India's Abhinav Bindra won the gold medal in the Men's 10m Air Rifle in Beijing on August 11 with an incredible performance in the final. Bindra shot a total score of 700.5.

The bronze medal was won by Finland's Henri Hakkinen, who was leading the field after the qualification round, but was unable to hold off Bindra and Zhu in the final. The Finnish shooter shot a total of 699.4.

Hakkinen shot 598 in the qualification round, giving him a one point lead over Zhu. Bindra was one point further back with 596.

Bindra signals his intentions early in the final, with a 10.7 on his first shot. None of Bindra's shots in the final dropped below 10.0.

Hakkinen's performance in the final was solid, but it needed to be better. He averaged 10.14 per shot in the final, compared to Bindra's 10.45.

Going into the last shot, Bindra and Hakkinen were tied for first place, but Bindra secured the gold medal with his best shot of the final, an outstanding 10.8.

Conversely, Hakkinen's last shot was his worst, a lowly 9.7. This allowed Zhu to overcome Hakkinen and win the silver medal. Zhu shot 10.5 on his last shot.

Shooting is not on the sports that I can comment on, I will leave it to others to comment/ update, but for me, I am just going to enjoy the nice feeling. Link to the official report of the Beijing Games here.

First Posted at Prem Panicker's on August 11, 2008.

Long before the English launched cricket some 300 years ago, similar games were being played as early as the 8th century in the Punjab region, Derek Birley writes in his Social History of English Cricket.

But an Armenian scholar says there is good reason to believe that similar games were played in the Middle East long before that time.

Dr Abraham Terian, recently a visiting professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem as Fulbright Distinguished Chair in the Humanities, points to a rare manuscript as his source.

He notes that in the Armenian Gospel of the Infancy, translated into Armenian in the 6th century from a much older lost Syriac original, a passage tells of Jesus playing what may well be the precursor of cricket, with a club and ball.

Quoting from his Armenian source, Terian says the gospel relates how Jesus, at the age of nine, had been apprenticed to a master dyer named Israel in Tiberias, on the shores of the Sea of Galilee.

"Jesus is instructed to watch Israel's house and not leave the place while the master goes away on a tour to collect clothes to be dyed. But no sooner has Israel left the house, than Jesus runs out with the boys,'' Terian says.

"The most amazing part of the story of the nine-year-old Jesus playing a form of cricket with the boys at the sea shore, is that he would go on playing the game on water, over the sea waves.''

He gives the following translation: "He (Jesus) would take the boys to the seashore and, carrying the playing ball and the club, he would go over the waves of the sea as though he was playing on a frozen surface, hitting the playing ball. And watching him, the boys would scream and say: 'Watch the child Jesus, what he does over the waves of the sea!' Many would gather there and, watching him, would be amazed.''

Terian says the story echoes allusions to Jesus' walking on the Sea of Galilee, as told in the gospels.

"But the apocryphal story shows that for a ball game even Jesus would forget work and would go to have fun with the boys!'' he says.

Now we can safely say we follow a game played by the Gods!

First Posted at Prem Panicker's on August 9, 2008.

The Indian Olympic Association president and chairman of the ad-hoc committee for hockey, Suresh Kalmadi, informed that the ad-hoc committee had decided to send national women's team coach M K Kaushik, junior men's team coach A K Bansal, Harinder Singh and goalkeeping coach A B Subbiah to Beijing to observe the competing teams and report their findings to the committee.

"In a forward looking step, we have decided to send four top coaches of the country to Beijing. They will observe the strategy and style of other teams and compile individual reports on their findings which they will submit to the ad-hoc committee after they return home," Kalmadi told reporters in Delhi [Images] on Thursday, briefing about the minutes of the committee's first meeting with Olympians and technical experts.

"We are determined to revive Indian hockey. We have chalked out a lot of competitions at the national level," he said.

Kaushik, who is seen as a frontrunner to take up the reigns of the men's team, said he will utilise the opportunity to gather maximum knowledge about the playing style of the top hockey-playing nations.

"We lack in scientific knowledge. I feel scientific methods should be immediately imparted with the consultancy of the coaches. Our time in Beijing will help us to study the various strategies of the participating nations," he added.

Seriously, we are going to send coaches to sit in the viewing stands and understand the techniques being employed, why can't they just watch it on TV? And once he understands, these techniques are going to be directly adopted by the Indian senior hockey team without trialling it at any other level by a person whose only previous experience is that he watched it being employed by others. Oh and by the way, the frontrunner for this position of coach already feels "scientific methods should be immediately imparted with the consultancy of the coaches". Wonder what his plans are and pray what does he mean by scientific methods?

Maybe I am just being cynical?

First Posted at Prem Panicker's on August 1, 2008.

Milkha Singh and PT Usha missed it by a whisker two decades ago, Leander Paes, Malleshwari and Rajyavardhan Rathore gave India some respectability in the past decade, but the first Indian representing the tricolour who ever won a medal was Khashabha Jadhav, way back in 1952, at the Helensinki Olympics. As I was, looking up some details on the man, I came across this article by Rediff in 2000, on him. Read on, on the story of the man, who in most other countries would be immortalised, but died unrecognised by our system. Some excerpts:

Recalls Ranjit Jhadhav, his only son, "When Baba wanted some financial help for his journey to the Helsinki Olympics, he received a cold snub from (then Bombay chief minister) Morarji Desai, asking him to contact them after the Games."

The same leader garlanded the victorious Khashaba when he returned from Helsinki at a function organised in Bombay.

True heroes, they say, are admired without an apology. Not so in the case of this wrestling great who had to beg for money to travel to Helsinki. The Maharaja of Kolhapur funded Jhadhav's trip to London for the 1948 Games. But for the 1952 Games he and his family went around the village begging for contributions to enable him to flirt with destiny.

Khardikar, principal of the Rajaram College, where Jhadhav studied, mortgaged his home for Rs 7,000 to send his former student to the Olympics. Despite repeated requests to Morarji for only Rs 4000, there was no help forthcoming from any quarter.

"He would have easily won the gold at Helsinki," said Sampat Rao Jhadhav, his cousin who was with Khashababhau when he left for Helsinki to compete in the bantamweight category.

"It was difficult for him to adjust to the mat surface. After two rolling fouls he missed out on the gold medal which was his for the taking. (The gold was won by Japan's Ishii Shobachi while Russia's Rashid Mamedekov clinched the silver.) Moreover, there was no interval between the two bouts and to fight with two world class wrestlers without appropriate rest was more than a Herculean effort," added Rao.

The Akhil Bharatiya Khashaba Jhadhav Wrestling Tournament was instituted to posthumously appreciate his contribution to Indian wrestling. His son and wife, however, continued to run from pillar to post lobbying for the Chhatrapati Shivaji award, Maharashtra's highest sporting honour, but were turned down on the pretext that he was dead.

In 1994 after repeated requests to the Maharashtra sports minister, Khashaba Jhadhav was posthumously awarded the Chhatrapati Shivaji award.

But the Arjuna Award still eludes the wrestler.

"My father should get the Arjuna Award because he deserves it. I have done everything possible to get my father the recognition he deserved when he was alive. I will try and get the Arjuna Award awarded to my father," says his son, Ranjit, who has written to Sports Minister Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa in June. There has been no response yet.

"I'm bitter. I'm bitter when I look at the prevailing conditions. The glamour the cricketers have got. It hurts. What have they given in return to the people who showered so much love and attention on them? They will have to take into consideration my father's accomplishments. Milkha Singh wasn't highly qualified, but became the sports director of Punjab. My father was a BA, LLB and yet they thought that he was not qualified to be a coach," says a bitter Ranjit.

As a post script to this piece, Jadhav was awarded the Arjuna Award posthumously in 2001, 48 years after his award winning performance and 16 years after his death! In comparison, Karnam Malleswari who won a bronze medal in the Sydeny Olympics of 2000 was awarded the same Arjuna Award in 1994, 6 years prior to the medal winning performance.

First Posted at Prem Panicker's on July 18, 2008.

Coming to the issue, which is purpotedly behind all this, the nuclear deal, I really wonder how else could the deal have been drafted given the compulsions on both sides. India is a growing economy and needs the energy to power this growth engine - so either you burn enough coal to cover your lungs with soot or switch to nuclear power (given that every dam built can also lead governemnts to fall) . Now nuclear power can come about in two ways, either through Uranium, which we dont have enough of or through Thorium which India has enough off, but unfortunately will take 10 years to fructify. So now the option is to either bite the bullet and sign the NPT or look to the one country which can bend the rules enough for us. So while the US makes money selling uranium, you can make use of all the plutonium you have to stock up for military purposes and what's even more - the other countries can line up to supply uranium and technology. I don't even know how we can oppose this, and the leader of the opposition came as close to admitting this as he could.

Consider the opposition to the deal, some say they want the world to recognise as a nuclear power, but wouldnt that also mean recognising Pakistan and for that matter Israel and Iran and is not in anbody's interests especially considering they are all at odds with the other. India will be subject to intrusive inspections by IAEA, they say, but as a member of the IAEA, India is always subject to safety standards, so if somebody else wants to do it for you, what is the problem, especially given that you can classify a reactor as military and remove it from all inspections. Another objection is that India cannot test, but isnt that a hypothetical condition? Does India need to test and what happens after that - India will be subject to sanctions and will not receive any more fuel and return any fuel obtained - so really what is the issue that we will have to return fuel or that we wont have any of it at all? India must enter into any treaty as an equal they say, the US is willing to give you a treaty which they spend time to modify to accomodate all your concerns - musn't we be satisfied especially given that we are the ones in need and that our large neighbour would be more than happy to continue to be a monopoly buyer or a monopsony, if my economics is correct. Also, if the US is the concern, I really didnt come across anything that tied India to US as sole supplier and we could more than happily turn to France and Japan whose fast breeder technology is streets ahead of the US and will not provide a speck of information without approval. The Left was peeved that the parliament was not provided a copy of the IAEA agreement and now that it has been provided, I would seriously like to how much of this is actually different and how much of it actually made a difference in the stand of third front leaders from Chattisgarh or Karnataka or UP?

Maybe parts of the deal are wrong and can be modified, but has there ever been an attempt to provide any feedback, especially given that they were allies for four years and were considered for all matters sundry. And really why are we assuming that the scientists who negotiated the deal, have lesser national interests than the alliance-a-day leaders? National interest, now really.

First Posted at Prem Panicker's on July 21, 2008.

ET analysed the moolah-run rate(MRR) of the players, which reveals that the real stars of the league matches have been batsmen like Abhishek Nayar (Mumbai), Shane Watson (Rajasthan) and Yusuf Pathan (Rajasthan), who have fared much better than star players like MS Dhoni, Andrew Symonds and Rahul Dravid, to name a few, who took home million-dollar-plus pay cheques for the debut season of the IPL.

continuing, the article adds

Among the batsmen who have had disappointing debut at IPL given their MRR include Shahid Afridi, Rahul Dravid, Sourav Ganguly, Ricky Ponting and MS Dhoni, among others. However, things might change going forward. A similar analogy can be drawn for bowlers where the top performers are ranked purely with respect to wickets. Among those who have picked 5 or more wickets, the moolah-scalp rate(MSR) was the best for Ajit Agarkar. The speedster, who is representing Kolkata in IPL, has picked up wickets at the rate of Rs 23 lakh per wicket, followed by veteran Aussie spinner Shane Warne whose MSR is Rs 30 lakh/head.

Even as the teams were auctioned, people felt that Mumbai and Bangalore had played their cards badly and it was vindicated with both teams having players unsuited to this version and the big names failing to provide any spark, however the real surprise has been the form or non-form of the Deccan Chargers, with Symonds, Gilchrist, Afridi, Laxman and Gibbs, they were supposed to be the team to beat, however the returns have been just about average so far and recently Kolkotta Knight riders with Ganguly & Ponting also seemed to have slumped after a bright start.

First Posted at Prem Panicker's on April 30, 2008.

The channel claimed that after receiving cash payment of Rs two lakh and taking a promise of another Rs three lakh to be given to his man in Delhi, Jothikumaran assured the channel's team of getting a player picked for the senior hockey team for the Azlan Shah hockey tournament next month.

Truth be told, the patience with the Indian Hockey establishment had worn thin, after India failed to reach the Olympics for the first time ever, but the IHF president was as nonchalant as ever, even taking on the Union Sports Minister

The minister did make a reference to Jothikumaran saying the public's faith in him had been "shattered", but indicated that KPS was equally at fault for the mess Indian hockey was in. His advice to KPS was simple: "I believe, in the totality of the situation, the IHF president must introspect, and review his position. In consideration of the situation facing Indian hockey, I urge him to consider withdrawing from his responsibility. It is time to let other Indians make an attempt to lift our hockey," he said.
KPS Gill, typically, laughed away the minister's suggestion and said there was no problem with the selection process. asked about the minister's remarks and whether he thought that the entire IHF executive committee should take moral responsibility and resign, as Jothikumaran (secretary-general from 1994 and KPS's right-hand man) was an integral part of it, Gill said: "If that is the case then the entire government should resign (if a member of it faces any allegation)."

It was however left to the FIH to read the riot act to the petulant supremo of the IHF, and sent a stern missive through the IOA, warning them to get their act together or lose the rights to the 2010 World Cup.

Expressing dismay at the state of Indian hockey just a day before an IOA meeting to discuss the bribe scandal involving suspended IHF secretary K Jothikumaran, FIH chief Els van Breda Vriesman said the world body can't work with a federation whose top official was under investigation following a TV sting operation.

"It (the sting operation) is never heard of in the world of field hockey. I wish the Indian hockey got positive publicity and not this kind. We are in touch with both International Olympic committee and the Indian Olympic Association (IOA) how to proceed in such situation," she told PTI.

"Now the IOA has to manage Indian Hockey Confederation because I don't think we can work with a half-suspended Secretary General (K Jothikumaran) and a president probably linked because he protects his secretary in this case," she added. "The agenda before the Indian table is clear. But who is going to take the decisions. It is up to the Indian Olympic Association and the Sports ministry to handle the situation; it is not up to us.

Reacting swiftly, the IOA yesterday in an hurriedly convened meeting , suspended the IHF, effectively sacking Mr. Gill and introduced an interim committee, consisting of erstwhile hockey players to run the show.

While the exit of the president of IHF and his team, is indeed a welcome step, Mr. Kalmadi would do well to ensure that things do not end up in chaos. As Iraq and Pakistan have shown that while dictatorship might be a bad thing, a power vacuum can be devastating.

And as I was checking for references, this piece from Hindustan Times on Women's hockey that I also check on every now and then, bringing not much good news either.

At least 11 players of the 18-member squad that finished a depressing fourth at the Olympic qualifiers in Kazan (Russia) on Sunday were carrying injuries. In fact, most members of the squad that failed to qualify for the Olympics were considered unfit to play an international-level event.

Interestingly, both the government and the hockey federation were aware of this and still sent them to the prestigious April 19-25 tournament.

Mentioning captain Mamta Kharab, Sabha Anjum, Ritu Rani, Rajwinder Kaur and Deepika Murthy by name, it states: "All the above girls are in the list of 18 players. I don't know how they will cope up with the fitness of other players when fitness is the prime tactics of winning. Senior players should set up an example for juniors in training."

While IWHF president Vidya Stokes was in New Delhi but not contactable (we were told she also did not have a mobile phone), repeated attempts to speak to Union Sports Secretary SK Arora were stonewalled by his office. Finally, HT was told that he would not be available on the day, despite the seriousness of the issue being explained to them.

Dont put away the weed-cutter just yet.

First Posted at Prem Panicker's on April 29, 2008.