Chinese woman footballer Sun Wen first made her debut appearance for the national team at the age of 17. She played 13 years for the China. During the period, she was part of the team which won the Olympic Silver medal in the 1996 Atlanta games, took part in 4 the inaugural four women’s FIFA World Cups, won the Golden Boot and Golden Ball for the 1999 World Cup (where China finished runners up) and shared the FIFA Player of the century award with American Michelle Akers.

What is Wen doing now? At 33, Wen is washing her own kits. China Youth Daily reported it initially and an English report on it can be found in Malaysian The Star:

Sun Wen and her teammates are accommodated in rooms no more than six square metres with dirty sheets on tiny beds, malfunctioning television sets and air-conditioning and a leaking toilet, according to a report in the China Youth Daily.

“I buy a plastic basin to do my laundry wherever I go,” the 33-year-old Sun Wen told the newspaper. “I’m afraid I’ll have to bring my own bedclothes next time.”

(more…)

Hopping flights to get from Varanasi to finally reach Calcutta means I am dead tired. Regular blogging resumes tomorrow. Hope you don’t miss me too much!

Satya Prakash asks this question in his latest post. He tries to reason out the answer as well:

A blog is about one’s affiliation, association, subscription, belief, disbelief, disenchantment and disappointment with some idea(s). The view presented in a blog can’t always be compared with Op-Ed pages of a newspaper. There can be several sources or websites which have better substances, but a blog is author’s personal substantiation.

Will Luke finds himself in the same boat. He, like many of us, has seen the progress blogs have made in the recent past:

I just find it really interesting. Blogs are evolving so quickly (they’ve certainly changed and matured beyond measure in my short time fiddling around with them). Channels, sets or groups of blog-types are forming. Initially, most people simply used the format to write about their mundane lives. “I went shopping. Shopping sux lol” is about as interesting as they got.

Blogs are the strong new medium by which ideas of any one and every one can be published instantly. In another era, you would have to write to a newspaper and hope that the newspaper would publish it in the letters to the editor if not the OP-ED column. A blog has it’s own audience - doesn’t matter if it is large or small. Amit Varma talked about blogs being The New Journalism:

Blogs may have began, in the late 1990s, in that manner, but they have evolved into a powerful new form of journalism, that offers journalists the scope to do things that they cannot do in other media, and that draws discerning readers for just this reason. I experienced this when I blogged on my journey through Tamil Nadu on my blog, India Uncut… My normal quota of 800 pageviews a day – pretty good for a month-old blog – shot up to over 13,000 a day when I began reporting from the coast, and my 10 days of reporting from there got me over 100,000 pageviews, thus demonstrating the power of word-of-mouth on the internet. And the efficacy of this new form of journalism.

A blog can be very powerful. It is there for you to exploit. It can mean different things for differnet people; every one can use it in a different way. For example, for me, Sportolysis means my sporting outlet. I am a huge sports fan (duh! as if I needed to state it given I started a blog on sports). I think a lot of sports and like to talk about it. What better way to do it than via a blog and share my thoughts with however large or small audience develops.

Why do you blog?

Krishna is perplexed by the attitude of his friend who plays loosely as he plays sport for fun. He writes:

When I play, I am eagerly trying to win. However, winning is not an end in itself. Winning is not even the primary goal. Primary goal is to play as well as I can. I can not have fun if I know that I am not playing as well as I can.

But what is fun? Two schools of thought:

1. Giving it your best shot and trying to win. You relish the thrill you gets in the process.
2. Playing just for the sake of it.

I play my sport the way Krishna plays his. However, I have also encountered people who play like Krishna’s friend.

How do you play your sport?

Ronaldinho is the most valuable footballer commercially ahead of David Beckham and Wayne Rooney. Eto’o and Messi follow in next. So there are 3 Barcelona players in the top 5. Also, the youngsters are the new Brand ambassadors. Only Beckham is over 30 in the list. This more than any thing symbolises the new generation of footballers. There is no Zidane, Ronaldo, Figo and the likes. Beckham is likely to slide off from the top 5 soon too if he doesn’t do some thing spectacular in the World Cup.

What is amazing is how much Michael Jordan still makes via commercials. His brand name has crossed the performance barrier. He has proven so much over his career that it doesn’t matter whether he plays now or not. The Jordan brand is strong and tough to erode.

Would the Tendulkar brand be the same once he retires? Has it eroded even a bit in the recent past where his performance has suffered? What will happen of the Tiger Woods and Michael Schumacher brands once they retire? How much is the Pele brand and Muhammad Ali brand worth today?

One would imagine that erosion does take place in brand values but quality sportspersons manage to command a fair deal of money after their retirement. If there is some legend who symbolises the sport itself even years afyer his retirement, his brand value could be unaffected by recent performances and even increase once he retires.

Moving home is always tedious. So when I decided to move Sportolysis, I knew it was never going to be a piece of cake.

The whole process of buying a domain, hosting, shifting posts, shifting comments, toggling with wordpress and every thing in between has taken about 6 days. In the end, I feel joyous, excited, thrilled but most of all thankful.

I wouldn’t have manged this without some very significant people. Firstly, Sudeep. He has installed wordpress for me and played with HTML as only he can. If I had gone to install wordpress all by myself, it would have taken me way more time. Yes, I am that new to all this. Sudeep has played the biggest role in getting Sportolysis shifted. You rock!

Secondly, Abhinav. My younger brother has designed all the cool headers you see on Sportolysis. He is cool personified. The banners are there to prove it. For hosting the site, James should be thanked. He has been helpful with all the queries I have had. I bought the domain name via Brainpulse. The registration was completed in a jiffy and the service has been prompt. Vulturo, Arnab da and Will have been there to resolve any doubts which have surfaced in my mind.

I haven’t won an Oscar. But I thought the best way to start this would be to acknowledge the people who have made this task much easier.

This is a new beginning for Sportolysis. A journey which promises so much. I hope you can enjoy the ride with me.

There was a time when I used to reflect on the composition of the Indian test team. There used to some basis for team selection then. The test squad chosen to face England is the latest in a series of many whimsical selections.

Picture some recent inconsistencies in selection -

Famously choosing Ganguly to play as an all rounder in the team.
Dropping/choosing him regardless of match performances.
The treatment of Yuvraj, Kaif. (In and out of the XI, team)
Choosing Parthiv Patel above Dinesh Karthik as reserve wicket keeper for tour of Pakistan. This despite Karthik not doing much wrong.

And we haven’t even gone to the bowlers yet.. The first two tests in Pakistan were on flat tracks. No bowler should be judged based on that. The third test at Karachi was a failure for Zaheer Khan. Ajit Agarkar wasn’t even included in the first XI for that test. Without given a proper run, the two players were dumped.

I am finally immune to the selection of the test team it seems, at least for the time being. The last straw was the exclusion of Gautam Gambhir. Gautam Gambhir hasn’t had an impressive test career so far if we exclude stats versus Bangladesh and Zimbabwe. Despite this the selectors decided to back him for the tour of Pakistan. He didn’t get the opportunity to play even 1 test in Pakistan. So why should he have been unceremoniously dumped? Why should a player loose his test place because of failures in limited overs cricket in between two test series?

Also, why announce teams on Day 1 of tour games. Gambhir is batting at 33. Imagine how devastated he must be feeling at this juncture. This is a repeat of what happened recently. Ganguly was batting in the deciding third test versus Pakistan. The one day team was announced while the test was proceding and Ganguly was left out. Why not wait for a day so that the match at hand is over until absolutely unavoidable.

The issue is not about a specific player being included or excluded. It is the larger issue of inconstencies in selection which are being displayed.

Want to bring in young players? I am all for it. But chopping and changing with no method, no meaning is not the way to go about things. It is still highly unlikely that India will loose to England but it wouldn’t take away from the poor methods applied to achieve end results.

Barcelona-Chelsea champions league encounters last year were exciting, full of emotions and heart breaking for me as a staunch supporter of Barca. There has been the pitch controversy with Chelsea delaying re-laying the pitch. Obviously Barcelona players aren’t pleased. Silvinho said:

I cannot believe it. I have heard they are making the condition of their pitch worse. I’ve heard many complaints about the pitch.

Why should patches devoid of grass be left for such a crucial match?

The latest suggestion by Mourinho regarding inviting Barca to use their training base doesn’t serve much purpose. The crucial first leg will still be played on a poorer pitch than it should.

Well the conditions will be equal for both teams and whoever plays better in these circumstances will be the winner. The pressure is on Barca as they did loose to Chelsea last year, though by the thinnest of margins (goal difference) in the two leg encounter. History will not look at Barcelona going down two years in a row to Chelsea too kindly. It will mean that Barca will have a tougher challenge to be recognised as a great team in the future by many fans. It would be greatness denied. I hope I am smiling after the second leg is complete on March 7th.

Will has brought to focus an aspect of South African cricket I was unaware of.

The Sportstar magazine is bigger and cheaper. It has also cut the out of its name. The annual subscription costs as little as Rs. 5 an issue now. In the world of inflating prices, the magazine has managed to keep its price the same for more than 16 years. It now cuts down on the prices. In the price sensitive Indian market, this will surely increase sales.