As I start to grow grey behind my ears, the story that warmed my heart at the Olympics was not Superfish Michael Phelps quest for Olympic immortality, but th story of this man who 44 years after his debut at the 1964 Olympics is back again as the games’ oldest athlete - Hiroshi Hoketsu. Read more on this athlete here:

But they probably wouldn’t be so surprised if they knew that the oldest athlete competing at the Beijing Olympics in August is 67-year-old Hiroshi Hoketsu, a dressage rider for the Japanese equestrian team. His first Olympics was in 1964, where he placed 40th in the show jumping competition. It’s been 44 years since Hoketsu’s Olympic debut, and in that time he’s been busy running large pharmaceutical companies, including the Japan division of Johnson & Johnson, prior to his retirement in 2002.

It was his wife, Motoko, who first introduced Hiroshi to dressage after enjoying watching the sport in Europe. A self-professed perfectionist, Hiroshi was fascinated by the detail and precision involved in the sport. He began riding every morning before donning his suit and tie and heading in to the office. After business trips abroad, the first place he went when he got home was the stables. He earned his second Olympic spot for Seoul in 1988, but was unable to compete when his horse failed the quarantine test due to a respiratory problem. Hiroshi then decided to concentrate on competitions at home, and won five national championships in a row between 1988 and 1992.

But he never gave up his Olympic dream.

Following his retirement from Johnson & Johnson, Hiroshi flew to Aachen, Germany where he took up with trainer Ton de Ridder. Under Ridder’s instruction, he qualified for the 2006 FEI World Equestrian Games, only to be thwarted again when his horse Calando went lame.

Then he found Whisper, an 11-year-old chestnut mare with a wide blaze and taste for bananas. The pair has solidified a strong partnership that has impressed discerning judges, earned the Japanese equestrian team a spot in the 2008 Summer Olympics, and is finally sending Hiroshi back to the Olympics. The Pan-Asian Olympic qualifiers were scrambled by an outbreak of Equine Influenza, and instead delegations were sent to evaluate the riders for the countries affected. Hiroshi and Whisper won for Japan, securing a slot in the equestrian events for his country as well as his own Olympic berth.

As they say, the Olympics is not only about winning....

First Posted at Prem Panicker's on August 16, 2008.

Finally, finally the wait ends. India win a Gold medal in an individual sport at the Olympics. Abhinav Bindra ends India’s drought with a superb come from behind finish to ensure his place in India’s sporting history. Most of the times our sportspersons have not been able to hold their nerve, Bindra held his and shot his best when it really mattered. Quoting the official report:

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.

 The Age, reports today on the results of a study conducted recently, which suggests that the origins of the game we love - Cricket, might be older than we thought and even the fact that Jesus Christ might have played an ancient version of the sport. Quoting The Age,

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.

That the Indian men’s Hockey Team did not make it to the Olympics is old hat, this news item in Rediff, nearly brought tears to my eyes - the frustrated, you gotta be kidding me kind. We will send not 1, but 4 hockey coaches to ‘study’ the techniques of other teams at the Olympics and one of these ‘under-studies’ will be tipped to become the coach of the Olympic Hockey team to replace the legendary Ric Charlesworth. Quoting Rediff,

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.

As the countdown to 08.08.08 begins, and a neighbour braces itself for both brickbats and accolades on hosting its maiden Olympic Games and we send our quota of dreamy eyed athletes and officials who would be placed just above Eritrea and below Slovenia in the medals tally and we do the usual jamboree of announcing harebrained schemes to win gold medal after gold medal 4, 8 and 12 years hence, I have one question for you - who is Independent India’s first individual medal winner at the Olympics?

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.

You would think that with the advent of so many news channels and so much scrutiny every politician would atleast be scared of appearing to be available for a price, but the events of the past week have been ludicruous to say the least. If you have an MP in the Lok Sabha(what an irony to call it that), the sky is the limit to what you can ask and if not the sky you can atleast get the airport renamed after your father and since when did becoming convicted of murder stop anyone from wanting to be a central minister? The main opposition party seems to have forgotten that it was the one who initiated the deal in the first place and wants to join hands with the communists and not a bleat from either the religious idealogues who spend so much time burning up Valentine day’s cards or the politburo who is supposed to denounce all religion except that of Mao. Even the amount of money is not a secret anymore, it could cost the UPA merely 25 crores a pop to buy a few votes to run the country for another year.

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.

A typical piece in The Australian, informs us what most of us suspected, but hoped would have changed - India does not have the wherewithal to host a major sporting event. Visitors travelling to the Delhi Commonwealth Games, would be forced into tents, given that Delhi is short of hotel rooms.

A shortage of hotel rooms and excessively expensive accommodation have forced authorities to announce guidelines for tented accommodation that allow tourist operators to establish camps during the games for visitors to the overcrowded city of more than 15 million.

The tent towns are seen as the only way to provide accommodation for the crowds expected for the Commonwealth Games. India is estimated to have a a shortage of 150,000 hotel rooms, and there will be no way of providing the 44,000 extra rooms required for the games.  The plan to provide tents follows an attempt to develop a bed-and-breakfast scheme in private homes, but this added only 500 rooms.

Because of the accommodation shortage, the hotels in the city are massively overpriced, with most five-star places charging more than $500 a night for a room, and hoteliers profiteering outrageously. The tent initiative, due to be announced last night by Tourism Minister Ambika Soni, comes amid reports that the building of infrastructure for the 2010 games is well behind schedule.

The accommodation shortage is embarrassing for a city that has initiated many infrastructure projects in the hope of outclassing Melbourne’s Commonwealth Games. The tented campsites will be required to meet official specifications - toilets and kitchens must be included, as well as garbage disposal and solid waste management.

To “encourage competition and fair play”, any two camping sites must be at least 500m apart.

Tented accommodation is already used in Delhi, but is usually for those displaced from demolished slums.

I hope Bernie Ecclestone is not reading this.

First Posted at Prem Panicker's on July 15, 2008.

Till about 6 months back, this question would have been irrelevant to cricket, however with the advent of the monied leagues in India, this is being asked of it - as it has been for many years of other competitive sport. While the tournament meanders to an end this weekend, the casualties of war are already being counted and from the initial estimate these skirmishes have accounted for two generals, both battle scarred veterans, of their respective sides - Sachin Tendulkar for India and Matthew Hayden for Australia. Luckily, the forthcoming international engagements for both the sides are against the weakest teams - Bangladesh and West Indies - of the international circuit, else the shrill cry from the media on the ill effects of the month and half long jamboree would have been vociferous. Already the national media in the two countries have their daggers drawn.

The Hindustan Times, reports on Sachin Tendulkar:

“Sachin Tendulkar has not yet recovered …” began the official statement that Indian cricket lovers most dread. At this point, we don’t quite know whether the statement could have been better worded or whether India’s greatest contemporary cricketer rushed his recovery process in his eagerness to play.

Whether Sachin, who returned to the Mumbai team in their 8th match was fully fit when he returned to active duty, is a question we won’t easily have an answer to. If he was not fully fit — and Tendulkar, who has played 18 years of cricket at the highest level, has found it more and more difficult to avoid niggles as age catches up — then he should never have chanced playing in the IPL.

But people are already asking if the urgency to return to playing for Mumbai, who started badly, is the first instance of an Indian player putting such a premium on playing for his IPL team that it affected his chances of playing for his country (even if inadvertently).

while Herald Sun, does the honours for Matthew Hayden:

A Twenty20 tournament that may have transformed player payments, and be all the rage in India, but one that very few people are talking about in Australia. A tournament that, here at least, no one really cares who wins. Even the most ardent of cricket supporters would struggle to name the four semi-finalists, let alone know that West Australian Shaun Marsh is the leading run-scorer.

CA had little choice but to appease the almighty Board of Control for Cricket in India and allow its superstars to take part - albeit briefly - in the IPL. The fallout of not giving approval would have been horrendous at all levels.  Australia’s Test players wanted their cut at any cost, even though they were to receive only a portion of their bidding prices because of international commitments.  That “cost” has now hit as hard as rising petrol prices.

Hayden complained of the injury at the team’s pre-tour camp earlier this month, but it’s understood the problem is more the result of wear and tear than a sudden setback. Clearly, the four matches he played for Chennai, scoring 189 runs at 63 off 131 balls, were enough to do some damage and effectively stop the champion opening batsman from fulfilling his contractual obligations to his primary employer, CA.  That may be business jargon but, as one CA official said yesterday, “cricket isn’t just a sport any more”.

“And who is to say this won’t happen again? This could become a major problem,” he added.

Hayden remains one of the top five-ranked CA players, and would earn about $1 million a year in base payments, match fees and prizemoney. Australian coach Tim Nielsen gave cautious approval to allowing his leading men to take part in an IPL tournament that requires plenty of high-stress activity for a 36-year-old such as Hayden, when batting and in the field.

It’s a move that has backfired - badly.

While this all sounds prim and proper, I wonder what the reaction have been had the same players injured themselves playing county cricket in England? 

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

Over the past couple of months, the sports headlines have been dominated by the IPL, for a number of reasons, good and bad, but the national sport, that I follow with equal interest, made an appearance thanks to the infamous sting and the aftermath. After appointing the 5 wise men, the results have changed immediately and thankfully, this time for the good.

India just finished runners-up to a strong Argentine side in the recent Sultan Azlan Shah tournament in Malaysia - coverage from rediff here. While the immediate reaction might be to think that the departure of Gill and co automatically saw the departure of hangers-on and the introduction of genuine talent, it has been widely quoted that the team which was sent is pretty much the same one as before barring a few changes.

The reason that I can immediately attribute though is the emergence of the drag flicker Sandeep Singh, who has been consistent throughout the tournament, and has produced goal after goal through penalty corners which have traditionally been India’s achilles heal, and as a bonus is extremely good at defence too.

For hockey aficianados, India’s runner up performance in a tournament which arguably had few very strong teams, would not really count as a highlight, but considering the tumultous events of the past few weeks, I would sincerely hope it is a case of daylight at last!

First Posted at Prem Panicker's on May 19, 2008.

The Economic Times, has come out with this interesting statistic, mid way through the IPL tournament, on the Return on Investment of the millions of dollars spent on the players against the runs and wickets they have scored. While this does not include intrinsic value of the players, like the hundreds who throng Eden gardens just to see Saurav Ganguly irrespective of the runs he scored, or to Chepauk to cheer for Dhoni even if he hails from Jharkhand, it makes for interesting reading from a purely cricketing perspective and throws up a few surprises.

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.