Smile Please Balaji is back

Lakshmipathy Balaji’s famous 1000 watt smile will be back on display on the Indian cricket field.‘Bala’as he is fondly known made his way into the side after Munaf Patel flew back home due to injury.Incidentally Balaji played his last international match against Sri Lanka in 2005 at Dambulla.With a modified action that has worked well for him so far,it is heartening to see the smile back where it belongs.

Lakshmipathy Balaji made his ODI debut against the West Indies in 2002.He was baptized by fire going for 44 runs off four overs in a game that the Men-in-Blue lost to Carl Hooper’s men. But the turning point came in the series against Pakistan in 2003-04.Balaji swung the cricket ball well to ensure the Pakistani cricketers did not make the pitch their home. Also that famous six off Shoaib Akthar is still counted by cricket fans amongst famous cricketing memories.

But then came the time that every fast bowler dreads every time he bends his back to bowl. Balaji had played the Indian Oil Cup in Sri Lanka where India lost the final to the hosts. When he returned he had a career-threatening back injury for which he went under the knife, one that kept him out of cricket headlines for two years before he returned to play for the IPL finalists-the Chennai Super Kings.

Did someone say return of the King?Balaji sizzled for the SuperKings team taking the IPL’s first hat-trick and finishing with 11 wickets.The smile that had vanished for two years had returned. But Balaji did not stop there; he carried forward the momentum to the Ranji trophy. He took 36 wickets and went with his team-mates to the semi-final.The numbers kept him in the good books of the selectors and he earned a call up to the national squad profiting from Munaf Patel’s injury.

While he may not be playing the third ODI,Balaji must be happy to be back in the blues. With a lot of cricket coming up in 2009,including the IPL where he announced his return, Balaji knows that he has made it to the right place at the right time.All he needs to do is to keep bowling well and wipe the smiles off all the batsmen’s faces while keeping his.It is time to say cheese for Lakshmipathy Balaji.

IPL is back !!!!!

The excitement and expectations from the IPL increase as the second edition approaches. The auction for the foreign players begins on the sixth of February. This year’s edition will see England being represented by Kevin Pietersen & Co for the first time, whereas Shoaib Akthar’s aeroplane celebration wil be missed due to the ban on Pakistani players. Nevertheless here is a look at some of the special moments that clearly made IPL 2008 cricket’s new avtaar.

Behind the action

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Pietersen, Clarke have costliest base price at IPL auction
England’s dethroned captain Kevin Pietersen and Australian vice captain Michael Clarke are to command the top two reserve prices of 1.35 and one million USD, respectively, during the second Indian Premier League players’ auction to be held in Goa on February 6.

England’s charismatic all rounder Andrew Flintoff’s base price has been pegged at USD 950,000 in the auction for which a final list of 43 players nominated by the eight franchisees to go under the auctioner’s hammer was announced by the IPL today.

As per the guidelines set by the Governing Council for the DLF IPL 2009, each franchisee will have a maximum purse of USD 2 million, less any amount spent on signing temporary replacements from last year to select the cricketers best suited for their team’s strategies.

A total of 15 Australians, four Bangladeshis, seven Englishmen, three New Zealanders, five South Africans, four Sri Lankans and five West Indians would go under the hammer, the IPL said.

The first IPL auction last year saw current Indian captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni being bought by Chennai Super Kings for a whopping USD 1.5 million, setting the benchmark for a tumultuous day of auctioning of top players from around the world.

The second-best signing was of controversial Australian all rounder Andrew Symonds who was bought by Deccan Chargers for USD 1.35 million.

These two players were the only millionaire signings last year in the inaugural edition of the Twenty20 League.

The second edition is set to kick off on April 10.

Final list of players nominated and their base prices in USD:
Australia: Aaron Bird 45,000, Brett Geeves 45,000, Bryce McGain 50,000, Daniel Harris 50,000, Dominic Thornley 50,000, George Bailey 50,000, Jonathan Moss 50,000, Michael Clarke 1,000,000, Michael Dighton 85,000, Michael Hill 50,000, Phil Jacques 100,000, Shane Harwood 75,000, Shaun Tait 250,000, Steven Smith 75,000 and Stuart Clark 250,000.

Bangladesh: Mashrafe Bin Mortaza 50,000, Mohammed Ashraful 75,000, Shakib Al Hasan 75,000 and Tamim Iqbal 50,000.

England: Andrew Flintoff 950,000, Kevin Pietersen 1,35,000, Luke Wright 150,000, Owais Shah 150,000, Paul Collingwood 250,000, Ravi Bopara 150,000 and Samit Patel 100,000.

New Zealand: James Franklin 50,000, Jesse Ryder 100,000 and Kyle Mills 150,000.

South Africa: Gulam Bodi 100,000, J P Duminy 300,000, Morne Van Wyk 100,000, Tyron Henderson 100,000 and Yusuf Abdullah 25,000.

Sri Lanka: Chamara Kapugedara 150,000, Kaushalya Weereratne 50,000, Nuwan Kulasekera 100,000 and Thilan Tushara 100,000.

West Indies: Dwayne Smith (To be confirmed), Fidel Edwards 150,000, Jerome Taylor (TBC), Kemar Roach 50,000 and Kieron Pollard 60,000.

India's first moon mission is world's 68th

Chandrayaan-1, that lifted off Wednesday morning from Sriharikota, is India's first and the world's 68th mission to the moon, the earth's closest celestial body which has fascinated children, scientists and poets alike.

"Through the ages, the moon, our closest celestial body, has aroused curiosity in our mind, far more than any other objects in the sky," says the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on its maiden moon mission.

The world's first moon mission was by the then Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) on Jan 2, 1959, followed two months later by the US on March 3.

Between them, the two countries have sent 62 missions to probe the moon with the US stealing a march over the then cold war rival USSR by landing a man on the moon on July 20, 1969.

Japan broke the monopoly of the two superpowers on Jan 24, 1990 by sending its spacecraft Hiten to orbit the moon. The European Space Agency launched its probe in September 2003. China sent its spacecraft Chang-e last year.

The first hard landing on the moon was on Sep 12, 1959 by Soviet Union's Luna 2.

The first photos from the moon were taken by Oct 4, 1959 from the Soviet spacecraft Luna 3.

On Jan 26, 1962, the US Ranger 3 missed the Moon by 36,793 km.

The Soviet Union's Luna 6 did worse on June 8, 1965 missing the moon by 160,000 km.

Luna 9 made up for it on Jan 31, 1966 by becoming the first spacecraft to soft land on the moon.

The Indian mission to the moon was proposed at a meeting of the Indian Academy of Sciences in 1999.

Then prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee announced the project was on course in his Independence Day speech on Aug 15, 2003.

The Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft is cuboid in shape, weighs 1,304 kg at launch and 590 kg at lunar orbit. It will carry 11 payloads, including six from abroad.


A canted single-sided solar array will generate required power for the spacecraft during its two-year mission. The solar array generates 700 watts of peak power. During eclipse the spacecraft will be powered by Lithium ion (Li-Ion) batteries.

The spacecraft employs an X-band, 0.7-metre diameter parabolic antenna for payload data transmission.

The Telemetry, Tracking & Command (TTC) communication is in S-band frequency and scientific payload data transmission in X-band frequency.

The spacecraft has three Solid State Recorders (SSRs) to record data from various payloads.

SSR-1 will store science payload data and has capability of storing 32 GB data.


The 8 GB SSR-2 will store science payload data along with spacecraft attitude information, satellite house keeping and other auxiliary data.

The third SSR with 10 GB SSR is for storing M3 (Moon Mineralogy Mapper) payload data.

On the ground, Chandrayaan-1 will be tracked by the Deep Space Station (DSN), Spacecraft Control Centre (SCC) and Indian Space Science Data Centre (ISSDC).

The spacecraft will blast off on an upgraded version of the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle, built first in the early 1990s by ISRO.

PSLV is ISRO's workhorse launch vehicle. The upgraded version, PSLV-C11, has a liftoff weight of 316 tonnes.

Chandrayaan-1 costs Rs.3.86 billion (about $76 million): Rs.530 million (about $11 million) for Payload development, Rs.830 million (about $17 million) for Spacecraft Bus, Rs.1 billion ($20 million) for Deep Space Network, Rs.1 billion ($20 million) for PSLV launch vehicle, and Rs.500 million ($10 million) for scientific data centre, external network support and programme management expenses.

India reached Moon

India's maiden moon probe crashed on to the lunar surface at 8.31 p.m. Friday, sending a wealth of data to its mother spacecraft Chandrayaan-1 during the 25 minutes of its useful life. India became the fourth country to send a probe to the moon.

The moon impact probe (MIP), which has the Indian tricolour painted on its four sides, will remain for all time to come on the Shackleton Crater region of the lunar south pole. It will never corrode due to the lack of atmosphere on the moon.

"We have given the moon to India," a beaming and excited chief of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) G. Madhavan Nair said minutes after the MIP landed. "The moon has been very favourable to us all through. We have travelled all the way to the moon," Nair told a crowded press conference at an ISRO base here as his fellow space scientists applauded.

The MIP has already sent "beautiful images with high resolution of the moon and their analysis will now begin", Nair said.

The around 35-kg MIP with three instruments took the images as it drifted towards the lunar surface detaching from India's first unmanned lunar spacecraft Chandrayaan-1 at 8.06 p.m.

The crash landing of the 375 mm x 375 mm x 470 mm MIP, a honeycomb structure carrying a radar altimeter, a video imaging system and a mass spectrometer, raised a cloud of dust that will be analysed by the scientists, yielding a host of data about the composition of the moon.

But well before that, the video imaging system and the mass spectrometer had obtained data that will enable the scientists to analyse if the moon has water, if it has anything that can be used as fuel for nuclear fusion, hopefully even the age of the moon.

Scientists at ISRO waited impatiently for the first batch of data sent by the MIP to Chandrayaan-1, as the spacecraft went behind the moon for an hour after the landing, while orbiting the Earth's natural satellite from 100 km above.

The landing of the MIP comes 50 years after the first man-made object landed on the lunar surface. The other countries that landed probes on the moon are the former USSR, the US and China.