Sayonara Beijing!

This has certainly been a historic month for Indian sports. While we won an ODI Tri Series in Australia for the first time, we somehow failed to qualify the Beijing Olympic Games' hockey tournament. It is quite a true reflection of the way the two sports are run in a country where there is no system of 'separation of federation from the government' .

While cricketers get 58 lakh rupees each for a win in a one day tri series competition, football players got zilch for winning the Nehru Cup. Hockey players got nothing at first for winning the Asian Cup but then got bits and pieces. The simple fact is that we prefer to play and support a sport which is played mostly by the Commonwealth Nations. We want to exist in a World where we feel we are successful. We have this pathetically recessive thought that supporting our hockey or football teams are going to get us nowhere. I didn't see any news reports about eggs being thrown on players or people criticizing the Indian Hockey Team for their miserable failure. I did see some Indian Cricket fans berate Yuvraj Singh for not scoring enough runs on the Australia Tour though. No one seems to care about anything other than cricket. We are yet again trying to prove that we have only one dimension. It saddens me no end.

The simple reason for our failure to qualify for the Olympic Hockey Tournament this year is that we don't care about our Hockey Team. We don't care if they qualify, if they win, lose, get thrashed. But we do feel the pain of Sachin Tendulkar when he gets out in his 90s. That said, we celebrate for 5 minutes when we see our Hockey Team win the ASIA CUP and we celebrate for 5 days when we see our Cricket Team win the CB SERIES. Talk about putting things in perspective.

Yes, the flaws are in the system. Whose job is it to clean it up? Only if we put pressure on the Hockey Federation will they act in a suitable manner. I heard somewhere that an ex-Army man is incharge for selecting an entire team. We have a 'technical consultant' who is sitting in Australia while the team is in Chile trying to qualify for the biggest hockey event in 4 years. None of this was covered in the news. None of this was made known to us. Why? The Indian Cricket warriors were battling Australia... that's why!

We, as a nation must really learn to put things in perspective. We set ourselves up for failure and then blame the poor players who have been beaten down by the very evil that we've nurtured. I'm not saying that we should become hockey fans.. all I'm saying is that partisan support for cricket - is just that, brainless.

For now though, because of the inability of the system and of course, us - the men in blue.. with the sticks are coming back home having failed rather ignominiously. I hope that we are able to develop some tact to support them in the future, if not the sport itself.

Five Months.... And Nothing's Changed!

Wow.. It has been somewhat of a hiatus, and I get the feeling of complete unfamiliarity when it comes to blogging now.. It started off as a "block" and then I just couldn't find time to blog. I have absolutely no reasons as to why I couldn’t blog.. I just couldn't!

The funny thing in all this is that barely anything has changed in my life (of note) that really needs writing about. I remember the first time I felt like blogging since October - and that was when Benazir Bhutto passed away quite tragically. Somehow again, it just didn't happen. Now, somewhat equally inexplicable is my desire to blog again! You can see I'm going nowhere with this...

The next time I really felt like blogging was on New Year's Day.. and again for some stupid reason or the other.. I didn't blog. The beauty of the blogosphere is that it is always there. You can always come back to it after some time and acclimatize.. feel at home and then really get back into your "groove".

I'll end all of this here.. but I'm pretty confident I will come back soon enough to blog about something. For the moment though, it's just nice to be back here again!