Monday, August 11, 2008

Bindra Lives India's Dream.

Bindra took the world by surprise and India into cheer and celebrations when he won the Olympic Gold, the first in an individual sport for India in Olympic history. As he has mentioned in his post victory interview its just the beginning and hope that the young kids show interest beyond Cricket.

As expected the whole country started to pour in cash awards to the champion and has proved successful sports men will be rewarded and over a period this will change to upcoming sports people will get the kind of encouragement and support to achieve greater targets.Four state governments had announced cash rewards to the tune of 1.4 crores. As usual BCCI also announced a reward of Rs 50 lakh for Bindra and Railway Minister Lalu Prasad gifted lifetime AC first-class travel pass and SpiceJet gave him free unlimited travel for life.

Now is the time for the SAI (Sports Authority of India) to take advantage of the interest and support extended by the corporates into tie-up for sponsors to support good talent in various sports to reach greater high's in the coming CommonWealthGames and the next Olympics. I would even go to the extent of asking people like LalithModi,I.S.Bindra to help run these federations and build infrastructure and most importantly sell the sports and make the transition happen. I think this is the golden opportunity for the federations to take a leaf from BCCI and start doing things rather than accusing that Cricket is eating their lunch.


On Cricket

As expected Srilanka won the match and the series without much of a problem and England won the fourth test to end the series as the losing side with series score line as 2-1.

There is bug difference in how SouthAfrica won the series and Srilanka won the series, SA had to fight session by session to win the test matches, where as Srilanka had no problems they were dominating the series so much that the results were mostly in the expected lines. India's famed batting order played worst cricket in the recent memories and never looked to make a fight and rather they were losing steam to fight as the series progressed. England had some fabulous performances from Peiterson,Anderson,Flintoff,I.Bell event hough they lost the series, where as India had just 3 names in Sehwag,Gambhi and Harbhajan to name with some good performances. SA had some brilliant performance from its captain Smith and the top order never gave up and fought well with Prince,McCanze,Amla and DeVillars coming good at important stages of the game. SA bowlers in Styen,Morkel,Ntini all played their role to perfection and Boucher kept wickets like a champ and scored runs when mattered most. Fro Srilanka it most the two magical spinners all the way and some good batting by their captain and deputy and one has also mention about the fielding and good judgment from Jaywardene on the referral which made lot of difference to the outcome of the game. Overall SA fought their victory and Srilanka won it by discipline.

IMHO its time that the selectors need to think in bringing in fresh blood into the test series also, I can see at least 2 of the top 4 needs to be replaced to bring in the young talent to test. I also feel its time that we replace the aging Kumble and bring in fresh talent so that we have some time to build the team.

2 comments:

abimanyu said...

Congrats to Abinav!! He has made all of us proud. It was really a special feeling to hear the Indian National Anthem while he took the podium, no words can explain it.

Definitely the time has to come to build the team for future, the selectors have to make some bold decisions at this stage like what they did with the ODI team. They will have to drop the old horses. There was hardly any spirit when the Indians took the field in the final test. I would love to see these changes in the squad for the home series against Aussies.

Shankar.Nash said...

Yes Vasu.. its a welcome break for the sports followers to know that a Indian has succeeded in an individual event. Heartening to see someone other than cricketer is being talked about in our country. Just hope that the sports body maintain this momentum atleast in this one sport(shooting) and encourage somemore budding personalities.

Regarding the loss of the third test against srilanka.. wats more disappointing more than the loss is the way they lost the series, with no appetite to fight. Even after gaining upperhand in the second test, our team didnt maintain the same momentum and let this one slip out of their hands even after getting on to some excellent start. I believe atleast two of the famed four will bid good bye to the game . lets c