Year of Perplexity

As the Decade of the 2010s is coming to an end its the time to reflect on what we have seen and wonder what lies ahead in the 2020s. This blog existed throughout this decade if you would like to ruminate over the views over most of the events in this decade. Climate Change is an issue of concern as we faced extremes resulting in loss and devastation. Economies are sluggish as trade war has made its impact. Polarization is extreme across most civilized countries of the globe.  The Middle East keeps on burning to result in new threats of war and terror.  On the other hand, we found the enormous change in lives thanks to SMAC:   Social Media, Mobility, Cloud and Analytics. AI and Machine learning have opened up new horizons as well as created new threats.   Hope we find ourselves placed better on 31^st Dec 2029 than what we are today. Are we better than what we were on 31^st Dec 2009? I still remember ending of 80s decade (on a star-studded night camped at Rajmachi under stars with friends, 90s (located at Kasauni in the Himalayas experiencing the chill). On 31^st Dec 2009, I was in Colombo. It just seems yesterday as I today write this overlooking NYC

30 minutes

When India won a closely fought ODI series vs west indies, last of the assignments of 2019, Virat Kohli said in the post-match presentation that India dominated all the year except those fateful 30 minutes on 9th July. In those 30 mins, India lost the top four batsmen and India's weak underbelly which was not tested till that date thanks to dominant performances of the top order and wrong selection/management issues were exposed. And thus went down the dreams of million Indian fans who wanted to win ICC trophy which they sought after for eight years after that memorable Mumbai night. 

The decade of 2010 also comes to an end with team India dominating all three formats. In Tests, India is a settled unit. In Limited overs still, we struggle to find the perfect combination which we tried to find after WC2011.

To summarize 2019, the most important highlight is the emergence of the all-conquering bowling unit across all three formats.