THE formal appointment of Spaniard Jose Brasa as India’s national hockey coach this week got good enough display in the media at a time when the sports pages were looking for some ‘in-house’ news. The Indian Premier League cricket is being played far away in South Africa and there was no action worth a mention at home. The formal appointment of Brasa and his visit to…
PEACH was my instantaneous reaction. And this peach was certainly not the eating kind. It was a peach of a delivery that knocked out AB De Villiers. It was like a heat seeking missile which sent De Villiers stumps for a walk. The bowler in question Sudeep Tyagi. I was impressed by the tall Chennai Super Kings fast bowler. The tall gangling tyro looked every inch the part. It set…
THIS week, Pakistani cricket captain Younis Khan said in Dubai that Australian teams always tend to create controversies when they fear ending up second best to the Indian sub continental teams. The affable Younis, a friendly man with a large heart, was bang on target, even though he was speaking in the context of Australian Shane Watson complaining about Saeed Ajmal’s…
EVEN as Indian cricket’s big five run the last lap of their great careers, one wondered where the next big temperament players were likely to emerge from. In fact two of the big five – Saurav Ganguly and Anil Kumble - have already retired and the surviving trinity may well be playing its last year of competitive international cricket. So, just when one thought that the gene pool…
THERE was a certain prestige attached to being the World Heavyweight Boxing champion. The man had an aura. It was something that people followed and tracked with great glee and gusto. But lately one doesn’t hear of the World Heavyweight boxing champion. Why has this blue riband title fallen off the radar? Is it that the personalities have all vanished? I was a great votary and…
THERE is a huge difference between Sachin Tendulkar and Mahendra Singh Dhoni – and between Tendulkar and Harbhajan Singh. And this difference is not just in their respective skill specialisation in the game, but also in their outlook towards life, society and culture - more so, culture.
Only on Tuesday in Noida, Tendulkar explained why he remains so calm and humble and is never…
A COUPLE of days back, I was speaking to a colleague and discussing how soccer is a metaphor for nationalism in most under developed and developing countries, barring India of course. Cricket has permeated our sub consciousness to such a great extent that it has a garrote like grip on our mind space. Look around and you will find that the most impoverished nations in Africa and…
When two asteroids clash, there is bound to be collateral damage. Over the weekend, one found two icons - Sunil Gavaskar and Shahrukh Khan - indulging in a war of words. And both sides decided to pump up the volume. In my long association with Sunil Gavaskar, I have always found him to be an extremely pragmatic man, some may call him opinionated, but in the recent past, he has become very vocal about…
What does the IPL pull out mean for Indian sport? Are we headed the Pakistan way? Is this the road to perdition for India as a host of international sporting events? In the short term yes, but in the long term, I guess the answer is in the negative. I agree that bolstering the security apparatus during the elections gained primacy over everything else including a cricket jamboree, but I can't help but…
February 6, sunny Goa and the IPL auction jamboree. Industrialists, starlets, BCCI power brokers, wheeler dealers operating on cricket's fringes, movers and shakers, a panting media hanging onto every dollar transacted as the gavel came down; the Taj Holiday Village and Fort Aguada was the cynosure. Gangbuster prices were forked out as the fat cats opened their cheque books with great gusto. And then it…