A Common Fan’s Sports Diary

Based on the quality of their analysis, the TOI surely has a dream team working behind the scenes

To the football editor,

You guys have done a decent job of providing a lot of football information. It has helped bring a lot of not- so -diehard fans up to speed with whatever has happened in the history of the FIFA World Cup so far.

You guys also think that it’s a great idea to have Mandira Bedi write a regular column on the football world cup. If cricket fans can benefit from her insights then why should football fans be denied the same pleasure.

And based on the football analysis that you guys have been providing, I have good reason to believe that the services of Rakhi Sawant and Sherlyn Chopra have also been employed by your publication for the 2010 FIFA World Cup.

Because proper football people couldn’t have come up with such mind blowing analysis.

A few samples

“The Jabulani was given to all countries in Feb for practise. It’s not used in the English Premier League, which has a contract with Nike for 9 years, but is used in US Major League Soccer. Could that be why England failed to beat the US?”

The genius behind this observation choose to ignore ( or probably didn’t have the brains to think) a few facts .

The Jabulani is not used in Major League Soccer. There are other footballs made by Adidas which are used. Most of the American players in the national side including Clint Dempsey, Jonathan Spector, Jozy Altidore and Landon Donavon actually play in the premiership. The player most affected by the random flights of the Jabulani is the goalkeeper and the American custodian, Tim Howard, also plays in the premiership. The MLS season runs from March to November which means it was long over before the ball was handed to the teams and there was no way American players in the MLS could have practised with it.

TOI obviously thought that they had hit pay dirt with this observation and decided to print it on the front page.

The other piece of analysis which would have left the world’s greatest football tacticians stunned appeared in the 24th June edition.

GROUP E EQUATION
Netherlands (Points 6; Goal Difference +3): They are already through. A win or a draw would help them top the group.
Japan (Points 3; GD 0): They need a victory for outright qualification. In case of a draw, they need to outdo Denmark in goal difference.
Denmark (Points 3; GD -1): They need a victory too. In case of a draw, they need to better Japan’s goal difference to qualify.

My intelligence isn’t up to the challenge of understanding the equation explained above. I always thought that if two teams drew a game then there would be no change in their goal difference. But the people at TOI ( Rakhi or Sherlyn) obviously know better. Now, if only they could explain this to the Danish coach.

I have a feeling that very soon football teams from across the world would be vying for the services of the TOI football analysts. After all, their current strategists haven’t managed to come up with such revolutionary ideas. However, I don’t think the TOI will let go of them. They need Rakhi and Sherlyn to continue to be the world leader in football analysis.

There’s only one piece of advice that I have for the TOI. Indian sports fans don’t just want to hear and read the expert views of the likes of Mandira Bedi, Shonali Nagrani and the other equally endowed women who grace the world of Indian sports. They also want to see them in their full splendour. Therefore, it would be a good idea to publish super size glossy pictures of the contributing writers ( in their attractive best) next to their brilliant articles.

I spent last night in agony watching Jeev Milkha Singh miss the half-way cut at the Augusta Masters by one stroke. He was comfortably in till the front nine, but 4 bogeys in 7 holes on the back nine killed his chances. Even the company of Tiger Woods couldn’t help him survive this uncharacteristic collapse. Considering that Tiger just about managed an even par score, himself, I don’t know if he was the best man to help the Indian.

I then woke up to find this front page headline in the morning paper.

It says that Jeev ended up tied 28th after Rd 1 at the Masters

I had a good mind to tear the paper apart.

And then there was a half page coverage of the first round performance in the inside pages as well.

Who is the TOI trying to impress with a story which is not just one day late, but also hopelessly out of place by trying to spread cheer when it is time to lament?

Does the paper really care about Indian Golf?

Or are they just making a half –baked and completely ignorant attempt to show that they do.

Would they have done the same for a cricket match that had ended late at night?

Let’s try to tear at least a hundred copies of the Times of India today. I just started the count . I know it doesn’t help in any way and is very juvenile but what the heck.

Dear Mr. Vengsarkar,

What is the plan?

When are you planning to give Sourav Ganguly ‘more than he asked for’? You were originally planning to do so after the India-Australia series got over, so that there was no undue discord in the team. Thank you so much for that. Because of your noble act, we managed to avoid the discord and win the series. But the series got over on the 10th of November. Today is the 28th. By now, Sourav Ganguly would have got his provident fund and gratuity money also from the board. But he is yet to get what you were supposed to give.

What is keeping you so long? After all you made the announcement on the 10th of October and it’s been almost 50 days since. Are you working on a literary masterpiece for him? The likes of Gulu Ezekiel would have completed two different versions of Sourav Ganguly’s autobiography by now. We don’t need your elaborate prose. Just give us a simple explanation. You can do that in Marathi in case you have suddenly forgotten all your English and your Hindi.

Dada has every right to give Vengsarkar a taste of his bat

I am not too surprised that Mr. Manohar and Mr. Pawar have conveniently forgotten to remind you. I had anticipated that. And I wasn’t expecting anything from our lousy media.

I am wondering what has happened to the others – the pundits – the likes of Sunny Gavaskar, Ravi Shastri, Harsha Bhogle and Ayaz Memon – the so-called expert voices. Have they all suddenly got a sore throat? Are they really fair and unbiased?

Forget about giving us a good explanation. I don’t think you have even a bad one.

I think it’s pointless to wait any more – because you never had a case in the first place. You were simply out on a slandering mission, taking a chance on Dada failing in the Australia series.

I hope this cowardly act becomes your lasting legacy and people keep asking you for an explanation for the rest of your life.

Actually, it would be better if your name could be added as a phrase to the English lexicon and be associated  with doing such an act. So whenever, someone makes a false and baseless accusation against an individual, it should be called doing a Vengsarkar.

Wish you the very best for your future career as a card carrying star campaigner of the Maharashtra Navnirman Seva

This one really has me stumped. We have seen the media in England and Australia wage psychological battles against the visiting cricket teams including ones from India. The Indian media on the other hand pays foreign cricketers to write guest columns – ones which criticize our cricket and berate our players. And sometimes it helps these foreign players promote their books as well. I can understand the rationale of guest articles written by knowledgeable former players but cannot fathom the reason for ones written by the current ones.

Is there such an acute shortage of sports content in this country that we have to rely on these visiting players?

Or, are these newspapers still suffering from the ‘white man’ complex – letting these white cricketers preach us on the game?

As for getting the opposition’s side of the story, we don’t need that. That is all we get when we travel abroad. Is there no cricket patriotism amongst the newspaper people?

And if this wasn’t painful enough, now we have guest columns from our great sports administrators as well. Mr Suresh Kalmadi waxed eloquent on how the Delhi half – marathon was the perfect build-up for the Commonwealth Games. On one hand the media conveniently forgot to report the trouble the 2010 games are facing and on the other hand they give the culprits an opportunity for self –praise.

Don't be surprised if an Indian newspaper publishes a guest column by this guy soon

I wonder what could better this – a guest column from Osama Bin Laden perhaps

Is this really great news for Archery?

The Hindu carries an interesting story, about, how in the wake of Abhinav Bindra’s Beijing success, the Olympic Champion’s sport has become a favourite amongst school children. Enthusiasm for this sport has reached such levels that the Navodaya Vidyalaya at Bagalur near Bangalore has raised an entire high school team. This team has brought great glory to the school.

This is great.

A sport other than cricket is becoming popular amongst shcools and students. Also that a top daily is covering this development.

But wait

The sport which these school children are falling in love with is Archery and not shooting. The article talks about the resounding success of Indian archer Abhinav Bindra at the Beijing Olympics.

There are two possibilities

One is that, the children’s taking up archery and doing well in it has nothing to do with Abhinav Bindra. The connection is the imagination of a poorly informed reporter and an equally poorly informed editor desperatley looking for a great story. So rather than appearing to be concerned about other sports, the paper ends up looking poorly informed about other sports.

The other rather unlikely possibility is that there is indeed a conncection. That someone told the children a lie about Bindra being an Olympic champion archer to enourage them to take up the sport. They ended up doing that and doing really well at it. In that case, however, the story should have been different. It should have been about Bindra the shooting champion inspiring children to take up differnet Olympic sports like archery.

But the story mentions Bindra the archer.

Is it possible that the reporter was also tricked by the lie which fooled the children

That reporters as naïve as small children do sports reporting says a lot about how much importance the media gives to non-cricket sports in this country

Thanks to Nimish for breaking this story

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The Times Now episode

Will we have a successful Games?

Here’s an update on the state of preparation for the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi.

This comes courtesy of Richard Moore’s report in The Scotsman. It’s really a credit to the Indian media that we have to depend on a Scottish newspaper for updates on something that is happening in our country

Now for the update

The preparations for the Games are lagging seriously behind schedule – so much so that the Commonwealth Games Federation chief executive Mike Hooper has been spending half his time in New Delhi overseeing the work.

There is also talk that the Games could be in grave danger, with some even talking of the worst case scenario – that the games will be handed back to the last host, Melbourne – becoming a genuine possibility. That would really be a proud moment for Indian sport.

But are we exaggerating the issue. Preparation for such mega events have known to be behind schedule, most recently during the Athens Olympic Games.

The Delhi case, however, is a little different. This because the projected completion dates for most of the facilities is very aggressive in the first place, leaving very little breathing space.

Work began on the 58,000-seat main stadium last August and is scheduled to finish on 31 January 2010. The same completion date is given for the lawn bowls facility. The final touches to the facilities housing weightlifting, gymnastics, wrestling, shooting, table tennis, archery, squash, badminton, table tennis, tennis and swimming is set for a month earlier.

So what stage are these facilities in?

As per the official games website these facilities – all of them – still exist only as artists’ impressions.

And that is not all. It gets scarier

The “final design” is still being developed for the swimming pool, while the cycling velodrome appears to be at a “concept design” stage.

If you still aren’t worried, then either you don’t care about these games or have Alladin’s magic lamp lying at home.

Interestingly, at the recent Commonwealth Youth Games in Pune, International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge, encouraged India to bid for the 2020 Olympic Games

He was either being sarcastic or is a very good diplomat

He seems to be a nice guy - what does the media have against him?

Amit Mishra played three one-dayers in 2003 and was then forgotten. A superb performance in the IPL brought him back in the national consciousness. And finally he was rewarded with a place in the 15 member squad for the first two tests against Australia.

But while reams of newsprint and millions of bytes were spent on Ganguly’s comeback and Badrinath’s maiden selection, Mishra’s inclusion hardly generated anything from the media.

The performance of India probables – Rohit Sharma, Suresh Raina and Virat Kohli in the ongoing A series and in the ‘Board President XI – Australia’ game was also given a lot of media attention.

There was nothing wrong in that. But was wrong was how Piyush Chawla’s five for against the Aussies made the sporting headlines in the country’s largest selling newspaper but the same newspaper conveniently forgot to highlight Amit Mishra’s six wicket haul against the Kiwis. The headline from that game talked of M Vijay and Sourav Ganguly. This finally got my goat.

What do the media have against Mishra? This is his moment. He’s the one in the India squad. He’s in good form ahead of the series. His is the kind of comeback story fans want to read about. Even the unknown Aussie spinners, McGain and Krejza have hogged more attention than him. Give him some love guys.

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All the other Amit Mishra content on Commonfan

I will first repeat the question in the picture for you

Question – This dashing Indian batsman put the Pakistani attack to sword as he scored a swashbuckling 119 to help India chase with ease in the Asia cup clash in Karachi on Thursday.

The options are
A) Sourav Ganguly B) Sachin Tendulkar C) Rahul Dravid

As a hint, they have provided a photograph of the lower half of the cricketer’s face – a pair of specs and a light moustache is visible. The player also happens to be chewing on his nails. Looks very much like a cricketer who once took his shirt off on the Lords balcony but wait there’s another hint.

The picture has been captioned as “Dadagiri Continues”. The first word reminds me of a very popular cricketer’s nickname. I am fairly certain that I know this one. But wait, it says Asia Cup in Karachi in 2008. I guy I was thinking about isn’t playing for the national senior team and as far as I know isn’t part of any rebel league or tournament going on simultaneously with the BCCI-approved Asia Cup in Pakistan.

I give up. I should’ve watched the Asia Cup more closely.

The reward for the lucky winner – to have his name published on the same trivia section the following day. Well, now I have an additional prize for whoever has the right answer. I will be his slave for the rest of my life. And I will build two monuments in his honour – one on the moon and one on the Lords cricket ground and name them as “this is to celebrate the Genius who correctly answered Times Of India’s quiz”

There is no time limit to answering this question. Keep trying. But please don’t come up with inane answers like – the options are all wrong or there is a typo error or that this was done to celebrate National Media Horrors Day or something.

Thanks to Aneesh Deepak for noticing the unsolvability of this question

Yes, the great football experts at TIMES NOW added the 3 penalties converted by Turkey and one by the Croats to the score line and showed it as 4 goals scored by Turkey and 2 by Croatia. The statistics also show that Turkey had only two shots at goal. So how did they manage to score 4 goals when only two shots were on target? How does one score a goal in football without the shot being on target?

What I cannot understand is that how no one in the news channel noticed it – the presenters, the camera guys, the production guys and everyone else who is involved in bringing news to us. Surely someone in the organization must know a little about football.

Now to give you a cricket perspective of this football blunder. Imagine a Twenty-20 game which has a bowl-out. Team A loses 9 wickets during the game and team B hits the stumps five times during the bowl-out. Then TIMES NOW’s analysis would have shown Team A lose 14 wickets in the game. That is how bad they are. Continue watching TIMES NOW if that is not bad enough for you