World cyber games 2006 Bangladesh championship

This is what so many of you gamers out there have been waiting for: The World Cyber Games 2006. Sponsored by Djuice, the WCG 2006 Bangladesh Championship is going to be held in Dhaka at Bangladesh China Friendship Convention Center on 6, 7 & 8 September. Winners of the championship shall be headed to Monza, Italy in October to participate in the World Cyber Games Grand Final where participants from more then 70 nations will be competing for a cool million dollars of prize money.

Last year at the 2005 Grand Finals our players Rusho and Fahim put up a brave show with the professional gamers from all around the world. Although they didn't move to the second round of the league but their opponents had a very tough time with them. And that says something. These professional gamers train like real athletes. For years.

This year an even higher number of participants are expected and the best gamer around will represent Bangladesh in the World Cyber Games.

Djuice is official sponsor for this event and Asus will be providing Graphics Cards. The strategic partner of World Cyber Games, F1 Management Ltd will be organizing this event.

This year, the gamers were given the opportunity to choose the games they wanted to play for the national finals. Once the games are selected, those who wish to participate must send in sms and the highest 1200 participants will be asked to come for registration.

Participants of any age and gender can participate in this event. The games shall be played on a Local Area Network and Referees appointed by F1 MANAGEMENT LTD shall monitor every single game. A Referee will thoroughly go through the rules and regulations of the game and shall be given training and live demo of the games. The games will be played on a knock-out basis during the 3day long event.

For more information, and details of how to register, log on to http://bd. worldcybergames.com

On a side note, if you're interested to know just how cool is it to be a top professional gamer, check out this article: http://www.geartest.com/sections/games/professional_gamer.html

By Irfan Hussein

As I got into my car, en route to a meeting with one of the greatest talents ever produced by the Bangladeshi cricket team, there were a number of thoughts running in my mind. I have to admit, I was a bit nervous, after all I was going to meet a person who managed to score a century against the likes of Shane Warne and Brett Lee. Flashes of his great batting and his sayings were constantly occurring in my mind. I was so excited that at one point I actually forgot his address and almost entered a wrong building! So after what seemed like ages, I finally got into the correct building and reached the correct floor. With a lot of courage I finally managed to ring the doorbell (I actually pressed it twice by mistake). The door opened and there he was, Shahriar Nafees standing there, very calm and collective. We shook hands and he introduced himself to me, which was obviously not required. I mean, almost the whole country knows who Shahriar Nafees is. After a consistent number of performances in the under 19 and the Bangladesh A team, Shahriar Nafees finally got the chance play for the national side. His debut match was pitted against England. When asked if he was nervous, he replied that chasing a total of 394 on your first one day international can be very nervy. Though he got out on 10 in that match he came back brilliantly with a mature 75 against the Australians in the last match of the Nat west series, thereby showing the selectors that he wasn't a wrong catch.

“Life is quite different now that I am a full fledged cricketer” he says. He goes out a lot lesser and is quite busy training at the field. During his off times he usually is busy studying for his exams in Dhaka University, which are scheduled a bit later specially for him. He still manages to keep up with his studies along with his cricketing career. In a short time, Shariar Nafees who loves to play the cover drive and also loves to field at the slips has already built quite a few land marks in his career. To him however, his most favorite and most memorable innings was against Australia in the recent test series that took place in Bangladesh. He scored 138 runs against a bowling attack that contained bowlers of the highest category. “That was the best moment for me, it was something different” he says. Playing at the highest level of international cricket naturally tends to put any cricketer under pressure and Shahriar Nafees was no different. He says that there is definitely a lot of pressure defending your country, especially because the people of Bangladesh are quite emotional. But pressure is a psychological thing and one can only be free from it by not thinking about it and playing one's own natural game. Well till now he has been quite successful and every successful person has an idol and an inspiration. So was the case with Shahriar Nafees, he says that when he was a kid he loved watching Sachin Tendulkar play, as he grew up Justin Langer, the left-handed Australian opener became his main idol. He further said that it was mainly because of his parents support that he has been able to play for the national side and without their support none of this would have been possible. When asked if there was any bowler in international cricket that he would rather not face, he replied boldly by saying that there are many good bowlers in cricket, but everyone is playable and there is no one that he would rather not face.

By this time I thought of switching the topic away from cricket and decided to ask him a few questions about his other activities. Food is the way to a man's heart and the same goes for Shahriar as he prefers home made food instead of fast food and also neglects going to restaurants. He enjoys hanging out with his friends in his university or has fun in an all night stay over party at his home with all his friends. He loves listening to music, especially to the underground bands of Dhaka; Artcell being one of his favorite bands. He doesn't have much of a hobby, other than listening to music and playing cricket. The one thing that he always does after coming back from a tour is to spend some time and roam around with his girlfriend. Some sportsmen tend to have a specific hairstyle for quite a while, that is not the case with Shahriar as he likes to vary his hair style quite regularly. Neither does he like to be too fancy with his dress up as he prefers to dress as casually as possible.

Still only twenty years of age, Shahriar Nafees has a long way to go in his career. His main aim is to be a consistent player for Bangladesh as long as he plays and he also hopes that he can better his personal performance and can do something special for his team. At the end of the day he gave away a scintillating message for all the rising star readers by saying that “this is an age (teenage) when one should try to do more of the positive things rather than just wasting there times on other unnecessary activities. They should also know how to distinguish between the good and the bad. Most importantly whatever they do, they must get educated in order to be successful in their future lives."

So that was it, a wonderful evening spent with the very talented Shahriar Nafees. I am sure he is not much of a stranger to me or to most of u, now that we know many things about him. Coming up next for him and the Bangladeshi team is the ICC championship trophy and the long awaited World Cup. I on behalf of “the Rising Stars” wish Shahriar Nafees and the whole Bangladeshi cricket team, the very best of luck for their future games.

By Naimul Karim

Emotions aside, I found this whole thing very amusing. Pluto was a planet. It's been a planet even before computers existed and ever since my grandpa got married. It's there in every damn encyclopaedia, in journals, books, thesis papers, and also in 'my first book of space'. Now all it takes to change all that is some 2500 nuts holding a meeting. Think about the implications all over the world, the amount of 'corrections', updating and what not. Think about the kid who learnt Pluto is a planet just the day before. Now suddenly, someone goes up to him and says, 'Sorry son, we fired him. He's no longer a planet.'

And what's more... they actually held a 'voting' to decide the status of Pluto. Let me get this straight: Whether Pluto is a planet or not will be decided by 0.00004% of a planet's population located 4 and a half billion kms away. Now that's what you call being 'Important'!

Now the reason that is being shown behind this resolution is that Pluto is too small to be regarded as a planet. Let me make it clear that Pluto has not recently lost weight. It has been the same since its discovery and classification. The problem is that all of a sudden these scientists have modified the definition of planets, so that Pluto's new status will now be a 'dwarf planet'. I hope the other scientists do not pick up this idea. All of a sudden, there might be a new resolution where people below 5 ft will no longer be considered people. They will be subtracted from the population count and stripped of basic rights. And we're going to call them, 'dwarf people'.

Alright, enough of my shouting on 'planet rights'. Consider this for a moment... What if the inhabitants of Pluto held a meeting and decided that Earth will no longer be considered as a planet. Now I don't want to get into the details, but such a resolution would basically mean the end of science for us. So before making any hasty decisions, try to be in Plutonian shoes for a change.

By Tausif Salim