yasir rizvi

curiosity skills the cat, cricket nerd, books, education, meandering soul, more thought than action, thriving in ambiguity and a victim of great expectations

[Nirupama Menon Rao 🇮🇳 @NMenonRao]

Nations do not acquire compassion with wealth. It is hardly a luxury acquired with better living standards. It is intrinsic to you as a person, rich or poor. Why wear an expression of patronising surprise when a relatively poorer country than yours, effectively conserves and preserves its precious wildlife? The measure of moral imagination is not per capita income. #WildlifeProtection @TheEconomist

[cricketingview @cricketingview]

If Pant was 7 years older, he'd be an all time great all format keeper bat. Now he'll mostly just be that greatest keeper-bat in Test history after Andy Flower. Or, the greatest IND Test lefty bat (until Jaiswal). And its not his fault. IND's ODI/T20I squad is ridiculously good.

[yasir rizvi @yasirrizvi]

@the_kk @dweplea And a real inability to support maverick players

[Kuldip Lal @diplal]

That’s how sporting rivalries should play out.
Nice one, @mihirsv

https://t.co/1YMPxoREQb

[Stanly Johny @johnstanly]

As we all know, there is a difference between tactical gains and strategic victory. When the U.S. assassinated Qassem Soleimani, along with Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the Iraqi Shia militia commander, in January 2020, it was widely seen as a major blow to #Iran, particularly to the Shia militias in Iraq. Six years later, the U.S. is leaving #Iraq, while the Shia militias are more deeply entrenched than ever.

[Himanish Ganjoo @himganj153]

Kohli and Gill, two batters built in a lab to ace ODI cricket, cruising together without risk. This is as good as ODI batting will ever get, more so with the fading of the format. Enjoy it while it lasts.

[www.sidin.co @sidin]

25 years of working. Story no. 2.

Sometime in 2009 I was working at the Mint office in Delhi. I was still in the weekend team and hadn't yet joined the digital team as Managing Editor.

One day I was asked to write a profile of a then celebrity entrepreneur who was running a national chain of retail stories. In fact at the time he was India's largest retailer of mobile phones.

I was handed this job because the entrepreneur was an IIMA alumnus, and so was I, and I had some access to alumni networks, people who went to school with him and so on.

At the time the company was going through some turmoil. But they had just acquired a logistics firm, and talking heads on TV were talking about how this was going to turn things around.

The one problem they had was logistics, the experts said. This acquisition was a super smart move. The channels even had investors come on air to discuss the whole thing.

So as part of my profile research I checked out the logistics company's website. And I was like: wait. This is just a Wordpress template with minor tweaks. There was nothing here. There was no sign at all that this was an actual company. No sign of contact details either. But then I checked the domain registry, looked at the WHOIS information, and got a phone number in Chennai.

An old man picked up. Said nothing and hung up.

Weird. So then I decided to look at the source code of the website. Because back in the day web developers often left comments or a trail of info in the source code.

I could clearly see this was a shoddy, low-effort thing. That had been put together just days before the announcement. So weird.

And so I had a word with the editors and then called up the celebrity entrepreneur's company. I didn't go through the usual PR channel. Instead I just called up their HO in Chennai.

Guess what? The same old man picked up.

I immediately knew what was going on. This dude was acquiring an entirely fake company that he himself had created, in order to desperately siphon funds out of the parent company.

Two hours later we noticed that several previous acquisitions had been similar frauds.

The next day we broke the story, the investors sued him, and the dude eventually went to jail. For someone in the weekend team to get a Page One story was pretty rare. But to have one with this impact was rarer still.

And all because I decided to make a few phone calls and look at the source code of a website or two. Something that none of the TV channels thought to do for days and days even as they covered the story breathlessly.

Moral of the story: Always always always look at the details. Forensic journalism is the best. I still do some of it these days. But mostly pass on the leads to working journalists and so on. But friends, there are always trails. Always. Look into almost any corporate announcement closely enough and you will see stories that you are not supposed to.

[The New Yorker @NewYorker]

Whatever book you pick up, it’s likely to make you feel better—maybe even a whole lot better. “In a secular age, I suspect that reading fiction is one of the few remaining paths to transcendence, that elusive state in which the distance between the self and the universe shrinks,” Ceridwen Dovey writes, in “Can Reading Make You Happier?,” which was published in 2015. Dive into the research behind the therapeutic effect of books: https://t.co/H94aQp3jtK

[yasir rizvi @yasirrizvi]

@the_kk Have you checked out cricket documentary on Amazon prime - Australian cricket in 80s

[Stanly Johny @johnstanly]

Some in India are getting so worked up about #Brics! The U.S. had imposed 50% tariffs on India, which could have seriously affected India's rise. The US wanted to impose its preferences on #India's energy purchases. trump's trade czar Peter Navarro used to attack Indian trade policies almost on a daily basis during the high-tariff days. The US maintains a very close strategc partnership with Pakistan and allowed trump's favourite field marshal to consolidate both at home and abroad. The US is also turning increasingly transactional, even alienating its closest post-War allies. The US's unilateral aggression in India's neighbourhood has threatened to disrupt India's economic and energy stability. America's ability and commitment to defend even its close allies are called into question in the aftermath of the war on #Iran. And from a broader, structural perspective, the American unipolarity is behind us.

Still, the Americaists in Delhi argue that India's only path to rise is through the U.S.! They don't find serious problems with any of these abovementioned material realities or US behaviour, but maintaining and managing a stable relationship with #China, bilaterally or multiletarally through groupings such as Brics and SCO, is an issue. Retainig and pursuing close strategic partnership with #Russia is an issue. They have been arguing since 2022 that India has, or should have, lost Russia. America forcing India to reroute its energy supply map is fine, but India importing good from Russia or China would make us a Russian or Chinese colony! This fear-mongering stems out either lack of confidence in Indian statecraft or a blind belief that only subordinance to the US would bring India prosperity and influence. We are a balancer, not an ally of any great power system, and we will continue to balance.

[yasir rizvi @yasirrizvi]

@SagarH62 Alex hales

[Tim Wigmore @timwig]

Rishabh Pant is mounting a case to surpass Adam Gilchrist as the best wicketkeeper-batsman in Test history.

In 19 Tests at number five, Pant averages 59.7 with a strike rate of 82. He is among the most intoxicating sights that Test cricket has ever seen

https://t.co/ad3KnrIVVp

[Jarrod Kimber @ajarrodkimber]

🎬How cricket will save the world in an alien invasion

https://t.co/QpwZKFFcGB

[Akash @Akashkumarjha14]

The quickness with which Ashwin has achieved his full Boomer arc is remarkable.

[Poetic Outlaws @OutlawsPoetic]

“Everybody wants to save the Earth; nobody wants to help Mom do the dishes.”

― P.J. O'Rourke

[Bloomberg @business]

The 2026 World Humanoid Robot Games have begun. 666 teams from around the world are competing with more than 2,000 humanoid robots https://t.co/8GwBuNnNn1 https://t.co/KMF1kkBiI6

[Ashwin 🇮🇳 @ashwinravi99]

Damn good from Bangladesh and this reiterates the value of designated test centres.

The conditions in Darwin have caught the ausies by surprise. #AusvBan

[Daniel Brettig 🏏 @danbrettig]

Unlike England, Bangladesh have come here determined to play proper Test cricket. In doing so, they are showing the world that this Australian side is vulnerable. Not to pyrotechnics, but to teams who refuse to beat themselves https://t.co/6TumORuDYG

[Vala Afshar @ValaAfshar]

It is not the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out; it is the pebble in your shoe.

—@MuhammadAli