The Indian Premier League (IPL) - economics

Today is the final cricket match between the Chennai superkings (led by M S Dhoni) and the Rajasthan Royals (led by Shane Warne)!

Redefining cricket has once again been attempted with great pomp and flourish deacades after the great Kerry Packer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerry_Packer) introduced the world series cricket in Australia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limited_overs_cricket).

Please also see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_cricket

Lalit Modi (the scion of the $2billion, Modi enterprise) has done just that with the fusion of India’s icons – the cricketers themselves who are auctioned, the owners of the teams (each IPL cricketing state has been bought out by the bigwigs), the Bollywood actors, the large # of spectators and of course, the television viewers in millions of viewers across over 100 countries.

Its been a success – without doubt, but is this the key to the future of world cricket?

McLaren driver Heikki Kovalainen emerges unscathed after a 240 kmph accident!

It appears every season, Formula 1 just gets more safer. While it is still a very risky sport (given the speeds involved), McLaren driver Heikki Kovalainen managed to suffer just a minor headache and a stiff neck after what appears to be a McLaren confirmed 140 kmph impact with the tyre wall. He lost consciousness as soon as he hit as you would expect (given he experienced a 29G - 29 times his own body weight impact). The HANS device also played its part. HANS is acronym for Head and neck support device that became mandatory in 2006 for all F1 cars.

But the carbon fiber monocoque of the F1 car stood true to its testimony as track medical team and marshals quickly and safely removed him from the car, shifted him to the track medical center and to the waiting helicopter as Heikki gave a thumbs up sign to indicate he was ok. It brings grim memories of what we saw on 1st May 1994 during the infamous Ayrton Senna death in a Williams car at Imola, Italy.

The F1 car of 2008 is probably the most safest vehicle to drive on the road with the stringent FIA safety standards laid down. Robert Kubica should know better. He escaped a near fatal crash in 2007 June at Montreal, Canada when hardly anything remained on his BMW.

I salute the safety of the modern F1 car!

Ecofinglobe.com and its statistics from an year ago

I was chancing to look upon my blog’s readership and it has skyrocketed in last few months. To give you an idea of how much the readership for http://www.ecofin.wordpress.com has gone up by, Alexa rating has shown a consistent rise in my webpage ranking (it currently stands at 755139 worldwide and its India ranking is better at 58137. Furthermore, my year old blog stats shows my blog to have averaged 9999 hits way in May 2007. The current count stands at 77791.

Above means nothing if people don’t read posts. Simple page views/hits serve no value absolutely. The most important indicator that indicates the health status of a blog is its post:comment ratio. My blog’s average post:comment ratio is at about 1:2. This means, for every post I put up, I get double the # of comments. This ratio was about 2:1 last year at about the same time and it had not even reached breakeven. So, it is a satisfaction that my blog is a success in terms of these critical metrics.

Thank you, all for making this blog readable! Its only my readers who can turnaround this blog and I hope to keep you as repeat readers so the value of this blog is enhanced further!

Keep visiting back - you know where to look for me: http://www.ecofinglobe.com!

Blogging guidelines - my two cents

What are the important factors one needs to consider before one begins to blog:

1. First, get over this obsession of Google adsense. 99/100 bloggers I meet first think of making a quick buck on adsense rather than focus on quality of their blogs and its relevance towards the topic(s) chosen! This is really very disturbing statistics.

Gul Panag drives a Renault F1 car!

http://www.gulpanag.net/formula1_france.php

http://www.gulpanag.net/news.php

http://www.gulpanag.net/gulspace/25-11-2007/driving-a-f1-car.html

She is one of my favorite actors. I like her roles because they show strength of character - especially in Dor. Nice to know she has nerves of steel to steer a Renault F1 car and send it screaming down the straits!

It looks like cars are not new to her when I realized she had featured on a rare Toyota commercial a few years back and I was struck with awe even then: http://www.gulpanag.net/tv/toyota.php 

Way to go, Gul!

Force India - F1 team

This is the erstwhile Jordan team that itself went through many christening events with being labeled as the Spyker F1 team and prior to which it was the Midland F1 team. Once upon a time, we even had Narain Karthikeyan drive for Jordan F1 a few years back.

Its owned and operated by none other than our patriotic billionnaire, Dr. Vijay Mallya. I like him for his outspokenness and candid nature. I know he will truly make a difference for the future of visibility of F1 and will single handedly take the revenues for F1 multi-fold by bringing in over a billion+ viewers and eyeballs to the F1 circus!

Good luck, Dr. Vijay Mallya! I am with you!

http://www.forceindiaf1.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_India_F1

The race for F1’s top spot tightens!

This is how the leaderboard read after the 2007 Belgian GP at Spa:

Alonso - 3rd. Hamilton - 4th. Ferrari wins the 2007 constructors title!

This is getting interesting!

McLaren fined $100 million and stripped off their constructors points for 2007 season

This is interesting. Max Mosley agrees that justice has been done in the Ferrari F1 spying controversy.

Mallya buys the Spyker Formula 1 team

Lets shortly analyze the economics of this deal and to see if the struggling Spyker F1 - http://www.spykerf1.nl/ - can be turned around by Mallya who has invested in this deal in his personal capacity.

Lets also examine if talented Indian drivers such as Narain Karthikeyan get that much needed break to drive for F1 again!

Sports and competitive spirit

How often have you wondered about the professional rivalry between teammates or professional jealously? Its nothing new - apparently Fernando Alonso - ironically a double world champion for 2005 and 2006 for Renault - decided to take the uncompetitive route to outwit his powerful and outqualifying team mate - Lewis Hamilton - in the pitstop at Hungary this weekend.

Update #1: The icing on the cake came in the form of Hamilton sealing the race with a historic win under tremendous pressure.

McLaren has been under immense pressure in the last few weeks with the Ferrari-Mclaren controversy of secrets being leaked from Ferrari to McLaren due to which they had to face a hearing commission etc.