News Round Up

This was meant to be an obituary of Indian Hockey. Playing a champions league match at home , after having already lost the first to Spain 2-1, India were down 2-0. The playesrs looked listless and had just wasted penalty corner after corner. And then the Indians struck. To level at 2-2 and finally in the last two three minutes the Indian struck the third and we had beaten Pakistan 3-2. Time for celebrations an Indian team showing grit to come from behind and beating arch rivals? Unthinkable!. But all is still not well with Indian hockey. The audience doesn’t support it. The game is run by an autocratic dictator and the same regionalism that dominates everything in Indian life is pervasive in Indian hockey as well. That India still manages to win some times is laudable. I wonder what we could do if sport was free from petty politics.
And Armaan Ebrahim finishes 14th in the A1 grand prix. You’d think with a level playing field we’d do better instead of just going up a couple of places because our neighbour from Pakistan knocks out a couple of cars?. Atleast narain had an excuse , his car sucks. But both karun chandok and armaan seem outclassed by most drivers. Perhaps because this is an exclusive sport. You have to be a rich mans son to have experience driving fast cars!.
Which is one of the beautiful things in cricket. Anyone can play it anywhere and does. We played in the small lane after almeida park. Football needs a proper ground. Cricket has no such restrictions (much to the chagrin of car owners and people with glass windows on the ground floor). And India has dragged Sri Lanka back thanks to Kumble and the umpires. It looks like a result is assured in this test match. And heres hoping that with the record out of the way the old Tendulkar will return. A brilliant 40-60 with the odd century rather than a painstaking labored gavaskarish 100.
And noone watches Ms World anymore.. yeah!