Latest news with #Dasgupta
Time of India
3 days ago
- Health
- Time of India
15-year-old boy critical with Covid & typhoid gets well, goes home
Kolkata: Amidst reports of a few Covid-19 related deaths across the country, no such deaths were reported from Bengal during this current spike. In fact, a 15-year-old boy who had a double infection of Covid-19 and typhoid was discharged from hospital. The teenager was admitted to Peerless Hospital on May 24 with a high-grade fever and other gastrointestinal problems. Test reports confirmed Covid-19. On Monday, four Covid-19 related deaths were reported – one each from Delhi, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, and Kerala. Two of the deaths were patients in their early 20s, with other existing health conditions. While the boy from Rishra had no existing health conditions, he was rushed to the Kolkata hospital with complaints of severe dehydration, loose stool, vomiting, throat pain, and a history of high-grade fever which refused to subside despite medication by local doctors. Due to the viral infection symptoms, a viral panel test was conducted. While the result was negative for all other respiratory viruses, doctors found the boy's swab samples positive for SARS-CoV-2. "We kept him in isolation and treated him for all symptoms, including severe dehydration. But we observed that while the other symptoms were getting resolved with medication, the fever was not persisting," said paediatrics critical care specialist Saheli Dasgupta, under whom the boy was admitted in Peerless Hospital. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Descubra ofertas de voos imperdíveis Voos | Anúncios de Pesquisa Saiba Mais Undo Suspecting some secondary infection, his blood samples were sent to the lab for blood culture, and the boy was found to have a typhoid infection. "Since the fever was persisting and a few other symptoms were not matching with Covid-19 alone, we had to look for the presence of other infections. The blood culture confirmed typhoid. This was a clear case of dual infection of Covid-19 and typhoid, and we had to take all precautions so that we continued the treatment for both infections," added Dasgupta. Experts said that even during the two waves of the Covid pandemic, many children were found infected. But unlike in adults, the infection was generally mild in children. However, dual infection could be risky for both children and adults. There have been several cases of Covid-19 with dual infections, including those of dengue, malaria, and scrub typhus, where doctors have to be extra careful in treating those patients. The 15-year-old recovered during the treatment and was discharged from hospital after seven days with the advice to stay in isolation for at least seven more days. Sources said that the father, who brought the boy to the hospital, also tested positive for Covid-19, but he is in home isolation and has only mild symptoms.
Mint
7 days ago
- Sport
- Mint
Big data has changed cricket
The 2025 edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL) has been anything but typical—how could it be, with the armed conflict between India and Pakistan forcing a week-long hiatus in May. Yet, the tournament remains a barometer for cricket's overarching trends. Even a casual glance at an IPL broadcast tells us the direction in which the game is heading—scientific, data-backed and underpinned by professional analytics. The pre-match show is punctuated by bursts of data specific to the venue—average scores, average degree of spin/seam movement, the average and economy rates for every single style of bowling. Two opposing players are pitted against one another in 'matchups", and we have ball-by-ball data about which batter fared poorly against which bowler. Former players plot the dismissals of key batters, keeping the bowlers of the day in mind, while broadcasters quickly back up their arguments using ball-tracking data. 'If you're a professional cricketer today," says former India wicketkeeper-batter Deep Dasgupta, 47, 'and you're playing for your country or you're playing in the IPL, you know that the other teams will have seen hours and hours of footage of you at play. There will be people whose job it is to go over the data, analyse your every weakness and figure out how to capitalise on it." Every team in the IPL knows that their key players are being deconstructed; massive datasets are being pored over by professional analysts; players are aware they will be 'figured out" sooner rather than later; they have to keep finding new and creative answers to questions being posed on-field—all of which has changed the game at the day-to-day level. 'One of the main things is the ball-tracking system," says Dasgupta, who has been a part of the commentary and pre/post-match analysis teams for IPL broadcasts. 'Everything flows downwards from there. If you're a batting coach, you can use the ball-tracking data to tell your batters which lengths and lines are troubling them. If you're a bowling coach, you can use the same data to make specific plans for the opposition's best batters." In Sanjay Manjrekar's playing days—the late 1980s and the 1990s—international teams didn't invest heavily in analysts. In recent years, however, teams have reaped the benefits of astute data analysis. According to the former India batter, young cricketers have been quick to adapt. 'Previously, if the captain or the coach wanted one of their players to make an adjustment in their game, they'd have to rely on what they've observed with their own eyes. But now, with the data and the analytics and everything, it has become very easy to convince players—and also fans, actually. The subjectivity has reduced." Cricket's new backroom Ahead of the 2024 T20 World Cup, held in the US and the West Indies, Team India analyst Himanish Ganjoo figured out that the explosive English opening batter Phil Salt was susceptible to deliveries angling in to him, deviating further inwards after pitching, targeting the stumps. The findings were presented to team India coach Rahul Dravid. Sure enough, in the eventual India vs England semi-final, India's Jasprit Bumrah produced a precision-guided missile along these lines, beating Salt's forward prod and crashing into the stumps. 'Rahul Dravid knew precisely how to use the information I presented, how to effectively communicate those points to the players," Ganjoo, 32, tells Lounge. 'It was a great feeling to make whatever small contribution I could—let's say 2-3%—to a World Cup victory for India." Ganjoo, a cosmologist by training, has produced cutting-edge cricketing analysis over the last four-five years. In January 2022, he published a Substack article on what made Indian left-arm finger-spinner Axar Patel a unique threat to batters, especially on Indian pitches, using data from HawkEye's ball-tracking technology. Without delving too much into the technical details, we can say this: the article presented compelling proof that Patel's height (at 6ft, 1 inch, he's taller than other elite spinners like Rashid Khan, Varun Chakravarthy and Sunil Narine) and angle of release made him far less predictable than his peers. The article led to Dravid bringing Ganjoo on-board. 'We had a workflow wherein I would analyse several different types of data for each batter we were facing," says Ganjoo, who is currently based in Paris. 'For every batter I prepared five-six slides, detailing, with graphs and charts, which shots they like to play the most, which shots they are least in control of, what are the kinds of deliveries they seem to be struggling against. Their performance against different lines, lengths, speeds and kinds of movement were analysed. We would present these slides to the coach (Dravid), who would then make game plans." What Dravid had taken note of wasn't Ganjoo's original article, but rather a YouTube breakdown of the same in February 2022, delivered by Australian cricket writer, podcaster and analyst Jarrod Kimber, who runs the popular Good Areas YouTube channel. A trained filmmaker, Kimber has a knack for storytelling and breaks down sophisticated, data-based arguments into actionable bits of cricketing wisdom. 'Ahead of the 2018 Caribbean Premier League, I had been hired as the analyst and assistant general manager for St. Lucia," recalls Kimber, 45, who lives in London. 'I thought I would work with the coaches, work on anything Kieron Pollard (then St. Lucia captain) wanted. Within a couple of hours of arriving I was asked, 'Are you ready to give a team talk about strategy?'. I asked for the video footage from previous seasons—there was no video. I asked if anybody had been collecting basic stats—there was nobody doing that either in the CPL." The CPL was hardly alone in its faltering first steps towards professionalisation. Issues like logistics, finances and a lack of structure were widespread roadblocks in the early days of professional analytics, explained Kimber. One morning Kimber found himself at a Durban bed and breakfast, manually chopping up hours-long game footage into usable clips, patchy internet notwithstanding, for Team Scotland. Powering the T20 age In the context of a franchise team, 'analyst" is ideally a full-time, year-long job, not just during the weeks and months before the tournament begins, not least because the analysts can help with auction strategy too. This is a simple reflection of the fact that T20 cricket has changed rapidly over the last decade and analytics has changed the way we look at the game. In T20, increasingly, we look at required runs and immediately start thinking of the number of sixes it would take to achieve the target. The six has become the primary currency of T20 cricket, in other words. Freddie Wilde, an analyst for the England and Royal Challengers Bangalore men's teams, described this process in the 2019 book Cricket 2.0: The T20 Revolution (co-written with Tim Wigmore). 'The growth of the six in T20 mirrored the ascent of the three in the NBA, which have more than doubled since 2000. The six, like the three in basketball, has a 50% greater pay-off than the previous highest scoring shot, more than making up for it being harder to execute. Both the six and the three represent the marriage of the athletically spectacular and the analytically shrewd. Increased use of data analysis in cricket has been one of a number of factors... to cause a surge in the rate of six-hitting in T20. In 2012 a six was hit every 28 balls. By 2018 that had fallen to one every 20 balls." Over the last decade, a number of companies have built up databases for cricket and developed predictive mathematical models. The rise to prominence of firms like London-based CricViz, and Chennai-based SportsMechanics began in the late 2010s, with T20 leagues starting around the world. A host of deep-pocketed new investors entered the game, eager to see their recently purchased teams being run professionally. Accordingly, a number of cricket writers, journalists and stats people transitioned into professional sports analysis. One of the reasons these changes feel significant is that cricket has been resistant to change. A number of concurrent phenomena in the 1990s, however, turned things around. One of them was the birth of Cricinfo in 1993, which introduced its popular StatsGuru tool by 2000. Then there was the emergence of live cricket as a lucrative category of TV programming. State broadcaster Doordarshan, which reached 60% of the Indian population in the 1990s, broadcast every match played at home. Suddenly, Indian TV screens lit up with 'wagon-wheels" (a diagram of the field with coloured lines indicating where batters are hitting the ball), 'run-worms" (line graphs representing cumulative runs scored across every phase of the innings) and complex fielding charts. This was the Indian viewer's first exposure to analytics in real time, and it whetted our collective appetite. This was already a passionate and involved fanbase. They were crying out not just for data but also for visualisations that communicated it in a lucid, engaging way. The rise of laptop coaches The enduring image of Bob Woolmer, coach of the South Africa team from 1994-99, is him hunched over a laptop screen, watching replays. 'The laptop coach", as he was dubbed, was one of the first international coaches to make extensive usage of computer-based analytics. Woolmer used the contemporary stratagem of 'matchups" back in the 1990s to stymie run-scoring in 50-over cricket. In the 1999 50-over World Cup, Woolmer used wireless earpieces to communicate with South Africa captain Hansie Cronje during the game. The practice was swiftly outlawed but proved, nevertheless, Woolmer's embrace of both technology and the spirit of innovation; two of the things that drive cricket analytics to this day. Woolmer died in 2007 at 58, less than a year before the first-ever T20 World Cup was played. One suspects he would have been a tactical giant in the game's most abbreviated—and analytics-friendly—format. For in the first decade of T20 cricket (2007-16), not many teams, national or franchise, were especially good from a tactical point of view. Most batters approached the 20-over game as though it were a 50-over game, only scrunched up. But where the latter format rewards batters minimising dot-balls (deliveries where no runs are scored), T20 rewards maximal four-and-six hitting. The West Indies men's team won the 2012 and 2016 T20 World Cups, largely on the back of its muscular six-hitters like Chris Gayle, Kieron Pollard and Andre Russell. Several factors through the 2000s—new statistical tools, the influx of money in T20 leagues, and legacy teams getting outflanked in a turbo-charged version of the game—have brought us to this current moment in cricket, where analytics and professional analysts have well-defined roles. Not just gameplay but also everything that happens off the field—training, conditioning, nutrition, etc.—is now a little more scientific, a little more organised. According to IPL commentator and former team India fast bowler Varun Aaron, 35, data and analytics can contribute to the fitness and well-being of fast bowlers (notoriously, the most injury-prone), not to mention improve their skills. 'A year ago, I was working with the MRF Pace Academy in Chennai, designing a new high-performance centre for fast bowling. I put a lot of data-driven processes in place. The data is intended for the coaches, not the players; it's important not to clutter their minds with too much data," says Aaron. 'At the same time, if I tell a young fast bowler to make a technical change in their action, the data helps me prove my point with evidence, it shows the young players exactly where they can make a change that will improve their pace." Aaron, who is currently pursuing a sports science degree at the Centre for Sports Science, part of Sri Ramachandra Institute of Higher Education and Research, Chennai, is representative of this new cricketing landscape, where ex-cricketers are using increasingly scientific methods to train the next generation. Of course, this comes with its own set of challenges. Effective analytics begins with widespread data-gathering and not every corner of the cricketing world is similarly blessed in this regard. In the women's game, for example, collecting enough footage and data can be a challenge. Women's games, especially domestic ones, are very often not broadcast live, or in some cases, captured with a single-camera setup that is, of course, inadequate for professional analysis. 'If you look at this year's men's IPL there are some teenaged players performing very well, about whom the average fan does not know a lot," says Krithika Venkatesan, who works for the Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) women's team. 'The likes of Vaibhav Suryavanshi and Ayush Mhatre; YouTube already has so much footage of them playing junior-level cricket and club cricket and so on, stuff that nobody would watch live. But when it comes to the women's game, analysts find it difficult to source footage even for international players. Also there have been only three seasons of the Women's Premier League so far, so analysts have a relatively small sample set to work off." Another potentially tricky area cricket might have to negotiate in the near future is the intersection of professional analysis and organised betting. Within the super-popular fantasy sports app Dream11, for example, there is a paid tier where users can access tips by pro-analysts, and look at their finished teams and compare notes. Twitter threads by the likes of Kimber and Ganjoo have been circulated in betting circles while discussing an upcoming matchday's potential trajectories. The legal status of betting on cricket is wildly variable among cricket-playing nations: in the UK and Australia, for instance, it's legal and centrally regulated, whereas it is illegal in India and Pakistan. Former cricketers also mention another problem: over-reliance on data. Teams run the risk of over-thinking their approach and good old-fashioned cricketing 'wisdom" could be ignored. As Manjrekar notes, 'Teams should remember that the human mind is the most sophisticated analytical tool." 'I always say that cricket is like a performing art," says Dasgupta. 'There is the scientific aspect. But there's also the artistic aspect or the cricketing sixth sense, which should never be underestimated. Ideally, both should go hand in hand." What Dasgupta is describing here may well be the foundation on which analytical teams are assembled in the future, with professionals from various walks of life working in tandem towards cricketing goals. Kimber hypothesises a future picture of the global game along similar lines. 'In the long-term future, I expect many more former players to get involved with analytics, especially younger ones who retired prematurely due to injuries," he says. 'Ideally, you don't want your analytics team to be just four kids from IIT or Cambridge or wherever, who are good at analysis but have never spoken to a cricketer in their lives. What you want is a bunch of different types of people—maybe one of them used to be a journalist, another is a junior coach, a third is a former player, a fourth guy who is the math whiz." As the IPL and other T20 leagues around the world carve out increasingly large chunks of the cricketing calendar for themselves, the visibility and responsibility offered to professional analysts will only increase. This will affect the game but also how cricket is presented. If you're a fan, what would a more data-inclusive game look like? A clue might lie in how the NBA is consumed. It begins with the way the sport produces and organises stats for fans. On the official NBA website, you will get a 360-degree statistical summary of the player you're looking up—points, rebounds, assists, and so on. Now imagine a cricket scorecard where you can see what percentage of false shots played by a batter, or a bowler's economy rates and averages against right versus left-handed batters. Compared to the data presentation of an average NBA or English Premier League broadcast, there's a long way to go. Cricket has some catching up to do to rival the statistical sophistication of other major team sports like basketball and football. The good news is, everyone—players, coaches, franchises and broadcasters—seem to agree that analysis is the future. When data points start to look like runs saved or wickets taken, you know the game has truly changed. Aditya Mani Jha is a writer based in Delhi. Also read: Fantasy leagues are making cricket viewing transactional
Time of India
27-05-2025
- Business
- Time of India
Ctrl+AI+Delete: Is the old PC dead?
Walk into any electronics retail store in a shopping mall and you will see experience zones showcasing the latest and greatest in AI PCs, running demo videos and AI apps. There will be a crowd huddled around them trying out new applications—summarising documents, writing code, generating images and making music. In-store promoters will be evangelising the benefits of a neural processing unit fitted in these laptops. Sales of AI PCs are gaining traction in India, albeit slowly. The main deterrents to mass adoption—confused consumers who are not very clear about the benefits and a steep price-tag, industry executives and market trackers told ET. Out of a total 9.9 million PCs shipped in India in 2024, only 1.2 million were AI notebooks, making up roughly 12% of total PC sales, according to IDC. Ipsita Dasgupta, managing director, HP India , told ET that AI PCs are just being introduced in the Indian market, so it's still early to quantify their share in overall shipments. However, momentum is building quickly, with strong interest across consumer and commercial segments.'Globally, 15-20% of all PCs sold this year are expected to be AI PCs and this is projected to rise to over 50% within the next two to three years,' she said. Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Join new Free to Play WWII MMO War Thunder War Thunder Play Now Undo ETtech Price is not expected to be a prohibitive factor for adoption of AI PCs in India. 'When comparing an AI PC to a non-AI PC with similar specifications, the price difference is negligible. In most cases, the difference is about Rs 15,000,' Dasgupta said. Some, however, feel that the response has been below expectations. 'In the last one year, the industry has realised that the adoption of AI hardware has not grown at the pace they assumed. The slow adoption is not only in India, but globally too,' said Sudhir Goel, chief business officer, Acer India . Live Events As the hype around generative AI reaches fever pitch, there is strong interest among customers in India, however. Discover the stories of your interest Blockchain 5 Stories Cyber-safety 7 Stories Fintech 9 Stories E-comm 9 Stories ML 8 Stories Edtech 6 Stories 'We're seeing stronger interest across customer cohorts—students, creators, gamers, mid-market and enterprise—where AI use cases such as AI tutors, personal assistants, video and audio editing, intelligent threat detection, real-time translation and Copilot+ workflows have immediate impact,' said Ashish Sikka, director and category head, Lenovo India . However, steep pricing of the products has kept overall penetration of AI PCs low, industry executives said. 'People don't know why they want to pay more to buy an AI PC,' said Bharath Shenoy, principal analyst, IDC India. Shenoy said AI PCs currently command a higher price compared to non-AI PCs which is a barrier, especially for bulk enterprise purchases and price-sensitive consumers. 'The entry-level price for AI PCs is currently significantly above the typical price range where the majority of Indian consumers are comfortable spending for a laptop. People were spending around Rs 30,000–35,000 for a laptop. Now it has gone up to Rs 45,000–50,000. But AI PCs start around Rs 75,000–80,000,' Shenoy said, adding that when consumers do spend that amount, they often opt for established premium alternatives. Some in the PC industry have accepted that pricing is a barrier to adoption, and has been actively working towards lowering it, admitting that the additional hardware inside AI PCs will always keep them at a premium over non-AI PCs. 'This is the beginning of the AI PC era in India. Right now, most of the AI PC devices launched are in the premium segment, and over a period of time, we will see more and more AI PCs being launched in the mainstream segment. However, AI PCs will continue to be at a premium to normal PCs, as they have significant hardware enhancements, which provide customers with an undeniable value proposition for productivity, creativity and security,' Lenovo's Sikka said. Industry executives said the second half of the year will see prices moderating. The older generation PCs will put on discounts to clear inventories, replaced by a new breed of affordable AI PCs , that will bring them closer to the average selling price of a PC in India. Goel says while prices have already started going down, a major drop is expected from June onwards. Acer specifically plans to bring AI hardware very close to what is the current mainstream pricing by May end when the back-to-school season starts, a period which typically sees PC sales go up in India. Qualcomm , a new entrant in the PC space known primarily for its chipsets for high-end smartphones, said its new Snapdragon X platform has already enabled devices at price points starting around $600 (approximately Rs 51,000), and the company now expects a big pull from consumers. Beyond just pricing, there is also a general lack of awareness of the benefits of using an AI PC, industry executives said. As awareness picks up and pricing comes down, AI PCs are expected to dominate PC sales in the years to come
Time of India
25-05-2025
- Time of India
‘It is complainant's duty to not cause delay after plaint is filed'
Kolkata: Once a complaint has been filed in court, its also the complainant's duty not to skip hearings and cause delay, an Alipore district and sessions court said on Friday, dismissing a complaint filed against six persons by a Kolkata-based woman in 2013. The woman, in her appeal, had chosen to blame her lawyer for misguiding her. Alipore judge Mainak Dasgupta stressed the right to speedy trial and said, "It would be a travesty of justice if the person is kept under criminal litigation for years, such criminal litigation being commenced at the behest of a complainant who appears to be not inclined to bring the litigation to a conclusion but rather remains content only by observing that the accused persons are being subjected to such a prolonged litigation process. " The woman had levelled multiple criminal charges in court against six individuals in June 2013. Once the court examined her, the case moved for trial. The court also slapped criminal charges against the six accused. After the case dragged on for a decade, on Jan 6, 2023, the Alipore judicial magistrate hearing this case dismissed the complaint due to non-appearance. The woman then challenged the order in the sessions court. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like 5 Books Warren Buffett Wants You to Read In 2025 Blinkist: Warren Buffett's Reading List Undo The woman, in her challenge, stressed her former lawyer had misguided her. She also cited the fact that on some court hearing days there were Bar resolutions for lawyers not to attend court. Judge Dasgupta did not buy this argument. In his order, he said if the lawyer was misguiding her, she had an option to approach the judicial magistrate directly. Judge Dasgupta said, "Adjournments sought for by the litigants have plagued the judicial system for years and it is only such adjournments that have led to huge pendency and burial of proceedings emanating out of actions of diligent litigants. Once the complainant has initiated the proceedings which have engulfed the accused person in a litigation, it is the duty of the complainant to attend court and ensure that the proceedings are carried forth by the learned appointed advocate. " The judge then upheld the judicial magistrate's order.
Time of India
24-05-2025
- Politics
- Time of India
Kol boy 1st Bengali to become 1st citizen of London borough
1 2 Kolkata: The London Borough of Newham on Thursday elected councillor Rohit K Dasgupta as its chair and first citizen, the top civic official representing the council. Dasgupta, who became the first ever chair of Bengali Indian origin in the borough, will preside over citizenship ceremonies, host dignitaries and chair civic events. He was first elected to the council as a Labour Party candidate in 2018 and re-elected in May 2022 for the Canning Town South Ward. An alumnus of St James' School and JU, Dasgupta had moved to London in 2009. Dasgupta told TOI it was "deeply meaningful" for him that someone of Indian Bengali origin, born in Kolkata, was elected to this role. "My vice-chair, councillor Imam Haque, also shares these roots. For the first time, two Bengalis have been elected to the top two civic roles in a UK borough. We are passionate about our shared heritage. We are working with organisations, such as London Bengal Heritage Foundation, as well as businesses and civic groups for cultural and civic ties between Newham and Kolkata. " Newham, Dasgupta said, was home to a vibrant South Asian community, including a significant Bengali population. "Strengthening these connections is both personally meaningful and politically important. During my acceptance speech, I quoted Tagore to reflect on our shared cultural values and his vision of universalism..." he added. An associate professor in gender studies at London School of Economics and Political Science, Dasgupta has been a trade unionist, anti-racist campaigner and an LGBTQ+ rights activist. "We are living in a time, when anti-migrant and anti-queer rhetoric is on the rise. Across many societies, trans-people, migrants and other vulnerable groups are being scapegoated and marginalised. As Chair, I will continue to be a proud ally and a voice of solidarity. I want our communities to know that Newham stands with them," he said. Get the latest lifestyle updates on Times of India, along with Brother's Day wishes , messages and quotes !
