The season of faith's perfection - The Olympics

The athlete crouches, nerves on edge and body taut, and awaits the gunshot. What the athlete does after the crack of the gun is a culmination of four years of toil, blood & sweat. Most often, it ends in tears. Often, because among hundreds, in any one discipline, there are just three steps on the podium to occupy. Tears, because there may not be another chance. Ever. The next Olympic Games are 4 years away, and that is a lifetime for an athlete.

This is the greatest spectacle on earth. It is the most equaling of all competitive sporting events. A middle distance runner, on whom a developed country has invested millions of dollars to get his training right, loses to the athlete whose middle distance training in sub-Saharan Africa was running 10 kilometers to school every day as a child. There’s no money for a winner. There’s a piece of metal to be won that no amount of money can buy.

I also like the Olympics because it is a melting pot of the greatest sporting talent on earth. 206 countries will participate and over 10,500 athletes will represent these countries at Rio 2016. It will be played out across 28 Olympic sports. 306 sets of medals will be up for grabs. That also means that over 9,500 athletes will not step on any podium. Most importantly, the Olympics serve as an amazing epiphany that every sportsman is just as important as the other. The multi-million dollar winning tennis player will get a gold medal if he wins and so will the obscure fencer whose face we cannot see behind that protective mask.

The Olympics are a poignant reminder that there are geniuses in sports that might be alien to many lands. Where else would we have seen the gravity defying pole vaults of Yelena Isinbayeva? Where else would we have seen a Nadia Comaneci do a backward flip and land perfectly on a beam that is the width of our palm? Where, on earth, would we have seen Michael Phelps cut through water, all the while making us wonder if this person, resembling Homo Sapiens, had fins and gills?

The darkest side of man is revealed in these games too. Some spoke of this being the testing lab for proving Aryan supremacy, a Canadian called Ben Johnson (and countless others) took drugs to compete, some innocent Israeli athletes paid with their lives in Munich because some Palestine terrorist group called Black September decided that these people were symbols of problems in their part of the world.

Yet, what stands out due to the Olympics is the fact that we get to see the commitment the human race is capable of. We read of Olga Korbut who counted sips of water during practice. We heard of athletes who would refuse to shake hands for the fear of catching germs. And, we’d hear of Natalie du Toit. She missed qualifying for the 2000 Sydney Olympics narrowly, and then met with an accident that made amputation of her left leg necessary. In 2008, she qualified for the Beijing Olympics after training herself to swim with just one leg. We get to know of Karoly Takacs who lost his right hand in a grenade explosion, trained himself to shoot with his left hand, and shot at the Olympics. Yes, he shot gold but even if he hadn’t won anything he’d be a winner, for refusing to accept the cards that life dealt him with. Innumerable stories of such heights that the human race is capable of reaching out to are brought forth by the Olympics.

What also comes forth, with an inescapable surge, is seeing these women and men live the moment because for many deserving athletes, there is just one Olympic Games in their lives. Just one race, or one throw, or one shot, or one row. It is tough for athletes to sustain their peaks and remain competitive for 8 years straight. Which is why the Olympics make our minds boggle at the mention of Steve Redgrave. A man who won 5 Olympic Golds - 13 less than Phelps, 4 less than Larisa Latynina, Pavvo Nurmi, Mark Spitz & Carl Lewis, and 3, 2, 1 less than 29 other athletes – but he won these five golds in five different Olympics. He rowed himself to these golds, in the pinnacle of all sports gatherings, for twenty years in a row.

So come August, let’s count ourselves lucky to be seeing this august gathering. In years gone by, the Olympics have seen a limping, bleeding & bandaged marathoner hobbling into the arena to complete his race and saying ‘my country didn’t send me 5000 kilometers to start a race, but to finish it’. Olympics have seen people honour the true spirit of sportsmanship, like Luz Long giving his biggest opponent, Jesse Owens, a tip that would make the man out-jump Luz for the gold medal. We will see women & men raising themselves to be more than what they are and, perhaps, inspiring a few of those who watch them to raise themselves up as well.

We'll get to behold the greatest social force in the world, for the road of the Olympics, as Jesse Owens said, leads – in the end – to the best within us.

The Baryshnikov's last ballet

The lovers of most performing arts live a curse and a blessing. They start admiring a performer, see the performer astound and bewilder over the years. And then they live through having to see the performer’s skills fray, their genius slowly fade away and see them reduced to remnants of the maestros they once were. Sure, it’s a bit of a curse to endure that. And then the maestro performs for the last time, and we realize what a blessing it was to have been astounded all these years.

Imagine this! You’re in a concert at Madison Square Gardens, Bille Jean is reverberating in the air, Michael Jackson starts moon-walking – and stumbles! The performer can’t moonwalk as effortlessly anymore. What would the MJ fan in you go through? It’d feel like seeing Roger Federer dunk forehands into the net, the ones he’d have caressed past his opponents in his sleep, when he was at his prime.

Sportsmen are the epitome of performing arts. Yes, sport is more art than science. It’s more literature than mathematics. Tell me, when you think of Sachin Tendulkar does a statistic of 15921 test runs flash past your mind or are you reminded of a short man, standing tall, cracking a ball straight past the bowler for four? I don’t think of Federer as 17 Grand Slams, 7 Wimbledons. I think of forehand cross-courts hit with a precision so great that it would make a surgeon proud.

Roger Federer’s game is beautiful. He doesn’t thump his opponent & batter them to demolition, he merely delicately carves them up, slices them to pieces by the dazzling cuts of his excellence. There’s no scowl on his face when he plays, no grunts of effort, no expression that says that he’s putting in tremendous physical effort. He’s like a ballet dancer, silent feet moving across his stage with enormous effort, but the face belies it. Federer at Wimbledon was like Mikhail Baryshnikov at the ballet. Much of that astonishment is now in the past. These days I see Federer shank forehands into the net, mistime the backhand to 8 feet past the baseline. It’s like seeing Baryshnikov doing a ballet with a limp.

I’ll still see him play this Wimbledon. Sure, I want Federer to win. Not because 18 grand slams will make him a greater player than when he won 17 slams. But because I’ll be able to see a genius pushing an older, obstinate body into some more breathtaking ballet that masquerades as tennis. It’s because despite stumbling through a lot of his games, from somewhere out of the recess of a memory of the past he’ll bring out a forehand which will also make his opponent applaud.

And I’ll watch Federer play because I don’t know if this is the last time he’ll take court at Wimbledon. Yes, I am living a curse of seeing the greatest ever become a shadow of his great past. But I still need to live the blessing of seeing the greatest ever compete despite being a pale shadow of what he was. In every game he might stumble, but till he’s in the competition Federer will just get up and moonwalk again. The ballet of the Baryshnikov is ending, but it hasn’t ended – not yet!

Phillip Hughes: The story that should live

Twenty two players walked out on one of the most hallowed turfs of the cricketing world. That’s how a  story always begins when one writes or reads about a cricket match. The story then builds about how some batsmen crafted a beautiful innings, how some bowlers eked out wonderful spells. The story always ends with how a team won, or lost, or how the match was drawn. This time, and I hope that it’s for the last time, I read a new ending in a  match story – A man died! Phillip Hughes’ mortal remains were lowered in Macksville, Australia, but it’s important that his story lives.

Hughes was playing a safe sport. He didn’t hurtle down on tracks at 300 KM/h in a racing car. He didn’t face a raging Mike Tyson in a ring eager to knock him out. He was in a park, all decked in protective armour, but he still died and that’s why it’s important that his story lives on. That batsmen, far inferior to him, have come out unscathed facing bowlers even more fearful, but he succumbed, is why this story should live on. The fact that he died when he had so much to live for is why this story should live on. The belief that no other man with a dream should have a death like this is the reason why this story should live on.

Cricketers have done much on fields that has been reported. Taken stunning catches, scored gritty hundreds, bowled sublime spells. Some have questioned the parentage of the opposition batsman, some have tampered with the ball’s seam, some have stood their ground despite knowing that they have edged one and some have signaled crooks by hanging a towel from their waists. But no cricketer has ever wanted a life taken on a cricket field. As a fan I had read about Raman Lamba dying because of a cricket ball hitting his head when he was fielding. That story was reported, but it died. It has come back to life, ironically, because another man trying to build a career has died.

I saw Michael Clarke fighting his tears while giving his tribute to his little brother one last time. I saw Sean Abbot trying, manfully, to face his demons as he came to bid his mate goodbye. I saw an ageing man act as pallbearer for a man he’d once cradled and called ‘son’. This story needs to live on because stories on cricketing endings shouldn’t be ones of a mourning family at a funeral. Aren’t cricketing endings happy stories of a family acknowledging the fans for finally returning them their son who always had to be away?

We are now talking of the helmet that needs to be improved. We probably will see innovations that will cover the back of the head as well. We will probably see a headline in a few years that would say ‘Helmet manufactured that completely insulates cricketers from head injuries’. We will probably live out our lives without the news of a cricketer dying because the equipment protecting him wasn’t inadequate. This story needs to live so that the ‘probably’ used so often in this paragraph transforms to ‘certainly’. Raman Lamba’s story died, so it’s very important that Phil Hughes’ story lives.

I have read about two cricketing deaths and this is a sport where one death is also one too many. What has happened to Phillip Hughes can’t be undone, the pain and grief cannot be lessened. But we cricket fans can take solace in the fact that Hughes died when he was at a place he could call his own, doing the one thing that loved doing most, playing cricket. I believe that is another reason why his story should live.

A commentary on commentators

25th of June, 1983, was a momentous day in the history of not just Indian cricket but India as well. There is no denying the fact that those men went where no Indian had gone before. What I do not like, however, is when some of those men come on to news channels as broadcasters with nothing to contribute, but to remind us that they had won a world cup.

When I look at cricketers analysing cricket for me, I look for insights, I look for very interesting anecdotes, I look at them for stating things that are beyond the obvious. Apart from Sunil Gavaskar, none of these ’83 players say anything insightful or even entertaining. They keep repeating themselves on and on and on. All they talk of is the 1983 world cup. They have been doing this now for over a decade.
Imagine somebody tweeting something great one day and then retweeting the same thing for the next 10 years. It gets irritating. Here is an analysis of the most irritating characters of the 1983 squad on the tube.


K. Srikkanth: An ODI great despite a grand average of 29, swashbuckling despite a career strike rate of 71. Rahul Dravid has a better strike rate than him. I do not mind the superlative adjectives used for him, but what I do mind is that as a cricket analyst he doesn’t know his face from his ass. His scientific name is ‘selfus contradictus’. Here is a pearl from when we was doing live commentary – ‘great shot over the top and OH! He is caught on the boundary. What a stupid shot’. Just that to say this Cheeka style, please ignore the spaces between words.

 Since those halcyon days of Cheeka the commentator, we now have Cheeka the expert. He comes on news channels to explain the ‘poishun’ of the game. Ok, ‘position’, but then that’s not the way Mr. Srikkanth pronounces it. He has now become the most forgetful of all ex-cricketers. ‘Whaddyoucall’ has become his favourite phrase. These days his lines go like this – ‘that was a great, whaddyoucall, catch, by, whaddyoucall, Yuvraj.’


Madan Lal: He embodies simultaneous translation. He is constantly thinking in Punjabi and simultaneously translating it in Hindi. If you are unfortunate, you will catch him translating it to English. A simple man, he strongly believes that all one needs to win matches and tournaments is ‘josh’. Here is how his expert analysis goes:
Q: Tendulkar did not quite look like himself in the last 2 innings. What should he do?
Madan Lal: He must play with more josh.
Q. What would a team like Zimbabwe be thinking when they are up against the might of Australia?
Madan Lal: They must come out with belief and with Josh.
Q. The finals. What would the teams be thinking?
Madan Lal: That come what may, we must play with josh.

No wonder, whenever he is asked what the team thought in the mid-innings break when they went out to defend 183 he replies, you guessed it, that they thought they will play with josh.


Kapil Dev: A lot of unjustified fun was poked at his English when he was a cricketer. His job then was to win matches for India. However, he cannot ignore his awful English when he comes on the tube as a cricket expert. He better be eloquent. But the Haryana Hurricane does on TV to the viewers what hurricanes do to trees.

 He once asked after an insipid Indian performance in a match – ‘are we the problem balling, or is we the problem batting?’ I’m sure former cricket writers must have turned in their graves after hearing this, just like a few fans might have smashed their TV sets after this. For a bowler, it’s amazing how he pronounces bowling as ‘balling’.


Mohinder Amarnath: Courage thy name is Jimmy, is what Gavaskar once said about this brave-heart. But out of his cricketing whites, beaming from the tube, he turns his viewers into brave-hearts. Those people who do not have cable at home and are forced to watch matches on DD, start taking cable connections just so that they do not have to hear Jimmy paaji singing on ‘Fourth Umpire’. He is the only cricket expert in the world who’s mid and end innings analysis is songs with changed lyrics.

 When he bowled, so slow was his run-up that he would put batsmen to sleep by the time he reached the bowling crease, and then hurl a ball to get them out. As an expert, he talks insipid stuff that puts viewers to sleep and then he suddenly sings to give them insomnia for weeks.


Syed Mujtaba Hussain Kirmani: By far, the most inattentive cricket expert. Maybe, not inattentive, but handicapped. After all, he was last seen advertising Widex hearing aids. But whenever I have seen him in a studio, he is sans his hearing aid, and hence the absolutely unrelated answers to questions.

 Q: So, Mr. Kirmani, a tough total for Dhoni’s team to chase?
Kirmani: Dhoni has a reputation of drinking 4 litres of buffalo milk every day. So you never know what will happen.
The line above is usually uttered in even more unintelligible English and followed by a guffaw from the former keeper. If a buffalo was to hear Mr. Kirmani utter this, milk would curdle in her udders.

So, batch of 1983, we are grateful to you for having won a world cup. We shall, however, be forever indebted if you stop coming on the tube.

The right to smoke

This is something that I have been thinking about for quite some time now. There was a ban some time back, and rightly so, on smoking in public places. However, this ban was not thought through properly and hence was a draconian system that really hurt smokers. Let me explain why I thought so.

Just like non-smokers have a right to not inhale cigarette smoke, smokers have a right to smoke. If there is a ban on smoking at the airport or the train stations then there ought to be a smoking zone demarcated at those places that allows smokers to smoke. Well, it is not an illegal activity. Every adult above the age of 18 has a right to smoke tobacco.

If one were to walk into an airport, and pee near the check-in counters, the person would be fined or put behind bars. The person would be told that ‘there are loos in this airport and that’s where you need to go and pee’. So to ensure that a person can answer the call of nature, all airports and stations have loos. After all, it is everybody’s right to go take a pee.

Somehow, this sort of consideration is not shown towards smokers. We need to go and indulge from time to time. It is legal. What is not acceptable is that smoking zones aren’t always given to indulge in a perfectly legal activity. Till the Bombay airport was refurbished, there weren’t any smoking zones. I am yet to hear of any train station having a smoking zone. The Calcutta airport does not have a smoking zone. Most restaurants and pubs have been dictated to ban smoking on the tables, but they have not been dictated to ensure that an area is given for smokers to smoke. I would certainly feel like a wretch smoking on a restaurant table and a kid sitting nearby inhaling that smoke. But why couldn’t Ramadoss feel like a wretch when I could not indulge in a perfectly legal activity?

There are also some who get into the MORAL of the whole thing. I have read and heard time an again, senseless things like ‘smoking should be completely banned in India’; ‘Cigarettes are the causes of so many deaths’ and so on and so forth. Well, let me put some statistics forward. Out of the total revenue that India earns, 8.8% is earned from excise duty of cigarettes alone. Bidis, cigars etc. contribute a further 3.3% to the government’s coffers.

Furthermore, the tobacco industry employs 62 lakh people in India. Bidi manufacturing is the biggest cottage industry in the country. So all those who want to ban smoking completely in India, please consider these facts. Banning smoking would not only lead to a huge dent in India’s revenues, it would mean 62 lakh jobless people in one go, just for some nonsensical people’s so-called high-moral ground.

Some might cite the fact that smoking leads to cancer and that needs to be a reason enough to ban smoking. This argument is rubbish. Firstly, smokers who get cancer are extremely heavy smokers and even among them not all get cancer. Secondly, there are more people in India who suffer from diabetes and high cholesterol than cigarette related diseases.

So, first ban sugar so that diabetics can live. Ban butter and cheese so that nobody in India suffers from cholesterol problems. Then talk about banning cigarettes. And, may I add, cigarettes give more employment and revenue to India than butter and cheese and sugar.

The same NGOs and saviours of the earth will not move their bums to ensure that a Govt. of India ruling – cigarette shops should not exist within 200 meters of any school – is stringently followed. They will not ensure that a person selling a fag to an underage kid is put behind bars. They will not work to ensure that there are no cigarette shops within 200 meters of a school. I can show you many cigarette shops in India that are within a few meters from a school.

Well, I hope the right of smokers is preserved. They are old enough; they are indulging in a legal activity; and they should be given their space to smoke. There should not be a draconian rule like what exists in places like, say, Phoenix mills in Bombay – where one cannot smoke anywhere in acres and acres of place.

Punish the irresponsible smoker who smokes at the airport. But also ensure that he has an option of walking into a smoking room somewhere nearby. That way both smokers and non-smokers would remain happy.

The best in the world

An attempt at a short story.. Inspired by a true incident that came flooding back when I heard the song ‘The Greatest’ by Kenny Rogers.


It was raining, and the 11-year old could not go out to play cricket. He was restless and kept looking at the clock, for there was only an hour’s day-light to go. Sadly, Mother Nature didn’t seem considerate enough to relent. The boy’s restlessness was understandable. After all, he wanted to hone his batting skills, he wanted to drive and cut and pull; he wanted to be Sachin Tendulkar, he wanted to be the best.


His mother saw him forlorn and lost and asked him to play in the garage instead of waiting in the veranda. The boy saw sense in the suggestion. He picked up his bat and a tennis ball and walked in to the garage. He switched the light on and prepared to battle. The moment the light was switched on, he was transported to another world. This was no longer a garage, it was Eden Gardens. And he had to practice his craft here for the day; he wanted to be Sachin Tendulkar, he wanted to be the best.


The rules were simple. The garage shutters were pulled down behind him; stumps were drawn on the shutter using crayons. The boy would stand with the stumps (garage shutters) behind him and hurl the tennis ball at the wall ahead; and when the ball came back, he would hit it with his bat. It was a new bat and a heavy one at that. His father had suggested that it might be a tad too heavy for him while buying it, but the boy was adamant. After all, his idol used a heavy bat and so should he; he wanted to be Sachin Tendulkar, he wanted to be the best.


He threw the ball at the wall, and the tennis ball quickly bounced back at him. By the time he gripped the bat and swung it, he heard the sound of the ball crashing into the shutters behind him. Well, the bat was too heavy for him to lift and swing, in a little more than a second; for that was the amount of time the ball took to come back to him after being hurled at the wall. He could have under-armed the ball to the wall very slowly, but he wanted to face the fastest bowlers in the world. That’s why he insisted on throwing the ball with full force instead of gently under-arming it to the wall. He had to learn how to face the fastest bowlers in the world; he wanted to be Sachin Tendulkar, he wanted to be the best.


The boy composed himself and launched the ball again. He swung the bat at the ball and again heard the sound of tennis ball on garage shutter. He walked down what he imagined was the pitch, tapped it like the batsmen did. He kept a running commentary on, and at that time the commentator said that this was a very fast pitch. It would require immense grit and skill to save this one for India and the boy had it. After all, he wanted to be Sachin Tendulkar, he wanted to be the best.
This process kept going on and on for half an hour. Swing, miss, ball crashes into the shutter. Not once did the boy lose hope. Not once did he throw the ball a little gently on to the wall. But every single time he swung the bat, he did not hear the sound of the bat hitting the ball. Each time the ball hit the shutters, each thud louder than the last one. Then finally, his mom called. It was time for homework. He raised the shutter and crawled out, walked into the house with bat and ball. His mom smiled at him and asked him if he batted like Sachin Tendulkar. The boy gave a wide grin and said “no, Ma! I didn’t. Today I bowled like the best, I bowled like Allan Donald.”

Of goodbyes and comebacks

I have seen people, aged 60, finding their world coming apart once they retire. The day seems to be a continuous challenge to keep oneself active, to still remain important. It is not that they miss an active working life because that is what they were best at. They might have been better singers than architects, better painters than soldiers, but still they really missed their jobs once they retired. Just imagine what retirement means to sportsmen, keeping this thought in mind.

These retired sportsmen are young people, most of them in their 30’s. In our corporate world, people that age will still be young men with a lot of potential for growth. However, we aren’t that kind when we're talking of a sportsman in his 30’s. We refer to them as old, await their imminent retirement. And retirement would mean that they give up, unlike us, the one thing that they are best at. For most of them, that is the only thing that they can competently do, something that has been part of their lives once they crossed infancy.

Of all things that we comprehend when we watch sport, there are some things that we can never associate with as viewers. We can comprehend skill, strength perhaps, for that can be seen. We can never comprehend physical pain, and emotion. When our favourite sportsmen retire, we are dejected, but we learn to move on, find other sportsmen to idolize. But can we ever imagine what goes through the mind of a sportsman who gives up everything that mattered to him?

Once they leave, over a beer or a cup of tea we wonder if that chap had one more season left in him. For the great ones, we usually ask why they have retired and wonder if he can just come back once. Can he, just once more, drive through the covers? Can he, just once, curl in the free kick into the net? Can he, just once, pull that stunning overtake?

Over time, I have realized that the retired sportsman thinks of this every waking hour of his life. Perhaps, he sleeps just because he can dream of that comeback. Some of them then start to work on the comeback after retirement. One does not know how differently they train, but probably they put in harder yards to get an obstinate ‘older’ body back into competitive shape. And then, some of them come back.

Why do they come back? There is a reputation that they would put on the line, they would constantly be reminded of the fact that they already know – that they are past their peak. They might reduce themselves from being champions to also-rans in their second avatar as a competitive sportsman. These are arguments followers of sport would put across, and rightly so.

But the sportsman is not programmed to think like this. Their thought process is driven by a will to win, to excel. They have spent a lifetime thumbing opponents in the nose, scrambled to emerge victorious, and trained to become the best in the world. Perhaps that is why they hold on to their dreams. Body and mind are divorced, but they let their minds keep custody of their dreams. Body says – ‘can’t do it’, mind says – ‘give it a shot’. They have lived a life living their dreams, and excelled at it, probably they need to hold on to that dream a little longer and thus they come back from retirement to active sport.

This could be the reason why Michael Jordan came back, or why Michael Schumacher is racing, or why Lance Armstrong would compete in the Tour De France, or why Warne and Ganguly and Gilly are playing one last IPL.

Or perhaps, none of this is true. Perhaps they never come back to hold on. Perhaps they come back one last time to say goodbye. When they first retired, they said their goodbyes to their fans. When they come back after retirement, maybe that journey is just for them, to marry mind and body and get them in agreement – an agreement to say goodbye to their dreams for ever.

IPL: Of captains and owners

It’s just one match. It’s probably too early to say it, but I will say it. The team that won today belonged to India’s greatest war-time general. Shah Rukh Khan owns Kolkata Knight Riders, true. But once they step on to the field, the team belongs to the captain. Shashank Manohar or Sharad Pawar never own team India, it is Dhoni’s team. The Australian team is Ponting’s team, not ACB’s. The team that won today, belonged to Sourav Ganguly.


Does this mean that there is no meaning to what Dav Whatmore and Wasim Akram would have done? It’d be incorrect to say so. But what ultimately matters is what the men do on the field, when there is no second chance. That performance is driven by the captain.

Rewind by a year. South Africa, IPL-2. Shah Rukh Khan thought John Buchanan was the guy who’d lead KKR to victory. The natural leader of the team was Ganguly. SRK had no guts to be forthright and say that he wanted to sack Ganguly. They came up with silly things like 4 captains for the tournament, and then the captaincy was taken away in a very wrong way. Yes, it is the owner’s prerogative as to who the captain should be and who should be given the sack. But things need to be done with dignity and as a man.

I saw KKR lose matches that they should have won. McCullum as a remote-control leader was uninspiring. The real leadership resided with Buchanan, who was sitting in the dugout. Players can’t look beyond the boundary line for leadership, they need to see it on the field. Coming to this match, now.

KKR looked like they’d lose this match, quite a few times. But the difference was that this year they came back from the brink and won a match they should have lost. The difference was probably in the leadership. Probably Whatmore and Ganguly have an arrangement that beyond the boundary line, Whatmore is the leader and when they step on to the field, Ganguly is. I saw the man make 3 bowling changes, and all of them produced wickets. I saw a charged-up team. It’s just one match, but I saw a change.

I don’t know if they can make it to the semis this year. That’d mean that they have played most of their matches well, leading up to the knock-out, and then they can hope for 2 good games. KKR finished last in the previous edition of the IPL, and that had nothing to do with the then captain. The owner screwed things up. This time, SRK has left his team in his captain’s hands. If KKR does better, it is because of Ganguly. If they don’t then the captain should take the flak.

And the self-proclaimed No.1 should realise that in a cricket match the heroes are the ones who are sweating it out on the field. Not the ones beyond the boundary line. Team sport is different. It is not like a film or a soft drink, for which you select a team to make a good product. In a team sport, the team is the product.


P.S. On 24th April, nothing would please me more than seeing Sachin Tendulkar lift the trophy on his 37th birthday. He represents the city that is my home. If not him, then it should be Sourav Ganguly. After all, he is the best person to have led my country in cricket

Looking for a hero

As I saw Tiger Woods reading out his apology to his fans, for his extra-marital affairs, I couldn’t help but wonder if he needed to do it. One school of thought said that ‘he better have done it! He cheated his fans’. The other school of thought said ‘hold on! Why does he need to apologise to us?’ The former thought is probably something that would be more acceptable to fans, than the latter. The refrain would be – ‘he was a hero and a role model to so many, and he let them down’. This is what I am uncomfortable with.

I had read an article written by Rohit Brijnath (the best sports writer in the world, in my humble opinion) that said that these top sportsmen are sporting champions, not necessarily heroes. I so agree with him. What I fail to understand is the need to crucify Woods for cheating his wife, the need to crucify John Terry for having an affair.

How well did we know Tiger Woods? Yes, we may know about the majors he won; we might know of the incredible shot he pulled off at the 2005 Masters; we might know that his first name is actually Eldrick; but what else do we know about him as a person? Precious little! That is the truth. On the golf course, he is a champion; outside it, we do not know him. So, why does he need to apologise to his fans who know nothing about Tiger Woods the man?

Don’t we all hold sports stars and film stars to an extremely high moral standard? Now, just think that you had a friend, and he or she cheats on the partner. Would we expect that friend to apologise to the partner that was cheated upon or would we expect that friend to call all of us over and apologise to all of us? I don’t think we’d feel aggrieved if the friend did not offer us an apology. We might feel bad, though, if the aggrieved partner has not been apologised to.

That is what should have happened. The press and the fans should have just let Tiger Woods be. Let him apologise to his wife, let him sort his life out, the one he leads away from the golfing greens. And once he comes back to swing his club, let us welcome back and cheer the champion that he once was on his turf.

And I hope that we all realise that not all sporting champions are real heroes. They are people who can go wrong, who can be insecure, who can be obnoxious, who we should accept as human. If we are to look for real heroes, let us search a little closer. Well, I did that and found my real heroes.

I think of that wonderful lady who sat next to me and helped me with my homework, and did not even make the slightest mention of her back spasm that badly needed rest. I think of that caring man who rushed me to a doctor when I had a 101 fever, and did not even bother that he was himself running a temperature of a 102. When I was old enough to realise this, I realised who my real heroes are. Believe me; some of my sporting heroes have let me down in one way or another. That why I looked for real heroes. And they weren’t difficult to find.

So the next time people mention Tiger Woods or Terry, let’s accept them for what we know them for; their prowess in the sporting arena and nothing else, for that is the only part of them that we intimately know.

My Name Is Khan: Review

One has seen lots of spoofs, funny ones, of big Hollywood films. Top Gun was spoofed in Hot Shots; Scary Movie series spoofs almost all the big Hollywood hits. Austin Powers spoofed James Bond and Star Wars. But these films are not by big directors and big actors. Tom Hanks and Russell Crowe and Denzel Washington do not star in them, and people like Martin Scorcesse, Speilberg, Tarantino do not direct them. Switch to Bollywood! Here things happen differently. The biggest directors and actors make extremely expensive spoofs. I saw one recently, it was called ‘My Name is Khan’. It starred Shah Rukh Khan and was directed by Karan Johar, for those who don’t know.

The movie was unintentionally funny, as was the whole premise behind the same. KJo usually reduces his heroes to simpering and crying retards in his films, albeit unintentionally. This time, he intentionally made SRK a retard. Well, those suffering from Asperger’s Syndrome (or autism) aren’t retarded. But King Khan played an autistic like a retard. He ran KKR like a retard in IPL – 2, made sweeping and retarded statements leading to the release of a movie, in which he acted like a retard.

Coming back to the spoof. Well, to begin with, one of the films this one spoofed was ‘Harold and Kumar escape from Guantanamo Bay’. That was a comedy, so the spoof was serious. It’s natural. After all, serious movies are spoofed comically; so it makes sense if comic films are spoofed in a so-called serious way. The story of Harold & Kumar goes like this – These are 2 care-free American citizens of Korean and Indian origin, who love smoking weed. On the way to Amsterdam, on an American flight, Kumar decided to light a bong. That raises alarms, and the plane goes back to America. There, they are detained by authorities (the HOD is an arrogant dumb-ass) where typical racial profiling happens. They are sent to Guantanamo Bay, from where they escape. Then begins their journey across America to prove their innocence and meet the President to get a pardon. Also, Kumar is doing it for love, because the girl he loved is getting married to a douchebag.

I’m serious!! This is the story of that hilarious comedy. So very familiar to MNIK. There are other similarities. Rizwan Khan finds a sleeper cell in MNIK, Harold and Kumar find the Ku Klux Klan in their movie; Rizwan is sent to a detention center, so are Harold and Kumar; Rizwan’s family face troubles, so do Harold & Kumar’s parents; most importantly, Rizwan meets Obama (who knows all about him), H&K meet George Bush at his ranch in Texas (where they smoke weed with him).

The reason H&K was better (besides the comedy) is that the duplicate Bush really looked like Dubya. In MNIK, KJo cast the first African-American that he found as Obama. Haven’t we all heard that – ‘sab kale ek jaise dikhte hain’? KJo probably thought people are serious when they say that.

This movie has proven one thing. Just like the illustrator of Savita Bhabhi cannot be expected to paint The Last Supper, the maker of utopian rubbish like KANK and K3G cannot be expected to make a good film on racial profiling. And, one feels bad that an actor who played Mohan Bhargav and Kabir Khan had to reduce himself to a caricature called Rizwan Khan. And no, SRK wasn’t Dustin Hoffman (Rainman) and Tom Hanks (Forrest Gump) rolled into one. Not in a million years!!

Mithun was a better desi James Bond in the Gunmaster G-9 movies, than SRK as Forrest Gump or Raymond Babbitt.

Saving Our Tigers: Exploiting a dying animal

Looking at the ‘Save Our Tigers’ campaign evokes a lot of mixed feelings. For the uninitiated, it is a campaign that Aircel has taken out. On one hand, I am happy that there is a lot of awareness that is being created which highlights the plight of our national animal, the most beautiful creature in our forests. On the other hand, I am not too sure if Aircel is in it for the long haul. Would this campaign last for very long?

I believe, if a corporate has come in for a long term then the cause being promoted is honorable. However, if they intend to use the tiger as a way to create goodwill for themselves with a short burst of publicity, then this is simply not done. We have seen, in the past, many celebrities and companies using a burning issue just to promote their films or products.

I do not know how much is being spent by Aircel to protect the tiger. What I definitely do not know is what the way forward with this campaign is. There are a couple of outrageously stupid links on the website that Aircel is promoting–

1) Speak up: This is what the text is on this link – ‘Write a letter or an email to editors of popular newspapers and magazines, asking them to support the cause and highlight the urgency to save our tigers. The more people we can reach and inform, the stronger our roar will be’

What I fail to understand is that why there are no articles by people actively involved in tiger conservation? Isn’t it important to highlight what people like Belinda Wright, Dr. Raghu Chandawat and Valmik Thapar have been writing and doing?

2) SMS, contact an NGO responsible for tigers, Preserve our natural resources, Be a responsible tourist.

Well, all is this utopian rubbish. SMSes do not help stop terrorism, where humans are killed, how is it going to save tigers? What NGOs do we get in touch with? All of us know that we must preserve natural resources and be responsible tourists. This is told to us right from our school days in moral science classes. But, almost all of us buy air-conditioners, use plastic bags without looking at the microns and litter when we travel. What is the use of writing this rubbish?

3) Donate: And here, they have provided a link to the WWF India website to make cash donations.

The third point takes the cake, in terms of stupidity of suggestions. Let me try and explain why.
As per the Project Tiger website, there are 38 reserves in the country which are project tiger reserves. There are other forests too, where tigers can be found, but these are not project tiger reserves. The government gave a grant in the 2009 union budget this year, to protect the tiger.

The generous grant was of Rs. 50 crores. That’s all the union budget of 2009 could spare for the national animal. This means, that just the 38 project tiger reserves would get Rs. 1.3 crores each, per annum to protect the tigers. And what all is needed to have a stronger tiger task force? Here is a very concise list:

• Equipment to monitor tigers: This includes radio collars etc.
• More number of people need to be employed to patrol the reserves day and night, so keep poachers out. The reserves are under-staffed and many vacancies are yet to be filled, and even if they are filled up, the number of rangers and forest guards still needs to double
• Proper fire-arms and weapons: Today, the poachers have more sophisticated weapons than the forest guards. It is the sad truth• More vehicles to patrol the forests
• Need to create more motorable roads so that the forests can be patrolled and guarded even during the monsoons. Currently, the forests are not guarded for 3 months of the monsoons and 50% of poaching happens then

This is a very small list, probably missing many more things that go in to save the tiger. But would Rs. 50 crores suffice to provide even half of the aforesaid? I seriously doubt it. This is where I find a disconnect. If Aircel is indeed hell bent on saving the tiger, the crores spent on making brand-films and plastering cities with campaigns could have added to the Rs. 50 crores of pittances the govt. has given. It would have done the tiger more good had a few extra equipments been bought out of that money than ensuring that a person in Juhu sees a Save Our Tigers hoarding.

Some may say, Aircel is not into charity. They are in the business of mobile services. That is exactly my point. If they are in a business, then run a business. Do not try and be clever and create awareness about your brand, using the plight of the tiger to your advantage.

And, there are many more pressing issues that concern the tiger’s existence that people need to be made aware of. The biggest issue is the one that concerns passing of the Tribal Bill in the parliament that has literally sounded the death knell for the national animal. Why don’t these corporate houses join hands with Wright and Thapar in revoking that bill?

If, after a few years, we realize that these campaigns about ‘Saving Our Tigers’ has resulted in the govt. waking up, I would take back all my cynical words about Aircel, and write an apology on this very space. I so hope I have to. I hope I am made to eat the pie, the one found in the ‘humble’ bakery, a few years from now. But, in my experience, online petitions and smses do precious little for causes, especially the ones that do not involve rights for some human being.

Pakistanis not welcome!!!

Two things have been irking me for some time now, and both of them are in some ways related to each other. Firstly, the hullabaloo about Pakistani cricketers not being part of IPL; and secondly, the Aman Ki Asha campaign that The Times of India has been running (it is an event, I’m told. I do not read the squalid little rag). There have been these so-called broad-minded and accommodating voices that have been talking about both and my narrow mind feels they are irritating noises, not talk.

First, let me talk about the so-called injustice meted out to the Pakistani cricketers by not allowing them to be part of the IPL. Many have said that it was wrong and unfair, and that politics and sport do not mix. I have no clue which world they live in, that they make statements like these. Politics and sports have mixed since quite some time now. Through sports, statements are made about the political scenario.

When South Africa was banned from sport it was for political reasons, apartheid. The players suffered because of this ban, and I am not too sure if all the players that did suffer were perpetrators of apartheid, or racist. But, as a country South Africa went wrong and was ostracised from sport, thereby rendering the sport buffs slightly poorer for the fact that some wonderful sportsmen from that country could not display their talents to a world audience. Barry Richards is an example. And had the ban continued for another 10 years, we’d not have seen Jonty Rhodes and Allan Donald set the field alight.

Even if we look back at 1936, the Berlin Olympics, Hitler allowed only the people of the Aryan race to compete for Germany – for it was his belief that they were racially superior. We all know Hitler’s role in world politics. And closer, to 2008, the Olympics at China was taken up by the Chinese to make a statement to the world that China is the new super-power. This statement was made by the way the Olympics were organized and due to the fact that China won the highest number of gold medals.

Well, now will the pundits stop talking about politics and sport not going hand-in-hand? India’s relations with Pakistan are at its lowest ebb. Why should Indian franchise owners fund players from the country that funds terrorists to conduct 26/11 in India? Also, they do not know if the Pakistani players would be given a visa to play here. Most importantly, it is the owners’ bloody money and they have the right to not spend it on Pakistani players.

The Indian government has said that it has no role to play in what transpired. Yes, that is true. They did not have the guts to say that a country that is full of terrorists has no right to play any sport in India. They should have disallowed the Pakistan hockey team from participating in the World Cup too. Pakistan is a country where terrorists were allowed to attack a bus carrying Sri Lankan cricketers, it is an anarchy where democracy is a sham. What stops India from stating that Pakistanis will not be allowed to participate in any sport, or cultural programs, until they get their act right? It happened for South Africa and apartheid, didn’t it? Once SA got their act together they came right back in to the fold. The same could happen for Pakistan.

Which now brings me to Aman Ki Asha. Well, how can we hope for peace when Pakistan has shown no urgency to bring the perpetrators of 26/11 to book? How can we accept peace with a country that houses Dawood Ibrahim? Some will say that ‘that is for the politicians, citizens want peace’. That is rubbish. The 26/11 terrorists, and other terrorists, are treated as heroes in Pakistan. So much for the common people there wanting peace with India.

Yes, the Pakistanis are the T20 World Champions and have some very good players in their ranks. But this slap in their face should read as a statement to the Pakistani policy makers, and to the world, that till Pakistan gets its act right on terrorism and extremism their sportsmen and artists have no hope of any sort of participation. No asha of any sort of aman.

P.S. And TOI should refrain from such canard like Aman Ki Asha and do what they are best at. Reporting on the front page about mundane Bollywood stuff, passing them off for stories of national importance. At least, they would not be making any bigger fools of themselves than what they have been able to manage so far.

Sporting spectacles in 2010

2010 is just days away. And the purest form of human expression, sport, is all lined up in what promises to a wonderful year for the sports buff. Well, there exists an outlet for every known human being; a road that brings immense joy when travelled. For some it is films, for some it is music and for some it is reading. All of the aforesaid are activities that I indulge in very regularly, besides travel, friends and……sport.

Sport, to me, embodies the most supreme form of human expression. Victory and defeat, emotion and passion, courage and commitment all are unbridled and pure in sport, because sport is not scripted. And because of this truth being stranger than fiction, I have been a devotee since ever. So where, in 2010, would this devotee look forward to worship? Let me list it down for you.

Roger Federer Vs. Rafael Nadal:

2009 was a great year for Fedex. He won the French Open for the first time and regained Wimbledon. He also regained his world No.1 ranking. Now, I am a big Federer fan, but somehow I would have been happier to see him accomplish the aforesaid with Rafa being around. Injury put him out for the better part of 2009, but he is back and would come all guns blazing in 2010. I look forward to these two supreme gladiators slugging it out, for the No.1 ranking, for titles, making it a wonderful treat for lovers of this sport.

T20 Cricket World Cup:

Yes, the previous world cup of the shortest edition happened 9 months back, so another world cup sounds weird. Well, India playing 2 tests is also weird. IPL – 3 is certainly happening. However, there is no greater thrill than seeing the cricketers of India don the national colours and play for flag and country. Playing for a franchisee owned by cement barons, liquor barons, barons and movie stars is one thing; playing for the tri-colour is something else. C’mon India!!!

World Cup Football, South Africa:

The beautiful game would be played in its most superior form, in South Africa. The best nations would compete against each other to become crowned world champions. There will be passion, there will be thrill, there’ll be the agony of defeat and the joy of victory. All in all, it will be sport at its competitive best; and I will be watching it with the whole world. P.S. I am supporting Germany.

Michael Schumacher:

This is a dream come true. The greatest is coming back, after a gap of three years. Yes he would not race in a Ferrari, but I’d overlook that so long as Schumi races. It didn’t happen in 2009, but it will happen in 2010. Welcome back, Schumi, have the time of your life. The fans will surely love every moment; for Michael Schumacher gunning past the racing line is a sight for the gods.

These would be the sporting moments I look forward to in 2010 and, once the year is over, remember fondly. Bring it on!!!

The Nobel prize is noble

Barack Obama wins the Nobel Peace prize. It is richly deserved, after all the Nobel committee says so. Therefore, it must be fair and just that Obama got it. After all, politicians get elected on promise alone. And they needn’t merely be promises. They just need to make some sort of noises that would suggest that they are trying to look as if they are trying to do something. That ensures a presidential seat in the US, the prime-minister’s chair in India.

I do not know what the big deal is about Obama getting the peace prize. Especially, to us Indians. It was denied to Gandhi, big deal. Some may say that this makes the prize as prestigious as the Nobel look ridiculous. Well, Pratibha Patil as the President of India is no less ridiculous. We have accepted it and moved on, the same would happen with Obama.

And while we are at it, may I suggest a few more awards that fall in the league of the Obama Nobel and the Pratibha Patil presidency?

Here goes:

ICC Spirit of Cricket Award: Andrew Symonds & S Sreesanth
Best ‘Original’ music score: Pritam
Filmfare award for best performance in a lead role (Male) for 2009: Rani Mukherjee for Dil Bole Hadippa
Pulitzer prize for Fiction, 2009: Letters to Penthouse, whatever volume comes out this year
Magsaysay Award for Journalism: Shared equally by all the Bombay Times journos for cutting-edge journalism; Next year, it belongs to India TV
Bharat Ratna: Mohd. Afzal Guru; we are paying for his upkeep after he attacked the parliament, he deserves it
Oscar for best film in a foreign language: Deshdrohi
Human documentary of the year: Rakhi Ka Swayamwar
Best country to live in: Afghanistan
World’s favourite tourist destination: Baghdad

And may I add that I am forwarding my name for the Nobel Prize for medicine. After all, I have discovered that brandy and warm milk cures a cold in a jiffy.

Some dreams do come true

All good things do come to an end. I’d heard this adage many times, and I have seen it come true in ways big and small. There were times I did not realise that something wonderful would come to an end. In my naivety, I took them for granted. And when those times would come to an end, I’d realise suddenly what I have lost. At times, what I’d lost was irrevocable and the loss of it has left voids that would never be filled. The greatest grief has been the fact that I had taken those times, those people, those moments as a given. I never believed it would end.

I was away from home, staying in a different city, a carefree student. There was a phone call for me in my institute’s canteen, and I was called to attend it. I was playing table-tennis at that point of time. I walked out of the room to take the phone call, with my TT bat and the TT ball in hand. I was leading 19-12 (I remember the score clearly) and did not want anybody to take my place on the table, so I took the ball away while going to attend the phone call, and did not realise that moments later I would be told on the phone that my grand-father had left me for ever.

I do not remember what I did after I heard of it. I thought of the walks with him during my vacations, the way he would want me to study hard but play harder. But most of all, I thought of the wonderful stories he had told me, the unparalleled stories about people and life that this grand-child had heard sitting on his Dadu’s knee. He was is the greatest person I knew and never did it cross my mind that he would be taken away.

Many such great things came to an end. I finished my studies, and my days as a student came to an end. Till some time back, I stayed with my parents & my brother in the most beautiful house in the world but those days came to an end as well. Till 2006, I worshipped a sportsman more than any other and he retired.

What was common to all these ends was that there was always a new beginning. Three years after Dadu left us, Didi had a baby boy. In Rishi I saw, and still see, the everthing that is beautiful on Earth. When I left home, I formed a family with a bunch of people who had left theirs. We formed a bond for life, the kinds that I have with my folks. When my days as a student were over, I started a wonderful life as a working professional. I met new people and made some more wonderful friends for life. Along the way, I fell in love and then fell out of love to fall in and out again.

All of this made me realise that sometimes an end is a new beginning, though not always is the end linked to a new beginning. I realised that almost all voids can be filled. But even after being filled, I kept (and still keep) dreaming that I would be given back a few moments of my past. I dream of spending an afternoon with both Rishi and Dadu in tow. I keep dreaming that my house and my hostel are a 100 yards away. I dream that my friends from school, college and MBA are also working in the same organisation along with my new friends. And, I dreamt since 2006 that Schumi races again… just once.

All of my dreams were impractical and improbable, mostly impossible. Dead people don’t come to life, days gone by do not come back and inhabit with the days we are living. And sportsmen usually do not come back to active duty at the age of 40. Out of the scores of dreams, one dream has come true. Michael Schumacher will race again. I don’t know if he will race like the world beater that he was, but what I do know is that he will make me live my dream.

Once again I will wear the scarlet shirt. Once again I would wear the cap with the 7 world championship stars, once again I will say a silent prayer as Schumacher lines up at the starting grid, and once again I will scream “Go Schumi” at the top of my voice when he roars off the starting line. Maybe, I’ll also jump for joy if he wins.

And after all this is over I’ll still dream of walking in a park with my nephew in my lap. I’ll point at a rose to and say that “this is a crimson rose”, and while saying this I’ll turn to my right and tell Dadu “you remember, you told me about a crimson rose when you told me the story of The Nightingale & The Rose by Oscar Wilde?” The Schumi dream has come true so maybe this dream would also come true, just maybe……

The unlikely hero

Heroes turn up in unlikely places. They are heroes because of their deeds, not necessarily because the world (the media, primarily) talk about them, but because they make a difference. A difference to our lives, be it directly or indirectly. There emerged a hero yesterday, not for the first time, but he did emerge. This hero was responsible (as he claims) for the death of 6 people and serious injury to 15 others. I still call him a hero. Perhaps an explanation is due.

I’m talking about E Sreedharan, the Managing Director of Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC), who resigned yesterday owning moral responsibility to an accident. An under-construction bridge of the Delhi metro collapsed, killing 6 and injuring many more. The reason this gentleman resigned, and I quote him, was – “For me even one casualty is too many. My colleagues advised against the resignation. Normally I listen to them but this time it is different. I have been in-charge of the project for 10 years. We have maintained a high safety mechanism. The first jolt was the Laxmi Nagar accident but this is a bigger setback".

I had heard of Sreedharan sometime in 2007, I suppose. He was the architect of the Delhi metro. This was one of the very few government projects that had been completed efficiently and well before time, quite unlike the Bandra-Worli sea link. Of course, this was not a first for Sreedharan. He had earlier achieved the near impossible, i.e. setting up the Konkan Railways. It was believed to be impossible and he did it in 7 years. The results are there for everybody to see. As a result of that, he was thrown the challenge of giving the capital its metro service. A challenge he accepted, on the verge of retirement, and achieved with distinction.

He had kept a reverse clock in his office, while the metro project was on, to keep people on their toes to meet the deadline. He was the one who made sure that this work ethic was imbibed among all that worked in DMRC, and they worked to achieve the deadline. And quality of work was not compromised. Yes, he was a hero.

Yet, this man resigns. Perhaps, because he is truly a leader. He did not rest on his laurels, and he has many. He could have come out stating that these things, however unfortunate, do happen. Given his impeccable record most would have swallowed it. But probably, he had his conscience to answer to, and that made him take the step he has taken.

I cast my mind back to the security lapses that have happened in India in the recent past. The last being the 26/11 incident. Shivraj Patil, with already a lot of blood in his hands, never resigned. He was sacked. The same with Vilasrao Deshmukh. The latter, though, has been rewarded with a minister-ship for failing in his primary duty as Chief Minister; that of protecting his citizens. The list of politicians is endless, who have failed miserably over a long period of time. Yet, they have no moral fibre that would make them own up a failure. Though they are responsible, they point fingers at others but hold on to their exalted positions. The never resign, but shamelessly stand for elections again.

But Sreedharan is different. In the past, he has given us a lot to be happy about. He has helped us save time, he has made distances disappear, made travelling a joy. Not just for us, but for the generations to follow. Yet, he could not take this lapse. It is an irony that a man this just and efficient and upright reports to a politician, the Chief Minister of Delhi.

He has taught us a lesson. He has taught us that we are just as good as our last performance, and not our past laurels. That there is a moral dimension to everything. What Sreedharan has done reminds me of a saying about a waterfall I read some time back – falling down from a somewhere so high has never looked as graceful or glorious. Well, Sreedharan has decided to fall with dignity. I guess this does make him an even greater hero.

There was a winner, and I didn't see a loser

Sport teaches. It enriches. And this isn’t restricted just to the people who play it, this extends to the people who watch as well, in fact the followers learn more. As I watched yesterday’s Wimbledon men’s singles epic final culminate to Federer lifting his 15th Grand Slam, a message was re-emphasised to me. The message was that in sport there is always a victor and a runner-up, but never a loser. This is not shown by a way a sportsman plays, but by the way the sportsman behaves after ending 2nd best. That is what Andy Roddick showed yesterday.

Roddick was the better player in the final, who never looked like his serve would be broken. Well, Federer won because he knows what it takes to be a champion, that he needs to stick around. He won because he hung on, because he refused to be a runner-up, because the grabbed the slightest opening (the only one in the whole match) that came his way. He did not win because he was the better player, for that was Roddick.

I cast my mind back to 2006. Michael Schumacher was racing like a dream, in Japan. It was his last season and he was fighting Alonso for the title. More than any of his fans he wanted to sign off as a world champion, for Michael Schumacher could never accept defeat. Then the unthinkable happened. His reliable Ferrari engine blew, with Schumacher leading the race, and with the engine went his chances of ending as a world champion. He’d never ever regain it. I thought that I’d see Schumacher walk out of the car disappointed, dejected, and walk into the Ferrari garage. After all, for no fault of his a championship, that was his for the taking, had gone away.

But there was a different script being written. Schumacher stepped out of his car, had a smile on his face. I don’t know what emotion hid behind it, but he was waving to the crowds as he walked back to the Ferrari pit, saying goodbye and thanking people. The Ferrari pit was a picture of dejection. The engineers and crew were heartbroken, because they had let Schumacher down at such a crucial juncture. But Schumi walked up to every one of them with a smile and hugged them all, consoling them. It seemed that he told them ‘forget about today, what you have done over the last 6 years is immeasurable. What happened today is a part of sport’.

As I saw that bit of magic unfold, this heartbroken fan learnt a lesson. That I should thank Schumacher for winning 7 championships and 91 races and not feel bad because he’s lost this one. The heart did not seem that broken then. I saw on screen a man who didn’t win, but who by no means was a loser.

A bit of that magic unfolded on Wimbledon’s centre court yesterday. Roger Federer walked all over centre court, carrying his trophy. In his corner, quietly sat the valiant Roddick. Teary eyed, with the runners-up plate, wondering what went wrong, but there was a difference. With those teary eyes he was looking at Federer parade and Roddick was giving his conqueror the most generous applause. It was genuine, it was dignified, it was tragic, and it was magical. He wasn’t moping and grumpy. He took his defeat like a sportsman. He lost to a man who did not play better tennis than him, but that did not stop Roddick from applauding one of the greatest feats in modern day tennis, 15 grand slams.

Maybe, Roddick’s day in the sun will come. Perhaps he would be a champion one day. He taught me the old lesson sport has been teaching me since forever, that why a defeated sportsman is not a loser. Maybe, he's a champion already...