India at Olympics 2012- Day 1

It was a disappointing beginning for India, once again in Olympics.
Do not know why, but this year I was expecting to listen some good news right from the beginning.
If not medals then at least 75% of Indian participants succeeding in their events.
But unfortunately that didn't happened.
If you look at the results:

- Sania-Rushmi bow out of Women's doubles event of Olympics
- Soniya Chanu finishes 7th in 48kg weightlifting
- Jwala Gutta-Ashwini Ponappa lose Olympic opener
- Shiva Thapa's Olympic debut ends with crushing first round defeat
- Vijay Kumar fails to qualify for 10m Air Pistol finals
- Paddler Ankita Das crashes out of London Olympics
- Vijay Kumar fails to qualify for 10m Air Pistol finals
- Men's archery team knocked out of Olympics
- Women's archery team stood 9th in the ranking race.
- Jwala-Diju pair loses opening group match

It is disappointing.

I expected Sania-Rushmi pair to at least cross 2 rounds if not win a medal.

Women's doubles and mixed doubles badminton results were big disappointments. Although they are not out of competition yet, the task is tougher ahead. I am surprised because few days back I read somewhere Jwala Gutta saying that she is prepared to play more than one game in a day (since she is participating in both Women's doubles and mixed doubles). She has always been doing this and it is not new to her. But now that she lost both her opening matches, she is blaming the organizing committee for mismanagement in scheduling the matches on same day.

I feel players better concentrate on their games rather than giving bites to media. Unlike Jwala, I haven't heard a single word from Saina ( a lot from Sania though who crashed out in first round). So, even if Saina looses, there won't be any talks behind her back. She played , she lost, story ends.

Another player I am wishing to concentrate on her games is Mary Kom. I don't know why at this moment she is giving all these statements in the media. We know you are a struggler, you have come long way fighting it out all the time and actually with no need to prove yourself. But please get back to the ring and concentrate on your game and shut the mouth of your critics with a medal.

One more disappointment was Men's archery team. Although they fought and lost a close game after tie, but we were expecting this to happen may be in the finals, not before that and surely not in the first round.

I had heard of Shiva Thapa in last few days and was looking forward for his fights but I guess inexperience took over the excitement. Well he has a long way to go and hopefully he will turn into another Vijender Singh in coming years.


While there were mostly disappointments, at least few Indians survived the first day.

- Vijender Singh beats Danabek Suzhanov in men's middleweight boxing
- Soumyajit Ghosh makes memorable Olympic debut
- Rower Swarn Singh 4th in singles sculls heats, to fight in repechage

Vijender Singh is one of our best bets in this season and I am looking forward to his game.
I haven't heard of Soumyajit Ghosh earlier, but now will watch out for him in coming days.
And I no idea what sculls heat and repechage means but I am wishing Rower Swarn Singh very best wishes to do well in the round of repechage.

On the other note, words are making rounds about a mystery woman in India's march past. I did not see the inauguration, but did saw the bite of India's troupe walking into the ground. Even I was surprised to see a woman in casual wear walking in front of Indian players. She neither looked like a player nor her casual wear made us accept her as  one of the managers. Now it is clear that she had nothing to do Indian squad. But I must admire the confidence with which she was walking in front all the crowd, everybody had to give up suspicion of her being an intruder at that instant.

- India clueless about mystery woman at march past

On bigger front, Phelps is fading out this season. Guy who won all the 8 golds in last season could not manage to come in top three in his first swim. Lets see how he performs in others.

- Lochte wins 400m medley, Phelps shut out


A new world record is set in rowing by guys from Newzealand beating the record of English guys

- New Zealand set world rowing record

And not to forget a doping test finding found the first culprit of the season.

- Hysen Pulaku becomes first doping cheat of London Olympics

All these news can be read in detail on Times of India

Olympics 2012, London

Olympics 2012 is beginning today. This time it is in London. I live not very far distance from the London, but in one of the European countries France. But I don't feel any excitement among people here for Olympics if compared to European Cup that took place just few days back. All the conversation that take place about Olympics goes around these statements:

A: I guess there are Olympics games some time around this month!
     Do you know when they are starting?
B: No idea, need to check on net. You got any hopes for medal for your country.

A: Yeah, possibly gold in ---, silver in --- and some bronze here and there.
     what about your country?
B: Some similar statement as A

And that's all. All the Olympic related conversation end somewhere close to this. Most of the time, they do not know any of their athletes names. All they say is, "There is a guy who runs very fast. He should win a medal or some such kind of stuff."

I started wondering, whether Europe has any active participation in Olympics or not?

I checked last Olympics medal tally. Well it is not very good, but it is not bad either. There are as good as 10 European countries in top 20 (including England and Russia). But compared to their performance people's interest in Olympics appears very less. I was more surprised over this attitude, because many of the other games (other than Football and Cricket) are quite prevalent among Europeans. They actively participate in different games and follow them religiously.




Compared to that, We Indians hardly play any game. If at all anybody play games, we mostly play Cricket and we totally follow Cricket religiously. The knowledge of other games is close to negligible among most of Indians.

In spite of this situation, we are very much enthusiastic about Olympics and Asian games. Though, these are the only times when we refresh our knowledge about latest lot of players in different games and this knowledge stays in our mind till the next Olympics or Asian games.
 I get my share of excitement about Olympics from Indian newspapers. There are lot of news with hopes of medals from different athletes, wrestlers, archers, shuttlers, boxers, shooters, which are followed by very strong (positive as well as negative) comments by readers.
 Then there are issues (Tennis chaos among pairing of players, injury of main hockey player) that hits the front page of the newspaper.

These things connects us to the Olympics excitement that we are used to over the years although we hardly won any medals in last many years.


This year appear to change the way the story is normally written. We are looking forward to win some good number of medals.

I will try to follow the achievements and disappointments of Indian players and make an update at regular intervals on this blog. Hopefully I succeed in what I am planning.












 Lets give all our best wishes to Indian players. Hope they succeed in their respective competitions.

Euro 2012: Finals

I am disappointed. Of all the Euro cup matches I followed, I found only Germany's team playing aggressive. I enjoyed watching their matches. And so, I came to conclusion that it has to be Germany winning Euro title.
 But one thing I overlooked was although they have very good attacking, their defence is poor. Infact, at many instance it happened that Germany don't have a single player to defend the attacks of the other team. That's the reason why only two of Greece's players managed to score a fantastic goal against Germany in quarter finals.

I had earlier watched Italy-England quarter final and I was convinced that Italy is no match to Germany. But considering the weaker defence of Germany in addition to exceptional game of Mario Balotelli, Italy managed to defeat Germany in Semi final.


It was kind of surprising for me. I am still trying to accept this unexpected result. On digging up deep, I came to know, this was not surprising for regulars. In Past, Germany has lost as many as 7 matches in crucial events like Euro Cup and in return has never won a single match against Italy. So, for regular Football match viewers this was not surprising but for people like me who rarely catch football fever, it was shocking.
Now that Germany is out of the contest, I do not have any team to support. Both the finalists, Spain and Italy play very defensive game as I understood in last many days and watching their matches was more of pain rather than fun. So I am not going to watch the final and just wish that Euro cup winner is not decided by penalty shoot out

Euro 2012

The football fever is on. This post is a bit late , but never mind. It took me some time to write the post because I was working on which team should I follow.
Now I have a German friend to who I should show some rivelery, I was choosing all the teams playing against Germany. First I chose Portugal which lost to Germany. But I must say, Portugal-Germany was one of the interesting matches to watch. It was so fast and going equally till Gomez scored a goal for Germany.
Once Germany entered quarter final, it was time for me to support Greece. And what a match that was. 4-2 in favor of Germany. I have never seen any team attacking so consistently. With in First half Germany had attacked Greece's goal some 23 times and were successful to convert one of these into a goal.
But the real fun started in the second half when out of nothing, just two players of Greece went on to make a goal. I was excited with a feeling that possibly today, Greece will make everybody surprise and I will get a chance to trouble my German friend. But this excitement existed for only 6 minutes when Germany scored 2nd goal and then 3rd and then 4th and kept no chance for Greece to catch up.

After following these matches, now I have no option but to accept that my favorite team in this season is Germany. I am really impressed by their game and hope that they finally win Euro cup. Out of all the teams playing in this tournament, Germany is way ahead and more entertaining than any other team. My second favorite is Portugal. Both the teams have an opportunity to make it to Final where they can once again clash against each other.
I found the games of Italy and Spain very boring. Its like nothing is happening on the ground. They make very attempts and try to convert them into goal. And they are fortunate to convert one of these into goal. After which they do nothing, except passing ball from one player to another.

My previous experience with  Football hasn't ben very good. I had not seen a single live field goal happening. All the matches I had seen before either ended in 0-0 goal score or they were decided  by  Penalty strokes, which I believe is a ridiculous way to decide the fate of a match.

But Germany changed that impression. This time I witnessed many field goals;

So, I am hoping for Germany to win the trophy.

P.S: Though this does not change my view that football is normally a boring and nasty and a dangerous and riot oriented (even this time there were racial attacks and unnecesary fan beatings)  game and should be avoided in all the circumstances

Zero Shadow Day

Two days back some of my friends put some photos and comments about "Zero Shadow day" on Facebook.
It was interesting to know about it.
Zero shadow means the moment when the Sun is exactly overhead. The shadow falls directly under you and there is not even slightest of angle to the shadow.
In pune this happened two days back on May 13. Depending on your cities latitude and longitude positions it occurs in different cities on different days.
Moreover this event is not rare, but actually take place twice in a year.
Once between December to June and the other one in the later part of the year.
First occurance is normally visible to most of the Indians but second occurance normally go unnoticed since its mostly rainy season during the time of this occurance.
A little attempt to know more about it put me to different query.
I started wondering if it happens only in India.
If you try to google "Zero Shadow Day" or "No shadow day" on google, all the links that would appear in the list comes from India only.I have been through 4-5 pages of google links and absolutely each one of these links are connected to India.
So, many questions come up.
1. Is my search biased?I understand that google produces results based on our previous search criteria keeping in its memory what kind of things we like to appear as the top most search. So, unknowingly if my Google search is biased then may be someone else need to crosscheck. But it is highly improbable. Even not a single hit for any other country based link is difficult to understand.
2. Is "Zero Shadow Day" not the real scieitific name for this event. Is it called by some other name? This needs to be verified. But if that would have been the case, some mention of the real scientific name would surely have appeared.
3. Does this happen only in India? I guess not. It can not be a regional phenomena.
4. Is it not an interesting event for the world that nobody cares to pen down some information about it accessible to everyone or Are only Indian too much enthusiastic about such planetary events.
5. Even Wikipedia has not page dedicated to "Zero Shadow Day" or "No Shadow Day".

For those who want to know more about "Zero Shadow day", I would like to direct you to this link:

http://skytonight.wordpress.com/2012/04/14/zero-shadow-day/

which very nicely present information related to ZSD with photographs and a video or shadow vanishing.

Satyamev Jayate

Its kind of obligatory for a blogger at the moment to write a post about "Satyamev Jayate" a TV series broadcast on Star Plus. I can not be an exception to that.

I believe there is only one reason why this series is creating ripples among the people. The name associated with it. "Aamir Khan".
Aamir Khan is known as a "Perfectionist". Whatever project he takes, he tries to make the best out of it. Many of his recent movies have also tried to deliver a social message which did reached the audience. May then it be Tare Zameen Par, Rang de Basanti or 3 idiots. I think "Satyamev Jayate" will be added to this list.

Till date 2 out of 13 proposed episodes of the series have been broadcasted. Aamir with his team has tried to highlight some major but hidden problems like female foeticide, child abuse. In coming episodes some more similar issues will be handled.

Its not that these problems have not been discussed earlier on TV or no discussion, talk show have been arranged before. I believe those attempts could not garner enough support or could creat awareness among people. There could be many reasons why this attempt is turning successful. First and foremost as mentioned earlier is the name associated with it, "Aamir Khan".
With Aamir Khan many things got automatically attached to this series.
The episodes show that a good level of research has been undertaken as a foundation of this series.
Aamir Khan is has taken care that it is promoted well across the country.
The presentation is quite methodical. A lot of thought has been put into arranging the segments of each episode. In one episode you are made well aware of the problem taking real life examples. A statistical study to make people realize the gravity of the issue. A slight touch of humor and subtle way that strucks the chord that will fill even a very strong man's eyes full of tears. The issues based song presented at the end of the episode make it sure that you spend atleast few minutes pondering over the problem and its severity.
One good thing I found about this program is it has a ability to make people vocal about issues. Everybody knows these problems but we hardly discuss them with our fellow friends and family except the case when it is your problem or it is a topic of discussion for a round of Group Discussion. I found many of my friends appreciating it and putting links to this series for their fellow friends on Facebook.
One thing I most liked about it, is it is immediately available to watch on Youtube. I don't know if this is a part of Broadcasting strategy by Star or Satyamev Jayate team,but it is welcoming approach. Because of this many people get an easy access to watch it and get connected to the series/problems. In today's time Internet is an integral part of reaching out to peeple and it will only add up in the success of the series and its cause.
One more good thing about this series is it not only points out the problem but also tries to suggest solutions with the help of example. The way Aamir Khan takes the responsibility to initiate the procedure to get the solution is worth mentioning. By going on record that he will write a letter to Rajasthan Chief Minister about Female Foeticide and later on following his word by personally going and meeting the CM has attracted lot of attention. Now it will insensitive on Rajasthan government's part  if they do not respond to his approach.

This series may not be able to fully tackle the problems it is discussing but even if it succeeds in curbing even one problem and creating better awareness among people about different problems around them, I would consider it as a big success.

IPL 2012

Its almost 2 weeks since IPL-5 begin.Apparently IPL is loosing its shine.

I haven't heard any body talking very positively about it.Also if recent news are to be believed, the TRP of the recent IPL edition is the lowest among all till date.
While pondering over all these facts my mind suggested some points that go in the favour of IPL.




Here are some of those:

The biggest benefit IPL has done is, it has given a platform to many new emerging players to come into limelight.

Because of this form of cricket many players like Watson, Shaun Marsh, Murali Vijay, Valthati, Saurabh Tiwari, Rahane from the recent IPL are known to people today. Some of them even went ahead to make a base in their respective National teams.
Before IPL, all players had to sweat out in Ranji, Devdhar trophy etc. But only a handful of those who at some point were able to get selected for the Indian team were able to attract some attention of people.But behind every one such player there were atleast 1000 other players who worked equally hard but could not make it to the final 11. They never got recognition of people and were easily forgotten over the time.
All those players were may be known in National level circuits, but how many of us really follow Ranji and Devdhar trophies?
I agree this form of cricket does not provide any great advantage to players.
But imagine a case of player who has devoted many years of his life, worked hard only on his cricket career and then at the end of the day, could not make it to the Indian National team. It is very difficult to give new  direction to his life if he can not make in the Indian squad.
IPL has given an opportunity to many such players to either:
Grab a seat in National team
or
Attract attention of the selection commeetee and come in the lime light
or
A small chance to earn some quick money and in the mean time realise that his cricket skills are not good enough to linger long in this field and so start looking for other options.

Before IPL, there used to be a bunch of selected players who were in lime light, be famous, earn good money and live a lavish life.

Now the size of this bunch has increased many a times in size and those who can not make it to this bunch realise it very soon and start looking for options at an early age.

 The other point that I liked about IPL is it has succeeded in breaking the boundaries of countries. I know, have and totally believe in national pride, but isn't it amazing that somewhere people are forgetting the boundaries of countries. 

Ofcourse for the reason of big and quick money, but still players today prefer to play in a unit made out of players of different countries rather than just playing with a bunch with same origin.It shows that humans don't require same origin to be able to live together. They can get well along with people of diverse background. May then it be money, country, language, colour.
Best example is of Harbhajan Singh and Andrew Symonds who at one point were close to enemies learned to live and play together as a team.
On one side it is disheartening to see  many good players  retiring from regular cricket only to remain fit for the shorter version of games but it is interesting to see players like Malinga, Bret Lee, Gayle, Bravo, Pollard, Samuels to play in IPL while there fellow countrymen are busy representing their respective countries.

I would say somewhere for some reason, some people people select world integrity over national integration.

Another interesting point is the opportunity IPL has given to some senior players to be able to play a little longer. Players like Gilchrist, Shane Warne, Ganguly, Dravid surely make it to list of favorites of many Cricket fans. IPL allowed these fans to enjoy the game of these cricket icons for few years.

Ofcourse it comes with sad part that some other interested senior players like Mcgrath, Vaas, Brian Lara, Laxman sometimes don't find any takers which feels like a disrespect towards such icons.

 One more thing that comes out of IPL is it has in a way shifted the center of cricket governing power to India. Earlier this power more or less appeared to be in the hands of England and Australia. But India has emerged as a new center of power with a big say in any decision. IPL has its own contribution in this shift of power. It has affected the international arena in many ways:
 Many players chose IPL over their National teams. They either took early retirement or restricted their participation to particular formats of the cricket. A big bunch of West Indies cricket players prefer to play IPL over the Cricket series representing their country.

England player Pieterson tries to point out how England is jealous of IPL and spreads negative publicity about it". 
Player like Ricky Ponting tries to suggest that there should be separate window for IPL in the World's Cricket Time Table. Newzeland  apparently learnt this at very early stage and so does not arrange any of their cricket series in this time allowing their players to freely participate in IPL.

I believe IPL has brought lots of new ideas with it. It has allowed new emerging players to make a mark. It has allowed old senior players to extend their career a bit. It has vanished the boundries between different countries and has brought all the players under one domain. I think that is the biggest success of IPL and thats why I look forward to more editions of IPL