Rained In With Awards, Honours

It's now raining awards and other goodies like BMW cars for the three members who tasted some success at Rio Olympics, out of the 119-strong Olympics contingent that returned after an overall disastrous outing. Compared with last Olympics tally of six medals this time it has been much slimmer pickings with just two medals - a silver and bronze.

However it may be argued that the previous outing was an honourable exception than rule. India's Olympic performance is nothing home to write about. Barring hockey in the pre-astroturf days, the country never made any lasting mark in this global sporting extravaganza.

In this medal starved country such accomplishments call for king's reception, something Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt may envy. They may come home with cart loads of gold medals, but I doubt whether they get the kind of reception which say an Indian bronze or silver medallist, or someone who came close to it, may get on arrival at the New Delhi airport.

It is almost as if for this country of billion people, which has little or no sports culture and treats sportspersons with scant respect, organising such a spectacle is its way of atoning for its sins of ignoring these athletes all these years.

For our sports ministry babus and mandarins, it works out perfectly well, as it is much easier to shower awards and goodies, with the procurement department guys pocketing commissions, than suffer the toil of setting up training facilities and maintaining them good enough to churn out world class athletes.

This mindset is very much evident when Indian contingent goes to participate in the Olympics. The number of officials is always higher than that of athletes. It has been our hallowed tradition and no government could ever overturn it. For most of them it is an all expenses paid pleasure trip with shopping for extended family thrown in.

For most athletes and their support staff official high handedness is a professional hazard. The latest story to tumble out this Olympics was of gymnast Dipa Karmarkar's physio being flown to Rio only after she made it to the finals. After every Olympics we get to hear such stories and this one is not going to be the last.

But it would be naive to assume that only bureaucrats and politicians had a good time. Some athletes too have perfected the art of fleecing the system. According to an Indian Express report as per the Target Olympic Podium Scheme (TOPS) some of them tried to claim huge amounts of money ostensibly for training, often in foreign shores, and some even managed to make the government pay for  their family members accompanying them to Rio. 

Ironically the country’s only two medallists were among those who received the least funding from the government, trained in India and under an Indian coach. Bronze medallist Sakshi Malik took just Rs 12 lakh under TOPS while silver medal-winning shuttler P V Sindhu was allocated Rs 44 lakh. Dipa Karmakar, who lost a medal by whisker, only claimed Rs 2 lakh from the government.

When someone does well in Olympics the state governments too wake up from their reveries and try to play cheer leaders. They loosen purse strings to indulge in competitive populism. After all it is only public money and those making these announcements are not paying from their pockets.

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Leicester FC: Suddenly Something

Gambling jargons have always gone over my head, as my measly salary and risk-averse nature kept me away from such 'wallet-lightening' pursuits. So when I first came across the news that punters had given '5000-1 against' chance for Leicester City FC winning the English Premier League, it did not ring any bell. Until somewhere I read the nearest possible analogy - Elvis Presley being found alive this year! Maybe in the Indian context Elvis Presley may well be substituted by Subhas Chandra Bose.

Now those minuscule few who were crazy enough to put their money on this club may well be whistling Elvis songs on their way to the bank. In this era of hard as nails professionalism and big money in football, Leicester quite literally rose like a phoenix, as its past credentials were hardly inspiring. The foxes' (as they are called) quietly went about their job of craftily outwitting fancied opponents and it really took a while for many to take notice, amid their smokescreens of scepticism.

After all who would even give chance for a team that had suffered near relegation last season to show any promise this year. The coach, Claudio Ranieri, had trained many biggies like Chelsea, Juventus etc, but failed to make any major splash, and his last assignment with Greece was a disgrace. About the players the lesser said the better. Very few of them had even played first division soccer. Second division players like Frenchman N’Golo Kante, Algerian Riyad Mahrez and Englishman Jamie Richard Vardy failed to invite even a second look from football pundits.

My off and on football antennae too failed to pick up Leicester phenomenon until a friend updated me about two months ago. Till then the only sports figure from Leicester I had heard of was cricketer David Gower, who used to represent Leicestershire in county cricket. But by the time I checked on Leicester FC it had garnered the eyeballs and overtaken all the biggies - the clubs based in Manchester and London. 

The rest they say is history, though I would have loved them to finish off with a victory rather than an equaliser with Manchester United.

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Closing of Indian Mind

Though Mary Kom the Bollywood biopic on the boxing sensation from Manipur may be raking the moolah at box office, with one Facebook meme even claiming that Priyanka Chopra, who plays Mary Kom, earned more money in this film than Mary Kom in her lifetime, it has no way made even a minor jab on the well entrenched prejudice 'mainland' Indians harbour towards their Northeast cousins.

A Facebook post by one Sreemoyee Piu Kundu about a scene in a Delhi multiplex screening the movie and later at a nearby restaurant was quite an eye-opener and succinctly sums up our fetish for symbolic gestures and quite literally 'skin deep' sense of national integration and inclusiveness.

At the end of the movie the national anthem is played and one couple refuses to stand up and all hell breaks loose. They are grabbed by the collar to stand up and reminded how Mary Kom has done India proud and how dare they sit and 'watch the fun', with choices Hindi expletives (ranging from Kuttey to MC, BC kind) thrown in. The fight snowballs to a mini riot with bottles flying and the security had to be called in to help people get out of the movie hall.

At the restaurant she describes how a group of Manipuri women, whom she had seen at the movie hall, get a taste of well entrenched prejudices and misogyny among a group of purebred Delhi youths of Punjabi kind. They sing cheesiest songs and even harass the waiter serving the Manipuri women. When one of the women stands up, they whistle and one of them remarks, 'oye yeh toh saali Mary wali aankhen dikha rahin hain...'

One among the waiters, all hailing from Northeast, pleads with  them to be quiet but gets pushed by one of the youths, who remarks, 'yeh dekh Mary ka ek aur aashiq!' The girls quietly pay and leave whatever they had ordered untouched. The guys then sing 'Hindi chini bhai bhai...'

Symbolic gestures like standing up for national anthem comes easy to us, but inculcating a far more complex sentiment like seeing a person from other community or state as equal is something we could not accomplish even 60 plus years after independence.

Though one of the cornerstones of our freedom struggle was national unity, quite ironically brought about by English education, and our stalwarts of freedom struggle had tried their level best to break down linguistic, communal and caste barriers of our vast and diverse land, but they were not fully successful, resulting in division of the country. After 1947 Jawaharlal Nehru and other leaders had made conscious efforts to promote national integration, but somewhere down the line their successors lost the zest and we lost the plot. Moreover the Northeast for some mysterious reason always remained in the fringes and little did we learn about those regions in our school, barring maybe Naga dance.

The country ended up being a conglomeration of various linguistic and religious enclaves.Slogan like 'unity in diversity' remained just that - slogans. For most of us the very idea of encountering people who are different is unsettling. Hence we always harbour a desire for homogeneity. The parameters for homogeneity may vary from person to person, but broadly they look for same language, religion, caste, region and food habits.

Delhi, of course, tops in such churlish behaviour as their tolerance bandwidth is very narrow - it spans from Gurgaon to Noida. Other cities may be a shade better, but are not free from it.


Image Courtesy: Facebook  
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In God's Name: Decoding Sachin Tendulkar Troller's Mind

Myopia. For Ophthalmologists it may be a disease or ailment, but for us it is wired into our DNA, as ingrained as paan stains on our country's walls or potholes on roads. Better get used to it.

Detractors say cricket is played in few countries, but aren't they one of the most populous ones. India, Pakistan, Bangladesh ... all eternal baby boomers and look at the way we fill up stadiums and stay put for the whole day (and leave them filthy), we have the numbers on our side and the world better take note of it. We care two hoots for who is the best baseball or rugby player (memory cells are in short supply as we refused to grow up), but they better know our God.

Don't know which yeda (fool) termed cricket a gentleman's game. For us trollers any form of propriety is alien and any form of decorum are meant to trampled at the altar of message boards. Woe betide if anyone tries to insult our god. Period.

If provoked (it could happen for just about anything) we replicate the nuisance pattern of locusts or crows on cyber space, don't even dare to test our prowess. For the victims the spam messages and memes we leave behind has the same effect as the sardine smell - the stink refuses to go away.

PS: Sorry Alia Bhatt, didn't mean to insult you. But then you happen to be the dumbest bimbo in contemporary Bollywood so we had to invoke your reference to run down a dumber sportswoman who didn't know our God's name.

Also Read: Bangalore Beat

Chinks In Spanish Armada

I am not one of those football fans who give their Circadian rhythm a miss to see their favorite stars in action at the other end of the globe. However I decided to make an exception for Holland's clash with Spain. Somehow Spain's victory last World Cup had not got down well with me - after all how can a team that had scored only eight goals (five of them by David Villa) in the whole tournament be considered a champion! And I could never forgive them for beating Germany in semi-finals.

The game began with the Spaniards dominating with their tiki taka brand of football, while the Dutch appeared to be  still carrying the ghost of last World Cup defeat in final on the back of their minds. The latter were playing a very aggressive physical soccer (remember Nigel de Jong landing his boot on the chest of Xabi Alonso in 2010 World Cup) with frequent fouls and acrimonious run ins with the referee, and one of those instances cost them dear as the Spaniards were rewarded a penalty. Veteran Xabi Alonso made no mistake, despite Dutch goalkeeper Jasper Cillessen's valiant attempt.

With Spain up 1-0 a sense of deja vu dawned upon me, I thought now they will while away rest of the time by keeping  possession of the ball and use all out efforts prevent opponents from scoring. That has been their game plan and they have been pretty successful in it. But they couldn't hold the Dutch for long. Just before half time captain Robin van Persie went airborne to score a header that is already being touted as the best goal of the world cup.

With their advantage frittered away the Spaniards looked beaten and hardly looked threatening for the rest of game. The team’s dearth of finishers was sorely exposed. On the other hand the spectacular equaliser acted like a tonic for the Dutch. They regained their poise and began playing their natural game and the number of fouls came down drastically.

Dutch winger Arjen Robben who had a score to settle for not being able to get past Iker Casillas' adept hands in the previous World Cup made merry by scoring a brace. His first goal during which he had Casillas on all fours and in near tears, is considered the fastest sprint recorded in World Cup.  

For the Spaniards this was a sledgehammer awakening. Last year too they had a jittery start with 0-1 loss to Switzerland. But the Swiss win seemed more like a fluke, whereas the Dutch hammering was very clinical and emphatic. The fading prowess of ageing stars like Xavi Hernandez and Iniesta stood exposed and they need to do some drastic regrouping to stay anywhere in the reckoning.

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Reduced To Ashes

The Ashes is winding to a close and one can be forgiven for thinking that this time England was playing Zimbabwe or Canada and not Australia. It was so easy for the hosts that they have pocketed the Ashes urn around mid-way of the series itself.

Barring the first test when things went down to a wire, thanks to some doughty batting by Australian tail-enders in both the innings, the Aussies hardly looked threatening. They had an upper hand in the third test but then the notorious English weather played spoilsport. So was the Decision Review System, which gave many controversial rulings, that too mostly against the Aussies.

But all this no way diminishes the fact that Aussies are a pale shadow of their former self. Their top and middle order looks badly depleted, though the bowling department looks a shade better and some of them have even adeptly wielded the willow during crunch times. Barely a couple of years ago they were the 21st century version of Donald Bradman's 'Invincibles'. Their nearly two decades of dominance of cricket, first under Steve Waugh and later under Ricky Ponting had made it look like the sun would never set over their rule.

However, the Aussies were not so endearing heroes, as their swagger and sledging turned many off. But even their harshest critics had to grudgingly acknowledge that the men in baggy green caps will always have the last laugh.

Hence, for the Aussies and their fans, the current slump in form and back-to-back losses at Ashes will be something they will find very hard to live down in near future. They are simply not used to these kind of reverses.

The generational change from Waugh to Ponting was smooth, but looks like a lot was lost in transition from Ponting to Clarke and, as it happens during lean phases, nothing seems to be going right. The country's steady stream of talent has run down to a trickle, both in terms of quantity and quality.  The current newcomers are finding it difficult to step into the shoes of their legendary predecessors like Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath. The retirement of Mike Hussey only revealed how acute the talent drought is.

On the coaching front too things were at a loose end. Mickey Arthur somehow could never keep the team as a cohesive unit. The near revolt by players during India tour exposed too many chinks and he seemed hardly in command.

Right now for the affable Michael Clarke the cup of woes is overflowing. Hope he does not throw in the towel and try to turn thing around - the Aussie way. 

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Andy Murray And The Identity Battles

Success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan. This axiom, immortalised by late John F Kennedy in one of his speeches, came into play after Andy Murray's historic win at Wimbledon. For the Brits, a long-drawn drought of their own countryman winning or coming anywhere close to the trophy, finally got over. The last guy to win the tournament was Fred Perry (1936).

But his success also brought to fore the latent sub-national identity and gender politics in the British society. During one of his interviews Murray himself had joked that he is a British when he’s winning, but Scottish when he’s losing. Many newspaper headline writers unwittingly stoked the embers of identity politics by mentioning it as 'England's' historic success. It turned out to be a proverbial red rag to Scottish nationalists, who took umbrage at this 'insensitive' reporting.

Murray's success also had its play in the arena of gender politics. The Guardian reminded us that another Brit had won Wimbledon in 1977 and that person happened to be a woman - Virginia Wade. In fact the newspaper points out that in women's tennis the country had been far more successful. Barely a year after Fred Perry won the championship Dorothy Round Little won the women's singles – for the second time in her career. In fact they had tasted success three times after Dorothy's feat, with Wade being the last one.

Describing it as a 'dark day for sports journalism' it quotes a tweet by Chloe Angyal, a feminist writer, "Murray is indeed the first Brit to win Wimbledon in 77 years unless you think women are people". For affable Murray all this may be something he may not have bargained for.

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IPL: Some Home Truths

Spot Fixing: A 20/20 version of match fixing. All you need to do is bowl a few lousy deliveries or as batsman you have two options. Either behave as if you need a microscope to see the ball or loft it under the delusion that laws of gravity have taken a sabbatical.

The Betrayed Billion: A coinage by TV newsmen who mistake hallucination for facts. They know that India's population is about a billion and cricket is a religion, but have deluded themselves to think all of them worship cricketers and take IPL seriously. The viewers very well know that this brand of cricket is at best a nautanki with a carnival fizz. It has little cricket but is loaded with 'fringe benefits' such as cheerleaders, well endowed hostesses with size zero knowledge of cricket and after match parties.

D-company: When a small kid's parent or someone dear dies he or she is told that their dear departed has become a star in the sky. Though Dawood Ibrahim is alive, for the Indian public he is many galaxies beyond the reach of the country's law enforcement machinery. Hence if any case gets linked to D-company, they know it will forever remain a mystery. The case dies an early natural death, notwithstanding Arnab Goswami's vocal cords, and its clerical remains are interred in a dusty file in some nondescript police station.

BCCI: In the 1970s there was a bank with the same acronym called Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI). It was founded by a Pakistani Agha Hasan Abedi and based out of London. It went bust in early 1990s thanks to Ponzi schemes and other nefarious activities such as funding dictators and drug cartels. Many overseas Pakistanis lost their money. It later came to be known as Bank of Crooks and Criminals. Our Board Of Control For Cricket In India (BCCI) is only a shade better in the sense that they are great survivors. It is a private organisation with an iron curtain over its finances and beyond the purview of RTI. Hence it attracts avaricious politicians and industrialists, for whom the interest in the game is at best an afterthought. Sports Illustrated had in 2011 exposed spot fixing in IPL and 20/20 world cup, but the thick skinned BCCI bigwigs just winked and moved on. After all when many of the IPL franchisees (some of them run by BCCI members themselves) have dubious funding running into crores, why bother when some enterprising lads make piddling lakhs on the sly!

Main Beneficiaries: No you got it all wrong. It is not Harbhajan Singh or those hapless viewers for whom Sreesanth's simian antics make their spleen work overtime. It is our former Railway Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal. This minister had the back on his wall over the bribery case involving his nephew. Little earlier it was the former air force chief over helicopter deal. Crores of rupees were involved in these cases and that too at the cost of public exchequer. For them this spot fixing scandal is godsend as the media has trained its guns elsewhere. 

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