a bonus of $25 for the winners from me!

Quiz Section

What are these? Find the odd one out. Why? 5 points.

• NN128TN
• SW195AE
• NW88QN
• K56A022
• 3112

Have fun & keep smiling!!

Semi-Final 1 - India Needed Another Gujju!

In a parallel universe, right now Kohli and his men are making merry after winning the first semi-final.

But in this universe where we are living and dying, the only thing that the #MenInBlue are able to enjoy today would have been some ‘bits and pieces’ of Jaddu magic. But then, we needed at least one more Gujju, preferably ‘the’ Gujju!

The intent was there.

The classic-Dhoni take-it-as-deep-as-Mariana-Trench was there (only that this time – as in a few times over the last couple of years, the oxygen cylinders were a bit faulty!)

But, what can you do, if your top-three score a big Naamam (Nelson in Tamil!) and are back in the hut even before you can say ‘Kiwis are underdogs!’

Quick post-mortem of the Indian performance. Suffice it to say, they played well given that their batting was always shaky except for Rohit and Kohli. Go look for some good solid batsmen, BCCI!

Also, as the wife said sometime back, there was too much of negative energy around the team 😊

• Rayudu-Vijayshankar
• Pant-Dhoni
• Dhoni-Everyone
• Jadhav-DK
• Rohit-Kohli (don’t be fooled by the ‘he is the best ODI player’ baloney! Did you notice that Rohit was the only one who wasn’t listening to Kohli during the team huddle today just before the resumption!? #Conspiracy)

Clean them up, the team is on the right path.

Oh, by the way, bring the IPL-like, Qualifier, Eliminator concept. Makes it more consistent & kinda eliminates the freak results 😊

Onward to 2023!

Meanwhile, my bet is on a new team to win the World Cup; heart says Kiwi – mind says England. Game on!

Talking of bets…

Guess Section

Arunsankar cleaned up the pool with a precise guess – though he had a few other hedges. But at least this brings him into black.

Let us see what happens in the ENG vs AUS game.

Quiz Section

Only Sivamani got the right answer & 3 points. It is an anagram of the Nato Phonetic Alphabet of the four pictures there… Foxtrot (dance), Oscar, Lima (that beautiful Peruvian city), Whiskey (sure you all got tipsy!) – FOLW on anagramming gives WOLF (hence the #Wallstreet reference!)

The last quiz question will be released tomorrow after the Semi-final.

Have fun!

First Semi: Kiwis vs Peacocks!

On Saturday night, a billion prayers went up from between the longitudes of 68 and 97 east.

‘Oh, Lord! Please make sure that the brash Ozzies are shown their place by the poor South Africans. After all, South Africa is close to our heart, aren’t they? Didn’t we play them first after their apartheid ban was lifted? Didn’t one Mohan Gandhi earned his chops in SA by being thrown out of trains and such? Let them teach a lesson to the men in yellow.’

And the Lord obliged. Though I am not sure whether the prayers were for India to win the Cup or India to avoid England in the semis. If it is the former, then I am fine. But I have a feeling that being brought up in the Agile world (read as Jugaad world), the Indian supporters would have prayed for the MVP – Most Viable Play for satisfying the immediate needs. That is for another day for them perhaps!

Anyway, the Ind v SL was a standard fare. It is like playing against some chess experts. It will be almost as if you have a chance for the first 20-30 moves. Then all hell will break loose! The edifice that you had ‘carefully’ built will crumble in no time only to see a 0-1 result. So, Indian juggernaut rolls into the semis.

At this stage, they look menacing with a few fangs missing (read as the middle-order muddles). Though the Jadeja experiment seems to be working in my opinion.

New Zealand will be hoping for a Guptill and Taylor show apart from the Kane Williamson special.

More odds are on India. Less evens are on the Kiwis.

Guess Section

The group stage saw a few high-fliers.

Also, included are the semi-final guess positions.

Interestingly no one gave a chance to Bangladesh and Afghanistan! The tigers played well to finish above the fancied Windies!

Ganesh, Hardy and Raghavan made the most out of this exercise.

Onto the Semi-Final #1.

Each guess is at SGD 4.

Quiz Section

It was almost as if the previous clue picture did not exist at all OR people got fatigued.

Setting up the question for one more time.

Which Animal?

Clues: #Nato #Alphabets #WallStreet

Still at 3 points.

Enjoy and Keep Smiling.

Match 42 & 43: Five, Seven, Nine, Ten!

Quiz Section


Now for Question No. 10

• Which Animal? #anagram [3 points]

And for Q9, despite the pictorial clue, only K Sivamani came close to give the right answer and gets 1 point in addition to ArunJayaraman who got the full 3. Answer below.

Summary

Looking back, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh and West Indies would rue all the chances that they missed. But then, that is life. We shed tears for the missed chances, missed calls, missed meetings, missed AAPL surges... you sure do get the drift!

Sticking to cricket, Pakistan was good yesterday and like Sarfaraz said, 'If you make 500, how can you expect the opponent to score only 100!', it was an impossible task and as the US Marine axiom goes 'If it is impossible, it takes a bit longer.' Meaning that it will not happen during this #CWC19. May be 60 years later when cricket matches are played in the moon/Mars ;)

Afghanistan did do well; Rashid was a big let down to me. Their fielding more so. They need to go back and replenish the cupboard with good batting talent & someone to whip them up to shape on the fielding front. I can't help think that they have been too badly influenced by Pakistani cricket - bad governance; poor fielding; mystery bowlers; mercurial performances... But then the alternative of following BCCI isn't great either :))

Bangladesh is playing like the India team of the late-80s & the 90s. Too much weighed down by the expectation of 170 million tigers who are braying for everyone's blood - their enemy's before the game & their own's after the game. Too dependent on Shakib (what a dream run that he has had!) & why do I see a resemblance of Dhoni in Mashrafe - sell-by-date already reached but still running on fumes!

West Indies are probably the worst of the lot. May be some one should have told them that the 50-over game consists of five 10-over games with 3 batsmen in each of the tens. May be they would have heard. May be they would have played properly. All in all, TEMPERAMENT is one commodity that was seriously lacking in them - except perhaps Captain Holder! Expect more exodus to T20 leagues soon.

South Africa is likely to have a completely new team soon. More Kolpaks in the pipeline. New Order Cometh!

Guess Section

Before the last two games, here is the latest status.

Keep Smiling
Have Fun.

Match 41: England to the Fore!

Quiz Section

Though ArunJayaraman got the right answer, I decided to keep it open for one more day - albeit for 1 point.

The picture below is the clue!

****

After all the prayers by all of Pakistan and a few other countries, the Empire Struck Back & how!!

Roy and Bairstow (almost sounds like a legal firm!) caused enough damage to the Kiwis that they pretty much threw in the towel at the half-way stage. Then those two run outs snuffed any light that they might have seen at the end of the tunnel.

Now for Pakistan to score some infinite runs of zero balls OR get all Bangladeshi wickets for zero or some such thing to qualify for the semis. So long, dear Pakistan. #StrangerThingsCanWait

Guess Section

Probably for the first time, the six-hitting capabilities of both the teams were over-estimated and it almost became a socialist pool for the last game. 

(For a change, decided to sort from smallest to highest ;))

Enjoy and keep smiling.