sports

Extra marks for sports in Maharashtra schools not the best idea ever

Maharashtra State Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Maharashtra State Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education (MSBSHSE) has decided to re-introduce allocation of extra marks for students who take part in sports. Additional marks range from 15 to 25 depending upon the level of participation.

The proposed resolution, which comes into effect in the year 2016, will benefit students irrespective of the status of their results.

Prima facie, the move appears progressive. However, it has certain drawbacks—the least of which is that students may score more than 100 percent.

When I was schooling , there existed no such system. Sports persons would, however, enjoy a lower cut-off for admissions to colleges that supported sporting activities. This was left to each college to decide whether they wished to admit lower-scoring ‘active‘ students. There may be something in reverting back to this system.

The proposed regime where students are rewarded for their sporting activities may have them pursuing physical activities for the extra reward they engender while ignoring the recreational aspects derived from them. Competition for sporting events would increase and not because there exist outstanding athletes among the students.

Sport could become study—another chore, another subject.

Pupils ought to be encouraged to both study and play. One should counterbalance the other.

“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All play and no work makes Jill a dull girl.”

At the macro level, physical exercise and fitness should become an integral part of each citizen’s life and routine. The ethos of sports  should pervade the very fabric of this nation and all its states.

Physical well-being and mental well-being are two sides of the same coin.

Go play!

Why should sportspersons be held to a higher standard?

It was 1988. It was the Summer Olympics in Seoul. Johnson had set the 100 meters world record of 9.83 seconds the previous year. Johnson, however, had injury problems coming into the Games. A hamstring injury had plagued him the whole season.

Johnson won. He also set a new world record: 9.79 seconds.

And then it ended almost as soon as it began.

The man was a cheat.

Johnson’s blood and urine samples were found to contain stanozolol.

The last citadel had been breached.

The Olympics , when it first begun, was celebrated as a coming together of amateur athletes under the Olympic motto “Citius, Altius, Fortius” which is Latin for “Faster,Higher, Stronger.”

Amateurism made way for professionalism beginning gradually in the 1970s.

Sport was no longer clean or for fun. It was competition–cutthroat competition.

Every millisecond, every millimeter counted.

1988 also saw the International Olympic Committee (IOC) declaring all professional athletes eligible for the Olympics, subject to the approval of the international federations in charge of each sport.

Only soccer and baseball disallow pros at the Olympics.

Thus began the age of disillusion.

If Johnson could cheat, then how many others?

Reports of systematic doping in East European countries did nothing to counteract such perceptions.

More recently, Lance Armstrong was stripped of his seven Tour De France titles.

Armstrong, a cancer survivor, indulged in blood doping throughout his career.

In an interview with the Telegraph, Armstrong says:

“I’m that guy everybody wants to pretend never lived. But it happened, everything happened. We know what happened. Now it’s swung so far the other way… who’s that character in Harry Potter they can’t talk about? Voldemort? It’s like that on every level. If you watch the Tour on American TV, if you read about it, it’s as if you can’t mention him.”

The Texan is riling his opponents once more by participating in the One Day Ahead ride, cycling part of the Tour de France route. The ride raises money to fight leukemia.

It is time we admit that we cannot hold our sporting heroes to a higher standard. They engage in a profession where every bit done can make a difference between winning and losing, between being the face of a shoe brand or simply being an also-ran.

Our modern-day heroes have feet of clay. We should learn to expect that they will disappoint us someday. They cannot be placed on a pedestal.

“But wait,”, you say, “these are the very personas my kids look up to.”

Yes, but isn’t that a reflection of the society and times we live in?

Children look up to actors and rock stars too. Are they held to a higher standard?

Then why sports persons?

Shouldn’t we teach our kids to look for heroes elsewhere? Real-life heroes.

Legends and Superstars: T20 cricket goes global

Sachin Tendulkar and Shane Warne have launched a Legends T20 Cricket League to be held in the USA in August-September.

Shah Rukh Khan has gone a step further and extended the Kolkata Knight Riders brand by buying Caribbean T20 team Trinidad & Tobago. Mark Wahlberg and Gerard Butler are other actor-owners of Barbados Tridents and  Jamaica Tallawahs respectively.

This confluence of acting and cricketing giants to promote the sport overseas is welcome.

The more the merrier.

Ageing superstars and retired cricketers have much more in common than their age. They enjoy a hold on their fans way past their expiry date.

The Legends T20 League will test this theory. More power to them.

English: Indian actor Shah Rukh Khan with family at premiere of Drona (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Stan the man is two for two in Grand Slam finals

I thought I was going to be writing an article on whether Career Grand Slams have become de rigueur in the current age of tennis or we are blessed to have three to four outstanding players converge on the sport in the same era.

It was not to be.

Stanislas Wawrinka (va-vreeng-kah) had other thoughts.

The Swiss No. 2 (he’ll probably be No. 1 this week) defeated the World No. 1 Novak Djokovic in four sets on a Sunday afternoon in Paris.

He is no longer a one-Slam wonder.

Aficionados might have cribbed that his first Slam, the Australian Open in 2014, was handed him on a platter. A favourable draw and an injured Nadal were the variables that worked to his advantage.

But very few can begrudge him his second Slam. Djokovic may not have had enough time to recover from a grueling semi-final. But the Swiss had to fight hard to get to the finals, ousting his idol Federer on the way.

Wawrinka recently ended his marriage to  Swiss TV presenter Ilham Vuilloud.

Wawrinka said:

“We have enjoyed ten fulfilling years, with all the ups and downs that every couple experiences, but sometimes life is more challenging than one would hope.

Ilham and I were both blessed to create a family when our wonderful daughter Alexia was born in 2010. We have always tried to live our lives as a team and as a family, despite the challenges we have faced due to the demands of my career. To my great regret this isn’t possible anymore.

Ilham will always be the mother of my daughter and a person that I have a lot of love and respect for. We will always remain as a family. Now my priority is to do everything to protect Alexia during these challenging times.

I hope that the fans and the media will understand that I’ve always been very protective of my private life and wish to continue to do so not giving any further information about the situation.”

Nice guys do not have to always finish last.

Voges and Chanderpaul: A matter of timing

Much has been made about Shivnarine Chanderpaul’s unceremonious ouster from the West Indian side. The veteran left-hander was left out from the Caribbean outfit for the series against Australia following a poor run of scores against England recently.

Was it the right thing to do? The southpaw is 40+ and is not getting any younger. Age should never be a criteria and rightly so. Form and class play an important role. Australia are a top side and playing an out-of-sorts Chanderpaul, however, would not have been fair to the rest of the side.

Sachin Tendulkar was given a farewell Test series by the BCCI against a weak West Indian side at Mumbai; he was able to go out on a relative high. Many would have preferred if the great had called it quits after the 2011 World Cup. The Master Blaster lingered on. It is a human failing fans have witnessed in so many wonderful sports persons. They do not know when to bid the game goodbye.

Ironically, the first Test saw the resurgence of a wonderfully talented Australian batsman Adam Voges making his Test debut at 35. Australian selectors are ruthless when cutting out-of-form or aging players to make room for younger champions.

Little credit is given to them for their bravery in choosing older players who would be considered journeymen in countries in India or Pakistan.

Thus, Matthew Hayden made a comeback at 32. Look where he finished!

Michael Hussey made the best of the chances that came his way the second time around.  Adam Voges is probably another of this breed. Team coach Darren Lehmann himself was a beneficiary of the selectors’ long memories.

Should Chanderpaul have played and contributed a ton à la Voges, he would have been lauded by one and all. But, alas, that is wishful thinking reflected upon by the mawkish.

Sports, like business, has no room for sentiment. Winning is serious business; so is modern sport.

Soccer: FIFA’s Sepp Blatter and corruption in high places

Português: Joseph Blatter, da Fifa, fala à imprensa após audiência com o presidente Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, no Palácio do Planalto (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Sepp Blatter has resigned.

The FIFA boss quit—perhaps—in anticipation of charges being filed against him by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The man—apparently—knows when the going is good.

Is this a victory for sports enthusiasts everywhere? For sportspersons? For anti-graft activists? For the UEFA?

The European body considered boycotting the  2018 World Cup in Russia; they managed to rope in a few South American nations as well.

All said and done, whatever the reasons, the news comes a breath of fresh air in the pungent, acrid atmosphere of world sports administration.

India is no stranger to corruption in sporting high places.

Suresh Kalmadi and N Srinivasan are names that roll off the tip of one’s tongue.

Is it time that sports administration became bodies for sportspersons, of sportspersons, by sportspersons?

Most budding sportsstars are now trained from an early age how to handle the media and their intrusions and inane quibbles. Is it too much to expect the sports academies of now and the future to also train them in sports administration and its intricacies?

Is this an utopian concept?

There are no difficult answers. Just difficult questions.

English: FBI agents from the Washington Field Office with one of the tactical vehicles they had standing by for the 2009 Presidential Inauguration (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

From IPL 8 to French Open 2015

IPL 2015 is finished, over, done with. The champions have been crowned. The champions are Mumbai Indians.

Three teams have now won the IPL twice. Chennai Superkings (of course), Kolkata Knightriders and Mumbai Indians. The other winners are Rajasthan Royals and Deccan Chargers (now defunct).

Is Rohit Sharma, on the basis of IPL results, a better skipper than Virat Kohli? Has captaincy led to a new-found maturity in the cavalier—yet immensely talented—Mumbai batter? Is Sharma a better candidate to lead the Indian Test side?

Recall that Saurav Ganguly was appointed skipper only after Sachin Tendulkar refused the crown of thorns for the second (and final) time. The rest, as they say, is history.

Meanwhile, the French Open beckons with a tantalising glimpse of possibly history in the making.

Can Novak Djokovic become only the fourth man in the Open era to claim a career Grand Slam?

For once, Nadal does not ride into Paris as the overwhelming favourite on his favoured surface—clay.

The Mallorcan has feet of (well, you said it, not me) clay.

In the women’s draw, the top two contenders are Serena Williams and Maria Sharapova. Both have claimed career Grand Slams and Sharapova—interestingly—has two French Open titles; it is her least liked surface.

(My cable operator is not televising the French Open; it is not among the default options offered. So I guess I’ll be following it mainly via the net or the print media.)

Cheers!

IPL 2015: A big tamasha that could be better

Embed from Getty Images

Have you been following IPL 8?

Be truthful.

I haven’t.
Embed from Getty Images

It’s not that cricket doesn’t excite me or that watching Chris Gayle or AB DeVilliers clobber bowlers to all parts of the ground and beyond isn’t a thrilling spectacle.

It’s just that it’s no longer interesting, it’s no longer fun.

It’s a surfeit of instant cricket following closely on the heels of the 2015 World Cup.

Yes, the cheerleaders are pleasing to look at; so are Archana Vijay and Shibani Dandekar.

However, it’s simply the same old package with very little changing.

Ravi Shastri, former Indian cricketer. 4 Test series vs Australia at Adelaide Oval (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The only positive change is the recruiting of former women cricketers as expert commentators.

I support Mumbai Indians.

But Rohit Sharma’s men simply don’t evoke the same passion that the Indian cricket team does.

What is the IPL then? A great Indian tamasha. Enjoy with bhel and popcorn and you won’t suffer from indigestion.

As for the genius who decided that the studio experts should have cheerleaders lauding their every soundbyte, he should have his head examined.

It’s obvious that advertisers have not deserted the Indian Premier League as yet.

But more of such hare-brained shenanigans and they surely will.

Kevin Pietersen sets in the West, rises in the East

Kevin Pietersen is wanted.

Kevin Pietersen is not wanted.

Rejected by the English and Wales Cricket Board (ECB), the South African born cricketer makes his way to India to turn out for the Sun Risers Hyderabad despite making his highest ever first-class score, a classy triple ton for Surrey.

The 34-year-old is piqued indeed.

He cannot bridge the ‘trust deficit’ with the new director of cricket Andrew Strauss.

Has he done all that’s required? Has he been punished enough for all his previous ‘misdemeanours‘. The English public rooting for him certainly believe so.

Is he worse than a convicted spot-fixer? Surely not.

That begets the question, “What is trust?”

Trust , my friend, is personal. And this decision , my cricketing friends, is personal.

English: England cricket Captain Kevin Pietersen at The Oval (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

ICC World Cup 2015: Australia are champions of the world

To tell you the truth, I did not really watch much of this World Cup’s final featuring Australia and New Zealand.

Switching on the telly after returning from morning Mass, with Brendon McCullum gone cheaply, it would be an uphill task for the Kiwis to compile a formidable total. Two more quick wickets followed and I switched off the set-top box.

For a partisan Indian supporter like me, the final held no thrills or attraction. Most World Cup finals have been one-sided affairs and there was no reason for me to believe otherwise.

Catching up with the morning news, Michael Clarke’s farewell announcing the final would be his ODI swansong caught my eyes.

“A World Cup victory would be a great way to sign off,” were my immediate thoughts. And I dwelled again on  the emotional eulogy he delivered at Philip Hughes’ funeral. Clarke will always have his share of detractors but that was the day he displayed how far he has travelled from being ‘Pup’ and the ‘Bad Boy’ of Australian cricket.

Noon and the Kiwis had folded up for 183. Despite Sunil Gavaskar’s vain attempts at drawing comparisons between the ’83 final and Sunday’s mismatch to keep viewer interest in the game alive, it was evident that barring a miracle the Australians were well on their way to being crowned five-time champions.

It was so, with Clark crafting a well-made 74.

Australians were world-beaters yet again.