Many moons later, as I sit back to ruminate on a century of South Asian sport and the sight of the lit border springs from the subconscious, the heart longs to dwell on the romantic but the persuasive mind over-rides that. For, there is so much to celebrate, so much to lament. So much joy and so much despair. South Asian sport has given us so much ecstasy and so much agony that the romance can wait.

And we can thank the British for that. Truth to tell, Britain’s influence was always evident on sport in its colonies in South Asia. Sports like cricket and hockey, football and tennis and a host of others had not only been introduced to the region by priests, defence personnel, educationists et al in the nineteenth century but also sustained by them through the first half of the twentieth century. For whatever it is worth, the British are worthy of the South Asians’ gratitude for introducing sport.

To be sure, the subcontinent found its soul on the maidans, to the innocent sound of bat against ball, stick against ball, boot against leather spheres, to the roar of a young country that was learning that sport – and sport alone – could forge that chain every link of which spells ‘Nation’. Indeed, sport was welding the country into a whole, cementing the communities together, compelling crowds to think in terms of country, breaking down barriers, nourishing the ideal of a nation.

Of course, it is a matter of regret that the British did not leave the economy of either India or Pakistan in a shape in which sport would be a priority. The state of their economies do not afford any of the South Asian nations the chance to focus their energies on sport but, in the past few years, corporate sponsorship has come in handy to keep them going. Sport may never be a priority but it has always generated much passion, with cricket even acquiring the overtones of a religion.

The cricketers of the subcontinent have been alternately revered and hated, adored and abhorred. They have been raised to the status of demi-gods, as whole peoples bid to bask in the reflected glory of their cricketers. Despite being a rather recent inductee to cricket, Sri Lanka has not been an exception to this phenomenon of reflected aspirations.

Talk of Sri Lanka reminds me that no discourse on South Asian sport will be complete if its recent surge in cricket and track and field is not taken note of. Inspired by the wily Ranatunga, the Sri Lankan cricketers won the World Cup in 1996, pulling the rug from under Australia’s feet at Lahore’s Gaddafi Stadium. The next year, sprinter Susanthika Jayasinghe became the first South Asian medalist at the World Athletics Championship by claiming the second place in 200m.

For all that, when you sit back in your favourite armchair and freeze-frames from a sporting century lash your mind like waves hitting a beach, it is possible that South Asia’s domination of Olympic hockey – India and Pakistan account for as many as 11 gold medals – and the decline of their powers in the sport that was rapidly changing to suit Europeans will occupy pride of place.

While the hockey team was on cloud nine, an indefatigable wrestler called Gama – Ghulam Husain- also did the subcontinent proud by being Rustam-e-Zaman, “champion of the world”. The cricketers, drawn from different regions, were still learning to cope with the demands of Test cricket, learning to play as one. It is for this reason alone that the story of south Asia’s monopoly of Olympic hockey competition will be written in letters of gold, at least as far as the first three-quarters of this century goes. In fact, the decline of oriental hockey in the last two decades comes as a stark contrast.

Yet, when India, its team comprising many Anglo-Indians and Muslims besides the 22-year-old army captain Dhyan Chand, scored 29 goals without reply in winning the gold medal in the 1928 Olympic Games in Amsterdam, interest in the game spread rapidly. Yet, legend has it that when the time came to raise money to send the side to the 1932 Games in Los Angeles and a journalist asked Mahatma Gandhi to issue an appeal to the masses, Gandhi’s reply was: “Hockey? What’s hockey?” The outfit did make it to the Games, duly won the gold again, and paid for its journey back home by playing some exhibition matches in Europe.

In what has been branded the Nazi Olympics at Berlin in 1936, India completed the hat-trick of hockey gold medals. Germany battled hard and conceded but one goal in the first-half but a barefoot Dhyan Chand scored six goals in the 8-1 victory. It was to be the last time that players from Lahore and Sialkot, Quetta and Karachi played for India in the Olympic Games. The trauma of partition was to hurt Indian sport.

When the Olympic Games were staged next in 1948, Pakistan was a separate nation and it finished a creditable fourth. India won the gold for the fifth time in Helsinki four years later when Pakistan retained its fourth place finish. After losing the final to India by RS Gentle goal in the 1956 Games in Melbourne, Pakistan climbed the winner’s podium at Rome in 1960, riding on the strength of a Nasir Ahmed strike in the 12th minute. India regained gold at Tokyo in 1964 and in the boycott-ridden Moscow Games in 1980 while Pakistan was to win again in Mexico City in 1968 and Los Angeles in 1984, when it avenged a loss to West Germany in the 1972 Munich Games.

To be sure, long before Susanthika Jayasinghe surfaced, South Asia had a clutch of good, even world class track and field stars like quartermilers Milkha Singh and Abdul Khalique, hurdler Gurbachan Singh Randhawa and steeplechaser Mubarak Shah, hammer thrower Mohammed Iqbal and the incomparable PT Usha but there is a sneaky feeling that athletics would have flourished if the British influence had lasted a little longer. Indeed, one of independence’s biggest victims was athletics.

It was as evident as in cricket. The long wait before India and Pakistan teams realized the importance of playing together as units amply reflects the fragile nature of the sides. It needed imaginative, selfless leadership by men like the Nawab of Pataudi Jr, Mansur Ali Khan and Imran Khan for the two sides to actualize their potential, despite the odd good result.

Partition was a grim reality. It was hard then for sports fans to get used to mental barriers that had not existed. It was no longer possible for them to think of cricketers Vijay Hazare and Fazal Mahmood turning out in the same colours. Lala Amarnath and Abdul Hafeez Kardar. Bishan Singh Bedi and Zaheer Abbas. Sunil Gavaskar and Imran Khan. Mohinder Amarnath and Wasim Akram. Sachin Tendulkar and Saqlain Mushtaq.

Of course, Mohammed Azharuddin had the unique privilege of leading a joint Indo-Pak team in an exhibition game against Sri Lanka at the start of the World Cup in 1996 when Australia and the West Indies preferred to concede walk-overs to the home side than travel to the tear-drop island. But it was a notable exception and, rather sadly, and India-Pakistan cricket derby provokes more passion than anything else. Ask Wasim Akram and his 1996 World Cup team-mates. Ask Bedi or Gavaskar.

If in the wake of partition, Pakistan has boasted of gifted hockey players like Hassan Sardar and Akhtar Rasool, Salim Sherwani and Mohammed Samiullah, Shahbaz Ahmed, India had its own Mohammed Shahid and Ajit Pal Singh, Ashok Kumar and Surjit Singh, Dhanraj Pillay and Balbir Singh.

Pakistan has also been the object of envy for being the home to a quiverful of world squash champions like Jehangir Khan and Jansher Khan while an Indian badminton maestro answering to the call of Prakash Padukone conquered the world, even if he seemed almost apologetic in doing so.

The subcontinent boasts of a string of world billiards champions like Wilson Jones, Michael Ferreira and Geet Sethi and a world amateur snooker champion, the late Om Agrawal. Of course, one of the best chess players the world has ever known, Viswanathan Anand, is an Indian too while Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi ended 1999 as the world tennis’ best doubles pair.

On the administrative front, if India gave the subcontinent the quadrennial Asian Games, Pakistan conceived the Champions Trophy hockey. Come to think of it, the world’s most powerful amateur boxing official Anwar Choudhury could have helped more pugilists from the subcontinent to win international acclaim than he managed.

For all that, the presence of such sporting stars, not to speak of cricketing greats like Gavaskar and Zaheer Abbas, Kapil Dev and Imran Khan, Arjuna Ranatunga and Aravinda de Silva – to name just a few and risk inviting the wrath of many – has helped the South Asians rid of their inferiority complex. Today, the browns clash against the whites but the code is clear – on equal terms.

Sadly, in the final decade of the century, betting and bribery scandals have broken out in the subcontinent and rocked world cricket like little else has. More importantly, they have forced fans to view cricket from behind tinted glasses – or with squint vision, if you please. And that is the tragedy of modern sport that is increasingly being driven by the commerce of television.

It is this reason alone that will prevent India and Pakistan from coming together on the cricket field like the West Indies as a regional outfit – an amalgam of nations that are bound together mainly by cricket. The Berlin wall may have come down and united the Germans as one but one of modern cricket’s endearing passions will not come to an end.

For starters, consider this dream team that could have been playing in the new millennium had it not been for that dotted line that we got to see during the flight to Lahore: Saeed Anwar, S Ramesh, Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar, Inzamam-ul-Haq, Sourav Ganguly, Moin Khan, Wasim Akram, Anil Kumble, Javagal Srinath and Saqlain Mushtaq. Awesome, isn’t it? Is it not good enough to take on all-comers? Under any conditions?

Then again, India and Pakistan are so vast and boast of such wonderful talent that their cricket officials may never think it necessary to bring the teams together as one. And, this notwithstanding the fact that they have teamed up to organize the World Cup twice. If you are inclined to brand me an incurable romantic, I cannot blame you, can I? Indeed, I was among those on the chartered trip to Lahore who were on a flight of fantasy as well.

* This essay was first published in Pakistan daily newspaper, Dawn, on January 1, 2000.

Saina Nehwal (Image courtesy: Yonex)

The pursuit of excellence always makes for a fascinating study. And, thanks to Saina Nehwal, we now have another remarkable Indian case study unfolding before us. The reining Indian badminton queen has won three international titles in as many weeks, making our hearts swell with pride and pushing the FIFA World Cup to the second spot, even if for a day.

Barely 20, Saina Nehwal has achieved something that few Indians have achieved – three titles in three weeks. Of course, PT Usha has won five gold medals and a silver in the 1985 Asian track and field meet in Jakarta and followed that up with four gold and a silver in the Asian Games in Seoul the following year but a winning streak over three weeks is rare indeed.

Truth to tell, consistency has been the hallmark of Saina Nehwal’s amazing journey. From the time she made it to the quarterfinals of the Olympic Games in Beijing two years ago, she has nearly always kept her date with the round of eight in major events and has progressed farther many times.

Facsimile of my translated piece on the edit page of Prabhat Khabar daily

Thanks to her efforts, we do get to read about her on-court exploits, attaching ourselves and our emotions with her success or failure. What we often overlook is the kind of hard work that goes into the making of a champion. It would not be wrong to say that she has led the life of a monk, sacrificing what can be called normal life in her quest to get better.

The 20-year-old knows she cannot live the life of the girl next door but that is a small price to pay for actualising her dream of making big waves on the international badminton circuit. But in doing that, she has sown the seeds of thousands of other dreams in the minds of the young of this nation. Yes, her achievements extend far beyond the lines that mark a badminton court.

Saina Nehwal would have ended up as one of the millions of girls-next-door had it not been for her parents Harvir Singh and Usha Nehwal’s decision to relocate to from Hissar in Haryana to Hyderabad in 1998 so that she could take the first big steps into the world of badminton. They made enormous adjustments in their lives to ensure that she could train first with Nani Prasad and then with the renowned SM Arif before former All-England champion P Gopi Chand took her under his wings. And, she has soared.

Indeed, she has raised the bar time and again at such a young age. How she handles the next few years – and in major events like the World championship, the Olympic Games and the Asian Games –will be worth watching. Going by her showing in the past two years, not just her levels of commitment in the past three weeks, it would be safe to wager on her raising the bar higher.

Her approach to success and failure is fascinating. “I am player. I have to go through both winning and losing,” she said. “You can’t keep winning all the time. If you lose once, it’s not as if one cannot win again. That is how I approach the game. Take for example the Chinese girls. They do not play so many tournaments and you don’t see them all in all the tournaments. And you will face different challenges from them all the time.”

She appears to be sound when it comes to managing her time. And, if you talking of mental strength, it is amazing how someone so young can handle the pressure of expectations. “I remind myself that I am a normal girl, out to enjoy myself, rather than assume that I am a champion. It is not easy but I try and not think about the pressure of expectation,” she said. “I focus on working hard and keeping fit. When you are fit, you don’t feel the pressure. If you have not trained well, that is when you have the doubts and feel the pressure.”

I asked her when she won the Indonesian Open last year when we could expect her to scale the top of the ladder and she said she was not looking at No. 1 straightaway. “I first want to break into the top five and then work to get into the top three. After that is when I will really focus on No.1. Yes, it is the larger goal but that demands great levels of consistent in terms of winning a lot of tournaments,” she said, offering a lesson in planning steeped in realism.

Back in January 1977, a certain Martina Navratilova won three tour tennis titles in Washington, Houston and Minneapolis in the United States. We all know the incredible heights to which she rose. The pressure of expectation will now grow but clearly Saina Nehwal is enjoying the process without being unduly worried about the results. And, that is one of the reasons why her pursuit of excellence makes for such a wonderful case study.

With cable and satellite channels bringing home a fairly high quality of sport from Europe for a good nine months each year, the number of youngsters who become fans of European football is only growing by leaps and bounds. Sadly, this is not converting to youngsters taking to playing the sport and we are fast being reduced to a nation of young couch potatoes who are happy to watch the Ronaldos and the Rooneys, the Kakas and the Messis.

The easiest target to attack for such a plight would be the All India Football Federation for the national team’s inability to cross the first set of hurdles in the qualification race for the FIFA World Cup. Of course, few attempts have been made to keep the Indian team in the collective consciousness of the people. Unlike in Europe where club football dominates, in our market, it is the national team that holds the attention of the fans.

We have seen large turnouts when the Indian side plays the Nehru Gold Cup and precious little energy has been spent on getting the team to feature in more matches at home. There would be many benefits, not the least being the fact that the national players would be on television for more time than they are now. A fair consequence of such frequent appearances at home matches would be that the team and the players would have the chance to gain popularity, if not challenge that of players in European leagues.

The other culprits could be the owners of Indian football teams. They have not kept pace with the times in building themselves or their players as brands. In a market driven economy, they remain rooted in ancient methods of running their teams. Even though India has a professional I-League that is broadcast live on television, no attempt has been made to professionalise the way the teams are run and kept in the public consciousness.

Fans have heard of Sunil Chhetri becoming the first Indian to figure in Major League Soccer in the United States. But schoolgirls are getting hooked to EPL and the like. Man-U and Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool, Barcelona and Real Madrid feature in their conversations just as much as the names of Ronaldo, Messi, Drogba and Xabi. The young of today have carried their public displays of affection for football to a different level altogether. And India’s football clubs, state associations and the AIFF are doing precious little to face this challenge.

Quite curiously, Germany, regarded highly for its method play, dished out entertainment even while pursuing the objectives of discipline and flair during its 4-0 verdict over Australia. Even it stemmed from Germany’s confidence that Australia would not hassle it, there is hope that not all teams will take the boring route that spells just discipline and organisation. And I speak purely as a football fan who does not understand the circumspection that dominates the TV screen.

Moments that cause an adrenalin rush have been few and far between – Lukas Podolski’s left-footer and Miroslav Klose’s header became Germany’s first two goals as well as Ji Yun Sam’s strike for North Korea against Brazil will all stay etched in the minds for some time as will the number of times Argentina’s Lionel Messi was denied by Vincent Enyeama under the Nigerian bar and the fact that Portugal skipper Cristiano Ronaldo hit the woodwork against Ivory Coast. But these were sporadic and left us hungering for more.

Of course, it is early days yet in the World Cup but, based on the first few contests, it would appear as if we must gear ourselves up to see teams religiously embrace these two qualities, discipline and organisation ahead of flair and creativity. We must prepare ourselves for lacklustre football as most coaches are guarded – some would say understandably – and are happy if their teams share points.

At the risk of being told to the contrary, I would like to stick my neck out and say that most matches remind of skirmishes between two Grand Masters on the chess board with neither wanting to give anything away and both waiting for the other to make a positional mistake. It can get very engrossing for those who understand the nuances of such play but most fans can find that quite boring.

Clearly, no team wants to come under pressure by dropping points in its opening game, simply because it has been adventurous. The amount of circumspection is directly proportional to the coaches’ perceptions about the rival team’s ability to cause some embarrassment. The fear of losing has come through strongly and is evidenced also by the fact that after scoring the first goal, teams seem to shed collective nerves that drag them towards becoming ordinary.

I believe that fans seek entertainment. To be sure, the buzzing swarms of bees – thousands of Vuvuzelas, actually – are holding more attention right now than the action on field. Hopefully, the second round of matches will see the tempo rise to the level of a World Cup. And superstars like Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo will find that they are not being denied by either woodwork or goalkeepers.

The ill-advised have been saying that skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni is on trial and the team’s performance here will determine his future as helmsman. Of course, he did not seem to be his usual self in the ICC World Twenty20 in the West Indies but that should not take away from the fact that he has been one of the most remarkable Indian captains.

For all that, the selectors must give the skipper the squad that he deserves. While the wise men may empower him with the best XI nearly always, I am not sure they spend any time thinking about the kind of reserves who should be making up the rest of the squad. For when you speak of balance, it is not just about finding the right combination in the playing XI but also in the kind of reserves available.

We will get a good idea when we look at what happened in Zimbabwe where India had to play Naman Ojha as an opening batsman in its final game of the triseries because Murali Vijay was so out of depth in the earlier games. Now, Naman Ojha was chosen more as second wicket-keeper than a reserve specialist opener. The team management had to perforce include him in the XI because it has no option once it decided to leave Vijay to warm the benches.

I am hoping that India does not face a similar situation in the Asia Cup. If you are wondering why, you just have to look at the 11 that India is likely to field in the first game: Sehwag, Gambhir, Kohli, Rohit, Raina, Dhoni, Jadeja, Harbhajan, Praveen, Zaheer and Nehra. The four who may sit out are Tiwary, Dinda, Ojha and Ashwin.

Does it make sense to have just one specialist batsman and three bowlers, including two spinners, among the reserves? Tamil Nadu off-spinner R Ashwin did play well on debut in India’s last match in the Zimbabwe triseries but the selectors did not really need include him in the squad for Sri Lanka. It is not as if he is going to push Harbhajan Singh for a place in the XI.

So, instead of arming the captain with better options, the selectors may have only hamstrung him a fair bit.

There is one more thought that the recent selections have sparked in my mind: It is time to stop pretending that IPL should be seen as a stepping stone to the Indian one-day international team. A series of lusty blows or a few good overs in IPL games should not be misconstrued as ability to do well in the longer version of the game as well.  Even if cricket is simply a contest between bat and ball, each format calls upon different temperaments and that is something that the selectors must keep in mind when picking Indian teams.

You will hear a cacophony if the team does not live up to expectations – and as a nation, even if we do not usually excel in everything we do, we expect the cricketers to deliver only victories and not fall short. And at that time, with the whole focus on Dhoni and not the selectors, everyone will display a herd mentality and bay for blood. The good thing is: This time around, the cacophony will be drowned by the magical notes flowing from the football carnival in the rainbow nation.

Having grown up in the pre-TV era, my earliest memories of World Cup football are sepia tinted; The Hindu and Sport & Pastime were primary sources of information. I remember reading about Pele and Bobby Moore, Jairzinho and Gordon Banks. We got lucky if we could watch a Films Division newsreel that included some clips from World Cup matches in the 70s and it was not until 1986 that I first saw a World Cup game on TV.

We were innocent to long-distance relationships when we watched Argentina’s Diego Armando Maradona scored two goals against England – with the infamous Hand of God goal and, four minutes later, with an absolute piece of magic when he beat half a dozen Englishmen all by himself. And after Argentina won the title with a win against West Germany, we started a four-year wait to watch quality football.

That was probably why an Indian journalist designed the invitation card for his wedding around newspaper headlines from Italia ’90. For, those were days when India woke up to world class football just once in four years. That was the time when young India succumbed to football fever for only not longer than four weeks every four years, perhaps letting the afterglow of a wonderful event linger for a few more weeks.

Now, two decades later, India has got addicted to watching high-class football at home for nine months every year. Thanks to the inroads that cable and satellite TV has made in vast parts of India, the young have been hooked to the broadcasts of the English Premier League and the UEFA Champions League. India’s long-distance romance with the Beautiful Game was easily sustained and it really does not matter that the home-bred National team is ranked 132nd in the world.

I saw the signs of change when I spent the Christmas weekend in 2002 at Manali in Himachal Pradesh and was pleasantly surprised to see a pub offer live telecast of an EPL match as a bonus for the tourists. The atmosphere was so charged up that I wondered if I was in India or some bar in England. Now, European football has taken over the mindset of the young so much that Indian cricket czars had to embrace the Twenty20 format of the game to ensure the monies stayed within cricket.

Then in 2006, I was invited to Delhi’s prestigious St Stephen’s College to discuss the state of Indian football. The subject was: A goalless India – The plight of football in this cricket-crazy nation. My fellow columnist Novy Kapadia spoke before me and, truth to tell, what he doesn’t know of football may not really be worth knowing. And before he was halfway through his opening remarks I got the feeling that I was going to be inadequate despite what had seemed to be sound preparations.

Novy did a terrific job of explaining to the couple of hundred students why Indian football was wallowing despite there being a huge fan following for the sport in the country. It was a veritable and – as an oxymoron phrase would go – at once an enjoyable dissection of the tragic state that Indian football has been in for many years now. I was secretly delighted that the audience was paying him such rapt attention that it didn’t notice my scratching off points from my notes.

Before long, Novy finished his discourse and sat down. I could hear the emcee say something about me and I knew I could no longer warm the chair and had to get up. I picked up the marker that had thoughtfully been provided in the auditorium and walked to the whiteboard behind us rather than to the dais. And I said: “Okay let’s play a game. Let us select two teams for an exhibition game. Say a St, Stephen’s vs Hindu College match.”

We started by naming two managers, Alex Fergusson and Arsene Wenger. Then we picked a goalkeeper each, some defenders, midfielders and a couple of strikers. Not surprisingly, all 22 names were of overseas stars. “Let’s think of playing some Indians because this game is being played here in Delhi,” I said and Novy smiled, immediately knowing what I was driving at. The hall rent up with the name of Bhaichung Bhutia but I said I want the Indian goalkeeper to replace Jens Lehmann. And I heard silence. Nobody knew who the Indian goalkeeper was!

Four years later, even though India continues to be more than dreaming distance away from playing in the FIFA World Cup, things are slightly different. Fans have heard of Sunil Chhetri becoming the first Indian to figure in Major League Soccer in the United States. But schoolgirls are getting hooked to EPL. Man-U and Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool, Barcelona and Real Madrid feature in their conversations just as much as the names of Ronaldo, Messi, Drogba and Xabi.  The young of today have carried their public displays of affection for football to a different level altogether.

And now even though I have grown up (or so I believe), there is no logic to how football… err… world football rules Indians. The Indian journalist I spoke of earlier made his wife endure a late night final on their honeymoon in 1990. Now, it is quite likely that his teenaged daughter will sit through live telecasts of the World Cup from the rainbow nation that we know as South Africa. Logic will be alien to us for a good four weeks when the FIFA World Cup 2010 is on. You can be sure India’s long-distance love affair with FIFA World Cup will continue. Uninterrupted.

This article first appeared in M magazine.

Barring an element that is based on aspirations, there is no apparent logic for Indians to be backing teams from Brazil or Spain, Argentina or Germany or from any of the 28 other nations from across the world. Yet, we offer these teams playing the Beautiful Game unconditional support from this distance, spending long hours each evening before our TV sets and planning our lives around the matches of our respective favourites.

You don’t have to make much effort to look around in the coming weeks and find a growing, if not dominant presence, of football in our daily lives. Marketing wizards have already drawn up exhaustive plans to unleash football mania on us. Newspapers and new TV channels have signed up celebrities and analysts to interpret world class action for us in language that we understand.

Indeed, it is a phenomenon that is not very easy to explain. Why would India, which does not seem to be even within sniffing distance of competing at the FIFA World Cup devote so many man hours in backing squads that have no idea of how many pair of lips in India have prayers for each of them. For many years since 1986, I tried to understand the passion but over the last couple of FIFA World Cup finals, I have focussed on enjoying the process of observing it unfold each time.

It brings me in touch with a young India that grown up admiring high quality practitioners of sport and sports itself that is beamed into its drawing rooms. It brings me in touch with an India that thrives on the pure sporting entertainment offered in the FIFA World Cup finals. This time around, I can sense a number of girls will join the frenzy, even if the older women reconcile themselves to having to make their own plans outside of football. It also tells me, less enjoyably, I must add, about an India that is increasingly content to watch such spectacles and makes little effort to actually play sport.

I have also become aware of how India Inc increases its ad spends on the telecast of each edition of the FIFA World Cup finals. There is at least one market study which says that the official broadcaster in India, ESPN Star Sports, is expecting at least Rs 150 crore from ad revenue alone for this year’s World Cup finals. Besides, there will dozens of crores of rupees that Indian advertisers will spend in an effort to ride piggy back on the football frenzy that we are about to witness in the coming weeks.

Yes, the FIFA World Cup 2010 is nearly upon us. Be warned! And be ready for a blast. Of the sporting kind, that is. A blast that will hard to explain but great to cherish.

My heart flipped back a decade when, playing as a unit, they made it to the final of all four Grand Slams and won the French Open and Wimbledon crowns. I wished one more time they hadn’t broken their doubles partnership. My mind goes back to their gut-wrenching split a couple of years later and the mess they got themselves to around the 2006 Asian Games, leaving a whole nation clueless about their break up.

The realist in me, however, quickly came to terms with the fact that the two Indian legends were actually on the opposite halves of the draw at Roland Garros again. They have gone on to discover greater heights themselves because of the split; they found additional motivation to do well for themselves and may have become better men in the process.

Now, Leander and Mahesh need no certificate from me about their wonderful qualities. But I think it would be of help if share what I learnt about Leander Paes when I met him briefly some months ago in Mumbai as he got on board the Olympic Gold Quest foundation. He was talking to some journalists about how he found inspiration at home when he was growing up in Calcutta (as the wonderful eastern megapolis was still known).

“As a young boy growing up in Calcutta, I was inspired by blue jerseys that were stacked up in the cupboards at home. My mother’s jersey number was Five and my father’s Ten,” he said. The jerseys had been worn by his parents Jennifer who had played basketball for India and Vece Paes, a 1972 Olympic Games hockey medallist. “I wanted to try and emulate my father in winning a medal.”

I asked him to describe himself. He paused for a moment and said “In one word, multi-faceted. And in a sentence: As a student of life whose journey is to try and achieve excellence in everything he does.” He also went on to speak of how he sees sport an amazing vehicle to communicate with people, to bridge cultures, communities and languages.

I don’t think better words have been used to describe one of India’s most enduring and endearing champions in the past couple of decades.Indeed, they are wonderful examples for Indians to look up to, Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi. With Somdev Dev Varman coming along now, India can continue to hope that its presence in the world stage would be extended but until he features in more Grand Slam events and the ATP Tour consistently to be a top 100 player, one can only say: May Leander and Mahesh continue to age slowly.

India’s elite wrestlers have been pleading for an air-conditioned training hall at the Ch Devi Lal Northern Centre of the Sports Authority of India in Sonepat. All international competition is held in air-conditioned venues and it is not an unfair demand that has to be met. Similarly, the Rugby Sevens squad, which made it to the semifinals of the invitation event in Delhi last month, has been seeking a hike in diet allowance.

Rowing Federation of India President CP Singhdeo told me on Tuesday that Indian probables – and these include Asian champions – for the Asian Games to be held in Guangzhou in November are waiting for boats to arrive from overseas and are continuing to train in Hyderabad in boats that were imported seven years ago for the National Games. The case of the cyclists is worse: they are training with machines that were imported nine years ago.

Two factors bind each of these little big tales. First, all these athletes are hungry to do well and be among the medals at the Commonwealth Games and/or Asian Games this year. It is this spirit that we recognise and salute. The other thing that is common to these athletes – besides table tennis players, gymnasts and full bore shooters – is the inadequate support by the Sports Authority of India to India’s best sportspersons.

It is precisely this reason that forces our shooters to buy their ammunition from the National Rifle Association of India at a higher price than it imports. It led to the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence slapping a fine of Rs 8 crore on NRAI for selling arms, ammunition and targets, imported without customs duty, to its state units and shooters for profits. The moot question is: Why is the Sports Authority of India not giving the shooters all this?

For a long time now, I have been wondering why our shooters have to buy ammunition and targets from NRAI? The simple reason is: Because the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports (and its baby, Sports Authority of India) has failed to provide the shooters the required ammunition or even make them available at a subsidised price. It claims that it has liberalised import procedures, giving shooters import duty exemption on a maximum of 25,000 cartridges (costing Rs 17 each) but should it not be providing the cartridges to the shooters in the first place?

If it can ensure that the hockey team has got adequate hockey balls to train with, the track and field athletes have the right amount of equipment to train with, I can never understand why the shooters have to buy their own ammunition. I can understand then having to buy their own weapons but not the reusables. It is like telling national swimming campers to arrange for their own water to fill the swimming pool.

I believe it is imperative that the Sports Authority of India – and its parent, the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports — has to get its act right if India is to make an impression in the two most events in the calendar this year: the Commonwealth Games in Delhi and the Asian Games in Guangzhou. Its focus on training the elite athletes must be razor sharp and it must not allow any slippages to ensure that India’s best can be ready for the big competition without a hassle.

Of course, we could turn around and ask why the respective National Sports Federations are not providing their elite athletes the facilities and the equipment to prepare for the Commonwealth Games and the Asian Games. The answer is not far to seek: the federations do not have the wherewithal since the monies provided for the training of the elite athletes by the Union Budget are routed from the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports through the Sports Authority of India.

Until the Federations start raising their own funds to support the cream of their own sport, we will keep hearing such soul-stirring tales of our champions running from pillar to post to ensure that they have the right training conditions as they prepare to take on the best in the Commonwealth and in the continent. And that is what makes the Indian sportsperson’s pursuit of excellence such a daunting but beautiful task.

My focus is on the unadulterated joy caused by that genius answering to the name of V Anand whene he retained the World Chess Championship title with a fine victory over Veselin Topalov with black pieces in the 12th game in Sofia. For someone who endured a four day road trip to get to the match venue, he was simply the master.

I speak of the unbridled optimism when the Indian badminton men and women’s teams made it to the quarterfinals of the Thomas and Uber Cups in Kuala Lumpur. The fact that P Kashyap took a game off the legendary Taufiq Hidayat and that Saina Nehwal held her own in the face of the Korean onslaught on her team augured well for Indian badminton.

I speak of the hope that was sparked in our hearts that the hockey team had begun its arduous walk back to the top half of world rankings when it beat Australia in the Sultan Azlan Shah Cup tournament in Ipoh. It was a rare victory over a side from Down Under but that did not send me into a tizzy of ecstasy since the Australian squad was at best an experimental outfit.

Yet, there was a huge sense of disappointment that the Indian cricket team – which has the largest television viewership – caused by its inability to make it to the semifinals of the ICC World Twenty20 in the West Indies. For a side that was expected to be among the front-runners in the tournament, India stunned its followers with an early exit

A number of reasons have been put forth for India’s successive defeats to Australia, the West Indies and Sri Lanka. The biggest was the failure of the batsmen to come to grips with the challenge of playing on a bouncy track in Bridgetown against Australia and the West Indies or accelerate in the second half of its innings against Sri Lanka on a more comfortable pitch.

The selectors must take a large part of the blame for not giving the team management any choice as far as batting is concerned – Dinesh Karthik was the only one available and let us not forget he was on the squad mainly as a reserve wicket-keeper and not as a specialist batsman. It forced the team to play both Ravindra Jadeja and Yusuf Pathan as bits and pieces players.

It is not just with hindsight that I believe Piyush Chawla’s presence in the tour party was a luxury that the side could not afford. And then to have carried Vinay Kumar – and flown in Umesh Yadav as a replacement for the injured Praveen Kumar – without showing much faith in them suggested that the team management was not aligned with the thinking of the selectors,

Of course, the team erred in playing just two seam bowlers in Zaheer Khan and Ashish Nehra even on the bouncier tracks in Bridgetown. The ploy worked like magic against South Africa in the Beausejour Stadium at Gros Islet in St. Kitts. Mahendra Singh Dhoni challenged the South Africans with plenty of spin and reaped dividends.

Sadly, even after the defeat by Australia in the opening Group F game in Bridgetown, India persisted with the same plan instead of playing Vinay Kumar ahead of an extra spin bowling option. On a track that offered pace and bounce to the quicker bowler ready to bend his back, India did not have anyone with that quality.

But more than anything else, it was the much vaunted Indian batting line-up’s inability to cope with chin music in Bridgetown that let the team down. For all that, it is critical that we do not allow that one emotion called anger to surface. It is one thing to be disappointed with and critical of the batting performances but another thing to be angry with the side,

Perhaps the fact the matchless Anand won his fourth world title and gave the nation so much cheer about will temper some of the anger; may be the ‘revival’ of Indian hockey (and let me reiterate that I am not convinced that it is) will shift some of the negative focus from the Indian cricketers.  Yes, at least, some of us did not go berserk because some team won the Premiership.