Dhoni Savvy Media

A few years earlier we used to have media savvy people. But now, we are having the opposite, people savvy media. Actually, it's not a people savvy media, but a celebrity savvy media. They make celebrities, they run programs on them, increase their TRPs, and then dump them with a few more programs and polls deciding should he/she do this/that in this way/at all etc.

I guess nowadays it's our one day Cricket captain Dhoni who is the apple of camera lenses for these TV channels, even newspapers. There are articles proving and reproving, assuring us all, that Dhoni has done something which was never done by anyone in India from Kapil Dev and Sunil Gavaskar to Sachin or Sehwag. By now I have no idea what exactly this something is but if the media continues this way I guess in some I shall be sure that this something has a real existence.

The interesting thing is that this media thing is affecting even bigger things now. Or so I feel. I really have no Idea why Dhoni is the only other player than Sachin Tendulkar to get a Khel Ratna award. I do agree that he is the poster boy of Indian cricket, but if Dhoni deserves a Khel Ratna, what about the players with 950+ wickets or with 10k runs in ODIs as well as in tests?

I think we just need a hero, and now that some are saying it's Dhoni, we are happy to have him. Otherwise, there was never a need to clarify that a winner 'deserves' the Khel Ratna award. Isn't it?

Olympics: More than Sports

I am often asked if the Olympic village - the vast restaurant and housing conglomeration that hosts the world's top athletes for the duration of the Games - is the sex-fest it is cracked up to be. My answer is always the same: too right it is. I played my first Games in Barcelona in 1992 and got laid more often in those two and a half weeks than in the rest of my life up to that point. That is to say twice, which may not sound a lot, but for a 21-year-old undergraduate with crooked teeth, it was a minor miracle...

A revealing article. Read HERE.

Maybe you want to participate in the next Olympics. :P

Proud of you, Vijender!

He could not win us another gold. But Vijender Kumar is India's hero. He's a person who has made us proud.

Vijender not only won us a bronze, he kept the hopes of a medal alive while fighting another champion. We all wish him luck for future.

Vijender Kumar Semifinal Schedule

Vijender Kumar, the Indian boxer who has confirmed yet another medal for the country, will be playing his Semifinal on 22nd August.

The Schedule is as follows:

Men's Middle (75kg) Semifinal 2
Friday, August 22, 1245 IST
CORREA BAYEAUX Emilio (Cuba) vs KUMAR Vijender (India)

PS: The schedule has been calculated very carefully, but you may confirm the schedule from the official Olympics site.

All the Best to Vijender.

Top Dug Pic!

The picture that was Dug most number of times in past sometime, getting hundreds of Diggs every hour.

Here is the link.

Sorry for not putting the pic here. ;)

Just in case SRK's 6 packs impressed you

The only question after seeing Phelps here is: Will Aamir Khan be perfect this time while flaunting his 6 pack abs in Ghajini?

Indian boxers at Beijing Olympics: Schedule

Three boxers from India, Akhil Kumar, Jitender Kumar, and Vijender Kumar, are now in Beijing Olympics quarterfinals, and all the eyes are on these three now.

So here is the schedule of the three boxers:

Monday, Aug 18, 5 PM (IST)
Men's Bantam (54kg) Quarterfinal 3
GOJAN Veaceslav (Rep. of Moldova) vs KUMAR Akhil

Wednesday, Aug 20, 4.45 PM (IST)
Men's Fly (51kg) Quarterfinal 2
BALAKSHIN Georgy (Russia) vs KUMAR Jitender

Wednesday, Aug 20, 6 PM (IST)
Vijender Kumar (75kg) Quarterfinal 4
GONGORA Carlos (Ecuador) vs KUMAR Vijender

For confirmation you can check the schedule on the official website of Beijing 2008.

Hope I get to write more schedule after this.

Two Steps Behind

Akhil Kumar is the only person in Beijing now who is keeping the hopes of 'one more medal' alive for Indians.

Akhil reached quarter finals after beating world champion Sergey Vodopyanov in the pre-quarters which, they say, was something unthinkable and unimaginable.

Pray for him. :)

Aren't we a bit too much?

India's performance at Beijing Olympics has been much better compared to previous ones. And Abhinav Bindra is getting a lot of encouragement from various people and organisations, not to mention the coverage given by the media and the respect from the countrymen, which is expected and desired. But isn't it that in some ways some of us go too far sometimes?

Consider these:

• The government of Bihar will be building an Abhinav Bindra stadium.
• National Rifles Association of India and Milkha Singh suggest that Abhinav Bindra should get the Highest Indian Civilian Award, Bharat Ratna.
• We read articles titled 'Is India's Mohammad Ali finally here?' as boxer Akhil Kumar enters the second round of Olympics.

I feel we sometimes do it too much and this may even affect those people negatively from whom we expect this much.

The interesting thing is that we find all the talent of the country only during Olympics, otherwise the media of our cricket-crazy country is happy running behind the so-called 'men-in-blue' even when they are in birthday parties.

As far as the Bharat Ratna for Abhinav is considered, I personally feel it will be an extremely exaggerated reaction if not exactly idiotic as I feel Bharat Ratna is too high an award at this stage. It can be understood simply by asking if we shall be giving out 10 Bharat Ratnas a year if India wins 10 Gold medals sometime? And leave that stage, what if more athletes win medals this time itself, say Paes-Bhupati and Akhil Kumar? Shall we be awarding 3 Bharat Ratnas or shall we be awarding it to the first one because his was an event that was scheduled to finish earlier?

I think we, that is the media of this country, as well as the countrymen, should behave in a bit more matured manner and governments should encourage sports by doing proper work on it, not by announcing yet-another-stadium that we know the end of.

Abhinav Bindra's Blog

So it is now over and the time for me to return home has arrived. I know my life is not goign to be even close to the same upon return but it is something i am going to have to embrace and actually enjoy which i am at this moment finding way more daunting than shooting...

Here it is: Link to Abhinav Bindra's own Blog: http://abhinavbindra.blogspot.com

Read about the Indian Olympic Hero's journey to Beijing, in his own words. I hope you too leave a commennt there.

Post-Gold

Prices of Gold have been falling for last one week. And there is a number of ladies in my home and family who are planning to buy some Gold and wishing it falls down more.

I think it will. As Abhinav Bindra will be bringing some extra Gold home while coming back from Beijing. Though I wish and hope there will be more Golden moments in Beijing for India, history doesn't allow me to expect a lot, and considering we have not fell down in terms of overall performance in Olympics for past 12 years, ever since Paes won us a Bronze in 1996 olympics, fighting Andre Agassi in the semis, one gold is where we should have landed after Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore's silver last Olympics.

Fast forward to 2008. Abhinav Bindra wins a gold in 10 meter air rifle. Of course 95% of Indians will be learning the name of shooting events for the first time, it being a conservative estimate.

First of all, my hearty congratulations to Bindra. Anything said here is not meant to dishonor the national hero by any means.

Now, let us see what happens when Abhinav Bindra wins the Gold. As soon as we know Abhinav wins, there is a usual race among news channels to capture the nearest. Some reach his home to find his parents dealing with neighbors living at the other end of town whereas some try to reach him on phone before the national anthem in the Beijing's Olympic stadium could finish, rest trying to make up their stories with relations and coaches.

But the interesting part starts when it seems that entire contry except Srinagar where a curfew was imposed, was celebrating Abhinav's victory on roads with Dhols and fireworks. Not just in Chandigarh and Dehradun, people were found celebrating even in Meerut which had no specific relation to the national hero dancing with the national flag of India, though it was held upside down. Surely the men in front of camera cannot be framed guilty as they are too happy being on television but the channel showing the national flag upside down could have given it a thought while showing the clip repeatedly.

Television was also showing news of lacs of rupees being announced for the shooter by state governements that are trying to swim out of their debts of crores, as it was a great chance to prove our commitment to sports and sportsmen. But of these, the second most interesting was BCCI giving Rs 25 lac to Bindra, as if it were ADC, and number one was Bihar government's announcement to build a Bindra stadium. I wish that's not a cricket ground.

And among all this, there was a bunch that enjoyed the moment of Abhinav's victory as their own. It was the Indian cricket team, who lost another test and the series to Sri Lanka but as Abhinav won, there was almost no coverage on the match loss, whereas it would have been an experts' day on news channels who would lament the loss of our cricket team.

In the end, I also feel that some leading towns of India may see the rise of small shooting ranges where you could 'Learn shooting in 15 days' or something like that. And in my views which might be considered pessimistic, there will hardly be anything positive for Indian sports resulting from this because we will still be seeing the rates of gold day after tomorrow and mom will be sending me to my study so that I become a computer engineer and then I will be able to buy lot of gold.

But whatever the result, Abhinav has proved that we CAN do it. So if there are a few moms who try, we can WIN some more gold in future.

PS: ADC stands for access deficit charge that was paid to (a losing) BSNL till some time ago by leading companies like Airtel and Hutch as only BSNL operated in remote areas.