The Quest for Glory at Tokyo 2020 Has to Begin Now!

Its been a while no doubt. You can attribute it to the Olympics hangover. That is the beauty of the Games. It keeps you in awe even if your own nation is not quite setting the Olympic arenas on fire. It was a disappointing Indian performance to say the least. We returned with two medals and at one point, the horror days of the 80s n 90s were coming back to haunt at the possibility of a blank medals return, but thankfully Sakshi Malik and PV Sindhu saved the blushes much to the elation of their 1.3 billion countrymen and women. Kudos to them!

The Athletes are least to blame for the 'Rio Debacle' though. Two-third of them shouldn't have been there in the first place. The rest did manage to elevate the competitiveness of Indian athletes overall from the previous games and in many more sporting disciplines as well. The fact that the desired results did not materialize can be put down to bad talent management. Take the case of Saina Nehwal who clearly played with an injury. Or the shooters, who despite shooting at their highest competitive level at any Olympics collectively as a squad, failed to win a medal. A report chaired by a committee headed by Abhinav Bindra post the games, basically put it down to training and fitness issues and lack of proper monitoring of the same by the national federation. Contrast that to the Italian shooters who despite not quite burning the ranges in the years leading up to the Olympics, got results where it mattered most. Talent needs to be managed scientifically without any compromise on discipline, in a way that performances peak at the big stage. To make matters worse, we even commit self-goals in pursuing Olympic medals as we did with the mess created with the Narsingh Yadav issue.

Clearly, a comprehensive and focussed agenda for success is missing. The good part is that the Government seems to have woken up to the situation and post the Olympics, the right noises have been made and on-ground proactivity displayed, which was not the case earlier. What they will also do well, is to realize, that today in India, we thankfully have 13 individual Olympic medalists very much at hand to lean back upon for advice, apart from the hockey veterans. We also have a double Olympic winning coach in Pullela Gopichand available. They need to lead our Olympic Mission from the forefront and not just be appointed to showpiece positions without empowerment.

There is frankly no reason why we cannot achieve the Olympic glory we deserve because Indian sport even with all its administrative and structural shortcomings, has been on the upswing, albeit very gradually given the challenges. This is however the case with every aspect of life in the world's largest democracy, which is probably also the most complex and diverse.

Badminton and Golf are today probably India's top performing Olympic sport globally. Both have been very consistent in doling out quality international performances year after year for at least the past two decades. And both have been raising the bar for themselves with every passing year as well, which is even more gratifying to the fan. This year, apart from Sindhu's Rio Silver, at least six international titles have been won in Badminton. This includes Sindhu's brilliant win at the prestigious China Open recently. Four international titles have also been won by the men golfers in places like Korea, The Philippines and Indonesia apart from India. Anirban Lahiri also finds himself in the top-20 money list of the coveted PGA tour. And after making it to the Olympics, the World Cup of Golf beckons now, scheduled to begin in Melbourne in the next 24 hours. Aditi Ashok has also been scorching the golfing greens and recently became the first Indian woman to win on the Ladies European Tour.

It is no wonder then that Siril Verma is the junior world number one in Badminton and Shubham Jaglan won the Junior World Golf Championships last year. In fact India's performances at the junior levels have been pleasing to say the least. Neeraj Chopra's world record javelin effort to catapult him to being India's first ever world champion at any level in athletics is awe-inspiring. Especially the distance he gained with his throw at such a young age. The junior shooters have been consistently winning Gold at Olympic events at the Junior Shooting World Cups and India's hockey juniors have also been winning abroad pretty consistently. Yes, Shooting and Hockey are probably the next two best performing Olympic sports of India at this point.

India's Olympic sport fans will continue to hope that Boxing, Wrestling and Weightlifting, the three other disciplines in which India had displayed considerable potential in, before treading on the path of self-destruction, resurrect themselves. With the appointment of a successful modern-era entrepreneur as the head of the national Boxing federation, better days can certainly be hoped for in the sport. Dipa Karmakar's Produnova became a rage during Rio and her astounding fourth-place showing at the Games also raises the hopes of a Gymnastics revolution in the country. Tennis, another medal near-miss at the Rio games for India, has always had the required lineage, tradition and infrastructure to throw up top quality players.

The Government therefore, will do well to identify these 9-10 disciplines for special investments and focus. They have some sort of good thing going about them in the country and if only the powers that be ensure that the enabling and supporting measures needed are in place, along with strict monitoring and discipline, results are bound to be very rewarding. The quest for glory at Tokyo 2020 needs to begin NOW!

When the National Open Trophy Returned to the Mecca of Indian Golf after 17 Years

With a beaming S.S.P. Chawrasia after his Hero Indian Open victory at the Delhi Golf Club

March 20, 2016

Not many remember Sk Jamshed Ali, one of India's earliest Arjuna awardees for the sport of Golf. It seems many credible sources of public information also do not have his name in the 'list'. Jamshed, India's first caddy-turned pro Golfer, won the coveted award way back in 1978. He honed his skills at the legendary Royal Calcutta Golf Club (RCGC), the world's second oldest golf course after the famous St. Andrews of Scotland. The legend of Jamshed Ali, still lives on at the famous 'caddy-basti' adjoining the wall of the 187 year old RCGC, the melting pot of so many of India's finest golfers.

S.S.P. Chawrasia's 2016 Hero Indian Open victory, in that context, should be celebrated for the continuation and progress of a healthy and passionate culture surrounding a sport, in a cricket mad country like India, while at the same time contributing immensely to quality and sustainable social upliftment. The Golfing culture of RCGC and the contribution it has made to the growth of the game in the country easily qualifies it as the 'Mecca of Golf' in the country. Even the legendary 'Biloo' Sethi became the first Indian to win the Indian Open at this hallowed course. Such is its sense of being associated with history.

S.S.P becomes the third 'home' golfer to win the National Open after Feroze Ali in 1993 and Arjun Atwal in 1999. RCGC would not have had to wait for 17 years if S.S.P had won it in any of his subsequent three runner-up finishes, after finishing second at the Open for the first time to Atwal in 1999. So en grained with 'Bengali Pride and Passion' is the otherwise cosmopolitan nature of the Club, that joke has it that they the faithful would also appropriate both Anirban Lahiri, a Bangalore bred golfer and Bangladesh's top Golfer Siddikur Rahman, both winners of the Indian Open, as one of their own given their 'bong' connections, without as much of a bat of the eyelid.

S.S.P carries on a glorious tradition which surprisingly is still very healthy, given growth of Golf is said to have a direct correlation to economic growth of a city/region/country and Calcutta, or Kolkata as it is now called, has not been in the news of good economic reasons for some time now. Apart from Arjun Atwal, who is still winning tournaments on the global tours as recently as last year, Rahil Gangjee and Shankar Das have also returned many encouraging results, more so Rahil. And if you ask the present RCGC pros they will tell you that they themselves are training many dreamy-eyed and talented youngsters at the Club to ensure a healthy pipeline of talented Golfers who can win laurels for the country.

S.S.P is easily the leading beacon at present for the club, notching up his 3rd European Tour victory to be one win short of Jeev Milkha Singh's Indian record of four, and one better than even the present world number 52 Anirban Lahiri's two. That makes it six European Tour victories for the Club now, if you were to add Atwal's three. The only PGA Tour win for India, being Atwal's, also adds to RCGC's glories. As do the innumerable Asian Tour and domestic Indian titles. Is there one single Golf Club in the country with so many incredibly credible numbers associated with it?And chances are that with S.S.P set to be one of the top two Indian Golfers to represent the country at the Rio 2016 Olympics, RCGC will soon have an Olympian amongst them.

The glorious tradition of Golfing success for the Club set by the likes of Jamshed Ali, Basad Ali (a 10 time Indian order of merit winner), Rafaq Ali, Feroze Ali and Arjun Atwal are hail and hearty and in able hands which is great for the sport in the country. You need passionate cultures for a sport to grow around it. In fact, such is the depth and diversity of talent at the RCGC, that even the present order of merit leader in women's professional golf in the country, Neha Tripathi is a RCGC prodigy, a past winner of the WGAI tour and is one of India's top woman pro-golfers of the country for the past 6-7 years. S.S.P himself is training his nephews to become golfers. So here's a 'Long Live' to one of India's greatest Golfing nurseries and wishing it many more golden years of Golfing success.  

Results in Sports a Direct Outcome of Priorities

  Kavita Raut became the fourth Indian lady to qualify for Rio 2016 in the Marathon!

An Olympic Year pushes you to write more. The buzz among the global sporting fraternity is so palpable! There is so much happening all around in the build-up- athletes are qualifying, getting banned, injured et. all. And you sometimes want to just let go and dive headlong into capturing all those moments, those 'stars in the making' and all those stories of extreme human ambition, dejection and perseverance against all odds.

News just came in that an Indian runner Kavita Raut has qualified for the Rio Olympics making her the fourth Indian woman to do so. She beat the qualifying mark by more than two secs....but the marathon has maximum participation among all Games events and qualifying standards are therefore kept pretty lenient. In another unrelated development New Zealand's World#1 Ranked Woman Golfer Lydia Ko has said that the Olympics will be her top priority this year. Reinforces the stature of the Games even among hard-core individual professional sportsmen and women.

Back home Indian athletes including Olympic hopefuls are busy grinding it out at the South Asian Games. The twelfth edition being played in the cities of Guwahati and Shillong. People in the know and well-wishers of Olympic sports in the country, including several high ranking federation officials associated with sports for a long time, have raised concerns around this disrupting preparation schedules in an Olympic year. In fact, causing more harm to them as sparring with well below par competition has its ill-effects....or so they say.

But we have taken an oath to be positive haven't we? And the way to look at it, is that it might just instill more confidence, get them into a winning habit and so on. Time will tell. However, what agonizes the sports fan no-end is why cannot the authorities be more pragmatic in an Olympic year? Would the results have been anymore different if the top Olympic hopefuls were allowed to give the event a miss? What makes a Sports Minister energize all his efforts into himself organizing and pulling no stops to ensure that a nondescript regional sporting event gets more attention than Olympic preparations? Can you imagine a Sports Minister of a country missing from the country's sporting base for months on end, with less than a year to go for the Olympics to begin?

Results are often a direct outcome of priorities. Lydia Ko's priorities are crystal clear. You will see that her results will follow as well- GK's Call!

We can only hope that ours are in the right place as well.

Six Months to Rio, Six the Benchmark!

Its six months to the day for the Rio 2016 Summer Olympic Games to kick-off and till date about 61 Indians have attained the qualifying standards to compete in them. There will be a few more after pending qualifiers of some sports are concluded. The final qualification opportunity for Asian shooters concluded this week by the way right here in New Delhi, It was heartening to see some sports loving nations like Singapore and Malaysia win their first ever quotas in the sport for Rio right here in India's capital city. The toil and tears which go into such massive human efforts is often missed by the mass-media in general, overeager and rightly so, to project successes closer home. India added four more Rio quotas to their existing eight to ensure a record participation of the sport in all Olympics and if performances of the last four years are anything to go by, then shooting should once again return as the country's most successful sport from the games. However we should have done more in Shooting and the 3-4 'near miss quotas' could come back to hurt us really hard at the end of the games. Read on to find out why.

The problem this time is that the benchmark is Six medals! Are we confident enough to surpass the mark which every nation progressing in the right direction should aspire to do as a bare minimum? This space a while before the London Games had emphatically stressed on Six medals as a certainty.! This time there is nothing that makes us overtly optimistic....even of touching that mark, leave alone bypassing it. Why?

By and large over the last four years if you have followed this space, you would find that the Olympic sports that have performed at a top international level for India continue to be the ones which were already an area of strength in the last games. Archery, Badminton, Boxing,Shooting, Tennis and Wrestling. The worry is that over the past four years in Archery, Boxing and Wrestling we have kinda stagnated as far as top international results are concerned, instead of being on an upswing. Combined we probably have four quality athletes ranked in the lower top 10s of the world across the 35 odd competition categories which will give away medals at the Olympics.

Shiva Thapa is perhaps the highest ranked at number two in his boxing weight category and Deepika Kumari and Mary Kom are probably the other significant names on that list but they have either remained at same performance levels or have gone down with age. To expect three medals from the above three disciplines would be being too optimistic given that the world is too young and fast nowadays to wait for athletes past their prime to to make lasting mark. Unless of course if you are an Usain Bolt! That leaves you with Shooting, Tennis and Badminton. Shooting has the potential to be a game changer for this trio if lady luck goes India's way at Rio and these three disciplines alone can then help us surpass the London mark or at least touch it. At their best your shooters can give you four medals, Shuttlers two and Tennis one to easily go past London. And then anything else we get will be a bonus:))

Golf is the other sport where we would be sending a quality side and have been doing really well at the top level in recent times. However its a debut for the sport and all the top guns of the world will be giving it their all so it would be very harsh to expect a medal out of the sport. Anirban Lahiri and SSP Chawrasia should make it on present form and rankings.

GK's Call!
And I know its a shame and it continues to be for decades now but we should not be expecting any medals at all from the Men's and Women's hockey team who have also qualified for Rio.-GK's Call!

If I were to be negative and add my personal experience to it, I would have to say that it is really sad that our internal political equations come in the way of progress of Olympic sports in this country....and so it is in any walk of life here. Here is hoping and continuing to hope that we reach double figures at least at Tokyo 2020! At the very least if we have any dignity left as a nation!-GK's Agony!

The way to look at it is obviously being positive. What we do have in the forthcoming games is Quality Olympic experience of winning medals. Abhinav Bindra, Gagan Narang, Saina Nehwal, Mary Kom, Yogeshwar Dutt and most probably Sushil Kumar give you that comforting company which previous Indian Olympic squads were deprived of. We need to cash in on this, hope that their presence energizes everyone to give off their best and that is our best chance to come back with our best ever performance from Rio!

Hockey Wins a Top Medal after Ages!

On a day when the national sport of hockey won a top international medal after three decades, I felt compelled to write:) There is nothing like a good day in hockey for us 'Indo-sportanatics'. For the record India bagged the Bronze in the Hockey World League Finals beating Holland in a penalty shootout in Raipur. This is after 1982. Jesus! Well, as mentioned in these posts, the signs were looking good for a while and it seemed only a matter of time. Of course, the new rules and our new found economic clout have also helped a lot lately. This medal however, will give the Indian Olympic squad bound for Rio in August of 2016, a whole new vigour! When hockey leads, India roars.

What a Pre-Olympic year it has been for Indian sports! One will have to believe that one has seen India building strong squads across Olympic sports for some time now and the labour has started to bear fruit. This column safely predicts that the previous years tally would be matched, if not surpassed and that in itself will be no mean feat.

Here is a peek into some of the strong Indian squads set for Rio:

Tennis:

• Strong doubles teams which include the legendary Leander Paes, world number 1 ladies doubles player Sania Mirza and multiple ATP tour title winner Rohan Bopanna give India a great chance of a medal in the sport at Rio. Somdev Dev Varman has been patchy in singles and so has Yuki Bhambri, but the doubles specialists should be able to hide this weak link and help sneek in a medal, given the format and number of medals on offer.

Shooting:

• Should give us the maximum medals from one discipline. Experienced medal winning Olympians like Abhinav Bindra and Gagan Narang are leading the squad and look hungry for medals. There is good depth and healthy competition within the squad making it a big squad of top class multiple international medal winners. Medals can be expected from unexpected sources.

Badminton

• This column has long hailed the squad as world class and it has only gotten better in the Pre-Olympic year. Saina has missed her much coveted top class world title by a whisker twice and PV Sindhu has reinforced her mercurial status over and over again. Srikanth after a subdued year seems to be peaking at the right time and Kashyap also seems to be building up towards top fitness during Rio. The bench strength and doubles teams have also been solid performers internationally and another medal from this sport can be a certainty.

Golf

• The top 5 finish in a Major by Anirban Lahiri means that the Indian golfing team to Rio has at least one current world class golfer in its ranks. Indian golf in general has had a strong year if the combined earnings is any kind of parameter to go by and with the right blend of youth and experience, on their day, they can be a very capable team.

Wrestling

• Led by the legendary Sushil Kumar and his mate Yogeshwar Dutt, younger turks like Narsingh Yadav and Amit Kumar are the ones to watch out for in the men's section. The Phogat sisters in the women's section also can spring a few surprises.

Boxing

• Never to be left behind in the Indian Olympic movement, the boxing squad has lost legendary veteran Vijender to the pro arena but still has a formidable squad with the likes of Shiva Thapa, Devendro Singh and Vikas Krishan capable of great deeds. And who can forget the legend of Mary Kom among the women boxers, not too forget the 'sure-to-be-hungry' Sarita Devi.

Hockey- we proved we can be in the top three of a world competition today.

So we have seven world class squads and other squads which are every improving like archery and weightlifting and can give us an Olympic medal any day if everything goes our way.

Therefore a repeat of the six medals of last time is a given. Can we get more??

'Acche Din' for the Indian Sports Fan!

For someone who has lived and breathed sports for 30 years and who even today takes the time out from all the regular responsibilities of a 'working urban middle class family man' in India, to write about it (very few Indians across the world do actually), you couldn't be living in better times. The now proverbial 'Acche Din' is surely here for them!

The six months since yours truly last summed up the progress made by India in the international sporting arena for you, have been nothing short of exhilarating. It all reached its zenith on a 'Super Indian Sporting Sunday', November 16, 2014 when Kidambi Srikanth, a young 21-year old from Guntur in Andhra Pradesh, stunned (hold your breadth) Lin Dan (yes, The Super Dan Himself!) in two straight games in the China Open Super Series final of all places.

Four bullet points should be enough to express the enormity of the 'event' for Indian sports.
1. Lin Dan is and forever will be the greatest human being to have played the sport of badminton
2. He might be 31(only), having come out of retirement (but that too two years ago), but the best of the best have always, almost always had it tough with the 'Dan' in big finals and have almost always come out vanquished, at best bruised. The nonchalance of the Srikanth performance given his age and top level experience (this was a first SS title) is spine-chilling!
3. Even on current form Lin Dan was ranked higher than Srikanth
4. This was in the lion's den-in China itself!

The parallels for this event in Indian sports could be drawn with the likes of the unprecedented eight Olympic gold run for Indian hockey, Khashaba's Jadhav's wrestling bronze in the 1952 Helsinki Olympics, the 1983 world cup win in cricket, Michael Fereira's world championship win in cue sports, Abhinav Bindra's shooting gold in the 2008 Beijing Olympics and in badminton itself- Prakash Padukone's All England triumph in 1980. Those are all game changing moments and mark my words this one will be for Indian badminton and Kidambi Srikanth for sure and for Indian sports in general as well. Simply the audacity of it from a young Indian! This will rub off among the many talented youngsters out there pursuing their passion, now with far better access to sporting infrastructure and corporate support than ever before. Not to suggest that there is enough, but definitely far more.

Saina Nehwal also won the women's section of the China Open singles, but c'mon- we kinda expect her to win a couple of SS titles at least. She needs to go higher and bigger and sooner rather than later. Great sportswoman that she is, she deserves to give herself one final push.

Earlier in the year, India also participated in two important international multi-sporting events, namely, the Commonwealth Games and the Asian Games. For the record India finished fifth and eighth respectively in the medal rankings, which were both down from the previous editions, but having watched the performances, I would not read too much into such minor deviations, which nowadays are also affected with frequently changing international rules and regulations. It should satisfy us for the moment that the Indian squads are now trying to be very competitive and professional internationally, and consistently at that, and the direction of progress is bang on. A lot more disciplines have started to show results which points at all round development of sport.

The year in particular has also been fantastic for the National sport (and a personal passion) of men's field hockey. After the euphoria of the Asian Games gold and the subsequent automatic qualification for the Rio Olympics, came the pleasing news of the squads Test series victory down under in Australia of all places. Now Australia has been the nemesis of Indian hockey on more than one occasion in the recent past and psychologically we were just down and out against them. To take them out at home was no mean feat. I will still stay on the side of the critic though as many more years of consistency is still required by the national squad in international hockey to reclaim the glory days. Till that happens it will help the squad to have some constructive critics.

And of course in the era of leagues, two more came up on the domestic sporting landscape both with very different outcomes as of now. The Hero Indian Super League for football did not take much time to be a raging hit in its debut year, as it was very well planned, invested, marketed, organized and executed. A special note of gratitude goes out to all the veteran and playing international footballers who with all their dedication and professionalism have made the league a resounding success.The same cannot be said about the Champions Tennis league mooted by the legendary Vijay Amritaraj. The pull outs didn't help as well.Whats pleasing about all such efforts is that with them enhances the chances of local talent getting better and better, as well as more and more of them getting attracted enough to pursue sport professionally. Money in sport nowadays, anyways cannot be a complain.

Vishwanathan Anand at the moment has the opportunity to drive a fresh bunch of talent towards chess if he manages to beat Magnus Carlson for the world title, which is currently underway. This is Anand's second shot at Carlson and champion is ahead by a point with two games to go in the duel. Anand could never be better than Kasparov. He needs to be better than Carlson.You wouldn't like to leave the slightest doubt would you?

Good news also continues to flow for India from the golf courses across the globe, more from the Asian region to be specific. There was an unprecedented period of three Sundays on the trot, when Indian golfers won on the Asian tour. Anirban Lahiri's win in the Venetian Macau Open was followed up by SSP Chowrasia with the Panasonic Open in Delhi and Rahsid Khan on the following Sunday bagging the Chiangmai Classic in Thailand. Lahiri then rounded off a fantastic year by qualifying for the European Tour through Q-school in Girona, Spain. What was also heartening was the unearthing of another talented golfing youngster who goes by the name of Subhankar Sharma. The amateur almost secured a dramatic victory at the Panasonic Open, but eventually finished fourth. Not a mean performance by any standards. Subhankar is barely 18, but the maturity and poise he displayed on the golf course is very encouraging. Wish him all the best!

There was inspiring news from the international cycling velodromes, although this one is situated in Delhi itself- now that is so unprecedented that even unprecedented sounds like an understatement. In a fairy tale of sorts, 2004 Tsunami survivor 19-year old Deborah, who hails from the serene Andaman & Nicobar islands struck gold in the women's 500 metre time trial at the AC Track Asia Cup 2014. I at least had never heard of any cycling medals of any international worth before this one.

So there is definitely a lot of buzz around Indian sports at the moment. Apart from the traditional strength areas, a lot of new sports are gaining in levels of performance and popularity which is excellent news. Rio by the way, will not be very far away and therefore now is not the time to relax but to increase efforts even more. Here's for a great Pre-Olympic year for Indian sports.

Sports and sportspersons are immune to political developments

A roundup of Indian sports these days, is seldom without more than one piece of exciting news. Not sure whether the return of the country to the Olympic fold in February this year after having to face the ignominy of participating almost the entire length of the Winter Olympics in Sochi under the Olympic flag, would fall in the same category. Although it was always a foregone conclusion, but it still had to be accomplished and the basic strenghts of Indian democracy finally shone through on this one. We can dismiss it as a nightmare, a rude jolt, which should hopefully augur well for the future of the success of India as a sporting nation.

Heena Sidhu and Manavjit Singh Sandhu would be the rockstars of this roundup, each doing their bit to keep enhancing India's status bit by bit as a global shooting powerhouse. Heena became the first Indian shooter to be ranked number one in the world, when after a string of consistent performnces including a world record breaking feat at last year's world cup in Munich and a silver in this year's edition, she scaled the International Shooting Sport Federation's (ISSF) 10m Air Pistol summit in the first week of April. A week later, Manavjit stunningly took out two former Olympic champions to grab the ISSF Shot Gun World Cup Trap gold to become a two time World Cup winner.Incredible feats both. 

In between the legendary Leander Paes completed the small matter of wrapping up his 14th Grand Slam doubles title (eight men's and six mixed doubles) partnering Radek Stepanek at the US Open in September....AT THE RIPE YOUNG AGE OF 40 TO BECOME THE OLDEST MAN TO WIN A GRAND SLAM TITLE EVER. A Kolkata guy, this work ethic is rarer than hailstorms where he grew up.Salute!

Also laudible were the efforts of P.V.Sindhu, who enhanced her growing reputation as a top woman's shuttler by bagging a bronze in the always closely fought and high quality Asian Badminton Championships and Sania Mirza picking up a WTA doubles tour title with partner Cara Black. Sania though is now resigned to play for her passion and career, called out in this space quite some time back. 

Two tournaments of great interest, one in progress and one yet to begin are sure to capture the imagination of the country's sports buffs even as this roundup is being drafted. The Thomas and Uber Cups, literally the badminton equivalent of the FIFA world cup finals, are being played in the country's capital.It is a pity that such high quality badminton, taking place in your own country and there isnt enough noise around it.....even in the sports pages of the national media. And India does play regularly in this one amongst a total of 16 countries who qualify for it. It is a real shame. 

The Men's squad ended its campaign in the group stages finishing third in their group, but the Women have already booked their places in the last eight stage of the tournament. With two world class shuttlers it is kinda expected from the women, but from here on the BIG GIRLS IN THE BUSINESS come into the picture and it will be boil down to your 'strength of meditation versus mine' as is usual during the business end of every top class sporting event. A medal is not an unrealistic proposition for this squad.

The FIH Men's hockey world cup is scheduled to start in Hague at the end of this month and as usual ardent followers the national game will be hoping against hope for nothing short of a miracle- a win. As usual, we do have a top class team with great players, but it is the basics of modern hockey like consistency and good defense which has been our bane for over three decades now and nothing in recent times has suggested that they are near extinction.

All the best to the two national squads as usual.

The newest entry into the olympic fold, the sport of golf, has been the other source of great joy for Indian sports fans in recent years. Particularly heartnening has been the rise of AnirbanLahiri, a 26 year old Bangalore pro golfer. The lad is into his seventh year-still early days, as a pro and is currently perched comfortably at the top of the gritty Asian Tour (although its still early days) with earnings close to US $245,000 for the current season already. Amongst the golfing fraternity in India this is how the top players by calibre are spoken of in descending order: Jeev Milkha Singh, Arjun Atwal, Jyoti Randhawa,Gaganjeet ,Bhullar, Shiv Kapur..... Anirban though has managed to steel the thunder from all of those big names in the recent times. 

He just seems to be the guy born for the big moments. Picture this.....A hole in one on his Open debut, four Asian Tour titles, hero of a sensational comeback which was key to Team Asia drawing the inaugural Eurasia contest against a Europe Team boasting of the legendary Miguel Angel Jimenez, major winner Graeme McDowell and European Tour leader Thomas Bjorn and an 18 feet Eagle on the last hole to win his first title outside India. Also, I havent seen an Indian golfer register so many mid-60 or under rounds which such glaring consistency. The prayer is only a whisper at the moment.

India was in the grip of a political fever from the beginning of the year.No conversation could afford to miss out on a discussion on who would possibly come to power post the largest general elections of the world which concluded with the results on May 16. It was almost as if the world had come to a standstill. In the midst of all this, three young men, Anirban Lahiri, Rahil Gangjee and S.S.P.Chowrasia-can ostensibly be called the 'Bong connection in Indian Golf' (Anirban is a Bengali by birth and Rahil and S.S.P are Kolkata boys through and through)- and the talented Rashid Khan of Delhi, nonchalantly picked up a cool Rs 3 Cr approximately amongst themselves in the first five months of the year, with Anirban garnering the larger share. They have been playing some very pleasing golf consistently and seems to be enjoying travelling and being together. If this carries on we have a pretty decent chance to fight for a medal at the Olympics.

Just goes to show how far away a sportsman's mind is from issues which appear to be larger than life for us.Relations have soured, friends have been blocked/unfriended on facebook, abuses have been hurled in the heat of the campaign and these three just going about enjoying themselves playing the sport they love so much.There is a lesson of life to be learnt.

It is not something new that I have discovered but merely reiterating the purity of sport.Sports and sportpeople across the globe have had to undergo far greater turmoil but have always allowed the sport to lord over politics.So when the Afghan national team beat the Indian national team in football recently, purely as a sports buff you felt a lump in your throat even though you were not from Afghanistan. The stories of African long distance atheletes overcoming inhuman living conditions, Jesse Ownes showing the iron will and resolve to triumph in front of Adolf Hitler, Serbian tennis stars and Sri Lankan athletes living and succeeding through war have been there since time immemorial.The learning from all this I beleive is that the greatest instrument of peace in this world could only be the widespread penetration of the sporting spirit, the sporting culture.Maybe global leaders and statesmen recognize this, which is why they have often used sports to build bridges.