sport in india

Boxing and wrestling are latest entrants to mushrooming leagues in Indian sport

It’s said about the Indian monsoon: When it rains, it pours.

Indian sport has been enjoying a monsoon of sorts over the past few years.

It’s been showering leagues.

The mushrooming of leagues in various sports and their live telecast whereby  converts to games other than cricket are drawn in can only be good news for Indian sport persons.

The latest entrants into the fray are the Pro Wrestling League and the Indian Boxing Council.

While the Pro Wrestling League is launched under the aegis of the Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) by Pro Sportify and consists of six city-based franchises each featuring 11 freestyle grapplers, six male and five female, the Indian Boxing Council acts as a licensee for promoters wishing to launch boxing leagues of their own across the country.

The council is, however, not affiliated to the Indian Boxing Federation which means that pugilists wishing to represent the country will stay out until the murkiness around the venture is cleared.

Boxers, who are past their prime, but still fighting fit are enthusiastic about the possibilities. It will add to their meager earnings from the sport.

Boxing and wrestling are sports that attract participants from lower-middle class families. This may just be their ticket out.

These sports are also the country’s best avenues for medals at the Olympic and Asian games.

The better the prospects for aspiring contenders, the better the training facilities offered and the more attractive  a career it is.

The world can be their oyster. Can Indian pearls seize their chances?

Of Bharat Ratnas, Dhyan Chand and Sachin Tendulkar

The late Major Dhyan Chand is in the news once more this time of  year. And again it is connected with speculation that he might be one of the recipients of the Bharat Ratna.

When there was a debate about whether sports persons should be awarded the Bharat Ratna , and if so , who first, yours truly along with many others felt that arguably the world’s greatest hockey player was preeminent among all current and past Indian sports persons.

But the Indian government played to the gallery and awarded the country’s most prestigious award to Sachin Tendulkar on the eve of his retirement from the game.

This is not to deny Mr. Sachin Tendulkar his spot in the sun. God knows, he did not need another award. He is the most beloved of all sports stars on the Indian firmament.  But surely Dhyan Chand and his descendants were done a disservice.

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Sachin is in the news too; this time for his leave of absence from the Upper House of Parliament. ‘Aap la Sachin’ is not the dedicated parliamentarian—neither posting any questions in the house nor spending his quota of allocated funds for his constituents’ betterment. And now, he has decided to go AWL  (Absent With Leave) citing personal and professional commitments.

It does make one wonder if Tendulkar considered the Rajya Sabha selection as just yet another award and not a call to service—a thought echoed by Pradeep Magazine in his column for the Hindustan Times.

The man cannot be solely blamed. Politics is a different kettle of fish—a fact that Amitabh Bachchan can attest to.

The Guangzhou Asian Games: It came, we saw, it went!

It’s been two weeks of waiting in vain for Indian athletes to prove that their CommonWealth Games medal haul was no flash in the pan. But it was not to be.

Even though India came home with 14 golds, their highest ever tally at an Asiad, comparing our performance against those of the Chinese or the Japanese or the Koreans does put our recent tomtomming in the shade. Let’s get some perspective, chaps!

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