Archive for the ‘Indian Sports’ Category

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Hockey World Cup

Sunday, February 28th, 2010

India Plays Pakistan in the Hockey World Cup tonight. The World Cup is being held in India which is some thing to be proud about. The famous stars like Virender Sehwag and Priyanka Chopra have done their bit with advertisements to promote the tournament which is a great thing.

Two qualms –

1. We have literally no chance of winning the title. See about decline and neglect of hockey in India here.

2. All the matches are being held in the Dhyan Chand National Stadium in Delhi. I would have loved to go to a few matches if they were held in Kolkata. It should be held in more venues if the world cup and hockey is to have a chance to catch the imaginaiton of the nation.

I hope India does well and reaches the semis, which would be a great achievement.

Posted in Hockey, Indian Sports | 1 Comment »

Sunfeast Open lookback

Tuesday, September 26th, 2006

The lights in Netaji Indoor Stadium still shine. The stadium was renovated last year.

The tournament saw a lot of seeds upset early but ended with Martina Hingis winning the singles quite comfortably. She wasn’t stretched at any point in the tournament and was typical Hingis – winning using timing and placement rather than power.

The semi-final versus Mirza was the big attraction from the local point of view. However, the match disappointed at large. Mirza started off with a bit of promise considering her first serves were going in more often than not. However, the aspect where she missed out was going for the placement game versus Martina Hingis. 99 times out of 100, if you try to beat Hingis at her strength, you will end up second best.

Mirza played the waiting game instead of going for her shots – her main strength. When she did go the power route for a couple of games in the second set, she looked far more effective and looked like troubling Hingis, even if it was for a few points. The problem with the service showed up after a few games in the first set itself though and though there has been a marked improvement in Mirza’s service, more power and accuracy is still needed. Mirza did win the doubles as a consolation prize but as Hingis said, the promise is there for the future.

Over all, the tournament was dampening because many of the top seeds went out early. The novelty factor present in the inaugral Sunfeast Open wasn’t there as well. The tournament is still in it’s infancy and bringing Hingis to play in only the second year of the event is a huge achievement in itself.

The following are a few more pictures my friends and I took. Hope you like them:

The chair umpire checks that the measurements of the net, sidelines are perfect before the match starts.

(more…)

Posted in Indian Sports, Tennis | No Comments »

Sport unites in rural India

Saturday, August 19th, 2006

Sport brings the society together and bridges differences. This story from villages of south Indian state Tamil Nadu reiterates the same. From NDTV:

A unique initiative to encourage traditional games like Volley Ball in villages is paying rich dividends in rural Tamil Nadu.

Besides an increased awareness on physical fitness, these teams have actually helped in establishing friendly relations even among warring communities…

…over a thousand village teams have been formed across nine districts. Now, the two-day Rural Rejuvenation camp in Salem district was an opportunity for over 2 lakh villagers to display their sporting skills and camaraderie.

For a few moments, you don’t differentiate on the basis of race, religion and suchlike. Even harsh truths like poverty is forgotten when people play sport.

Update: On a different note, I notice that people can create blogs on the NDTV site just like people can on blogger or wordpress. Main stream media has often linked to blogs (Eg: the NY Times site). They have even had a select group of people blogging including journalists (CNN-IBN) but I am not sure if this is a first. Not surprisingly, most of the sport posts are on cricket.

With MSM giving blogs space, awareness will increase. Blogging in India is bound to grow at a very fast rate in the near future.

Posted in Indian Sports, Misc. Sports | 1 Comment »

Indian shooters continue rise

Thursday, August 17th, 2006

Manavjit Singh Sandhu is now a world no. 1. Indian shooters continue rise in rankings as Financial Express reports:

Trap shooter Manavjit Singh Sandhu’s gold medal finish at the recent World Championships at Zagreb in Croatia helped him notch the world No 1 spot in world rankings.

Abhinav Bindra, who claimed a gold in 10m air rifle, also climbed 24 places to second position. Olympic silver medallist Lt Col Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore was fifth in the rankings in double trap.

Sportstar has an indepth profile on Manavjit. In another piece in the same issue of Sportstar, Kamesh Srinavasan reviews India’s most successful faring yet in the world championships.

I had blogged on Bindra winning gold a few weeks back. The creditable performance in Zagreb by the Indians was to be expected given the steady improvement of the Indian shooting contingent. Regardless of this, the performance is worth applauding.

I have noticed this phenomena – every time before the olympics, the media focuses on a few sports persons and think that they might win medals in the olympics. However, if you go into even a bit of detail regarding the given sportspersons, their track record isn’t usually notable.

You just don’t win olympic medals by showing up at olympics. There has to be performances to back you up and then, you have to have nerves of steel to deliver during the olympics. A lot of factors lead upto winning. Even if one small thing goes wrong, you can lose.

This time, the build up for the shooting contingent is going quite well and we are seeing new highs being reached each day. The one word to describe the Indian shooting contingent would be strong. That is usually not a word you associate with Indian sporting contingents. Usually it is talented or promising.

At the cost of sounding preachy, I will say this – this is a story which Indian sports fans should start following if they haven’t already.

Posted in Indian Sports, Target-Sports | 1 Comment »

Best by an Indian

Tuesday, July 25th, 2006

That’s what Abhinav Bindra achieved as Telegraph reports:

Abhinav Bindra overcame back pain to become the first Indian shooter to win a World Championship gold in Zagreb on Monday. Dr Karni Singh’s silver in 1962 was the best by an Indian in a World Championship meet before Monday.

That no Indian had ever won a gold before is not surprising. After all, the shooting boom in India is not very old. The Indian shooting contingent for Beijing is looking stronger with each passing day. We have the likes of Narang, Samaresh Jung, Rathore and young guns like Bindra.

We disappointed tremendously last time in the Olympics but it will be shocking if we don’t win a few medals via shooting in Beijing. Here’s hoping the shooting contingent does India proud and I don’t have to write some thing on this topic again.

Update: Read Indian Express’ Navneet Singh write on Bindra coming back from the dead.

Posted in Indian Sports, Olympics, Target-Sports | 4 Comments »

RIP V.P.Sathyan

Wednesday, July 19th, 2006

41 year old former Indian captain V.P.Sathyan is dead. Reports suggest that he committed suicide.

The suicide note reads:

“I was vexed in life. I had lost my wealth as I was habituated to drinking and gambling. I had lot of respect and admiration in the society as long as I was a football player for India. But at present, I’ve lost everything. I don’t want to live in this world anymore,” read the suicide note.

Sathyan was the All India Football Federation player of the year in 1995. He was a true servant of the game though usually away from the spotlight. Read Bikash Mohapatra remembering Sathyan.

Telegraph has a detailed report:

While his other teammates in the then crack Kerala team, such as I.M. Vijayan and Jo Paul Ancheri, rose to become glamour boys of Indian football, Sathyan somehow remained the unsung hero…

All these years, no one really talked and discussed the classic and world-class goal he scored against South Korea in 1986 in Merdeka. A rookie defender then, Sathyan took India to the quarter-finals with a terrific 35-yard shot that had both his teammates and rivals completely stunned.

Sathyan himself never regretted it, leave alone talking about his achievements.

Read the reactions of the football fraternity.

It is a bit sad that we remember achievements and talk of the great deeds of people only when they are no more. The bigger question worth pondering is whether Sathyan would have met this fate had there been more recognition for him and had Indian football been better off. We don’t know that answer.

Regardless, this is a very tragic loss to Indian sports.

Posted in Football, Indian Sports | 1 Comment »

Poor Show ESPN-Star

Wednesday, June 21st, 2006

Heat’s first ever title. Another title for Shaq. One for Wade and Mourning. Don’t tell me I didn’t tell you Heat will win it and Mr. Nowitzki will run out of steam. World Cup fever has meant that I have missed most of the NBA finals and an exciting NHL playoffs final series as well.

Dhoomk2 informed me that ESPN-star haven’t been showing the finals live in India. I was shocked by it as this is in complete contrast to the Jordan days where then showed all games live from around the Conference semis. When he switched on his TV set late at night, they were showing some aerobics or something. Bewildering.

It is true that the NBA has gone downhill since then but the current playoffs have seen a rebirth for the league. ESPN-star missed the bus to attract new viewers to the game and have a select audience. Live telecasts of the NBA don’t clash with other sports most of the time and had a more serious approach been given to NBA, I am sure it would have reaped long term benefits.

I kept seeing repeated ads of TNA between breaks of the world cup highlights show apart from the cricket ads. Surely other sports have their audiences in India apart from cricket, football and erm, wrestling? A few days ago, I saw an ad for Wimbledon thus –

The only time you get to see girls groan on grass.

Uh WHAT? How is that a good way to draw an audience for a sport? If people are interested in porn or have a soft porn mentality, they won’t switch on to a sports channel for the same. Even if they switch on to sports for a moment as a result of this, you are targetting the wrong kind of audience which isn’t sustainable.

It also shows that you are not confident in the sports viewing audience of the country. True, the segment is smaller than usual. But if you think having a Harsha Bhogle presenting the world cup will draw in the house wifes and the cricket following audience to follow football in India, you are missing the picture. It is similar to Mandira Bedi being called up by Set-Max though not as clearly identifiable.

If you do not take the audience seriously, it will not take you seriously. It will switch to the other sports channels whenever it can – some thing I am sure you would not like.

Posted in Indian Sports, NBA, NHL | 28 Comments »

Indian Football’s Rising Graph

Tuesday, May 23rd, 2006

Anju falls short. Even the brainy chess guys are not winning. Indian sport continues to see an upward trend while all this happens, especially football.

Priya Saini at Economic Times writes:

Indian football is taking on glitzy hues as more and more corporates are coming on board as sponsors. It would seem outrageous that a sport in which India is ranked so low, is seeing major Indian TV networks bidding some ridiculous amounts for its TV rights and corporates making a beeline for sponsorships.

The piece is a must read if you want to know more on the recent Indian football trends. I had touched briefly on Indian football here. There is huge potential for growth in football (else why would it be the most popular game in the world!) and the scenario for India is no different. A few wins can propel the growth of the game very, very quickly.

Posted in Athletics, Chess, Football, Indian Sports | No Comments »

Indian Hockey’s Sorry State

Friday, May 19th, 2006

The story of Indian hockey pains the Indian sports lover particularly – dominating champions in another year but now trailing and merely making the numbers. It is a sad story which is symbolic of the poor state Indian sport is in general. I haven’t written at length on the issue yet and my excuse is that I am too frustrated with Indian hockey to talk with perspective on it.

There have been some intentions shown like with the Professional Hockey League (which has changes to the rule to apparently try to appeal to the masses). Poor timings of the PHL have shown poor regard on it by the organisers. For example, in it’s second edition it was hosted while the India-Pakistan cricket series – the worst time to try to capture an audience. The sad situation Indian Hockey finds itself in cannot ever be rued less.

Chidambarakumari Ponnambalam presents another mourning essay on the subject: [Via Desipundit]

For all his brilliance on the field, Dhyan Chand died an ordinary man without a hefty bank balance. If this is the way we treat our Star players, we have no bloody right to complain about anyone not performing in the international arena.

The pertinent question is – ‘what can be done to improve Indian hockey?’ Infrastructure and training facilities are the keys obviously. Where does the money come in for the same? The slow but best way is by in-house initiatives like the PHL to create interest in the game. Only, such initiatives should be handled properly and seriously.

Some related posts on the plight in general in Indian sports and some new marked improvements – Why India doesn’t win at the Olympics, Indian shooting boom, Indian Football.

Posted in Hockey, Indian Sports | 3 Comments »

Thomas Cup

Wednesday, May 3rd, 2006

Thomas Cup, or the World Badminton Championshps, is in it’s quarter final stages. Denmark start Favourite versus India. How have the Indians fared so far?

Telegraph reports:

But the Indian shuttlers have also showed much promise, reflected in the way they dispatched the New Zealanders despite missing top player Chetan Anand due to an injury.

National champion Anup Sridhar packed off world No. 33 John Moody while Nikhil Kanetkar, replacing Anand, rose to the occasion and brushed aside Craig Cooper’s challenge. Arvind Bhat was also impressive in his efforts.

The victory against New Zealand would serve as a big boost for India given the fact that they were playing without their top singles player in Anand and doubles specialist in Sanave Thomas, who pulled out of the tournament.

Malaysia take on South Korea in another quarter final. China was dominating defeating Germany and will now meet England. The Uber Cup is also going on, of course.

For more scores, see here.

Posted in Indian Sports, Misc. Sports | No Comments »

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