How good is Ricky Ponting as a leader

Ricky Ponting and Leadership
· To envision a goal and to inspire and motivate the group towards achieving it
· Aggressiveness and dynamism.
o Apart from being unorthodox, he does not hesitate to go into the uncharted territory that was aptly demonstrated by his unorthodox fielding positions and bowling changes, just to try to unsettle the rthym of the batsmen. His pre and post match media briefings specifically aimed at the opponents to have a mental edge over them demonstrate his astute and aggressive mind at work.
o Nicknamed “Punter” for his love for gambling in races, he has a inherent risk taking ability.
· It also includes taking the lead and setting precedents
o He has the ability to lead from the front with his consistent performances. Disregarding some occasional failures, he has been amongst the top batsmen for the last three to four years and has set numerous examples for his team
· Sharing knowledge with the group
o Another aspect that I admire about Ricky is his meticulous planning before getting set to work. He along with his team always plans a strategy for outsmarting the opponents before taking on to the field and keeps a plan B ready in case a plan A fails.
· Backing the team members and taking blame on behalf of the group in case of a fiasco.
o Most distinctive feature about Ricky is his support to his team members, in times of distress. Be it Shane Warne for the drug abuse case or Mathew Hayden for his poor form in Ashes series, Ricky has never buckled up under pressure and extended his full support to his team members. This, I believe, makes him a natural leader

· Learns from his failures

o Ponting had off-field problems tormented his cricket during the early parts of his career. Ponting was known to get into fights at clubs and had to publicly admit it once. Though dumped from the test side for this in 1997, he fought back his alcohol problem and was back in the test side in 1999 when Ian Healy retired.
Undoubtedly he is one of the best leaders alive in the cricketing arena.

Cricketing controversies-Zimbabwe

The Zimbabwe saga
Zimbabwe suspend themselves from Tests
January 18, 2006
The interim board that is currently in charge of Zimbabwe cricket has chosen to suspend the national team from Test cricket until early next year.
The decision, which was announced at a meeting in Harare on Wednesday, means that Zimbabwe's two-Test tour of the Caribbean, scheduled for April and May, will now not take place, despite earlier assurances to the contrary from Peter Chingoka, the chairman.
Given that Chingoka met with the ICC chairman and chief executive, Ehsan Mani and Malcolm Speed, last week, it is inconceivable that this course of action was not discussed. As was the case when Zimbabwe excused themselves from Test cricket in 2004, it is likely to have been done with the ICC's blessing and been welcomed at their headquarters in Dubai.
Though they are to sit out of Test cricket for the foreseeable future, Zimbabwe Cricket remains hopeful that the five-match one-day leg of their Caribbean tour will go ahead as planned. The news, however, will not go down well with the West Indies board who less than a week ago were assured by Chingoka the full tour was on.
"While the side goes through the programme to prepare it adequately for the rigours of Test cricket, ZC has no doubt that the team will be competitive in its ODI commitments under the Future Tours Programme," added Chingoka, who hoped that the team would resume its Test status on the tour to Sri Lanka in February 2007.
According to a ZC press release, the decision to suspend its participation in Test matches was reached after consideration of the recent performances by the national and A teams. "The young teams remain full of potential and hopes abound for their development into a strong and competitive performer on the Test arena.
"ZC is now putting in place a programme to galvanize the development of the Zimbabwe squads," the release concluded. "It will work with other Test nations and the ICC itself to realize this objective."



Comments on this issue:
· The first sensible move that it has made in a long time
· The brains behind today's announcement was not Peter Chingoka, the board's increasingly isolated and discredited chairman. It was the ICC pairing of Ehsan Mani and Malcolm Speed. Mani and Speed held private talks with Chingoka in Karachi in Mid January.
· It was unlikely that Zimbabwe could have raised a side to tour the Caribbean capable of taking a Test match beyond two days
· It is quite possible that other boards added to the pressure by making it clear that playing Zimbabwe was a financial disaster in the making they would no longer entertain
· By continuing to play one-day cricket, Zimbabwe will keep themselves in the shop window - albeit, in a dusty corner of it - and allow their players the international exposure they have to have to be encouraged to continue
Supporting comments
Last Test series that Zimbabwe played was versus New Zealand in Aug 2005
Results
1st Test
Harare
New Zealand won by an innings and 294 runs
2nd Test
Bulawayo
New Zealand won by an innings and 46 runs
Before that Zimbabwe played India and lost the series 2-0 to India. Both were comprehensive wins.
Zimbabwe has also been plagued by White players rebellion and only white player playing is Heath Streak. Team has been in tatters after both the flower brothers retired and Henry olanga left for England.

XAT 2006 time analysis

Here is an article regarding XAT 2006 analysis by time

XAT2006 Analysis

Students who thought the era of difficult papers got over with CAT would have been in for a very nasty surprise. XAT 2006 was one of the most difficult XAT papers of all times, and is definitely the most difficult paper of this season.

Even before opening the paper, students would have started worrying because the instructions very clearly stated that there is progressive negative marking. It is one-third for every wrong answer up to 5 incorrect answers per section. Beyond that it is half the marks for the question. This meant that students could not afford to guess too many answers.

Verbal Ability

This section had 40 questions – 16 in VA and 24 in RC. VA questions included questions on para-formation, selecting the correct/ incorrect replacement, and 4 questions on LR. Since many of the answers had “none of the above” as a choice, one could not be too sure of the answers. There were 5 passages in RC, each between 500 and 700 words in length, and one of these was a dialogue between a Japanese executive and an American executive. The questions were mostly inference based.

A good score in this section would be anything above 12-13 marks while the cutoff is likely to be around 9 marks.

Quant

For the first time, there were questions on Integration and Differentiation (1 each). There were also the usual share of questions from Probability, Functions & Graphs, Numbers, and Series. There were a few easy questions too but it was not too easy to locate them. Questions in DS were also clubbed with Quant.

Expected cutoff in this section is 6+/-1 and only very good students would have managed to score more than 10.

DI & Logical Ability

There were 43 questions in this section. There was 1 easy set in DI which was basically a table giving details of political parties, seats won by them, and alliances formed. The other sets talked of economic parameters and the representations included pie-charts, line-graph, and tables .

The sets of questions in LA were mostly difficult, and there were too many conditions in every set. The questions also were of the kind “which of the following must be true/ cannot be true” and this made it even more difficult to be sure of the answer.

The cutoff is likely to be around 7 marks.

Overall cutoff for XLRI: 33+/-1 for BM, 30+/-1 for PMIR

Cutoffs for other institutes:

XIMB: 27-28
BIM: 25-26
MICA: 23-24
GIM: 21-22


GOOD LUCK for FMS!

Buzzing stocks in indian equity market

The indian equity markets have given a fabulous run and made a new high. Looking at the liquidity and the foreign inflows nothing looks like a concern on the horizon. Having said that, the outlook on sectors like two wheelers, capital goods, MNC pharma and Oil refining companies looks very positive.

Stocks like Bajaj Auto, BPCL, HPCL, Aventis, Glaxo can be looked at from the current levels for long term investments.

Auto sector is booming
Tata motors is my pick of the day. I recommend a buy on it.
It can reach Rs. 700 levels within a month from its present Rs. 650 levels.

Hot stocks to invest in: 6 stock recommendations for coming week

Hot stocks to invest in: 6 stock recommendations for coming week

6 stock recommendations for coming week

The following counters are looiking good.
Investing in these stocks for a period of 1 month can give handsome returns of 10%

1. Suzlon Energy
2. Tata Motors
3. Dena Bank
4. Ambuja Cement
5. Bharti Televentures
6. Reliance industries

CAT percentiles to be out today

The much hyped MBA enterance test CAT's result will be declared today by IIM lucknow.
About 1.75 lac students appeared for the exam out of which only 1200 will be slected finally.
The IIM call results have already been declared

This is an article published on ndtvprofit.com on 05.01.06
It is bullish on the indian market makinghuge strides

Markets close weak
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Puneet Wadhwa

Thursday, January 5, 2006 (Mumbai):

The markets snapped two-day winning streak and closed in the red. The benchmark index ended at 9617 levels.

In the broader markets, the Nifty, slipped 0.2 per cent to end the day at 2899 levels.

"I am bullish on the markets. The Sensex can touch 10200 levels by February. However, there can be a sharp correction after that," said Ashu Kakkar, Tech Analyst, Skypowerfinancialservices.com.

Leading the pack of losers at the Sensex were Satyam Computer and Tata Motors. Both the counters slipped 1.8 per cent each. ICICI Bank, Wipro, TCS, ITC Limited and NTPC also ended weak.

Grasim Industries at Rs 1,477 levels however gained ground. The stock firmed up 2.6 per cent or Rs 38. SBI, BHEL, Hero Honda, Maruti Udyog and Bajaj Auto were the other gainers.

Mid-caps firm up

The CNX mid-cap index at 4176 levels gained 0.7 per cent or 29 points. Andhra Bank was the biggest gainer that firmed up 9.2 per cent. Bongaigaon Refinery, BEML, EIH Limited and Monsanto India also ended in the green.

Bucking the trend was Bombay Dyeing. The counter slipped 3.4 per cent. Aban Lloyd Chiles (down 3.1 per cent), HCL-Infosystems (down 2.4 per cent), Amtek Auto (down 2.3 per cent) and Gillette India (down 2.1 per cent) were the other losers.

Banking stocks flare

The banking index, BANKEX, at 5320 levels was the biggest gainer among sectoral indices. Andhra Bank (up 9.2 per cent) was the key gainer. Indian Overseas Bank (up 7.5 per cent), Bank of India (up 6.9 per cent), Vijaya Bank (up 6.6 per cent) logged gains.

ICICI Bank was the only counter that slipped. It ended the day at Rs 604 levels, down 1.6 per cent.

On firm foundation

Fresh buying was witnessed in select cement counters. Grasim Industries (up 2.6 per cent), Ultratech Cemco (up 2.2 per cent), Dalmia Cement (up 0.5 per cent) and ACC (up 0.3 per cent) were the top gainers.

Metal stocks also gained ground. Hindustan Zinc (up 10.4 per cent), Sterlite Industries (up 3.2 per cent) and Jindal Saw (up 1.4 per cent) ended the day in positive turf.

India to grow at 7.7% in FY07: BankAm

This is a report published on rediff.com, india's premier website

Booming manufacturing and services sector is likely to push up India's GDP growth to 7.7 per cent in 2006-07, but inflationary pressure may lead to hike in interest rates, Bank of America said on Thursday.

However, Bank of America warned that cutting fiscal deficit as per FRBM (Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management) Act is likely to remain a challenge in the absence of further budgetary reforms.

"In India, GDP growth is likely to remain in high gear at 7.7 per cent in 2006-67, as economic activity continues to transit from the public to private sector," Bank of America chief economist Mickey Levy said in the report 'Global Outlook for 2006'.

Growth is likely to be more evenly distributed among varying sectors, with the manufacturing and services sectors maintaining forward momentum and agriculture benefiting from a normal rainfall.

Rising income levels will see inflationary pressure mounting in addition to the effect of the gradual pass-through of higher fuel prices in 2005.

"Wholesale Price Inflation is projected to average higher at 5.1 per cent in 2006-07 compared to 4.6 per cent in 2005-06 in part due to a low base this year," Levy's said.

Policy rates (repo and reverse repo) will remain on an uptrend because managing the build-up of inflationary expectation continues to be an over-riding concern for Reserve Bank of India.

Though privatisation of state-owned companies in a smaller scale will relieve fiscal pressure in the near term, achieving commitments under the Fiscal Responsibility Act will be difficult in the next fiscal in the absence of further budgetary reform.

The current account deficit of the country may pose a challenge in 2006-07, the report said.

The strong investment cycle, low real interest rates and the credit boom will continue to exert significant upward pressure on the trade imbalance.

"Import growth will outpace export growth, although we see the current account deficit staying at a manageable 2.5 per cent of GDP, up from around two per cent in 2005," Levy said.

The present shift away from state domination is likely to continue to proceed with a further ease in the regulatory environment, which will keep India at the forefront of destinations for foreign direct investment.

The steady stream of FDI projects and incremental investment liberalisation is likely to trigger a significant improvement in long-term investment flows in 2006.

There is likely to be improvement in long-term capital inflows, together with an expected stable flow of overseas borrowing and equity inflows, and the overall balance should remain in surplus with rising foreign reserves.

Indian makets on a roll

The indian Equity markets are on a roll although the Sensex(Indian index) is volatile today

The sensex has jumped from 6000 levels in early 2005 to 9600 now.
The heavyweights leading the rally are Reliance industries, ONGC and tata motors.

FII and mutual funds have pumped in a huge amount of money and have made India a attractive economy to look at.

nitin-gupta's blog

nitin-gupta's blog

Did not make it to IIM C

it is very sad for me that after a agonising long wait for results, i have been rejected by IIM C.
Going to sleep now
Really heart broken.

Nervousness before a major result

It has often been see that people get nervous before a major result.
i am nervous before checking out my CAT result tonite
God pls. help me

CAT Results to be out on 02.01.2005 midnight

An indian news channel NDTV reported that the results for CAT 2005 enterance examination conducted for admission into India's most prestigious MBA universities will be out by 02.01.2006 midnight.