Succeeding where more experienced batsmen have failed he is a big hitter with

Succeeding where more experienced batsmen have failed, he is a big hitter with the finer cricket shots in his repertoire to pull off when he needs them.A young talent with something to prove before this tournament, Raina has exploded onto the scene and, along with Sharma, could be the future of Indian cricket. Rohit Sharma (Deccan Chargers)Sharma has been one of the few success stories of an extremely poor tournament for Deccan, in which they haven’t recorded a single home win. In this terrible run of form, Sharma has lit up the Hyderabad batting lineup, striking 38 fours and 19 maximums in a tournament where he has scored 404 runs.Sharma has even outshone veteran teammates Adam Gilchrist and Herschelle Gibbs.That’s the batsmen for my team of the tournament so far; check back for the wicket keeper and bowlers. . * Q3 EPS $0.07 vs est loss $0.30/shr Stocks * Q3 provision for loan losses down 6 pct * Loan originations fall sharply April 23 (Reuters) – AmeriCredit Corp (ACF.N) posted asurprise quarterly profit, helped by a fall in provision forbad loans and lower expenses. For the quarter ended March 31, the company posted netincome of $9.8 million, or 7 cents a share, compared with $38.2million, or 31 cents a share, a year ago. Analysts on average were expecting the company to post aloss of 30 cents a share, before items, according to ReutersEstimates Total expenses fell 18 percent to $475.7 million Provisionfor loan losses dropped 6 percent. Tighter lending conditions have forced the company tosignificantly scale down on its loan origination volumes, whichhave slumped to $210.1 million in the quarter, compared with$1.3 billion a year earlier. Shares of the company closed at $9.09 Thursday on the NewYork Stock Exchange.

(Reporting by Archana Shankar in Bangalore; Editing by AnnePallivathuckal) Stocks. The Pittsburgh Penguins beat the Detroit Red Wings by a score of 3-2 on Wednesday night, as they attempted to pull themselves back into a series thatDetroit once had a stranglehold on.Sidney Crosby finally lived up to the hype and scored two goals for the home team.The victory pulls the Pens within a game, but Detroit still leads the series 2-1.Even though Pittsburgh has won 17 consecutive games at Mellon Arena, (not losing since back in February),I still can’t help but feel that the Wings have them right where they want them.If Detroit can win the next game in Pittsburgh on Saturday night, then they will be able to close out the series with a win in Michigan on Monday, and hoist the Cup on their home ice.The next game will be the most important one to date. The team who wins that game will most likely win the series andI still feel that will be Detroit.After reading the transcripts of the post-game interviews held with the coaches after Game Two, I can’t help but think that Penguins coach Michel Therrien must have gone to the same coaching school as Buffalo task-master Lindy Ruff. Check this out and see if you can find anything familiar…Michel Therrien: “It’s really tough to generate offense against that team They’re good on obstruction. It’s going to be tough to generate any type of offense, if the rules remain the same.

So it’s the first time we’re facing a team that the obstruction is there, and we’re having a hard time skating to take away ice.”We took two penalties tonight on the goalie We never take penalty to the goalie in the playoff I’ll tell you something, I reviewed those plays He’s a good actor He goes to players, and he’s diving Took away our power play Got to get focused I know our players are frustrated right now It’s tough to play the game. But Osgood did the same thing against Dallas under Ribeiro.”Our team never go to goalie We never did it And we don’t target the goalie. But this is, want to talk about experience, he goes to players, and he knows what to do, I guess.”When in doubt, blame the refs and call the other team cheaters.Don’t ever take any responsibility or give the other team any credit. NEW YORK (Reuters) – Microsoft Corp reported a lower quarterly profit that met Wall Street forecasts, as cost cuts helped to partly offset a sharper-than-expected decline in revenue. Technology  |  Media  |  FranceThe world’s largest software maker also said it was on track to release the next version of its operating system, Windows 7, during its 2010 fiscal year. Shares of Microsoft rose 4 percent in after-hours trading.COMMENTARY:CURTIS SHAUGER, ANALYST, CARIS & COShauger said Microsoft’s stock has been “pretty cheap” and investors were expecting lower margins.”So the fact that this is not negative and they saw some positive growth in one or two of their business lines (servers and Xbox) is providing a little bit of relief. Also, some of the cost cuts they have done is having positive impact.

People were fearing far worse.”SID PARAKH, ANALYST, MCADAMS WRIGHT RAGEN, SEATTLE”The numbers are lower than we were expecting .. they hit the earnings number but were … lower on revenue than we expected.”On share move: “One of the things they said was operating expense guidance is lower, which might imply they are doing more on cost savings.”"They said: we expect the weakness to continue through the next quarter. We don’t know whether it means it’s going to get better after that.”KIM CAUGHEY, SENIOR ANALYST, FORT PITT CAPITAL GROUP, PITTSBURGH”I’m kind of neutral. There’s stuff to be happy with: they’re controlling costs and getting that under control. The bad thing is demand and consumer preference seems to have affected their topline.”"The last couple of days tech earnings have shown an increasing weakness in enterprise spending. And more of a shift toward netbooks than notebooks, that would ultimately impact Microsoft.”"Some areas of weakness that I can really see is their online services business….Client looks a little on the light side, and we expect that to have been impact by netbooks.”"Something that looks like it’s holding up well is server and tools, and that’s the more business-oriented software. We were probably expecting that to be stronger, but for Microsoft at least it’s strong.”"It’s good to see that they are controlling their costs, because that’s within their sphere of control.

They can’t really do a lot about demand.”Caughey attributed the share rise to Microsoft’s comments that Windows 7 will be released in fiscal year 2010:”They have a nice product refresh cycle coming up which should allow them to maintain their market share.”"The best of all possible worlds would be that it’s ready for back-to-school, which is the July-August time frame.”"They really haven’t had a scheduled release. We all thought it was sometime in calendar 2010.”"Vista was very delayed so this is a positive sign. that Microsoft said Windows 7 will be out in 2010.”BRIAN BARISH, PRESIDENT, CAMBIAR INVESTORS, DENVER, COLORADO”I think there’s nothing really terribly surprising in them. What is moderately encouraging is a good deal more restraint on cost. Microsoft has not exactly been the tightest run ship on the cost side for a long time and they are actually doing something there and I think that’s encouraging.”Quite honestly movement in the stock probably has more to do with what kind of short-term options various short-term oriented traders have than anything else. But it’s nice to see pretty decent numbers coming out of them.”TOAN TRAN, ANALYST, MORNINGSTAR”Microsoft had a good quarter.