A Common Fan’s Sports Diary

India do not go to the Asian Games

The International Olympic Committee takes note that the country with the biggest cricket market doesn’t care for such sporting events.

They will realize that there is no guarantee that India will send a team to the Olympics if the sport does become a part of the Olympic program.

Will considerably weaken cricket’s chances of joining the Olympic movement.

If India had gone to the Asian Games

Good TV ratings and attendance figures ( quite possible with India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka participating) would have given cricket’s Olympic chances a boost.

The fringe players get a chance to play an international tournament and that is never a bad thing.

An opportunity to win an Asian Games gold. We usually win only 4-5 of those at every event. So, another one would have meant a lot.

An opportunity for an Olympic medal if cricket was included in the Olympic program. And that would have been a huge deal. The likes of Sachin Tendulkar would’ve willingly agreed to play.

All expenses paid trip for Ratnakar Shetty and other BCCI mandarins for the Asian Games and possibly for the Olympics as well.

A chance to complete cricket’s domination of Indian sports. After all, the Asian Games and the Olympics were the only times when a majority of Indian sports fans paid attention to other sports.

The likes of Shashank Manohar and team would get to work with Suresh Kalmadi. They could share best practises and other trade secrets.

There are a few more but I guess the point has already been made.

Just when everyone else is trying to do whatever it takes to get cricket included in the Olympic program, the BCCI have decided to throw a spanner in the works.

The BCCI does not believe in the Olympic movement but they do seem to have borrowed from the Olympic Motto.

Their motto is Atius, Altius Altius.

Just when you think the BCCI can’t get any worse, they come back to dazzle you with a higher level of ineptness which in turn makes your anger levels go higher.

P.S – The BCCI could damage cricket’s chances further. They should bar any cricketer who plays in the Asian Games, Commonwealth Games or any such event from playing in the IPL. After all, these events like the ICL haven’t been sanctioned by the BCCI.

Whatever the likes of Suresh Kalmadi and others of his ilk have to say about the transparent manner in which they run the sports federations, we all know why these guys never want to stop their selfless work for the good of sports in this country. It’s the small matter of power, prestige, kickbacks , foreign junkets, nepotism and the opportunity to hog the limelight and the dais if a sportsperson from their sport brings glory to India ( in spite of the federations best efforts to stop him from doing so).

But there is one name whose presence in the lifetime list belies all logic.

Ashoke Ghosh of the Kho Kho federation

Can’t understand what this gentleman has to gain from being the lifetime president of the Kho Kho federation

This sport has no equipment ( all it needs is two small poles). So no opportunity for making money through tenders.

The team doesn’t play in any international tournaments ( unlike Kabbaddi which has international tournaments). So no foreign trips and no felicitation ceremonies.

As for power and nepotism, I don’t think any undeserving kin of politicians, administrators or bureaucrats are trying to join any kho kho teams.

There are no sponsorship or TV deals.

Kho Kho is not even part of the CWG. So they haven’t been given a budget to supposedly improve their players for the 2010 games.

And unlike their counterparts in the boxing federation, the female kho kho players haven’t been used to serve tea or serve some other carnal desires of the federation members. And if they have, then it’s not been considered important enough to be reported by the media. Another reason why it is difficult to understand Mr Ghosh’s unflinching hold on the president’s post.

I am surprised Kalmadi even bothered calling him for the meeting of the federation heads. In fact, the news reports on this meeting are the only results which you get if you Google Ashoke Ghosh and Kho Kho.

Ashoke Ghosh should thank M S Gill that his decision to cap tenures has finally made him Google worthy.

Couldn’t even find what he does when he is not presiding over the Kho Kho federation ( or is he a professional president ?)

Kho means to chase.

I really cant understand what Mr Ghosh is Kho-ing.

The country is counting on you once again

The Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF) has been worried for a long time the venues will not be completed in time for the 2010 games in Delhi. The organizing committee on the other hand have continued to promise everyone that the nothing of that sort will happen. The media also had chosen to ignore the matter for the longest possible time.

Now things have fallen so much behind schedule that the CGF president wants the prime minister’s intervention to speed up things. That’s just step away from asking for divine intervention.

The Organizing Committee are totally unruffled, however, coming out with yet another statement that Delhi will be ready at any cost.
The ball is now in the prime minister and the sports minister’s court. With the media having suddenly risen to the occasion, the ministers are definitely aware of the gravity of the situation. They can either play the autonomy card a la Mani Shankar Aiyer; claiming that government intervention will be tantamount to a violation of the IOC Charter (which says that sports bodies should be run autonomously) or they can save India from losing face in front of the entire world – something which will seriously dent our chances of hosting any major events in the future.

If no action is taken and the CGF takes the unprecedented step of moving the Games to Australia (which has already been placed on the stand bye) it will be more than the small matter of 12,000 crores going down the drain. These games are meant to showcase what modern India is all about – a country on the rise and on the move. Not being able to put it all together will highlight the exact opposite and jeopardize all our claims to being a new world power.

To the average Indian sports fan, it will hurt as much as the failure to qualify for the men’s hockey event of the last Olympics, if not more. There is so much at stake here.

The sports minister had sacked Indian Hockey Federation chief KPS Gill after the Beijing debacle. But the damage had already been done. So waiting for the present organizing committee to fail will be a calamitous mistake. The minsters need to pre-empt that and take some quick measures.

Disbanding the current one and getting a more professional and capable team will be a good place to start. A leaf can be taken out of the Athens 2004 example, when caught in similar situation, Greece averted a modern day Greek tragedy by getting the best man or shall we say woman to do the job. Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki was brought back to head the organizing committee and she re-energized the preparations ensuring a highly successful hosting of the games.

There is no shortage of capable people in this country who can handle an operation of this magnitude and save India’s blushes. The two ministers just need to put one in charge before its too late.

But do the two of them have the courage to take such a decision. Removing Suresh Kalmadi will not be easy. He is an influential member of parliament who belongs to the same party as the two ministers. It will be a public loss of face for him and he will fight tooth and nail, using all his political clout to scuttle such a move.

Manmohan Singh created a name for himself during the liberalisation process and during the nuclear deal. The fate of another important chapter in the history of modern India is now in his hands. Will he show the same conviction and do the right thing for the country or buckle under political considerations?

The entire country wants to know.

Related Article

What the Indian media isn’t telling you about the 2010 Delhi Commonwealth Games

Renu Gora has gone from winning a bronze at the World Championships to serving tea to govt lackeys

The Hindustan Times has done a ‘Tehelka’ on the officials of NIS Patiala.

They have brought to the country’s attention the shocking truth that women boxers, including former national champions and a bronze medallist at the World Championships, are being made to do the chores usually reserved for servants.

On second thoughts, it wasn’t really a ‘Tehelka after all; there was no sting operation and there isn’t anything covert about what is going in the National Institute of Sports. As reported by the national daily, it is blatant and its out in the open. And what is worse is that it’s hardly raised a furore and nobody’s even bothered to issue a statement to refute what has been reported or to condemn the actions of the officials at NIS Patiala.

Quite obviously, other than the Hindustan times and a few sports fans, nobody cares for the plight of these female boxers; atleast the people in authority are the least bit bothered.

Milkha Singh had set a benchmark for apathy towards women boxers when he refused to consider four times world champion MC Mary Kom for the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna award because he hadn’t heard about her or her exploits. The officials of the NIS Patiala just raised the bar.

This comes soon after Delhi was awarded a WSB franchise and the boxing community and boxing fans were looking forward to a bright future for the sport. I guess the future’s bright only for the men and that too as long as they keep winning medals.

It’s not that the women haven’t been winning medals. They topped the medals tally at the 2006 World Championships in Delhi and won 4 to finish in third place at the 2008 edition in Ningbo, China. And what’s more, women’s boxing is a strong contender to be included as a medal sport in the 2012 London Olympics. If that happens, our women boxers could win more Olympic medals than the rest of contingent combined.

What is most difficult to fathom is whether the officials at NIS Patiala are irrevocably dumb and uninformed and do not realize the damage they are doing to the potential Olympic medallists and in turn causing harm to their own good as well – after all if the women boxers script a glorious chapter at the London Olympics, there will be media attention , official recognition and inflow of corporate money in the sport, and even the officials will stand to gain from that, through right means and wrong ones as well.

Or are they one of the most heartless, corrupt bastards to have been born in this country; people who have gotten into the sport but have absolutely no love for it. They aren’t the least bit interested in helping produce the next batch of champions and don’t get any joy in seeing an Indian win an Olympic medal.

I don’t know if anything is going to come out of the HT report. I don’t expect much in a country where someone who sold an India cap for 2 lakhs (with video evidence to boot), K Jothikumaran, has managed to win the corruption case against him in the Madras high court and could soon get back to running hockey affairs in India again.

But if given a chance to decide the punishment for these guys, I know just the thing for them. No committees and court cases for these rascals. They should be put in a ring with these women boxers in a bout with no rules and protective gear. I am fully confident that after these bouts no sports official will dare repeat what’s going on in Patiala!

Thanks to the Hindustan Times for breaking the news and to my friend Nimish for sending the link

The government needs to come up with something better to appease the sports community

Almost at the end of 2008, the Indian sports ministry came up with a shocker – they decided that only players holding Indian passports could represent the country at sporting events. This decision was not the consequence of any event; the govt just pulled a rabbit out of the hat. Not even the Indian Olympic Association (IOA), which is headed by a Member of Parliament, had any clue that this was in the offing. I cannot understand why for the first time in living memory the govt took an active step and not a reactive one –Something which has been unanimously criticized by the sporting fraternity as an unnecessary impediment. They have earned the distinction of becoming probably the only nation to do so – even the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) and International Olympic Committee (IOC) do not bar such sportspersons. For once the sports federations – the IOA and the AITA, the sportspersons and the fans were all on one page. Thankfully, the govt has consented to the request of the IOA to re-consider this ruling.

But this begs the question – Is this politically motivated? The sporting fraternity was completely against it but wouldn’t something like this appeal to the jingoistic kinds – people who don’t know a thing about sports but take every opportunity to stir up a rabid nationalist frenzy?

There has never been any protest against the inclusion of a PIO (Player of Indian Origin). It’s not that these overseas players have limited the opportunities for home-bred players. We haven’t had a flood of PIOs flocking home to represent the country. And not even that other countries have been complaining that India has benefitted from the inclusion of such players. Even mighty sporting powers like the US, Australia and the UK don’t have a rule like this – and they have benefitted far more. Also, if the sports ministry was so convinced about it then why have agreed to re-consider it so quickly.

If the sports ministry really wanted to do something for Indian sports, then why not first tackle the more obvious and more pertinent issues – and there is a long list of those – the problem of infrastructure, selection of over-age players, proliferation of drug usage, inefficiency and corruption of sporting federations and so on and so forth. Or why not just make the passport issuing process faster for those who are Indian citizens – they would have surely noticed the trouble Saina Nehwal had to go though recently. They would have spent long hours thinking hard before they came up with the passport ‘idea’. They probably though they had another winner like the ‘OBC reservation rule’. But sadly for them their rule has found few takers. If only there were a few true sports fans amongst them.

India Today has come up with a list of the 10 biggest controversies in Indian sports. I agree with most of them but there are a few that we don’t find worthy of this list. I think somewhere there was a predisposition towards the controversies that had been well covered by the magazine. Never mind. We decided to come up with a list of 10 other important controversies from Indian sports, some of which were worthy of being in the first list itself.

Here goes in no particular order.

What gender did it bring more shame to?

The girl who was a guy

This was completely bizarre – so much so that it found a mention on ESPN’s US website. Santhi Sounderajan won a silver medal at the 2006 Doha Asian Games and then failed a gender test. She was found to be missing the sexual characteristics of a woman. The medal had to be returned and this incident brought us shame and disrepute. Things like this were common in the 1930’s and 40’s but there is excuse for something like this happening in today’s times. The government in the athlete’s home state of Tamil Nadu added to the controversy by refusing to recognize the verdict and felicitating the athlete in the same manner as the other medal-winners.

Kerry Packer revisited -The ICL controversy

This one has a strong case to be in the India Today list. Subhash Chandra emulated Kerry Packer by setting up his own cricket league after losing out on the broadcast rights, in spite of having the highest bid. The broadcast bidding is quite a controversy in itself. The BCCI wasn’t ready to play along –they banned the League and all its stakeholders and then upped the ante by starting a far bigger league of their own. Since then the BCCI and the Zee group have been at war and have sucked the entire cricket world into their dispute. The controversy looks like dragging on forever with both parties engaged in a war of attrition and there being no resolution to the matter in sight.

The monkey and the ugly Australians

This one surely had to be in the India Today list. It almost caused India to withdraw from the series and led to a public outcry against the Australian cricket team. The events leading up to it were truly inflammable – first the Aussies took gamesmanship to a new level and then rubbed salt into India’s wounds by accusing Harbhajan Singh of racism. It almost became a case of the white man’s word against the brown man’s. Insults were traded between the two sides and matters had almost come to a point of no return. Thankfully India was captained by an honourable man in Anil Kumble who got together with Ponting to iron out the issues between the two sides.

There is blood on their hands

The sportsman’s widow and her lover

Almost 20 years ago, one of India’s best badminton players, Syed Modi was shot dead by unknown assassins. His badminton playing wife, Amita, was rumoured to be having an extra-marital affair with noted politician and much married father of two children Sanjay Singh. A case was lodged against Sanjay for arranging  the killing but as it happens in our country, the well-connected politician, also a royal and a close friend of the Gandhi family, got away scot-free. A little later Sanjay divorced his first wife and married Amita. There are no witnesses and no legal proof – Just a simple matter of putting two and two together.

The cricketing god and his free chariot

Another one which India Today totally missed. India’s biggest cricket icon was gifted a Ferrari car by his sponsors FIAT on equalling Don Bradman’s record of 29 centuries. It was a 75 lakhs rupee gift but there was also the small matter of paying the customs duty of 1.15 crores. The controversy started after it was reported that the batting maestro had requested a custom duty waiver on the car despite getting it as a gift and not winning it as a prize in any tournament. That he was well capable of paying for it added to the steam and matters came to a boil when the Union government decide to oblige. There was a hue and a cry and Tendulkar’s demigod status took a hit. Finally FIAT decided to end the controversy by picking up the tab.

Indian hockey – of what happened after the Olympic failure

The qualification failure is already in the first list. But what happened after makes for a far bigger storm. The union sports minister, Mani Shankar Aiyer shed crocodile tears but failed to take any action citing the Olympic charter (which calls for autonomy of sports bodies). Thankfully, he was replaced by M.S Gill who showed more gumption by sacking the IHF chief. Then the IHF secretary was caught accepting a bribe on camera and he was also duly removed from his post. An ad hoc body was put in place but soon the power battle begun with the likes of Sahara’s JB Roy mobilizing the support of the state bodies. Ex- chief KPS Gill also refuses to let go and keeps sabotaging the activities of the ad-hoc body. And the former secretary is now flexing his muscles in his home state’s association by setting up a parallel body with the support of the district chiefs. This one also continues to rage on

All the good work undoes the Mary Kom episode

When the champion of rights was the perpetrator himself

Milkha Singh has always trodden on a moral high ground and never shies away from speaking his mind – mostly it has to do with the government’s apathy and disrespect towards non-cricketing sports and sportspersons. He caused a furore by refusing the Arjuna Award and makes the India today list based on that controversy. And then the same gentleman, in his capacity as the chairman of the Arjuna Awards selection committee, strikes of the name of female boxer MC Mary Kom from the Khel Ratna award list. His excuse – he didn’t know which sport she competed in. Where does that rate on the scale of hypocrisy? The World Champion boxer was hurt and aggrieved at the ‘Flying Sikh’s’ lack of respect and complete ignorance. For the record, she has 4 World Championship crowns, which is 4 more than what Milkha Singh has.

The over-age controversy

This controversy raises its ugly head every time we participate in a junior event, especially in cricket, football, hockey and athletics. The most famous or rather most infamous instances are the times when we won the junior hockey world cup and finished runners-up. Numerous complaints have been registered against us but we are so driven in our efforts to capture glory at the junior events that we continue to court controversy and infamy. If only we had the same drive to win things the right way

The other cricket controversies

There are three other cricket controversies which deserve an equal mention. First the ban on Sehwag for excessiveappealing in South Africa which led to a protest by the Indian side and the final test had to be played as an unofficial one. Second is the Harbhajan slapping Sreesanth episode which remains the gold standard on how things should be brushed under the carpet. And finally the Vengsarkar – Ganguly fracas, where Ganguly claimed to have been unjustifiably dropped after a good season and the former chairman of selectors promised to explain his act and give Dada more than what he had bargained for. This event caused, as many Dada fans would claim, Sourav Ganguly to make an early exit from the game. As for Mr. Vengsarkar, we are still waiting for his reply. But as it happens in Indian cricket, a few wins and everything is forgotten.

Wardrobe malfunction?

Sania Mirza and the Beijing Olympics

Another case of a victim in the ‘India Today’ list switching roles. Sania Mirza’s mom caused a major storm when she was accommodated in the Indian contingent for the Beijing Olympics as one of the officials of the tennis squad. She was not accommodated as a one member cheering squad but as one of the coaches and her inclusion was at the cost of dropping a ‘real’ coach in Rick Leach and a couple of physios, including South African Heath Mathews, whose eventual inclusion in the squad played a crucial role in the outstanding performance of the Indian boxers. And that was not all. Sania Mirza then turned up wearing trainers and not the official uniform for the opening ceremony. Some claimed she didn’t know how to wrap a saree and the official word was that she didn’t get time as she was trying to get in some additional practise. Whatever it was, it didn’t make for a pretty picture as the Indian contingent marched in and obviously the country was incensed.

Poll – Which sports administrator do you hate most?

Results - KPS Gill – 36%
Can we toss a coin -all of them are equally bad -31%
Suresh Kalmadi -16%

Others who featured in the poll

Priya Ranjan Das Munshi
Sharad Pawar
Jagmohan Dalmiya
Rajeev Shukla
I thought there were no administrators -and things were running on their own
Hey I know someone worse

Others who narrowly missed making the list

Almost everyone who is in charge of running sports in this country.

The State of affairs

I will not bother to get into the details of how sport has been ‘run’ into the ground in this country. A proper analysis will take a book, probably more. We will just mention that ability is not a pre-requisite to become a sports administrator in this country. You need to be an influential politician, businessmen, bureaucrat or a crony of someone influential. In the words of IOA and IAAF president, head of the ad-hoc body of the IHF, Member of Parliament and businessman, Suresh Kalmadi, “it’s imperative that Politicians or industrialists run sports in this country, for only they know how to get more money out of the government”. Golden words indeed. No mention that they are also more capable of diverting this money into their own coffers.

Poll outcome

In light of these facts, it was quite a challenge to pick out a winner from amongst our sports administrators. It was a battle among equals. Things have been bad across the board. And that was well proven by the 31% votes received by ‘Can we toss a coin -all of them are equally bad’.

We had expected that people who run the more popular sports would be at an advantage, their notoriety and ineffectiveness getting more media attention – like the men who have been involved with the cricket board. Also people who have had extremely long tenures – we have a system of getting appointed for a life time in Indian sports – the likes of Priya Ranjan Das Munshi and R.K.Khanna. But surprisingly, this advantage counted for nothing and none of these guys got a significant portion of the votes.

It takes much more than that to separate oneself from the rest of the administrative mediocrity

It takes an extraordinary effort – like ensuring that the sport you rule (that’s the right word) touches its nadir – like hockey did when our men’s team failed to qualify for the Olympics. This led to a national outcry and also the hitherto unseen step of the head of the sports body getting sacked by the sports minister.

I am a proud winner

And that is why KPS Gill – the man who oversaw this great decline – runs away with the poll, getting 36% of the votes. That he is unrepentant and is still making an effort to mobilize the support of the state units to re-capture power makes his case even more convincing.

He is the first among the equals

On a side note, it should be noted that the sports minister at the time of our hockey failure, failed to take any action, referring to the Olympic charter for his impotency. He would have done well in this poll, had he been eligible as the head of a sports body.

Suresh Kalmadi also comes out with flying colours taking a comfortable second behind Gill with 16% of the votes. He takes pride in the fact that he won the Commonwealth Games bid but this event could well become his Waterloo. With the games getting shifted out of Delhi becoming a realistic possibility owing to slack preparation work, Mr Kalmadi could well end up matching KPS Gill in the ‘touching a nadir’ dept. But for now, KPS Gill can bask in the glory all by himself.

Dear Mr Modi

This is the second time I am writing to you. The first time, I wanted to know what happened to all the money made from the IPL. You haven’t answered that one as yet. I guess you are too busy, what with the multiple positions that you hold. Well, we will come back to the IPL money and your numerous designations later. I have more important questions to ask first.

Freud would have loved to analyze his brain

Have you had a long history of suffering from temporary memory losses or from multiple personality disorder?

Or has the affliction been a recent one – starting from the time you saw your dream of starting the IPL?

Because nothing else can explain the recent remarks made by you regarding the ICL not satisfying the norms of authorized cricket

First you wear one hat of the IPL commissioner – someone who shamelessly copied the concept of the ICL and then called it his own. Someone who has seen the ICL make major inroads this year and feels threatened by its growing popularity.

And then you sit on the five-member ICC panel which decides what constitutes ‘official cricket’ and what does not. Is there a more clear case of conflict of interest? The only way you could be doing justice to both roles, is if you were suffering from one of the above mentioned ailments. You could then seamlessly shift into the ICC role without any influence or knowledge of your IPL role.

Then you have made the rather ignorant statement saying that there is no window in the international calendar to accommodate the ICL. Tell me seriously; which League has caused more problems to the International calendar, the ICL or the IPL. If there is any doubt then I suggest you check with the Srilankan and English cricket boards. Moreover, the ICL is largely made of aspiring or semi-retired cricketers who don’t have much to do with the international calendar anyways.

You have given two arguments as to why the ICL does not satisfy the norms of official or authorized cricket. Both these norms are news for me and surely a creation of your imagination. And that you have a really confused imagination owing to your multiple personalities makes matters worse

First you have said that the ICL is not built on a pyramid structure, whereas the BCCI-created IPL is built on one. What you forgot to add was that the BCCI pyramid has faults at every level – faults which are a result of a nepotistic architecture which forces a lot of deserving cricketers off the pyramid. Also that this pyramid has a defective foundation where little is spent on the lower levels and millions splurged on the topmost level. The BCCI pyramid is no good and therefore by Mr Modi’s argument, a league (the IPL) backed by a defective pyramid should also be unfit to be deemed official

And then there is your piece de resistance – calling the ICL a profit making exercise. What in god’s name is the IPL doing. And as already complained earlier, we are not even getting a whiff of where all that money is ending up. What were you trying to imply when you called the ICL a corporate effort – that its wrong to be transparent and promote meritocracy like they do in the corporate world. The EPL and the NBA, which you claim, the IPL has borrowed heavily from, are also corporate profit making efforts.

And what do you have to say about the Sanford 20-20. Is it official or not. Is it a corporate profit making exercise or not. Does it have a pyramid like structure or not.

You also mentioned something about the other, new, corporate tournaments that are coming up. What are these tournaments that you are talking about? Are they for real or just taking place in your imagination?

I wouldn’t be surprised if you saw corporate backed tournaments in your dreams, all the time

After all one corporate league has already been causing nightmares for you

Shame on you, you poster child of nepotism

Arjun Yadav is a part of the India Blues side for the ongoing NKP Salve Challenger trophy. I would assume that he has been given a chance by the selectors on the basis of his strong domestic performances. They haven’t shared with us what they saw, so let’s go and find for ourselves.

I last remember him playing in the IPL for the Deccan Chargers. The Chargers stunk as a whole – surely Arjun must have stood out as a shining star. But the stats show something quite on the contrary. Arjun was 12th best in the worst side in the IPL with a total of 49 runs at an average of 9.80 in 8 games. Even Nuwan Zoysa was better

Surely, Arjun wasn’t selected on the basis of his IPL performance. Then I guess the selectors would have been buoyed by his Ranji performance. After all 20-20 is tamasha cricket and the four day game is a true test of batsman’s ability

Let’s check Arjun’s performance in the last Ranji season

Arjun scored 370 runs in 6 games at an average of 33.46. His state mate DB Ravi Teja on the other hand scored 653 runs at an average of 59.36. And Ravi Teja isn’t playing in the challengers

And how good was Arjun’s performance on an all India level.

This is the list of top 50 batsmen (in terms of average) in the Ranji Trophy in 2007-08. And surprise surprise, Arjun is not on this list. So he wasn’t even one of the fifty best batsmen in the Ranji trophy. In fact he was way behind the last guy on this list – SS Das with an average of 39.40

So Arjun sucked in the Ranji also. Then he must have surely been on fire in the Vijay Hazare trophy. After all it is the domestic one-day competition and is the perfect tournament for selecting players for the Challenger Trophy.

Here are the lists of the top fifty batsmen by average and the top fifty batmen by run scored in the 2007-08 Vijay Hazare Trophy. Surely Arjun must be near the top of both lists. But no – he is actually missing from both lists. The cut off for the first list was 48.33 and for the second list it was 176 runs. So where is Arjun?

Arjun is way back with an average of 26.20 and a total haul of 131 runs. He is fifth on the Hyderabad list. In fact two of his state mates – SA Pai and A Shinde have better averages and more runs. And they are also not playing in the Challenger.

So what has Arjun Yadav done to deserve a chance in the Challengers? Why is a batsman who has fared poorly in the IPL, the Ranji Trophy and the Vijay Hazare Trophy being given such a golden opportunity? Is it fair to all the guys who missed out? All the others present in the top fifty lists. Or has he been given a chance just because he is former selector Shivlal Yadav’s son. Is it just a coincidence that Arjun’s father is the Director of the National Cricket Academy. Is there a more blatant case of nepotism – at such a high level?

This comes after the nepotistic policies of the Hyderabad cricket board led by Shivlal Yadav forced most of their talented players to risk their careers and join the ICL.

Will Mr Pawar, Mr Shashank Manohar and Mr Srikkanth please tell us why Arjun Yadav is playing in the Challengers?

The cricket fans of this country deserve to get an answer

Mr Suresh Kalmadi has been elected as the president of the Indian Olympic Association (IOA) for the fourth time in a row. This is great news for all Indian sports fans. Mr Kalmadi can now build on all the good work that he and his team have done in the past 12 years and take Indian sport to new highs.

That he was elected unopposed is clearly testimony to the high esteem he is held in – by friends and foes alike. In that sense he is the closest thing that we have had to Mahatma Gandhi – somebody who can cut across party lines and unify everyone under his leadership – and lead the country to glory.

We don’t have to look beyond the 2008 Beijing Olympics to see what Mr Kalmadi is capable of. This was India’s finest moment in the history of the games – all thanks to this great leader’s efforts. In spite of the Mittal Trust’s best efforts to take credit for the success of the Indian athletes, we all know it was Mr Kalmadi who was really responsible for the 3 medals. After all he selected the team for the Olympics and sent them to Beijing. Bad selection policy has been a bane for Indian sport and finally we have someone who has put an end to that.

Suresh Kalamdi deserves a halo over his head

Another reason why Mr Kalmadi faced no competition was because he takes great care of his people. He always makes sure that a large number of sports officials are sent to the international sports events. If he gets to go then his men should also go -Even if the official has no business being at the sports event – Even if sometimes the number of officials becomes more than the number of athletes and coaches – even if a physio has to be sacrificed to make way for an official. For Mr Kalmadi the hard working official always comes first- and hence it’s no surprise that Mr Kalmadi comes first for the officials also.

He has also received little credit for convincing many politicians to take up important positions in the IOA and various other national sports federations. It is thanks to his powers of persuasion that many of these politicians have agreed to take time out from their busy schedules and work for the betterment of Indian sport. Thanks to the wicked media, the common sports fan does not know that getting more politicians on board is a brilliant move on the IOA president’s part. After all it is the politicians who know how to get more money out of the central government. Even the current team is adorned with noted politician- sports administrators like Jagdish Tytler and Abhay Singh Chautala.

Mr Kalmadi is a visionary who always thinks ahead. Although the 2010 Commonwealth Games and 2012 London Olympics are far away, Mr Kalmadi has already started planning for them. The Indian govt has entrusted the IOA president with a large sum of money to bring great success at the Delhi Commonwealth Games. While lesser mortals would be struggling to find a quick fix solution to improve the performance of Indian sportspersons, Mr Kalmadi has again shown his genius. He has gone ahead and asked the Chinese to help India. He is not vain enough to think that this makes India an international laughing stock. He is aware that China has always helped India, as seen during the recent nuclear issue debate. It is a masterstroke on Mr Kalmadi’s part. It’s surprising that nobody thought of this before – we could have become a sports powerhouse long back.

Mr Kalmadi’s dream is to bring the 2020 Olympics to India. It’s a pity that this cannot be achieved in his current term which will end in 2012. Therefore, we should make him president of the IOA till 2020 so that he can make this dream a reality. And thanks to Mr Kalmadi and the help from the Chinese we might just end up on top of the medals tally