Sports : life magnified

The 3rd stage of the tour de France was controversial with the disqualification of McEwen, Gerrard continues to remain in the limelight and more newsprint and web pages are being devoted to this than ever before, partly because of the fact no other major football news exists.

Similar to the Gerrard scenario is the case with Indian cricket frenzied media. So we know now that an arbitrator will be announced soon by the ICC on the Ganguly ban and the other players slated to join the fast bowlers today, will indeed, join the fast bowlers today at the camp. Makes you think not much is happening in Indian sport either. Right?

Well the DDCA has not hosted an official AGM for the past three years apparently because they were building a new stadium - so not much happening with the Delhi Cricket Association indeed!

All is not that gloomy though. As Telegraph Calcutta reports:

Tamil Nadu’s S. Shanthi set a national record in women’s 3000m steeplechase on the second day of the 45th national and inter-state senior athletics championship here on Monday. The 24-year-old, who had won the 1,500 silver on Sunday, came home in 10 minutes, 44.65 seconds at the Sree Kanteerava Stadium. He thus erased the 10:52.12 mark of Karnataka’s L. Manjula, set in New Delhi in March 2004

Certainly no where near the world record mark but its nice national marks are being broken.

There will be inspection of the Netaji Indoor Stadium for the WTA tour meet to be held in Calcutta, the biggest tournament of its kind in my city. I have been to a few Davis Cup matches but this should be a slightly better experience.

David Johnson, the former Karnataka pacer, is going to get a benefit match on July 17th , the teams captained by Dravid and Sehwag. David Johnson who? Ask Michael Slater. The man played 2 tests taking 3 wickets. Among them was the wicket of the Aussie. The ball was miles outside the off stump but of course Slater had to slash at it leading him to be dropped from the team before making a brief unsuccessful return to the team.

The trend of benefit matches is surely catching on in the country with one for Kanwaljeet Singh in which all major players played including Sachin Tendulkar played. A benefit match is a nice gesture from a player’s colleagues, so to say, not just in spirit but financially as well. The sporting life span is short and once you are out of the sport, money is not that easy to come by if you are not one of the top notch players.

So will Ganguly get his ban lifted and where will Gerrard go if indeed it is true he is going out of Liverpool, which looks like a certainty now? Who will finally get the Olympic bid? We leave this and many more important stories to the media to ponder on for the moment.

Whether we like it or not, substitutes are going to exist in one day cricket, for a while at least. I spoke on the topic some time back and the cricketing world, including me (a fan is a small part of the cricketing world I would imagine ) are getting on with it, so to say, and finally thinking of the strategies which can be used.

Angus Fraser was one of the first few people who suggested an all rounder to be the best option as a substitute when every one was pondering over whether teams will chose batsmen or bowlers. An all rounder is definitely the safest option as he can be brought on at any point of time in the game, if the team is in trouble.

There is much more to it, however, as one ponders the thought. Faaip, a fellow cricket fan, has pointed out the possibility of a batsman who is a very good fielder being used:

Scenario: Australia picks all five specialist bowlers in their team, in Hogg, Kasprowicz, McGrath, Gillespie and Lee, and wins the toss and bowls. Glenn McGrath sends down his 10 overs straight up, leaves the field and is replaced with Hodge, who excels in the field, cutting off runs and so on. When Austrlaia bats, they have 7 specialist batsmen, plus a couple of bowlers who can bat a bit.

Alternative scenario: Australia picks the same team (or Watson instead of Kasprowicz would be fine too), but loses the toss, and is sent in to bat. If Australia is going along fine and bats out their 50 overs without losing more than 5 or 6 wickets, Hussey/Hodge stays in the pavilion and takes no part in the game until a bowler who is weak in the field is bowled out. If Australia get 5 or 6 down and need a batsmen, the switch is made for Australia’s weakest seamer… probably Michael Kasprowicz. Hodge/Hussey can then bat and field, and Australia will need to send down 10 overs from Symonds and Clarke.

The case for the bowler as a sub is also feasible according to me. The vital aspect of a sub is to boost a team and it depends vastly on how the first XI of the team is when you want to consider your sub.

A team like South Africa which batted deep down in the 90s till say Symcox would not require a batting sub in most situations. They would rather have had some one like Brett Schultz as their sub. A team which has a weak bowling line up but a decent batting line up, like India for example, would go for a bowler as well (also they do not have a decent all rounder but even if they had this would be a legitimate option).

A very weak team like Bangladesh for example who have nothing to lose in a match versus Australia can take a bit of a gamble with their subs. They can go easily for a specialist batsman or a bowler which may not pay off if the toss does not go favourably. However if the toss does go favourably, they can make the most of the sub in an attempt to scale the balance.

So the possibilities with the sub have opened up as Fletcher seems to think as well. We have all criticized the subs. But one good point of them is it gives the teams a second chance. If test cricket has a second inning, one day cricket now has subs.

It is here to stay I guess as the more we think of the possibilities, the more interesting it gets. It changes totally from the game we know as one day cricket I think to a new one day cricket we are looking at now though.

More on Roger Federer. This blog is starting to look like The Roger Federer Blog rather than a sports blog but thats what is catching my attention more than the early stages of the Tour de France, more than the dull transfer off season with loads of newsprint consumed over speculation on where Gerrard will end up and the English media lapping up to every small player movement before the Ashes.

Sampras on Federer from BBC Sport:

I think he can dominate tennis for as long as I did. He can have an off day in a big tournament and be surprised but over the whole season, he is head and shoulders above the others.

That coming from Sampras, who does not speak as much as say McEnroe, is relevent. Not that we already knew about the fact that Federer is fighting with the history of the game as Becker put it a couple of days ago. But Federer can do one thing Sampras could not - win the French.

And it seems Sampras is not over that fact yet:

I regret that I never tried out a racquet with a bigger head at Roland Garros. “My racquet was almost like one of the old wooden ones - it was heavy and stiff. It took a lot of effort to make the ball move on clay. But I was really used to it and I never dared (change). I was too stubborn. I was scared of losing control, that it would take me too long to master it.

Come one Pete. You were a great player, the greatest since Laver without a shadow of a doubt. Your place is tennis history is assured.

The press love Jose Mourinho. He always has some thing to say. And whatever he says, he says it without adjectives to reduce the effect of his remarks. He says them point blank. And the fact that Mourinho has had a superb record and is the manager of current English Premiership Champions Chelsea means that Mourinho will always have a lot of newsprint dedicated to him.

Yahoo Sports quotes Mourinho:

To be fair I think we are the best team in history, because we beat the record (number of points in a Premier League season).

Can Chelsea say they are the best side in the world even currently with Barcelona, making rapid sides last season(and now aquiring Van Bommel), Juventus and AC Milan playing wonderful football? After Chelsea win a few more titles we may think of going into the best in history debate. Thank got Roger Federer doesnt speak like Mourinho for that could lead to a scary scenario.

Mourinho doesnt stop obviously:

Chelsea in the future won’t need this kind of budget. I have a five-year contract and I’ll bet that in my last year we won’t buy a single player. Next season, we’ll buy maybe two or three; the season after, one or two; and the next season we’ll buy one and after that we won’t need any new players.

And what will after your contract runs out Mr. Mourinho or in the 6 th. 7th and 8th year even if you dont leave? Will the team not require shuffling considering players are merely mortals and even the best fade out some time and new players need to be aquired? Why should we care. We have the purse and the short 5 year term in mind. Lets keep shopping till then.

After Colonel Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore won the silver meadal in shooting in the double trap event, how could India, corporate and the sport overall, not capitalise on the event.

So Indians will find Rathore in an event labelled Top Gun telecast on television. Whether it will be live or delayed telecast, is not clear from what I have read.

It has been termed as an attempt to experiment to make the sport more popular with a new format and TV coverage.

Apart from the rule modifications, there is so much more in this event. So much more noise to be specific. As Rathore says on NDTV:

There is generally a pin drop silence at shooting events. But people cheering and clapping when shooting is going on increases the pressure. I was feeling nervous, but I enjoyed it a lot.

Events such as these will certainly boost the viewership of the sport in the country to a small extent. It is India’s own version of Twenty20 cricket! MP Lok Sabha Naveen Jindal says they would like to organise five to six events and increase the total number of events to 15 or 20.

I dont think viewership and the quality of sportsmen a country produces is correlated though. India has the largest viewing public in cricket by a mile. By that logic, India should be miles ahead of Australia as a cricket team. Viewership can lead to people following a sport and hopefully some of these viewers will start following the sport.

What I want to know, though, is what is being done to impove the infrastructure of the sport over all in the country and whether the young aspiring shooters are being given the proper encouragement, both financially and training opportunities wise. Having such events which end in Formula 1 style celebrations in the end are good for television and good to get more people to follow the sport. It is good for the sport only if the people following can get a chance to become the best if they desire to.