Dr. Navtej Kohli Blog

Navtej Kohli compiles a list of  famous quotes that have been cropping up since the past few days leading to a War of Words between Indians and Australians on and off the cricket field.

• “The first time I ever met him he was the same little obnoxious weed that he is now.” - Matthew Hayden on his “good friend” Harbhajan Singh.
• “He is just young. I have said to him many times, ‘You are 19, take it easy’. At the end of the day you are 19, why don’t you just worry about your bowling for a while?” - Matthew Hayden at his best..this time its Ishant Sharma.

But this one figures right up there in Navtej Kohli’s list:

• “It’s great to play for Mumbai along with Sachin, but it would have been a lot nicer if we had Symonds, who is such a wonderful player.” - Harbhajan Sigh says regretfully!!!

Dr. Navtej Kohli’s List of reading resources feature books from the 17th and 18th centuries:

Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson

Bunyan, Pilgrim’s Progress

Burns, Poems

Defoe, Robinson Crusoe

Descartes, Discourse on Method

Donne, Poems

Fielding, Tom Jones

Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Hamilton, et al., Federalist Papers

Kant, Critique of Pure Reason

Locke, Essay Concering Human Understanding

Malthus, Principle of Population

Milton, Paradise Lost

Molière, Comedies

Paine, The Rights of Man

Rousseau, The Social Contract

Smith, The Wealth of Nations

Spinoza, Ethics

Sterne, Tristram Shandy

Swift, Gulliver’s Travels Voltaire, Candide

Dr. Navtej Kohli gives a list of Reading resources from the Middle ages and Renaissance Period.

 The Arabian Nights

Bacon, Essays

Boccaccio, Decameron

Cervantes, Don Quixote

Chaucer, Canterbury Tales

Dante, Divine Comedy

Machiavelli, The Prince

Malory, Le Morte D’Arthur

Montaigne, Essays

More, Utopia

Muhammad, Koran

Omar Khayyam, The Rubaiyat

Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel

Shakespeare, Complete Tragedies, Comedies, and Histories

Australian skipper Ricky Ponting felt the Indian side lacked experience as the hosts secured a 50-run victory in the tri-series one-dayer on Sunday.

“I guess a good balance of youth and experience is always welcome,” Ponting said at the post-match press conference.

“In our teams, we try to have experience in important positions. This India hasn’t got. They have a lot of talented youngsters but they are in a rebuilding phase as they would be in Tests soon.”

It did not stop the home captain from appealing to his batsmen to deliver the goods which they have not done in the series so far.

“We have not been playing anywhere near our best. It’s about the time batters did so. We have been winning and getting bonus points and if our batters hit the straps, we would be very difficult to beat.”

Ponting did not forget to mention his own form slump in the series so far.

“Let’s say I have played better,” he said. “We have not been playing anywhere near our best. It’s unusual for our team. Two or three of our guys are in a slump.”

“I am in a bit of a rough but runs would soon start to come.”

Ponting was very surprised that bowlers were calling the shots in the series so far.

“It’s unusual in one-day cricket. Bowlers are dominating. Bowlers have been too good for batsmen.”

Ponting went on to laud his bowlers who defended a small total in the evening.

“India went with a batsman light today. They had a long tail and we knew if we took early wickets, we had a chance.

“Still, the game was in the balance till Dhoni got run out. It was a good bit of fielding by Matty (Matthew Hayden).”

Australian captain Ricky Ponting conceded on Sunday that his tormentor Ishant Sharma is a “dangerous bowler” but stopped short of rating the Indian attack as the best he has seen in home conditions in the recent past.

“Ishant has done well in the latter half of this tour so far. He is a dangerous bowler,” conceded a sombre Ponting.

“Sreesanth has also looked good but it’s too early to say this is the best attack seen in Australian conditions for sometime now as England was here last year,” he said.

The Aussie skipper was suitably impressed by Ishant.

“He is different in the sense that he hits the deck hard and gets some inconsistent bounce. I don’t know whether it’s because he changes his action.

“He looks dangerous and would be even more to the left-handers. Even to the right-handers, the kind of in-swing he manages is a bit unusual,” Ponting said.

Ponting said that in his first two overs, Matthew Hayden seemed to have got on top of the young bowler.

“Matty (Hayden) was on top of him. He began with wides and no balls and we sensed he was not at his best. But he recovered and his overall figures were good.”

A shy-looking Ishant said that his plan to Ponting has been to bowl on the fourth stump.

“I tried to follow my plan against the Australian batsmen. For Ponting, it was to bowl to him on the fourth stump.”

He said that when he went for 18 runs in his second over, skipper MS Dhoni gave him some valuable advice.

“When I went for 18 runs, Dhoni came to me and asked me to stick to my plans and not try something which was alien to me. It calmed me down and I began bowling to my strength,” the Delhi speedster said.

Sharma, who has taken a heavy workload on this tour, including bowling full throttle at the nets, admitted he was feeling a bit tired at the end of the game.

“I am feeling a bit tired now, my stomach is paining. But having bowled long spells at Adelaide, I think my stamina is improving.

“I will continue to bowl properly at nets as it’s the practice which makes you a better bowler,” Ishant added.

Meanwhile, Ponting rubbished his batsmen for the poor display they put out in the middle.

“We were not good enough and were very poor in batting. We didn’t have enough runs. We tried to stick to our task and had half a chance of winning and that’s the only positive we have from the game.

“Their seamers bowled so well that Harbhajan could bowl his first six overs for six runs or something like that,” he said.

Ponting now foresees an interesting tournament ahead, more so that his fast bowlers, particularly Brett Lee, are in need of rotation.

“It’s a pretty interesting tournament now. The next couple of games are going to be pretty important for all the three teams. We now have a tight tussle on our hand.

“Lee bowled probably his quickest spell tonight but he is holding up very well. Perth (where Australia plays next) is the kind of venue where you need your best attack,” he added.

 Dr. Navtej Kohli compiles a list of the most significant books from different eras. Here is a list of the best books from the Ancient Times.

• Aesop, Fables
• Aeschylus, The Oresteia
• Aristophanes, Comedies
• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics
• The Bible
• Confucius, Analects
• Euripides, Dramas
• Homer, Iliad and Odyssey
• Lao-Tzu, The Way and Its Power
• Lucretius, On the Nature of Things
• Plato, Republic and Symposium
• Plutarch, Parallel Lives
• Sophocles, The Theban Plays
• Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War
• Vergil, Aeneid

Feeding birds with peanuts and other treats helps them to survive the coldest months but could affect migratory species, which are in decline, according to a study published recently.

For the first time, scientists have produced hard evidence to show that the extra food we provide garden birds in winter makes for a more successful breeding season in the spring.UK and US households provide some 500,000 tons of food for garden birds each year.

With enough bird food sold in the UK to sustain more than 30 million great tits just eating the supplementary feed, householders putting out nuts and seeds may have a substantial impact on numbers of birds such as finches and tits, because chicks from earlier broods are more likely to breed and gain territory the next year.

But it may also have a knock-on effect on other species - for example migratory birds which could face increased competition from species fed in the winter when they return in the summer, according to the study the University of Exeter and Queen’s University Belfast, published  in the journal Biology Letters.Dr Stuart Bearhop, of the University of Exeter, says: “While this research shows how the extra food we provide in winter helps the birds that take it, it is still unclear whether this has a knock-on effect on other species,” he said, referring to migratory species, such as willow warblers and pied flycatchers which have seen declines in recent years.However, the effects of climate change and the rise of modern farming in Africa are also significant. “This is something we are keen to investigate, but in the meantime I will certainly be putting out food for garden birds for the rest of the winter.”Dan Chamberlain of the British Trust for Ornithology, which collaborated on the project, also urges bird lovers to keep feeding them. “These results demonstrate that feeding birds in gardens over winter can be vital to their breeding success.”It is highly likely that the benefits of extra food continue year-round, so don’t just stock your bird feeders in winter if you want to do the best for the birds in your garden.”

The study compared 10 deciduous woodlands in County Down, Northern Ireland, which were either assigned a series of wire mesh feeders hung from trees and kept supplied with peanuts or left with no feed from the beginning of November to early March. Nesting boxes were also provided and monitored, most of which were used by blue tits.By providing some birds with extra food and leaving others to fend for themselves, the team was able to compare productivity between the two groups. Those that were given extra food laid eggs earlier and, although they produced the same number of chicks, an average of one more per clutch successfully fledged.