Amidst all this brouhaha about cricket and chappals, did anyone notice that Vishwanathan Anand became the world No.1 in chess?
Funny. You’d have thought that rather than concentrate on Sania Mirza rising up one spot to the grand height of No.45 in the WTA rankings or waste reams of paper on a worthless team whose only latest exploit is beating a team from a country with a population not large enough to fill even the eden gardens stadium, people and papers and the media would be patting Anand on the back. But no. All he gets is one half-column space article hidden between the man of the match SMS contest and a loser’s (read Indian cricketer) caricature.
Hasn’t somebody realised that finally another Indian is No.1 in a game when probably the last time we had a world champion was a few years after we invented it? Now that raises a lot more questions than answers. For we maybe Kabaddi champions today. But the day is not far away when Bermuda will beat us at that. But till then Congratulations Anand! We are all proud of you. There maybe those who would concentrate on our national team’s defeat, but there are those of us who’d rather look for people who bring glory to the nation in their chosen field. Not that you need our backslapping encouragement for you have always gone it alone, almost, but still.
But all said and done, this over-obsessive obsession with cricket must stop, if the rest of the games and sports are to go anywhere in this country.
But hey! It’s not like I hate cricket. I love cricket! Which is why I support the Australian cricket team. I love cricket. Which is why it think this humiliating ouster and its soap-operatic fallout is the best thing that’s happened to Indian cricket. Till then and even then, we have our Anands and Gopichands.
Funny. You’d have thought that rather than concentrate on Sania Mirza rising up one spot to the grand height of No.45 in the WTA rankings or waste reams of paper on a worthless team whose only latest exploit is beating a team from a country with a population not large enough to fill even the eden gardens stadium, people and papers and the media would be patting Anand on the back. But no. All he gets is one half-column space article hidden between the man of the match SMS contest and a loser’s (read Indian cricketer) caricature.
Hasn’t somebody realised that finally another Indian is No.1 in a game when probably the last time we had a world champion was a few years after we invented it? Now that raises a lot more questions than answers. For we maybe Kabaddi champions today. But the day is not far away when Bermuda will beat us at that. But till then Congratulations Anand! We are all proud of you. There maybe those who would concentrate on our national team’s defeat, but there are those of us who’d rather look for people who bring glory to the nation in their chosen field. Not that you need our backslapping encouragement for you have always gone it alone, almost, but still.
But all said and done, this over-obsessive obsession with cricket must stop, if the rest of the games and sports are to go anywhere in this country.
But hey! It’s not like I hate cricket. I love cricket! Which is why I support the Australian cricket team. I love cricket. Which is why it think this humiliating ouster and its soap-operatic fallout is the best thing that’s happened to Indian cricket. Till then and even then, we have our Anands and Gopichands.
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