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There’s a brighter side to India’s exit from the World Cup. Something that can cheer up disappointed fans and angry advertisers. Sri Lanka has done a great favour to Indian economy by ousting the cricket team from the World Cup. There are about 80 million cable and satellite viewing homes in India.

According to TAM ratings, the average viewership of all World Cup matches held till now stands at about 3%, with India vs Bangladesh touching a high of 7.25%. To reach the finals, India would have played at least seven more matches.

Considering a TV Rating of 7.25%, at least 5.8 million people would have watched the match. This would have resulted in a productivity loss of 371.2 million man hours (5.8 million x 8 hours x 8 matches), apart from stress faced by mothers during exams.

About 3% of 81 million TV viewers (2.4 million) were ardent cricket fans and would have sat through all eight hours in the remaining 28 matches. Thus overall, Indian team’s ouster would result in a productivity gain of 481 million man hours of work (28×2.4×8 man hours), if put to use.

The Sri Lankans have given a boost to the Indian economy by saving 54,902 man years of work (one year = 8,761 hours). Indians can build seven phases of the Golden Quadrilateral connecting Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai spread over 5,846 kilometres all over again, with this time saved.

A daily wage skilled labourer in Delhi earns Rs 17 per hour. If put to productive use, the 481 million man hours can produce Rs 817 crore of GDP, which is 63% more than BCCI’s annual revenues of Rs 500 crore, last year. It’s 401% more than the Rs 163 crore losses, corporate India has predicted to incur due India’s ouster.

The state electricity boards are also thanking Sri Lanka for the great favour. A TV consumes 45 watts per hour. Assuming a viewer will now switch off his TV by 12 midnight, it will save Rs 135 watts at least per viewer (not considering the electricity consumed by other appliances running simultaneously.)

This will save the electricity boards 324 million watts of electricity ( 3.24 lakh kilowatts) in just 28 days. According to estimates, SEB losses in India will touch Rs 1 lakh crore by 2008.

If disappointed viewers completely switch off their TVs for eight hours, it will save the government at least 8,64,000 kilowatts, along with many more lives – at least three Indian citizens have been reported to die due to cardiac arrest or suicide after India’s defeat at the hands of Sri Lanka.

by – http://indiatimes.com/

  

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Sania Mirza was born in Mumbai, India on the 15th November, 1986 to Mr. Imran Mirza and Naseema. Saniya Mirza’s father Imran was a sports journalist previously after that he went into the printing business and finally he became a builder and her mother Naseema was associated with the printing industry. The family later relocated themselves in the city of Hyderabad. Saniya Mirza got her schooling from Nasr School Khairatabad and passed her SSC examination with first division securing 63% marks.

Saniya Mirza has got a younger sister by the name of Anam. Saniya was drawn to the lawn tennis by her father; she started playing tennis at the tender age of six at Nizam Club Hyderabad. When Saniya was first taken to the coach he refused to coach her, later on after a week he called up the parents of Saniya and told them that he has never seen such a talent at such a tender age. Her initial training was handled by CK Bhupati father of Mahesh Bhupati, the legendary Indian tennis player.

Saniya Mirza started playing in international tournaments from the year 1999 when she first represented India in the World Junior Championship, Jakarta; after that Saniya went on to participate in the Asian Games in the year with Paes where she won a bronze medal. She again did India proud when she figured in the main draw for the girls doubles junior Wimbledon Tennis tournament with a 13 year old Russian player Alisa Kleybanova and won the Grand Slam title. Doing so Saniya became the first youngest Indian player to do so.

Sania Mirza has won 21 ITF titles till date. In the year 2005 Saniya Mirza created waves in the tennis world when she reached to the 3rd and 4th rounds of many Grand Slam tournaments. She has a very powerful forehand (Double handed backhand) and serves an array of strokes. She is greatly influenced by the German player Stefi Graff.

  

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After two days of “quiet” celebrations in rural Gloucestershire, Liz Hurley’s wedding train moves on 6,000 miles to India today.

English guests will mingle with India’s new aristocracy at a series of events in Mumbai and Jodhpur.

As Indian weddings are as much a statement of social status as they are about the union of bride and groom, the 400 guests can expect a display of wealth and prestige from Hurley’s new family.

Although Arun Nayar, 42, was born into wealth – his Indian father and German mother started a successful textile business 30 years ago – Nayar is successful in his own right, setting up a computer company with his younger brother.

The five days of festivities in India follow the couple’s extravagant nuptuals at Winchcombe, in the Cotswolds, at the weekend.

They married in a secret civil ceremony on Friday – a day earlier than expected – in the licensed library at the 15th-century Sudeley Castle, the family seat of Henry Dent-Brocklehurst, a friend of Hurley.

They repeated their vows in a blessing ceremony on Saturday evening in St Mary’s Church in the castle grounds. The couple could not marry in the church because it is not licensed for weddings. The 250 guests at the blessing included Sir Elton John, Kate Moss, Kate Winslet, Elle Macpherson, Patsy Kensit and Donatella Versace. Hugh Grant, Hurley’s former boyfriend, was not believed to have been present.

Sir Elton gave the bride away, and Miss Kensit read a lesson from St John Chapter 15: “I am the true vine.”

The Rev John Partington, vicar of St Peter’s Church, Winchcombe, who conducted the service, said it was a “relaxed but reverent” service, in which “old prayer book language” was used.

Hurley’s five-year-old son Damian, whose father is the film producer Steve Bing, was the ring bearer. There were 10 pageboys in breeches and five bridesmaids in cream dresses.

The ceremony was covered exclusively for Hello! magazine in a deal reported to be worth £2 million. The bride wore a V-necked, off white, Versace sleeveless dress. A veil was kept in place by a diamond tiara. The hymns included Love Divine.

Afterwards they sat down to a medieval-style banquet.

The couple and their guests were due to fly to India last night. Celebrations will begin in Mumbai, where guests have been invited to the Hilton Towers Hotel on the city’s waterfront to kit themselves out in traditional Indian dress – kurtas and turbans for the men, saris and bindis for the women. Tonight overseas guests will shake off their jetlag with a “glamorous casual” dinner, followed by a “very glamorous/black tie” dinner tomorrow.

Queenie Dhody, a former Miss India who turned her passion for expensive jewellery into a business, is also reported to be hosting a party for the couple. Every effort has been made to make outsiders feel at home with the couple sending out an “orientation pack” with the invitations reassuring guests not to “panic” at the prospect of wearing Indian attire.

After Mumbai, the party will retreat to the majestic surroundings of Jodhpur in Rajasthan where the couple will be married on Thursday at a traditional Hindu ceremony. Local reports say the Umaid Bhawan Palace, built in the 1940s from honey-coloured stone, will be the venue for the wedding in the evening. At the “sangeet”, a traditional night of music before the wedding day itself, Hurley can expect to have her hands and feet decorated with henna and, according to one Indian source, may even perform a Bollywood dance number.

As part of Indian tradition, Nayar is to arrive for his wedding on a white thoroughbred, with a band at the head of a procession of camels and elephants. His bride will be waiting in a £4,000 jewel-encrusted sari.

The day after the main event, visitors are to unwind at a cricket match, although whether Hurley’s English guests are strong enough to take on an Arun Nayar Indian XI has not been disclosed.

Telegraph.co.uk

  

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Arun is half-German and announces himself with a posh English accent. He is the eldest son of Vinod Nayar, a Bombay businessman, and Gunnar, his German mother who set up a lucrative textiles company in the city 30 years ago. After his parents’ separation when he was young, Arun was brought up by his mother and was sent to the John Connon School in Bombay before embarking on a top-drawer British education. This was furnished by Millfield, the 20,000-a-year independent school in Somerset, and Christ Church, Oxford, where he read physics. Nayar and his younger brother Nikhil had earned a wild reputation being pretty extravagant and partying all the time, but each appeared to settle down after marriage. The brothers also set up a computer firm, Directions Software Solution, often reported as the source of Arun’s wealth. Nayar appears to be an indulged son making use of the family’s homes in France, Germany and London to enhance his jet-setting lifestyle. He also enjoys one of several luxury premises owned by the family in Bombay’s exclusive St James Court.

Eleven years ago he met Valentina Pedroni, a blonde part-time model in her home town of Milan. After a four-year courtship they married in Bombay, where Pedroni settled in but soon their marriage was in trouble. Pedroni had returned to Milan and was devastated to see pictures of her husband and Hurley holding hands and flirting at a Paris fashion show in January. Any doubts evaporated last month when the couple was spotted at a cosy lunch with Nayar’s mother in Bombay’s Oberoi hotel. Both parents were reported to have given there blessing to the match, but Nayar’s paternal grandmother refused to meet Hurley, affronted by photographs of the couple kissing in St Moritz. However, sources in Bombay claim Nayar has lodged a divorce petition with the city’s family court on the ground that he and his wife are estranged and that she lives overseas. Pedroni’s friends say she will fight the divorce tooth and nail. Nayar is Hurley’s first serious boyfriend since Steve Bing, the millionaire who dumped her after she revealed that she was pregnant with his son Damian. Her friends say that she is happier than ever at finding a “soul mate” in Nayar. Sceptics maintain that Hurley’s career since bursting into the limelight in a skimpy Versace dress has been one long, carefully choreographed photo-shoot. What better new highlight than a spectacular Indian wedding, they venture. The couple will not get officially engaged until Nayar has secured a divorce.