Another myth about Indian Football World Cup

Did India withdraw from the 1950 World Cup because they were not allowed to play barefoot?

India surprised the world with their performance in the 1948 Summer Olympics in London, England. The Indian national football team, with every player playing without footwear (some players played in socks while most played barefoot), lost to France in the first round by the razor thin margin of 2-1 (and actually were tied with France at 1 all 70 minutes into the match) . This match already drew a great deal of attention as the 1948 Summer Olympics was the first time that India was performing in an international tournament as an independent nation (after gaining their independence from Great Britain). However, the fact that the Indian team did all of this in bare feet drew the most attention.

Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) made it clear to India that they would not be allowed to play in the 1950 FIFA World Cup without footwear. Then a curious thing happened. You see, when determining the make-up of the 1950 World Cup, FIFA determined that obviously the two defending finalists, Brazil and Italy, would be guaranteed spots. That left fourteen spots that needed to be filled. FIFA decided that seven of those spots would come from Europe, six would come from the Americas and one would come from Asia. The problem was that of the four Asian teams that were invited to the World Cup, three of them (the Philippines, Indonesia and Burma) withdrew from the tournament before the qualification round. Therefore, India earned an automatic spot within the World Cup. It would be India's first time appearing in the World Cup (and, indeed, as of 2011 they still have never appeared in the World Cup), but India, too, withdrew from the tournament.

For years, the story has been that India withdrew from the World Cup because FIFA would not allow them to compete barefoot.

Is that true? Let us find out!

First of all, the World Cup in 1950 was being held in Brazil. In 1950, it was not a simple matter to travel from, say, Burma, to Brazil. In fact, the team from Turkey withdrew because of financial concerns over traveling to Brazil. So teams withdrawing from the World Cup over financial reasons would be quite reasonable. In fact, that is an alternate theory that has arisen over the years - that India withdrew because they could not afford the trip. This appears to be false, as the organizers offered to pay most of the travel expense to get India to Brazil (as if India did not come, they would not have a representative from Asia, which is exactly what happened - the tournament ended up playing with 14 teams instead of 16, with one group having just two teams in it).

According to India's Sports Illustrated magazine, the All India Football Federation (AIFF) announced that the team would not attend the World Cup, citing "disagreements over team selection, and insufficient practice time." However, as Kaushik Bandyopadhyay, associate editor of the journal Soccer and Society, put it Sports Illustrated:

A careful study reveals that beneath the apparent financial difficulties given as cause of withdrawal lay the AIFF's unusual failure to appreciate the importance of participating in the Cup, despite assurances from the organizing committee to bear a major part of the tour expenses.

This general idea, that the AIFF just did not take the World Cup seriously, considering the Olympics to be the ultimate goal, is backed up by Sailen Manna, who would have been the captain of the team. As he told Sports Illustrated, "We had no idea about the World Cup then. [H]ad we been better informed, we would have taken the initiative ourselves. For us, the Olympics was everything. There was nothing bigger."

Nowhere in any of the discussions at the time was the barefoot issue. It might certainly have been something that would have annoyed the Indian team, but it did not appear as though it was the main reason for the team refusing to travel to Brazil. It seems much more likely that the Indian football officials just did not think that the World Cup was a big enough of a deal to warrant sending their players halfway across the world. Again, do note that 3/4 of the Asian teams had already withdrew!! Clearly, the World Cup was not some significant draw at the time if so many of the other Asian countries did not even try to get into the tournament.

So I am willing to believe Manna and the research of the Indian Sports Illustrated when they say that bare feet was not the major reason India did not attend the 1950 World Cup. Sadly, though, their decision not to attend clearly did affect Indian football. Manna reflected sadly that, "Indian football would have been on a different level had we made that journey."

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Evolution Of Blue Screen

The blue screen often referred as the blue screen of death occurs when a critical error occurs. We often pull our hair when we see this screen. What I have experienced after a blue screen comes is that it starts to come more often. The error is normally a non recoverable one. Once i tried reading what the blue screen conveys and it never gave what exactly the problem was. Below is a typical blue screen message:

The windows 8 blue screen is kinda cute though :)

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Benefits of Listening to Music

1. Emotional Health Benefits of Music

Music is a great way to change or enhance anyone’s mood. Certain songs can relax some and put other in a better mood. Sometimes if someone has a lot of stress or tension in their lives they will put on music to soothe the situation.

Music is a way for people to express the way that they are feeling. Musicians will play and write music to verbalize the emotions they are feeling. People listen to specific songs that capture the mood they are in. Many times it a certain song will give people the relief they need to calm down.

2. Physical Health Benefits of Listening to Music

This will come as no surprise. Music can be extremely beneficial during exercise. Weight lifters will get pumped up while listening to the radio. Joggers are more excited to go running with an iPod and they tend to lose track of time. Music has become a common use for exercise in classes like Zumba and Body Pump, which use songs to structure a workout routine.

There have even been studies that proved that children have an easier time learning activities requiring the use of motor skills when listing to music. Throwing, catching, jumping, and running are all activities that showed improvement when children performed them with music.

3. Brain Power

There have been several studies done that have shown the benefits of listening to music can have in a child’s life. Researchers have found that people who play music have a more developed connection between both sides of their brain. The Mozart Effect is commonly known. This theory states that listening to Mozart’s piano sonata will increase results on an IQ test almost ten points. Other forms of classical music can also have similar results.

4. The Power of Music

Everyone has their own reason for loving music and each person has a unique style they like to listen to. With so many genres and many musicians from all over the world it is impossible to not find a favorite. Whether music is used to de-stress or to get pumped up with, it has a benefit for everyone. Grab a friend and listen to some live music and enjoy the benefits it offers.

As a conclusion, I would say that fill your life with music and enjoy the amazing health benefits of listening to music.

Please share this article about the health benefits of listening to music – your friends will appreciate it!

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Why some resumes get shortlisted and some do not

What does your resume say about you?

The first step is to state the objective of your resume which should be to showcase your skills and search for a job. This simple yet essential step outlines the purpose of your resume. The proactive resume needs to bring out important information about your skills both as keywords and as action words.

A resume delivers in two parts:

• It gets you a meeting (the interview) with a recruiter or the hiring manager (your future boss)
• Having achieved step 1, it forms the basis for a decision on your selection.

A few tips for your resume:
It is a good thing to choose a resume from the internet to create your resume. When selecting a template remember that the resume should:

• Not be distractingly louder than your capability and skills
• Be relevant to the industry - job position

Avoid this:

• Senior level data administration professional
• Expert in database management
• Implemented creative solutions to produce fast results
• At home with analytics, data structures
• Comfortable with all aspects of enterprise grade database management

Go for this:

• Skill: Database management
• Expert in: Normalisation, Indexing, Warehousing, Analytics, Stored procedures, Data arrays
• Handled large database tables with up to 5 million records
• Retrieved data in 30 milli seconds using performance optimisation
• Optimised database that did not report any down time in two years

Job hunters, especially at the early part of their careers, tend to write long lists of seemingly meaningless things about their professional personality: team worker, problem solver, hard working, creative, disciplined, never say die attitude, excellent communicator, result oriented are commonly found phrases in resumes. Most recruiters have read these phrases too many times and instantly feel bored. Instead, describe your qualities and strengths in a manner that the resume is true to your personality. Always remember, you are working on a resume, and that is your resume. So make it cautiously.

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HTC One unboxing India

This is the unboxing of the phone HTC One V phone. This phone was ordered online via tradus.in and to be honest, i received the phone after 3 days of payment which is fast IMO. HTC One V is one the budget android phones, if you are looking for both normal use and multitask. I got a chance to unbox this phone, thanks to my friend Brijin.

The pictures below shows the unboxing and the contents inside the box.

The important thing to note is that there was no SD card inside the box which suggests HTC is not providing SD card along with this product.

HTC One V operating system Ice Cream Sandwich, although you will also get an update to Jelly Bean very soon.

 

HTC One V uses a Qualcomm MSM8255 Snapdragon 1 GHz, this makes the process of working the phone is quite fast. In addition, One V is also equipped with Adreno 205 GPU mixed with Sense technology makes 4 and graphic ICS Android runs quite smoothly.

What we have inside the box is a traditional combo; earbuds, USB cable, a small novella worth of documentation, an A/C adaptor and a CD. The point to note here is that the head phones which we get with the box is the normal HTC headphones and not beats edition.

The phone has a distinct chin under the display which is not liked by everyone, it undeniably makes the phone stand out. The device is your typical unibody that feels extra strong with that rough metal texture.

The One V is built on the solid foundations of the Desire, and its DNA can be traced all the way back to the Legend and the Hero.
The complete specs can be found here.
The complete review can be found here.

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