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Akmal assault wins it against hapless Indian bowlers

A day before the World Twenty20 begins in Sri Lanka, India's bowlers failed to defend 185 in a warm-up game after R Ashwin had reduced Pakistan to 91 for 5. Kamran Akmal's sustained assault finished the game with nearly an over left. Barring Ashwin, Kamran toyed with India's bowling as he swung six after meaty six in the company of Shoaib Malik, who bettered even Kamran with a strike-rate over 200 for his 37. What will worry India further is that they lost despite the use of five frontline bowlers, the warm-up game effectively allowing them the Supersub.

Pakistan won't be complaining, though. after an indisciplined show from their bowlers, they had their task cut out when they came out to bat. They started in belligerent fashion, but lost two wickets in Ashwin's first over. Kamran, though, made sure the momentum was not lost. He began with a good-looking cover-drive for a couple first ball, and lofted the second ball he faced for a six.

Harbhajan Singh and Yuvraj Singh then suffered at Kamran's hands before Ashwin came back to turn it around it with a mid-innings spell. In the 10th over he had Hafeez and Shahid Afridi caught at the boundary, before diving full length to his right to catch Umar Akmal off his own bowling. At that stage it seemed Pakistan had messed the chase up by playing around too much with the batting order, but Malik and Kamran had other ideas.

Sensible batting followed before the turnaround started in the 15th over when Kamran swung Zaheer Khan for successive sixes over long-on, and Malik drove him for four over mid-off. While runs seemed all too easy, the key over remained Ashwin's. All Indian eggs seemed to be in his basket as Kamran and Malik basically had their way with the others. By the time Ashwin came on to bowl the 18th over, the equation had changed completely.

Pakistan needed 29 now, and they could afford to take it easy in Ashwin's over. They were content with risk-free seven runs off his over, knowing well they could hit the others. And hit others they did. Kamran walked way across to Balaji in the 19th over to sweep a low full toss for a square leg over six, and Malik matched it with a loft over long-off to leave only six to get off the last over. Irfan conceded it through one loopy full toss.

It wasn't all doom and gloom for India, though, as one of their main batsmen extended his golden form, and another found some much-needed form. Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma powered to fifties in a century partnership that seemed to have given India enough. While Kohli's was just an extension of an incredible run, Rohit's showing in both warm-up matches - he made 37 against Sri Lanka on Saturday - will be a big relief for the management. The only downside of Kohli and Rohit's dominance was that Yuvraj Singh has now faced just 17 deliveries in both warm-up games put together.

Kohli's supreme touch was evident when he nonchalantly clipped his first delivery through midwicket for four in the fifth over. His confidence spurred him to step out consistently to the Pakistan spinners. Rohit found confidence as his innings grew, and even overtook Kohli on the scoreboard briefly. Their partnership of 127 came at close to 10 runs an over. Like Ashwin for India, the Pakistan bowling unit had Saeed Ajmal fighting a lone, losing battle. He went at under a run a ball while others bowled poorly under pressure.

Kohli and Rohit found a way around Ajmal quite appreciably, but they were to find out the same done to their bowling unit, only much more emphatically. 

Courtesy: ESPNcricinfo

Should lunch breaks be mandatory?

People are always being told that lunch is under threat from workaholism, but would a compulsory long break actually mean we achieved more. Former Wall Street trader Frank Partnoy thinks so.

Most of us rush through lunch. We might have a sandwich at our desk or grab a quick salad with a colleague. Or perhaps we skip lunch altogether. After all, breakfast is widely regarded as the most important meal of the day. Dinner is often the most enjoyable. Lunch gets short shrift.
Lunch also has suffered from the crush of technology. Email, social media, and 24-hour news all eat away at lunch. Even when we have lunch alone, we rarely spend the whole time quietly reading or thinking. We are more connected to our hand-held electronic devices than our own thoughts.
Given the fast pace of modern life, it is worth considering whether employers should require a substantial lunch break.
Or, if a mandatory lunch seems too draconian, perhaps employers could give workers incentives to take time off for lunch, just as in some countries they subsidise or reward regular visits to the gym or a physician. Would we benefit from a long intraday pause?

One obvious reason to do lunch is to slow down and gain some perspective. If we burrow into work, and don't come up for air during the day, we will have a hard time thinking strategically or putting our daily tasks into broader context.

By taking a lunch break, we can think outside the box. In the interviews I conducted for my book, I was struck by how many senior leaders stressed the importance of strategic "downtime" - lunch or some other block of an hour or more per day - to break up their thinking and spur them to be more strategic.
Where we have lunch can be almost as important as whether we have it. If we sit down at a real restaurant and take time to chat leisurely with colleagues, we are more likely to slow down than if we dash to a fast food chain. In fact, a fast food lunch can be more harmful than no lunch at all.
Although a mandatory lunch could generate substantial benefits, we are unlikely to do it on our own. When we have the choice, many of us see the salient costs of a leisurely lunch, but not the benefits.
To encourage people to enjoy the benefits of lunch, we need to change the lunch default rule with the kind of "libertarian paternalism" advocated by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein in their book Nudge. Just as they would impose a default rule requiring people to save money, while permitting them to "opt out," employers could do the same for lunch. People could skip lunch if they wanted, but they would have to take some action - fill out a form, or log on to a website.
And it wouldn't necessarily create an unproductive 90-minute block. Employers could ensure someone is on staff at all times by staggering lunch periods (11:30-13:00; 1200-13:30 and 12:30-14:00), like schools do.
Finally, lunch breaks could create new opportunities for part-time work by institutionalising two half-time shifts - one in the morning and one in the afternoon. Parents with newborns might choose to work just one of those times. It might become easier and more acceptable to become a halftime employee if there were a clean, natural split between morning and afternoon.
If our leaders want to improve economic growth and productivity, they could start by experimenting with a policy tool that is simpler than fiscal spending and less risky than monetary stimulus. How about lunch?

Pakistani stocks hit four-year high

KARACHI: Pakistani stocks closed at a four-year high on Friday after investors were encouraged by a slowdown in inflation, dealers said.
The Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE) benchmark 100-share index closed 0.90 per cent, or 137.87 points, higher at 15,391.58, on volume of 13.12 million shares.
Pakistan’s Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose 9.1 per cent in August from a year earlier, the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics said on Friday. The year-on-year rate was 9.60 per cent in July.
“A further slowdown in inflation numbers enticed investors to take fresh positions,” said Samar Iqbal, a trader at Topline Securities.
In the currency market, the Pakistani rupee ended slightly weaker at 94.56/94.61 to the dollar, compared to Thursday’s close of 94.48/94.54.
Overnight rates in the money market ended at 10.40 per cent compared with 7.50 on Thursday.
Source: Dawn News
Link: http://dawn.com/2012/08/31/pakistani-stocks-hit-four-year-high/