FedEx crashes Del Potro in Semis – French Open 2009

Exhilarating! Adrenalin rushing high!! Testing and nerve-racking!!! The more synonyms one attach to the match played between World No. 2 Roger Federer & 5^th seeded Del Potro, the less credit one would accrue to the scintillating performances. Yes, I’m talking about the semi-finals played between the two for Roland Garros’ French Open 2009. There was no doubt that Roger was tested all over the court for his skills and acrobatic moves by the young lad from Argentine. Won by Federer, but the contest was a battle of the war-lords fought furiously by the Argentinean. The convincing throttle unleashed by Potro must have sent shocking waves to the Swiss. With scores like 6/3, 6/7, 6/2, 1/6, 4/6 the match was equally combated by the two opponents. Clay not being the winning grounds for Swiss, one could really see him mustering all the strength required to fight it out, and convert his streak of 4 times entering into clay-court finals into a resounding Grand Slam victory this time. Match could have been compared to the wrestling match between Steve Austin & The Rock, with Rock (Roger) showing the greatest tenacity to fight till the last moment and Austin (Potro) knocking him with heavy punches and aces throughout the match.

Starting with the lead over Roger with 6/3 in the first set, one could clearly see the spirits with which Potro was there to fight it out. Having Roger thrown all around the court, Potro literally dictated the terms of tennis on the court. The second set was an equivocal combat between the two with each of them winning their respective points to fight for the final point in the form of a tie-breaker. This was when Federer showed his prowess to take the control of the situation. He led the tie-breaker deciding points with a lead of 5-1. And went on to winning the second set. In the third set, Potro was back again with full energy and enthusiasm and took the lead right from the beginning, leaving Federer trailing behind miserably. This was when it became for sure that tonight Potro was the one who dictated all terms on the ground, with throwing nearly three times aces on average in every set when compared to Federer. The average speed with which the Argentinean served fell in the bracket of 195 to 210 Km/hr which was much thumping and powerful when compared to Roger at 185 to 194 Km/hr. This made Potro clinch the third set with a score of 6/2, blowing Federer all over the court.

Moving towards the fourth set was when Federer was seen to come back in original form with 5^th seeded clearly showing signs of subtle tiredness setting in. but least he was about to give up. But fourth set saw, Roger competing against Potro in long rallies and coming out as clear winner. He made Potro move and fight hard for ball all around the court. With a number of double-faults on service committed by Potro, Federer was able to break his serve a number of times, thereby leading the set with an easy 1/6 win.

With match moving towards the final set, the deciding one, Roger decided to take the lead right from the beginning. In spite of a huge built and good height, Potro just could not perform to his highest levels to make Federer play at back foot from the court line. Roger begin the set with a clean sweep of 2/0 lead, and things started to become clear that Roger was hitting the bulls’ eye now when Argentinean shot back and moved the set towards 3/3 with serving for next game point. With the status-quo between the two at this point of time, it was a do or die situation between both the world-class players. Roger broke the serve of Potro and went on to lead the game with 3/4 score in the final set. Now, roger served and went on to win the point, leading the scores with 3/5. On Potro’s serve, Roger made all his efforts to break his serve and win the match, but the success was not bound to come easy when he had a fighting soldier at the other end of the battleground. The scores were 4/5 with Roger now serving for the match. This was made as easy as possible by Federer who went on to win this point and match with 40/15 intermediate scores and double match winning points.

At the end, a match played for over 3 hours could be a decider between the two, but it was a winning and quite convincing show for the audience, spectators in the court and for the spirit of the came.

Hope this streak of Federer continues and go on to win the French Open 2009 and create a new world record by beating Robin Soderling (the past occasions being Roger beating him 9 on 9 times). ALL THE BEST FEDEx!!!!

Education – The definitive road to success

There is no denying the fact that today, for any country to prosper, the most formidable pillars embodies in education & research foundations of a country. With a technology driven no-border world, every country relies most heavily on the most abundant & developed resources - humans. Higher education supplemented with research certainly earmarks the renaissance to heal the world of atrocities, ignorance, hatred and march towards a robotic productivity and efficiency in every walk of life.

After taking the charge of HRD Ministry, Dr.Kapil Sibal has a lot to do when it comes to bring the higher education at par with top-notch foreign universities’ and provide enough impetus for conducting world-class research in diversified facets of universe. Rather than opening up the avenues for foreign sub-standard and mediocre institutions in Indian contingent, there is a gamut of measures one need to ponder on for higher literacy and improving education.

The point where we need to begin is at primary and secondary education level. The scenario present today gives an image of a pyramid having three layers with maximum students waiting to get elementary education present at the bottom most level and still deprived of the resources and opportunities, the middle level comprising of students at senior secondary level not able to complete their studies due to lack of right enthusiasm and orientation, and the top triangular region comprising of very few students undertaking research with futile facilities accrued to them. The solution lies in re-orienting the pyramid to work out a win-win-win situation for all the three categories of future potentials. This can be explained with the help of the following diagram:

The first diagram shows the number of students in India at three levels and the second diagram shows the extent of facilities & resources made available to them at the respective levels (merging the two would bring in clarity). Mr. Sibal, what is required is not more meaningless facilities at the top but the greatest dedication towards the bottom i.e. the youngest lot. If problems at this level are rooted out, one would not wonder the closing in of the day when reservations in all forms can get siphoned off from the Indian contingent from every sphere of life & work, and convert s small fraction of research students into a vast pool (as shown in diagrams above). What we need to accomplish is the grooming of the bud in form of adequate provision of mid-day meals, Sarva Shiskha Abhiyan, Women & Child protection and empowerment and many more multitude of operations. Girl child needs to get educated and at par with boys with every right accrued to them. Subjects of morality, society and discipline needs to be incorporated in every class of school curriculum till the senior secondary education levels.

At the elementary level, more efforts need to be called for from non-working mothers to help in preparing meals for kids in schools where their wards study. This can be complimented with NREGA in villages and grams. Teachers’ attendance need to be properly supervised by the school authorities and submitted to the board for scrutinizing, sudden checks, and promotions. Awareness campaigns need to be launched on regular intervals at every village and small towns to educate ignorant masses towards keeping a tab on school authorities and their kid’s progress at school. Monetary incentives need to be proliferated on a wider scale to promote girl education.

At the senior secondary level, students need to be shown a more grown-up like attitude and give them the freedom to try out different diversified things. Students should be given real life trainings on different aspects like a day in the life of a traffic cop, drills, tutoring the down-trodden and needy, and certified for the same. Incentives in form of certificates pave a successful mechanism for making the maximum students try out their hand at different activities. To bring in transparency in the work carried out by government officials in different state and central governments’ initiatives, students from this level need to be given the authority to understand and inspect the work in progress and prepare reports. This would not only remove corruption, but also help them work towards the government’s cause which gets declared in form of government certificates.

At the highest level of education, students need to be given the right opportunities in form of monetary aids and all the help from prolific researchers, academicians and scholars in form of recurring events, tours & trips etc. They need to be given international exposure by initiatives to be taken by government in form of research conducting countries’ cruises and see the way researches are carried there. I was once asked by R.B.I(Delhi) Director & Team, what is the reason for such a low no. of hardware engineers in India? Well, I certainly do not agree with the statement, but there’s an underlying truth if we compare hardware professionals with other professions. The low numbers primarily point towards the fallacies in the system beginning at the root levels coupled with inadequate facilities/ opportunities given at the highest levels of education. It is this stage which can pave the success of India from being a service dominant industry to the biggest manufacturing hub of tomorrow.