If you ever wanted to master that art - see the Indian cricket team playing a few matches. If Rahul Dravid or any of his teammates write a book on - How to loose a match? - it would become an instant success in India. Well, sometimes I feel - they would be better off, if they start doing that only.
I didn't see India bowling, but I heard that it was good. Australia were less then 100 for 5. Good early wickets.Yet they were able to score more then 200. Its something that keeps happening with fair regularity. We getting a excellent bowling start - knock of almost half the team in less then 20 overs and yet after that the grip is lost and the opponent is allowed to recover to the maximum extent. Well, something about Indians having a big heart comes into play I suppose. They can't crush anyone ruthlessly, without mercy.

In India's batting - top order was gone even before the spectators could blink their eyes. It was again left to the likes of Dhoni, Mongia and Raina to atleast provide some decency to the scorecard, forget about winning. They did a good job at that too - but they have many things lacking. Both of them(Suresh and Dhoni) threw away their wickets in a reckless manner. I didn't see Suresh getting out, but yes Dhoni lost his head after getting a few deliveries above shoulder height and the end result - he packed himself up back to the pavillion - exactly what the Australians wanted. Mongia was the lone fiigher, who did give a great performance but eventually he was left alone, without any partners at the other end. I feel, when India were 8 down - he made a big mistake by taking singles and letting the tailenders get the strike. He should have himself taken all the strike - should have taken only 2 runs or tried to get boundries and taken single in the second last or last ball only. There were plenty of overs left and it could have been easily done. There is an interview with Mongia in TOI today in which he is saying that he had faith in the tailenders. I disagree wth him.Would he have done the same thing if that was a World Cup final match? Imagine a heart surgeon letting an intern handle a major complication while performing a heart surgery, just because he had faith in him?
Oh yes, Why am I being so harsh on the Indian team? - afterall they are human - everyone makes mistakes. It is easy to say things sitting here - but it would have been very difficult to face the pressure and be in the middle of things.
That argument was totally banished by my mind, firstly because they are professionals not some street cricket playing team - they have been trained to handle pressure and play at world class level. Secondly, once in a while - some mistakes are acceptable, but this is happening with fair regularity now.
I had stopped seeing cricket matches for quite a while now - saw this one after a long time and sadly it turned out to be a big disappointment. Well! I should have expected that only.

Till friday night, my laptop was running fine. As usual, I slept very late - it was weekend ahead - How could I have slept before 2 a.m.? The next day, I got up around 1 p.m. and the first thing I did, was to switch on my laptop. The OS started and asked for the password to login. I entered it with half-closed eyes and pressed the Enter key - but what the hell! - nothing happened. Then I re-entered it and again nothing happened. I thought probably, I am still sleeping and all this is happening in my dream. I rubbed my eyes again and tried to enter the password and was also now sure that I am awake and actually pushing the keys. I realized that I was pressing the keys but nothing was being typed on the monitor. I tried pressing some other keys - nothing appeared to work. The keyboard of my laptop was dead.
I shut down the laptop and restarted it - maybe it had some problem while startup. No use - keyboard was dead - no arrow keys, no tab, nothing working except the on/off key. I couldn't even enter the CMOS settings - it also requires F10 to be pressed.
After trying for sometime, I realized that I'll have to call some serviceman. Desktop PC is fine - I have opened it countless times - its nut and bolts - every chip - everything inside it. There was a time when my room was filled with desktop components littered all over the place. But laptop is another thing - I didn't want to open it myself.
It was raining heavily on saturday, so no serviceman was ready to come. On Sunday it was a holiday, so everyone said that they can come only on monday. In the meantime, I tried to run the laptop many times. Nothing seemed to work. I even put my laptop upside down for 4-5 hours thinking that probably the plate below the keys had been dislocated and it might correct itself. A silly thing to think and do, but anyway - What was the harm in taking the chance? As expected - it didn't work.
On monday, I had to goto office and I didn't want anyone to open the laptop in my absence, so the serviceman could come only after my return from office in the evening.
In the office, my office desktop machine, started shutting down on it own - without any warning or anything - whenever it felt like. By afternoon, it refused to even start. That had to be sent to hardware department for repair. Hardware guy have not been able to correct the problem so far.

In the evening, when I came back from office, the first thing to do was to call the serviceman. He was't there, so I tried to start my laptop again and to my utter surprise, its running fine since then - no problem - touchwood. Infact, I am typing my post on the same very laptop and using its very keyboard itself.

The latet theory is - "mere laptop ko thand lag gyi...delhi me ekdum se thand hui to bechara mera laptop zhel nehi paya. Ab dhere dhere usne adjust kar liya hai".

Well , I am thinking of asking my office hardware guy to keep my office desktop m/c in a warm place for a few hours - probably thats the main problem with it too. Hehehaha