Life Etc Etc

Until Next Time, Your favorite quotemaster.

This was a nail biter which will be remembered for the way the fielding team came back into the match after the chasing side almost ran away with the result. Here are three very interesting parallels from yesterday's encounter between SRH and RR:   Make the second 10 count: Sunrisers Hyderabad only made 75 runs in their first 10 overs. In the next 10 they smashed 126 setting a target of 201 runs for the opposition. While bowling second, they gave away 100 runs for the loss of two wickets in the first 10 overs but launched a rear guard to take five wickets for 100 runs in the next 10 overs to restrict Rajasthan Royals to 200/7 . Thus SRH's path to victory was built on making the second half of each innings count. Revenge 16 years in the making : When Rajasthan Royals met Deccan Chargers in the inaugural IPL at Hyderabad, they coasted to victory through Shane Warne's final over heroics . Here's a comparison between this match and the one from all those years ago: Royals

Plot: Perry Mason receives an unexpected call from Ellen Adair, a lady of queenly bearing with a dark past. Ellen was a beauty contestant who suddenly disappeared at the height of her fame. Now, there's a tabloid which is planning to run an inside scoop on what might have happened to her. Ellen wants Mason's help in ensuring that none of the details of her colorful past come out into the open and her identity remains a secret. Despite not receiving satisfactory answers to his preliminary questions, Mason agrees to help out his new client and promptly shuts down the newspaper from running the article. But the matter doesn't end there, the newspaper sends a detective to negotiate a fee with Mason for his client's compliance. Mason immediately senses that there's more to the matter than what's being laid on the table. With the assistance of Paul Drake, his trusted detective aide, Mason finds out that a very powerful family from the same town as Ellen Adair is desp

I guess it was destiny that the 150th post of Life Etc Etc had to be about Shri Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj. Shivaji rose like a phoenix from humble beginnings in the 17th century and laid the foundation for the Maratha empire which changed the course of  history. The history I studied at school restricted his life and achievements to a single chapter and quite erroneously credited the British Rule with the decline of the Mughal empire. I found out later on that it was in fact the Marathas under the able leadership of Shivaji who hastened the Mughal empire's downfall. They were the preeminent power whom the British had to checkmate in order to wrest control of the Indian subcontinent. Despite such monumental achievements my history syllabi had very little information about Shivaji. It was therefore a no-brainer for me to pick up this book and discover for myself why the history of India would never be complete without the mention of Shivaji.  In order to understand any historical c

We live in the times of the antihero. Grey is the new white now and it has become increasingly cool for our protagonists to repeatedly toe the line between good and bad. Nobody stands for anything anymore which makes it all the more difficult to root for such characters. That's probably the reason why I had to go back to Perry Mason . Mason, his confidante Della Street and the ever dependable Paul Drake are a crimefighting unit whom you can get behind in their pursuit of justice. A Perry Mason book comes with the guarantee of justice being served at the end. With this one, I just had to find out how the justice was meted out to the perpetrators.     Plot: John Witherspoon, the wealthy rancher doesn't think too much of his daughter Lois' love interest, Marvin Adams, a science student with no discernible family lineage. When Witherspoon digs into the past of his daughter's suitor, he finds that Marvin's father was convicted of murdering his business partner. Unable t

"You aren't done until you tell yourself that you are done!" September 2022 Joe Joyce outlasts Joseph Parker in a war of attrition. Joyce keeps coming forward taking everything that Parker threw at him and delivers a vicious knockout to end the contest. This was the first knockout of Parker's career and many thought such a deflating loss would end his stint as a respected heavyweight contender. Joyce on the other hand was crowned as the mandatory for the WBO Heavyweight Championship. He was proclaimed as the rising star of the division and a serious threat to the reigning champions. April 2023 With the mandatory title fight still a long way away, Joe Joyce took on the dangerous but unproven former Olympic Silver Medalist, Zhilei Zhang in a stay busy fight. To everyone's dismay, Joyce wilted under the onslaught of Zhang's power punching who took the possession of the WBO Interim Heavyweight title and the mandatory status. Like Parker, this was the first sto

India wins another Test and wraps up another series. With the series score line reading 3-1 , I was wondering how fortunate we are today to be watching Test matches which actually produce a result. This was really not the case when I was a kid with many Tests ending in a stalemate. A draw, back then was considered to be an acceptable result and in many cases also treated on par with a victory. Those were the days when neither sporting declarations nor spirited chases were in vogue. A Test match on the 5th day would typically meander meaninglessly allowing those playing to get to some personal milestones and thankfully end before the scheduled close with the customary handshakes of opposing teams. That's probably the reason why I don't remember too many drawn test matches from that era. The only memorable draw that comes to my mind was the one in Sydney where Vihari and Ashwin stalled Australia's charge . Since a draw has become somewhat of a rarity these days, I wanted to