Notes:
On 7th February, Vidharbha lifted the Ranji Trophy for the second time in a row, after defeating Saurashtra by 78 runs in the final match of the 2018–19 season held at Vidarbha Cricket Association Stadium, Nagpur. With this, Vidarbha has become only the 6th team in the tournament’s long history to have defended the title.

Notes:
The 9th Senior Women’s Hockey National Championship 2019 has started in Hisar, Haryana from February 8. Top India stars will turn up for their respective state units and employers for the tournament. RSPB will begin their campaign against Hockey Rajasthan in the Pool A opening match. Twenty teams will participate in the 11-day domestic extravaganza. Teams that take the top two spots in Pools A, B, C and D in the round-robin stage will qualify for the quarterfinals to be played on February 15. The semifinal and final will be played on February 17 and February 18, respectively.

Notes:
On 6th February 2019, Opener Smriti Mandhana hammered the fastest fifty for India in the first T20I against New Zealand in Wellington in just 24 deliveries. She broke her own record of fastest T20I fifty for India in women’s cricket, which she had achieved against England in Mumbai in 2018. Though, Smriti Mandhana’s 58 and Jemimah Rodrigues’ 39 went in vain as the Indian eves were bundled out for 136 in 19.1 overs. New Zealand Women defeated India by 23 runs in the first T20I. The overall record for the fastest fifty in women’s T20Is belongs to Sophie Devine of New Zealand who hit a half-century in 18 balls against India during a T20 International back in 2015.

Notes:
The Robert Bosch Center for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (RBC-DSAI) has recently inaugurated at the IIT Madras with an objective of advance scientific innovation for societal benefit. The RBC-DSAI will undertake foundational research in many areas of AI and Data Science viz. deep learning, reinforcement learning, network analytics, interpretable machine learning, and domain aware AI. The centre is opened by Germany-based Bosch in collaboration with IIT-Madras. Bosch will invest around Rs 20 crore (2.5 million euros) over five years in the centre.

Notes:
The Global Innovation Policy Center (GIPC) of the US Chambers of Commerce has recently released its International IP Index for Year 2019. In it, India has moved up 8 places to rank 36th among 50 economies in the 2019 Index.The improvement reflects important reforms implemented by Indian policymakers towards building and sustaining an innovation ecosystem for domestic entrepreneurs and foreign investors alike. The report also focuses on thorny issues. According to the report, the key problems in India include barriers to licensing and technology transfer, strict registration requirements, limited framework for the protection of bio-pharmaceutical IP rights, patentability requirements outside international standards, lengthy pre-grant opposition proceedings and previously used compulsory licensing for commercial and non-emergency situations. The index ranks countries based on 45 indicators covering patent, trademark, copyright and trade secrets protection.