Anil Jayaraj

@nimishdubey Was he better than Azhar in ODI? Doubt that

The ease with which we got rid of Sandeep Patil was a ghastly mistake. There are those who will say that Azhar was better but Patil was streets ahead while playing pace bowling, which is what mattered overseas, and was a better ODI player.

@kmr_dilip This is not a great take on the subject. You need competence at the task and not background necessarily!

The first step to fixing Indian sports is putting sportspeople in charge of sports federations. Out of 63 vice presidents across major sports federations only 6 have a sporting background. We allocated ~4480 crore annually to sports yet local stadiums remain dilapidated and athletes struggle financially. We’ve to replace self nomination and insider voting with athlete led elections. Olympians and athletes who've represented India should have the right to elect federation members and choose people who actually understand what it takes to compete at the highest level. If we want better outcomes, we’ve to put decision making in the hands of people who’ve lived the sport. Else we’ll always keep debating medals instead of building a system that produces them.

This pic tells the real story! What a bowler / what a man

@rameshsrivats 😁😁

The poor man was just confused. He thought, "Everything is mine."

@GabbbarSingh Meant to say Dew Impact Eliminator

@anilja Yeah, we need absolute certainty. A lot of decisions are still taken under the limitation of the frame rate of the broadcast.

Next innovation in Cricket - glowing boundary rope. Just like Bails, if they get moved they glow. Lot of boundary decisions would be easier.

@sidin Very very good lessons! Glad you could remember and narrate it so well!

"You went to IIMA? What did you learn there?" This question popped up late last year during one of my client pitch calls. I was talking to a smart young tech fellow, who had just raised money for his company. And usually these calls are about getting to know each other, what they do, what I do, how we can work together, communications, content, stories etc. So... this question was unusual. I am not a big credentials person. But when you are running your own business, every little helps, right? Anyway, it made me think. And I thought: You know what? I should share this with my Twitter friends. *** IIMA teaches you a lot about many things. And your mileage will vary. I loved it. But two, ostensibly tiny, classroom experiences have really stuck with me from my time there from 2003-2005. The first was the Arun Icecreams case study. (IIMA uses the case study methodology a lot. I don't think I appreciated this as much as I should have at the time.) This case was a sweeping history of the company from its inception in 1970 all the way to an inflection point in 1997 where the company's leadership now had to make some business decisions in the face of rising competition from people like Unilever. Our job in the class was to discuss and debate options. Two decades later I have zero memory of the conclusions of that session. But I remember one particular question that the professor asked to kick things off. It had to do with this section on page 1 of the case study. Let me paste the text here. (You can Google up the whole thing.) Slightly long excerpt. But there is a point to this. "Chandramogan, son of a vegetable wholesaler from the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu, set up Arun Ice Cream in 1970 in Madras (now re-named Chennai), essentially motivated by the urge to "do some thing". After his college studies were discontinued at the pre-university stage, Chandramogan agonised over several weeks about starting some business without being quite able to narrow down to any specific line, mainly because of heavy investments entailed. While driven by an urge to succeed as a businessman, he did not quite know how to go about setting up a business. It was his maternal uncle who suggested the business of ice cream. Investing Rs. 15,000 as his own capital and raising another Rs. 21,000 by way of a bank loan, he set up a small ice candy unit in a rented premises adjacent to his uncle's retail textile outlet. From a quick survey around the Madras market it appeared to Chandramogan that there were about 350 small-time ice candy manufacturers like himself competing in the low end of the market. These were offering no competition to the up-market segment dominated by the leading brands Dasaprakash, Joy and Kwality. Like the "others in the crowd", Chandramogan was also selling his Arun brand ice candies for 10 paise and 15 paise a piece predominantly through street-vendors. Thanks to its prominent location in a busy locality, Arun also quickly began attracting walk-in customers. The fact that one could get "fresh" ice candies right across the factory counter was a major selling point in promoting in-factory sales. In the very first year of operations, Chandramogan recalls, Arun clocked a turnover of about Rs. 150,000 and profit of about Rs. 40,000." And the question posed to the class was: "Why did Chandramogan choose that particular location to start the business?" This was a location in Royapuram. And if I remember correctly, it was in a busy commercial area next to a flyover. The details are not super relevant as you will soon see. With all the alacrity of young MBA students, who all wanted to work at Goldman Sachs or McKinsey, we dove into the location question. Because of footfall! Because of traffic! Maybe it had uninterrupted power supply? Maybe he had access to manpower? Maybe there were other ice cream shops nearby? One guy even suggested it was because Royapuram was very hot, and maybe that would make people buy more icecreams. The professor, who was clearly having fun, kept provoking us. And eventually he said: "Ok good. Now let me tell you my perspective on what really happened?" This is a bit of a cheat. But because many of our cases were written by our own faculty, they sometimes had more info than was obvious from the text. And part of our job was to tease this out? Anyway. I will pause on Arun Icecreams here. And I want you to think about his question: Why did Chandramogan start the first shop in that location in Royapuram. *** Second story. One of the final courses I did was one on Entrepreneurship, that was run by the venerable Sunil Handa. It was a bewildering, often bizarre course. And the point was to make a room full of campus-placement obsessed fellows think about running their own businesses. (Please remember, this was way back in 2005, when all this VC-funded startup frenzy was very very nascent. The default thing to do was very much get a campus job.) Right at the end of the course Sunil Handa told us that it was time to grade our performance on the course. He said there would be no exam, no tests, no presentations. Nothing. We were all handed a piece of paper. And we were told grade ourselves on the standard IIMA Scale. A, B+, B and so on. (Was there an A+? I have forgotten.) On what basis, we asked. Whatever basis, he said. You decide. I don't care. Whatever you grade yourselves I will accept as your grade for this course. We all graded ourselves and handed the slips in. The next week, the last session of the course, Prof. Handa bid us all farewell and good tidings. And then gave us a distribution of the scores. "Most of you gave yourselves a B of some sort," he said. And it turned out that exactly one guy gave himself the highest possible score. Nobody else. And the scores had very little correlation with performance. Most of us thought about attendance and participation and field trips and so on, and scored ourselves aiming for some notion of "fairness". Something like that. He said: "You guys need to realize that entrepreneurship is not primarily about fairness or justice or anything. Entrepreneurship is about making the most of the opportunity given to you. When someone gives you a chance, for god's sake, take it. You should have all given yourself an A+. Never talk yourself out of success. Go you fools, and never forget this lesson!" I embellish, of course. But that moment remains etched in stone on my heart. I gave myself a B+. Back to Arun Icecreams. *** Professor: "So guys. Let's talk about the uncle figure." "What do you think the maternal uncle is thinking to himself? Look at this guy, my nephew. He has dropped out of college. He wants do something but doesn't know what. I had to tell him what to do. Plus he has now taken a loan and put in some of his own money. Maybe I have given him some money myself? I am not letting that guy out of my sight. I want to make sure I can keep an eye on my nephew, in case he screws this icecream thing up." And that is why, the professor told us, he opened the shop right next to his uncle's. His uncle found the location for him. So that he can keep an eye on this nephew's shenanigans. "Business is not always location, footfall, tactics, and 2x2 matrices and stuff like. Often business is just human beings doing human being things. With simple human incentives and motivations. Never ignore the human aspects of business. Always keep the individuals, their motivations, fears, excitements, tendencies, and eccentricities in mind. Ask the human question first, apply the framework second." *** Two decades later, a day doesn't go by when I don't think of those two lessons. When I talk to clients I am always provoking them to tell me why... they are in Royapuram. And I have to constantly tell myself that there is a time to be humble, and there is a time to be your own champion. Many thanks for your attention. Cheers. And have a nice day. Oh, and have a great 2026. I give this note an A+.

@sidin 😄

Someone should invest in a startup that solves this. Maybe... PeakXV?

@GabbbarSingh Superb !!! Really well captured nostalgia inducing stuff!!

@ovshake42 😀👍

Brian Lara, who used a bat with an MRF sticker, was present at the CEAT awards in a country where the national team is sponsored by Apollo. This is my most tyresome tweet.

@GabbbarSingh @SridharanAnand Brilliant observation - well articulated

@SridharanAnand For the kids it will be a way of life. Hope when they step out of the airport in a foreign nation, they don’t pause and observe with a sense of wonder. We all did

1 Lakh commuters on Day 1 on the Aqua line of Mumbai Metro. I don’t even live in the city, yet feeling a sense of pride. Nothing dazzles a poor nation than world class infrastructure. We are the optimists. We are here. :)

@iimcomic Ha ha 😝

Pakistan fans have come a long way. From destroying TV to being destroyed by TV. #INDvPAK

@jakesprime @harshjain85 @purohita87 Good call out @jakesprime ! I have been very impressed with the maturity and clarity of thought shown by majority of the founders, despite the sudden change in fortunes. Good luck to all of them

Delighted to know two young founders, @harshjain85 (Dream 11) and @purohita87 (Fantasy Akhada), who've both run their businesses with integrity, intelligence and innate belief that they were creating a global scale enterprise in real-money gaming. The regulatory landscape (1/n)

Moving beyond Sandeep Patil and his insensitive, tone-deaf ilk. Indian cricket needs to accept that if they want peak Bumrah (who wouldn't?), they will probably get him for alternate Tests. For a five-Test series, it will probably be 1 3 5. +

@joybhattacharj He has had sometime to reflect- and there is no apology for his churlish behaviour that has come out. So I am gonna say that it does take the sheen off his cricketing skills

Reading the comments on this Old Trafford on social media. And it seems that its really difficult for most people to accept that their heroes & heroines are also human. Ben Stokes can be both a lion hearted cricketer who willed his country to a historic World Cup win and an ungenerous skipper who wanted to go off immediately once he realized he couldn't win. That's us all. And yes, it wasn't a great idea, but that does not diminish all the terrific things he did in this series.

I am not sure the last over was demonstrating the much hyped Bazball

Bazball ??

@GabbbarSingh 😄😄

I am sorry but those are not laptops.

@fadedoctober Cummins has had his fair share of injuries and staying out. Early in his career though ..

@theliverdoc “Cleverness is a gift, kindness is a choice. Gifts are easy—they’re given after all. Choices can be hard.” - Bezos on the fact that to be kind is an intentional choice

In general, my critics on Twitter are conspiracy theorists, nutrition coaches who sell supplements, Yoga practitioners calling themselves movement coaches, Ayurveda loving mens activists and boomer uncles without scientific temper and WhatsApp degrees. I think I deserve better critics. COME ON!