Cruelty and Romance of Sport

            Serena Williams was on the verge of making history. Sure, she has already made history before. There is no need for me to elaborate on those achievements. If she had retired before this semi-final against Roberta Vinci, without picking up her racquet ever again, she would still be considered the best of this generation and in the Top 5 tennis players of all time. But this US Open was different. She is already one of the greatest. But we are talking a level above. Winning this US Open would have elevated her to the levels of Pele, Michael Jordan, Muhammad Ali and Don Bradman. ‘The Greatest’ club. At least to me.

            Better than Roger Federer and Steffi Graf, better than Sachin and Schumacher, better than Tiger Woods and Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps. That’s how remarkable her achievement would be. At least to me.

           But sport, and life in general, has always had some fundamental realities. Every time we forget, they are reinforced – in various manifestations. One of them was reinforced today. Serena lost. It was an upset for the ages.

Sport is cruel. Very cruel.

Ask Sachin Tendulkar, who after a surge of centuries, got stuck at 99 for an embarrassingly long time. His legacy was secure, but the disastrous wait for the grand event is also part of it now.

Ask Tiger Woods, who in 2008 won his 14^th Major but is still stranded at the same exact spot.

Ask Rafael Nadal, who is also stuck at 14, his odds of overtaking Federer considerably low now.

Ask Steven Gerrard, who seemed destined for Liverpool’s first EPL title and lost at the final hurdle. It got worse when he captained the England team in a horrible World Cup and finished his career with embarrassing losses to mediocre teams.

Ask Liverpool, who have been waiting for No.19 forever and seem to live more in history than reality.

Ask Badrinath, whose brilliant domestic cricket career overlapped with the careers of the Fab Four and is now lost in oblivion.

Ask those unlucky unknown sportsmen and women who lost their career to injuries, poverty and lack of opportunities.

Ask Serena herself, who stepped on glass after winning Wimbledon and lost a year when on top of the world. And has to defeat her own sister in nearly half her Slam wins. I am not even bringing up the prejudice and the intended/unintended racist views that she has to withstand. That needs a separate post of its own.

I agree, sport also has its own fairy tales – Ivanesevic and Sachin winning World Cup immediately spring into mind – but, in general, sport is cruel.  Very cruel.

But, come to think of it, the romance and beauty of sport is derived out of this cruelty only. This is what we watch sport for. For these moments when fairy tales don’t happen. This is what makes sportstars human. This is what connects them with us mere mortals, who couldn’t play beyond street/school/college.

 It is only when we recognize defeats, we truly appreciate victories.

Successes don’t create fairy tales, failures and adversities do. Success only completes them.

The Greatest Indian Sportsperson Ever

Hi everybody.Once I wrote apropos the greatest sportsperson of all time, the logical sequel to it, me being an Indian, is to write about Indian sports. The Greatest Indian Sportsperson. The one thing about Indian Sports is that if I take popularity into account then I would fail, because Indian media has excessively popularised cricket and made cricketers demi-gods.


The other important thing is that we Indians must acknowledge that we hava not produced greats of the calibre of other greats of the world like Pele, Tiger Woods or Lance Amstrong. I say this with due respect to the Indian greats.


Some of the sportspersons I am going to consider are obvious challengers to the throne like Dhyan Chand, Milkha Singh, Viswanathan Anand, Leander Paes and , of course, cricketers. But there are others out there to whom we have failed to give respect like Prakash Padukone, Geet Sethi, Pankaj Advani and Ramanathan Krishnan.


First lets try to find just two cricketers who could be included in our deliberations. Sachin Tendulkar, Kapil Dev, Sunil Gavaskar, Ranjit Singhi are the best of the lot. Let other greats forgive me. From these we can eliminate Ranjit Singhi because he never played for India. Sunil Gavaskar was not a successful captain and found it very difficult to adjust to one-day cricket.So its Sachin and Kapil from cricket.


There area a lot of legends surrounding Dhyan Chand. He was too prolific to be true.Milkha Singh is undoubtedly the greatest Indian athlete ever. He owned the Asian Record for the 400 m and broke the Olympic record along with 3 others in the fiercely contested final in Rome 1960.Yet he was never a World Champion.


Prakash Padukone is the greatest Indian Batminton player. He has won the World cup once and the most coveted All England Badminton Championships which is the sport's equivalent of Wimbledon.


Geet Sethi has been carrying the mantle of Billiards in India for the Ppast 20 years and has now been ably joined by Pankaj Advani. Both are multiple World Champions though Pankaj is yet to win the Professional Title.

Ramanathan Krishnan is the greatest singles Tennis player India has produced. He reached the Wimbledon semifinal twice. Leander Paes has won a Bronze for India at the Olympics and is a multiple Grand Slam winner. Yet they both are not world beaters and did not dominate their game at any point of time.


Coming to the two cricketers, they have been the best . Kapil won the World Cup for India and Sachin is God, almost. Both have been prolific. Yet, I vote for Sachin for his longevity, his records, his game and most importantly his commitment, modesty and behavior on and off the field.


Viswanathan Anand has achieved what no other Indain sportsperson has. He is a World Champion in his sport. Anand has won World Championship twice, World Cup twice, World Rapid four times, 4 Chess Oscars and 1000s of international awards and title. He revolutioniosed Chess in India. But is chess actually a Sport?



So finally, to shrink the competition further, I select Dhyan Chand and Sachin Tendulkar. Sachin holds almost every record in one-day cricket and has one of the best averages in Test cricket. He is the Greatest one day player and contends for the NO.2 spot in Test cricket too, next only to the Don.

Dhyan Chand on the other hand came from a humble background and won the Olympic thrice for India. There have been issues that he has some kind of glue attached to his bat. In 1932, India scored 338 goals in 37 matches, 133 being Dhyan Chand's.Once, Don Bradman was so surprised by the number of goals that he quipped: 'Were they made by a hockey player or a batsman?'. He was known the world over as 'the Hockey Wizard'.


Sachin or Dhyan Chand? While Dhyan Chand has dominated the sport which no one till date has emulated, including Teun de Noojier, Taeke Taekama and Sohail Abbas, Tendulkar has performed extremely well under pressure which no Indian has ever experienced. So?

In my view, Dhyan Chand is the Greatest Indian Sportsperson ever because of the way he dominated the game. While Sachin was found to be vulnerable on certain occasions, the Wizard was not, never.



To learn more about the Wizard , search Wikipedia for Dhyan Chand.



Comments are most welcome.

The Greatest Sportsperson Of All Time-My Verdict

Hi. I am back to really try and figure out the greatest sportsperson of all time. The stars I considered are Michael Phelps, Michael Johnson, Michael Jordon, Michael Schumacher, Jesse Owens, Carl Lewis, Tiger Woods, Roger Federer, Muhammed Ali, Pele And Lance Amstrong.

After deliberations in my previous post, I shortened my list to Michael Jordon, Tiger Woods,
Muhammed Ali, Pele and Lance Amstrong. Now, narrowing further seems difficult but I aim to do exactly that. I go for Pele, for his amazing skills and character, and Lance Amstrong , for his determination.

Pele or Amstrong? "the King" or "The Force"? Pele came from a poor background and was at his peak for a very long period of time. Lance had only his mother to take care of him and had to fight cancer. Both these personalites have impeccable character on and off the field. And considered the best in their sport. Whom to chose?

My verdict is in favour of Lance Amstrong. Lance came back after a deadly cancer for which doctors gave him less than 50% chance of survival. He acheived all these in an energy sapping, mind boggling sport full of hardships. And he was happier when his first child was born than when he won his Tour de France title.

There may be people who feel my verdict is wrong. Before concluding that, I would advise them to read Lance Amstrong 's book 'This is not about the Tour'.

Fine. Meet you soon. Comments are most welcome