Ravi Shastri Appointed Director of Team India for ODI Series vs England; Dhoni Captaincy Safe

Ravi Shastri will assist Team India chief coach Duncan Fletcher during the five-match ODI series against England starting on August 25. BCCI also includes Sanjay Bangar in support staff.

Ravi Shastri will be Team India director for the five ODIs vs England starting on August 25.

© AFP

Reacting to India's shocking Test rout in England, the Board of Control for Cricket in India has decided to appoint former India captain Ravi Shastri to oversee and guide Team India during the forthcoming One-day International matches against England. Duncan Fletcher will continue as head coach while Shastri will be the overall in-charge of cricket affairs. The first ODI will be played in Bristol on August 25. The series ends with a one-off T20 international in Birmingham on September 7.  ('Duncan Fletcher Needs Help')
The BCCI also ruled out axing Mahendra Singh Dhoni as captain. Dhoni's Test captaincy has been under the scanner for his poor overseas record. In 2011, India lost eight Tests on-the-trot in England and Australia. India's next Test series will be at home against the West Indies in October-November this year.
Former Australian batsman and NDTV expert Dean Jones welcomed Shastri's appointment. "Ravi will have to make a fair assessment on how the players are reacting to Duncan Fletcher. The players must enjoy playing for India. That's important," said Jones. Shastri, who played 80 Tests and 150 one-dayers matches between 1981 and 1992, temporarily coached the Indian team during the 2007 tour of Bangladesh. (Dhoni Saved India Further Humiliation: Gavaskar)
In its continuing efforts to re-energise the support to Mahendra Singh Dhoni's beleaguered team, the BCCI has given a break to the bowling coach Joe Dawes and fielding coach Trevor Penney for the one-day series. The BCCI has appointed Sanjay Bangar, former Indian all-rounder, and former India fast bowler Bharat Arun as assistant coaches of the team. R. Sridhar will join the support team as the fielding coach for the one-day series.
Bangar was the coach of Indian Premier League team King's XI Punjab. Arun has worked with the Indian under-19 team in recent times. Bangar's work was praised after Kings XI made the IPL finals. Ahead of the England series, former India captain Rahul Dravid worked as a consultant with Team India. He came in on a request from Fletcher. (India Need to go Back to Basics: McGrath)
India lost the five-match Test series against England 3-1. The BCCI said in a statement on Tuesday that it was mulling the changes for over two weeks. According to the BCCI, the changes are only for the limited overs series. Fletcher's contract with the BCCI is till the end of the 2015 ICC World Cup.
When Fletcher replaced Gary Kirsten following the 2011 World Cup, the Zimbabwean came with a fabulous track record and CV. He was the main man in masterminding a turnaround in the fortunes of the England team. But his success with Team India, especially overseas, has been horrendous. Out of the 20 Tests India played abroad under Fletcher, Dhoni & Co. won two and lost 13.
"If India have to sack Duncan Fletcher, they must do it now. They can't do it closer to the World Cup. Australia did the same with Mickey Arthur and brought in Darren Lehmann before the Ashes," explained Jones.
Jones also backed Dhoni to retain the captaincy. "Tough situations bring out the best leaders. Dhoni must lead by example and the fact is there is no one to replace him. Virat Kohli is out of form so Dhoni is the best man now," the Aussie said.
Shastri's introduction may see a change in India's ODI fortunes - Team Dhoni won the ICC Champions Trophy in 2013 beating England in the final - but how that will solve their travel illness in the longer format of the game remains to be seen. India travel to Australia at the end of this year. (Dhoni Proud to Wear India Cap: Laxman)

 

Latest Mi 3 Sale Sees 20,000 Smartphones Sold in 2.3 Seconds: Xiaomi

20,000 units of Xiaomi's Mi 3 available in its fifth flash sale via Flipkart were sold out in less than three seconds, 2.3 seconds to be precise, for the third time in a row - according to Xiaomi's Vice President, Hugo Barra, who announced the news on Twitter.

Do Ads 'Follow' You Around the Internet? New Tool Will Tell You Why

Have you recently seen an ad about depression online? It could be because you sent an email about being sad.Researchers have developed a new tool that unveils which data in a Web account, such as emails, searches, or viewed products, are being used to target which outputs, such as ads, recommended products, or prices.
Roxana Geambasu and Augustin Chaintreau, both assistant professors of computer science at Columbia Engineering, along with PhD student Mathias Lecuyer created the tool called XRay to understand how personal data is being used on Web services like Google, Amazon, Facebook and YouTube.
"Today we have a problem: the web is not transparent. We see XRay as an important first step in exposing how websites are using your personal data," said Geambasu.
We live in a "big data" world, where staggering amounts of personal data - our locations, search histories, emails, posts, photos, and more - are constantly being collected and analysed by many other Web services.
While harnessing big data can certainly improve our daily lives, these beneficial uses have also generated a big data frenzy, with Web services aggressively pursuing new ways to acquire and commercialise the information.
"It's critical, now more than ever, to reconcile our privacy needs with the exponential progress in leveraging this big data," said Chaintreau.
"If we leave it unchecked, big data's exciting potential could become a breeding ground for data abuses, privacy vulnerabilities, and unfair or deceptive business practices," Geambasu added.
Determined to provide checks and balances on data abuse, XRay is designed to be the first fine-grained, scalable personal data tracking system for the Web.
For example, one can use the XRay prototype to study why a user might be shown a specific ad in Gmail. Geambasu and Chaintreau found, for example, that a Gmail user who sees ads about various forms of spiritualism might have received them because he or she sent an email message about depression.
"The theoretical results were encouraging, but seemed too good to be true. So we tested XRay in actual situations, learning from experiments we ran on Gmail, Amazon, and YouTube, and refining the design multiple times.
"The final design surprised us: XRay succeeded in all the experiments we ran, and it matched our theoretical predictions in increasingly complex cases," researchers said.
The current XRay system works with Gmail, Amazon, and YouTube. However, XRay's core functions are service-agnostic and easy to instantiate for new services, and they can track data within and across services.
The key idea in XRay is to use black-box correlation of data inputs and outputs to detect data use.
To assess XRay's practical value, the researchers created an XRay-based demo service that continuously collects and diagnoses Gmail ads related to a set of topics, including various diseases, pregnancy, race, sexual orientation, divorce, debt, etc.

Sony Launches Xperia M2 Aqua 'Waterproof Smartphone for Everyone'

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Sony on Tuesday has introduced its first mid-range waterproof smartphone - the Sony Xperia M2 Aqua - with the tagline 'waterproof smartphone for everyone.' The company hasn't detailed the pricing as yet, but has said that the smartphone will be rolled-out in Autumn 2014 to several markets including Asia Pacific, Europe and Latin America.The specifications on Sony Xperia M2 Aqua are same as the Xperia M2 and Xperia M2 Dual (which was launched at Rs. 21,990 in India), except that Sony has put in its improved waterproof technology with what Sony claims is the highest dust-proof and waterproof rating (IP65/68) in a smartphone. It is said to be able withstand immersion in up to 1 metre of water indefinitely. Previously, both flagship smartphones, Xperia Z1 and Xperia Z2 were IP55/58 certified devices.
"Xperia M2 Aqua is a significant milestone in our product portfolio as we bring yet another of our signature technologies to a new category of smartphones," said Calum MacDougall, Director of Xperia Marketing at Sony Mobile.
Just like the Sony Xperia M2, the Xperia M2 Aqua is a single-SIM supporting device and features a 4.8-inch qHD display with a resolution of 540x960 pixels. It packs a 1.2GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor coupled with 1GB of RAM.
(Also see: Sony Xperia M2 Dual Review | Pictures)
The 8GB of inbuilt storage on Xperia M2 Aqua can be expanded with microSD card up to 32GB. The device boasts a similar 8-megapixel rear camera with flash and a 0.3-megapixel front facing camera.
It packs a 2300mAh battery and will be available in two colours - Black and White. Connectivity options include 4G LTE, GPS/ A-GPS, GLONASS, Bluetooth 4.0, NFC, Wi-Fi, DLNA, and ANT+ for sports accessories. It also comes preloaded with Lifelog app for SmartBand SWR10. Notably, Sony has not announced a dual-SIM variant of the Xperia M2 Aqua yet.

When I try romantic films, 'Chennai Express' is the result: Rohit Shetty

Filmmaker Rohit Shetty talks about romantic films and box office business

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Varinder Chawla

Mumbai: Rohit Shetty says his idea of a romantic film is Chennai Express, adding that as a filmmaker his priority is to make a film that entertains the masses and recovers money.
When asked why he doesn't make full-fledged romantic film, Rohit said, "When I try to make a romantic film, it turns out to be a Chennai Express."
Released last year, the film starring Shah Rukh Khan and Deepika Padukone was basically a romantic comedy, but it had the Rohit Shetty element in the form of high-octane action scenes, an art that the director has mastered over the years. People accepted it and it became one of the highest grossers of 2013.
"It depends on many aspects. What happens with my films is that it is always a big budget film with a lot of money pumped in. I need to recover that money because I cannot make somebody sell his house because of my film."
"I cannot cheat the audience ever. That makes no sense! This is my audience, I cater to them and I know how to make films for them," he added.
From 'Golmaal' franchise to 'Singham' series, the director has always churned out massy films with core commercial elements infused in it, especially action and drama.
Is box office business your priority?
"When you make a film, you want your money to be recovered, unlike earlier times when a film doing well was not counted by how much it earned (at the box office), but on the basis of how many days it ran in theatres," he said.
"Now we say the film has earned Rs 100 crore or Rs 150 crore or Rs 200 crore. Business is definitely important because otherwise, you won't survive," added the director who has hit the jackpot once again with his recent release Singham Returns.

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