New bat for Sachin

MOHALI: Sachin Tendulkar is known to prepare assiduously before any match. He never leaves anything to chance and covers all bases before getting into the thick of the battle. Now that India are just two wins away from one of his most cherished goals - the World Cup crown - the batting maestro must be preparing even harder.

On Sunday, one got a sneak peak into his plans for the semifinal against Pakistan, and possibly the final on April 2, when he brought to the ground a fresh supply of bats. Tendulkar is very fastidious about his willows and wants them to be in perfect shape so that he can heap maximum damage on the bowlers.

The gleaming new bats needed some breaking up so he, after doing a few knock-downs himself, asked the yoga trainer Manoj Kumar to give them some hits.

Thus, while Tendulkar played football with teammates, Kumar kept hitting balls with the bats for close to an hour.

Tendulkar came back to continue the routine himself before Suresh Raina and Virat Kohli also got a taste of the master's new weapons of mass destruction.

Will Tendulkar be employing one of these new bats in the semifinal against Pakistan? We will know shortly. Maybe, his 100th international century (he is just one short) will come through a brand new bat.

Few companies declared tomorrow as Holiday due to Indo-Pak Semi's

NEW DELHI: Work will take a backseat at India Inc when the cricketing world's arch-rivals India and Pakistan face-off in the World Cup semi-final at Mohali on Wednesday.

While some companies are considering half- or full-day leave for employees on the day of the match, others have installed TV screens across office premises or made arrangements for special screening of the match to ensure employees get the pulse of the cricketing ties between the two nations that have fought three wars since independence.

FMCG company Dabur India is weighing an "off" on Wednesday. "The only constraint is that it is yearend closing, so work pressure is quite high at the moment," said Dabur India executive director A Sudhakar.

The company had declared a holiday on the day of the T20 final between India and Pakistan in 2007.

Food and beverages major PepsiCo India may allow half-day leave for employees if it doesn't impact the organisation's functioning, said Samik Basu, vice-president (HR) and chief people officer for India Region.

Some firms are also looking into work-from-home facility for that day. "If employees want to work from home or leave early to be able to watch the match, we are open to that," said Ashish Kumar, chief HR officer at multiplex chain operator PVR Ltd , which is screening the match at some of its multiplexes. The firm is also considering an exclusive screening for its employees.

Employees of the Future Group's Big Bazaar, the country's largest hypermarket retail chain, will be free to watch the match on large screens installed in stores, said its president, Rajan Malhotra.

"The idea is to let employees enjoy the match while at work, because they tend to take leave during such crucial matches," said S Varadarajan, executive vice-president (HR) at BPO firm Quatrro.

The company has in-house contests surrounding the World Cup to give employees a sense of involvement in the sporting event. Salil Kapoor, COO of the country's largest DTH service company Dish TV, said, "We would have special screening of the match in high definition feed for our employees in office and have also tied up with some pubs and clubs with special discounts for our employees."

Tsunami warning again in Japan

OSAKA, Japan: A shallow 6.5 magnitude earthquake hit off the northeast coast of Japan on Monday, the US Geological Survey said.

The Japan Meteorological Agency issued a 50-centimetre (18 inch) tsunami warning for the Pacific coast of Miyagi prefecture, which was devastated by the huge earthquake and tsunami that hit on March 11.

Indo-pak Match tickets in Black

NEW DELHI: When all eyes are on the India-Pakistan semifinal clash, cricket fans at Mohali complain about the unavailability of tickets at the counters on Sunday.

The fans are angry and allege that the tickets are now being sold at a high price in the black market.

However, there have been numerous reports of a thriving black market in tickets with prices rocketing so that a 5,000-rupee ticket was being sold for as much as 25,000 rupees.

"For a match as big as this one, we cannot do anything about black market tickets," said PCA joint secretary GS Walia.

"As far as we are concerned, we only gave the tickets to those who stood in the queues and bought them. We cannot keep track if they sell these in (the) black (market)."

Salary hike for Wipro Employees

BANGALORE: IT major Wipro said that it has completed some organisational changes it had planned and has assured employees of its IT business salary hikes across the board.

"The operating plan for the businesses has been completed. Continuing our design principle on having a single axis, we took advice from an external strategy consulting firm to finalise how to goal service lines and business units. This is now ready and will be shared with the leadership teams by next week," TK Kurien, the new CEO, said.

"A cross-functional team is working on the data review and structure finalisation to migrate all our data to the new organisation structure by middle of April," he added.

He also said that he would update the employees on the timing for salary increase process for the IT business by the first week of April.

In a bid to catch up with peers and improve its topline growth which has been lagging peers, the company had announced during its third quarter results that it will align itself to create a "bolder, simpler and leaner" organisation.

Wipro discarded its joint CEO model and appointed Kurien as the sole CEO earlier this year.

A Short interview with the Living Legend Warren Buffett

BANGALORE: On the second day of his India trip on Wednesday, Warren Buffett was a busy man, having a brief chat with the Karnataka CM before a factory visit to the only Buffett investment in India, TaeguTec India, a high-end tooling company. After pounding the shop floor, addressing employees and planting a sapling, it was time for a meeting with city CEOs. Before leaving for Delhi, the 'Sage of Omaha' spoke exclusively to TOI. Excerpts.

Q. We noticed that when you were planting the tree, there was a different Warren Buffett, different from the persona of an investor or a philanthropist. You seemed to open up in a different way.

A. Well, I like to think that I open up even otherwise (laughs). But part of life is to plant trees that other people will sit under. Somebody planted a tree for me long ago in the form of an educational institution and I sat under that tree, metaphorically. The same happened in one area after another in my life.

Q. The chairman of Infosys, Narayana Murthy, talks of compassionate capitalism. Is philanthropy going to be the compassionate side of capitalism?

A. I think philanthropy should be part of humanity. I don't relate it to capitalism or to business. When you have everything that you possibly could need yourself and other people need what you have that is of no use to you and has enormous use to them, I think you need to do something about it.

Q. Philanthropy till now largely has been an individual effort. As it becomes bigger, it might become an institutional effort with its own systems, processes, checks and balances. Will it take away from the spontaneity of the individual effort that it is today?

A. No, I don't think so. What we are encouraging is more individual effort. We are not asking people to join us or to give to what we believe in. We are encouraging people to enjoy giving and do it their own way. They can do it when they want, with whom they want. Maybe they can learn from each other. I have learnt from other people I have met. It's not designed to centralize anything. It's designed to encourage people individually and in their families to do the things we found so enjoyable.

Q. In India, the greatest potential is in the infrastructure sector. Would you be looking at gas, power, steel, utilities in general for investment? You did say on Tuesday that you would look at making one big investment a year in India.

A. I would like to make a big one, but it will have to be in a field that I understand. A company in which I have a good feeling about where it will be in 5/10 years, competitively.

Q. From what we have read, gut instinct plays a large role in your investment decisions. Many investors like to kick the tiles, go to the shop floor to see if an investment makes sense. Are you that kind of an investor?

A. No, I look at the people who run it. I would not know what to do if tomorrow morning you make me in charge of a plant (laughs). But I do know who should be in charge of it.

Q. Your only investment in India so far is in Bangalore-based TaeguTec. Would you future investments here be in such specialist, high-end manufacturing companies?

A. These kind of companies will do very well. But there are a whole group of companies that will do well in India. So, I will not limit my interest to something like this.

All 6 reactors at Fukushima reconnected to power lines

TOKYO/FUKUSHIMA: Japanese workers struggling to avert a nuclear disaster on Tuesday succeeded in reconnecting all six reactors to power lines at the quake-hit Fukushima plant, marking a significant progress in the tedious task of bringing the radiation-leaking complex under control.

The development came as the tsunami-hit northeast was again jolted by a series of powerful quakes, including two measuring 6.6 on the Richter Scale.

In a major relief in their efforts, engineers working overtime at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant reconnected all six reactors to external power, the plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Company said on Tuesday, according to Kyodo news agency.

The progress was made despite the efforts to restore power and cool down spent nuclear fuel pools being hampered by the detection of smoke at the No. 2 and No. 3 reactors.

However, TEPCO cautioned that a lot of work still needed to be done before electricity can actually be turned on at the plant.

The company said workers are checking all additional equipment for damage to make sure cooling systems can be safely operated.

Authorities earlier sought the help of the US military in tackling the "extremely tough" situation at the plant, close to which highly concentrated radioactivity was detected in iodine and cesium in seawater, sparking fears about food safety.

TEPCO said the seawater pollution in the region had expanded, but the country's nuclear safety agency said there were no immediate health threats.

The amount of radioactive iodine reached 80.3-fold of the standard level at the point 8 km south of the plant and 16.4-fold at the point 16 km south, Kyodo news agency reported.

The Fukushima prefectural government denied the possibility that seafood from the area was distributed to markets saying fishing had not been conducted near the nuclear plant, where emergency workers battled to avert a widespread disaster by trying to reconnect power lines and cool overheating reactors.

The critical restoration work at the plant was stalled on Monday after smoke rose from No. 2 and No. 3 reactors, fuelling fears of fresh radiation leaks from the area rocked by the March 11 quake of magnitude 9 and devastating tsunami that left over 22,000 people dead or unaccounted for in Japan's northeast.

Firefighters and the self-defense forces (SDF) on Tuesday also managed to throw in 18 tons of seawater into the nearly boiling storage pool that is holding spent nuclear fuel. The move succeeded in cooling the pool to 50 degrees Celsius, according to TEPCO.

The pool was throwing up steam possibly carrying radioactive elements into the air.