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FIFA World Cup 2018: Cristiano Ronaldo and football’s shades of grey
Portugal and Real Madrid forward Cristiano Ronaldo is a master at deriving every ‘technical foul’ from these shades. And he even flaunts it
When I close my eyes, three fleeting images spool out from Spain vs Portugal 3-3 draw—a match that has already become part of the World Cup football folklore.
The first is Portuguese captain Cristiano Ronaldo’s self-assurance and self-awareness as he struts off the bus into the stadium to put his mark on the game’s biggest stage.
Then comes the orchestrated tiki-taka of the Spanish armada around the understated Andres Iniesta. And finally, there’s the indelible imprint of Ronaldo closing his eyes and taking a deep breath before curling a free kick around the wall and dipping the ball into the top right corner of the goal to score an equaliser, minutes away from the final whistle of the Group B opener.
With power and confidence, speed and guile, and the finishing touch of a genius, Ronaldo took the match by the scruff of its neck and denied Spain a win.
The very next day, the world was witness to a contrasting performance from the man with whom Ronaldo vies for the mantle of the best footballer—Lionel Messi. Leo not only missed a free kick from just outside the D, and the sundry other chances, but also a penalty, as debutante Iceland held mighty Argentina to a 1-1 draw.
But, for all the brilliance of Ronaldo that lights up football for us, he also represents much that is still ambivalent about the sport. The manner in which he “earned” a penalty in the opening minutes of the game was typical. He ran at the relatively inexperienced Spanish right-back Nacho Fernandez, made a feint to draw out a challenge, which Nacho could not pull out of in time, made contact with the defender’s knee in his charge forward, and went down to the turf with one eye on the referee.
That’s where the subjective interpretation of a referee comes into play. Was the defender’s touch hard enough to knock Ronaldo off his feet? Or did the tricky Portuguese initiate the contacts to extract a penalty at the start of the game and the killer free kick near the end?
TCS share buyback shows absurdities of India’s repurchase rules
Sebi’s share buyback norms may have its quirks, but they are nothing compared to the oddities involved in valuing Indian IT stocks at the moment
Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) said last week that it would buy back roughly 2% of its shares at a 17% premium to prevailing prices. This should ideally have had almost no impact on the company’s share price, given the small reduction in the company’s share capital. But the TCS stock rose 3% after the share buyback announcement, largely because of a peculiarity in India’s share repurchase rules.
The Securities and Exchange Board of India, or Sebi, has mandated that companies reserve 15% of share buyback offers for small shareholders with holdings worth less than Rs 2 lakh.
These shareholders typically own a fraction of the company’s shares, which essentially means that all or most of the shares they tender in buyback offer get accepted. This provides an incentive for short-term trades that involve buying shares worth Rs 2 lakh or so just ahead of the buyback and then tendering them at the announced buyback price, which in this case is at a 17% premium.
As pointed out earlier in this column, Sebi’s misguided policy of protecting small shareholders is being taken advantage of by sophisticated traders who don’t need the regulator to hold their hand. As such, the bizarre quota system should be done away with to remove distortions in the marketplace.
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