After weeks of rumors, dropping hints and uncertainty, Karun Chandhok as confirmed by the HRT F1 team as their second driver.
HRT F1, which was originally named Campos Meta, will be the final team on the grid and the only team that has not tested their car yet. Karun will be partnering with Bruno Senna, Ayrton Senna’s nephew. Oddly enough, Bruno who was confirmed before Karun get’s the number 21 and Karun get’s the number 20 on his car.
With two rookies, a car designed by Dallara, who have not built an …

Indian cricketing legend, Sachin Tendulkar, is trending on Twitter …….. in 3 different spots! Things related to India trending on twitter are starting to become fairly common. The other day a viral tag titled #awesomeindianthings (which loosely translates to …… uberdesi) was #1 for a while on Twitter. Sachin Tendulkar became the first batsman to score 200 in a one day international match against South Africa earning him 3 different spots on Twitter trends.
Update: Turns out being politically incorrect when referring to Sachin Tendulkar as batsman as opposed to …

Sometimes competing is bigger than winning. Anyone who’s watched Cool Runnings is likely to echo that sentiment. Bollywood better fire up the camera for a desi version of the same movie, for participating in the winter Olympics is Indian luge competitor, Shiva Keshavan. [Vancouver Sun] (Runa via email)
Keshavan was interested in winter sports from an early age, despite being born in Vashisht, a village in the Indian Himalayas. “I was lucky because I was picked out by an international talent scout who started training me,” said Keshavan, who often trained …

India has a weird relationship with basketball. No one really plays basketball, at least not at a competitive level. Most sports not named cricket receive little airtime or publicity. Yet, the NBA somehow has garnered a rabid following among youth in the middle class and above in large cities. Everyone and their appa was a Michael Jordan fan in the 90s and a Kobe Bryant or Lebron James fan these days, which reeks of bandwagonism, but I digress.
To capitalize on the bandwagon effect, NBA’s Basketball Without Borders initiative has launched …

It’s a shame that Hamilton lost his position on the last lap of the race. Nice to see Rubens winning another race and Brawn getting a 1-2. Also nice to see that Ferrari are picking every point possible.
Force India did well for a car without KERS and had Sutil managed to have a better stop, chances are he might have found himself ahead of Raikonnen, but that’s something that comes with experience.
Fisi, who started for Ferrari this race, finished just outside the points, at least he did not come …

Force India snagged its first points last race with Fisi managing to secure the second position. Since the entire world was talking about the success of the team, I did not feel that it was necessary to blog about it.
What I failed to realize is the fact that this remarkable achievement has re-energized a lot of fans who’ve been dormant for the past few seasons.
To that end, I will be live blogging the race at Monza, starting at the ungodly hour of 4:30 AM. Yes, I live in …

Roman veteran, Giancarlo Fisichela , driving for Force India Formula 1 managed to snag the teams first pole position, this afternoon at the Belgian grand prix.
Force India, which is not considered a front running team managed this feat without rain, crazy accidents or any untoward incident. Normally that would be the only way you would see a back marker team pulling such an upset.
To their credit, Fisi’s car was not lightly fueled. With the fuel adjusted levels (an indicator or how much fuel they have, resulting in how it affects …

India’s next great medal hope at the Olympic games could very well be in women’s boxing.
[NYT]
Chak De, Rakhi Balboa???img: via NYT
The New York Times has a story on the emergence of a new career choice for women in less-privileged backgrounds in India, professional boxing.
Women’s boxing was not even an Olympic sport, until recently.
In a country with numerous obstacles for them, young women are gearing up to punch in the big league.
The International Olympic Committee earlier this month announced the entry of women’s boxing in the 2012 London Games. India …

Tired of insurgency, terrorism and border intrusions, the Indian Army decided to think out of the box. They went out and procured nearly two dozen “silent reconnaissance vehicles for missions beyond enemy lines” worth Rs. 1 crore (approx $210,000). And just to be extra conspicuous they disguised these “silent reconnaissance vehicles” as ………. golf carts. [TimesOnline UK] (tip Sandeep via email)
The scandal emerged in a scathing audit of the military’s recent spending by India’s civil servants after army chiefs were given powers over their expanding budgets to combat terrorism.
Nothing …

It’s a weird world these day. We have Indian players in the MLB and MLB players playing cricket. To be fair, Manny does hail from the the region of the former cricket world champions.

On the third day of the second test match between Sri Lanka and Pakistan in Lahore, the Sri Lankan team bus was attacked by masked gunmen numbering nearly a dozen. The players escaped with about five of them sustaining minor non-critical injuries. Five security personnel however were killed in the gun battle. Cricinfo link.

Speaking from Sri Lanka, Sanath Jayasuriya said that it was an “extremely unfortunate incident. “We’ve never had this kind of problem,” Jayasuriya told CNN-IBN. “They are all safe, that’s the good news I got when I …

We’ve not blogged much about cricket lately and most of us on here hate the Australian cricket team but this is truly amazing. In a T20 match against New Zealand, Aussie Adam Voges made a stunning catch for the ages.
Coming under a skier on the boundary line, Voges realized his momentum would take him out of bounds. So he tossed the ball back into the air, went out of bounds with his momentum, stumbled back into bounds and made a diving catch which Sourav Ganguly would have a tough time …

Uber Tennis stars: Sania and Mahesh in their semi-final match of AUS open which they had won earlier.
IBN Reports
Mahesh Bhupathi and Sania Mirza clinched the mixed doubles title at the Australian Open on Sunday defeating Andy Ram of Israel and Natalie Dechy of France in the final at Melbourne.
Image Source: Australianopen.com

Mahesh Bhupathi, who had also made it to the finals in Men’s doubles with Bhamian Mark Knowles, could not cap it, despite a tough fight and the duo lost to American twins Bob and Mike Ryan. (link)
Sixteen year old Yuki …

Looks like the recession that is hitting India has led to Spice Energy backing out of the sponsorship of A1 Team India.
Neha Rastogi, the spokesperson for Spice Energy was quoted as saying
Spice Energy is temporarily out of handling operations for A1 Team India given the current economic situation. We will look forward to continue our support to the team.

The news is not all bad. Narain Karthikeyan while confirming that things have changed, confirmed that the drivers are staying put

There is a reshuffle in the management but the team will …

Mallya is no stranger to controversy, neither is Narain. But the media has successfully orchastrated a death match between the two.
So here is what went down.
A few days ago, when asked about “An Indian driver driving for an Indian team” statement that Mallaya had made early in his F1 career, Mallya decided to conclude that neither Narain Karthikeyan nor Karun Chandok fit the bill.

In my F1 context, [Karthikeyan] doesn’t fit in,[Chandhok] is like my son, but I have not broken the professional rules of Force India F1 and announced in …

There is news (at this time, I would consider this pure speculation) that Mallya is one one the interested parties, along with a host of other big names, including Pro Drives Richard as possible buyers of the Honda F1 team.
For those who care to remember, Pro Drive wanted to start 2008 buying their chassis from Mercedes, but because of the Customer Car row, they decided to pull out.
Mallya might already be over committed with Force India, but now that he has almost given up control and “sold” the team to …

ESPN Outside the Lines aired an episode about the Million Dollar Arm contest, and the remarkable journey of Rinku & Dinesh that began in India and ended with both of them signing a contract with the Pirates. (tip Ash)

In Kolkatta. [BBC]
Maradona meets (wax) Maradona in Kolkattaimg: via BCC
Indians in India have a weird relationship with soccer. As we all know cricket is the more widely played sport and bar a few soccer crazy areas like Kolkatta and Goa, soccer is rarely played on a nationwide basis. But Indians still follow a lot of European and South American club soccer. Case in point, every other college kid’s favorite team is Manchester United (the New York Yankees of soccer) and on a national level, Brazil and/or Argentina.
Speaking of Argentina, most …

Über Desi gupshups with Rinku Singh and Dinesh Patel, the winners of the “Million Dollar Arm Hunt” and the first Indian athletes to sign with a MLB team. As our regular readers know, we like to keep it short, sweet and above all, “Keep it real – desi ishtyle”. So this Q&A session is being posted as-as in its unedited format. Thanks to Ash of “The Million Dollar Arm” contest for making this Q&A session possible.
The Million Dollar babasimg: via MLB.com
A few quick notes:
The first thing that will jump out …

Remember Rinku Singh and Dinesh Patel, the winners of the “Million Dollar Arm Hunt”? [UD]
It seems like Über Desi’s streak of discussing newsmakers, before they make news, continues. [CNNSI]
For those new to this story, Rinku and Dinesh, won the “Million Dollar Arm Hunt”, a talent event to find the fastest baseball pitcher in India, and a trip to train in the US.
Both moved to the US and started training in Southern California. They even blogged about these experiences. [Blog] [via]
Rinku and Dinesh have signed as free agents with the Pittsburgh …