Crank It Right Up

Pressure: Let’s shake on it, say Justin Langer (left) and Daniel Vettori

Justin Langer was a tough opening bat in the great Australian sides led by Steve Waugh and Ricky Ponting, his flintiness often overshadowing a deceptively efficient strokemaker. In a team filled with marquee names, he seldom got the credit he deserved.

Daniel Vettori has been New Zealand’s outstanding bowler for the past 15 years, notching up 681 wickets in all formats of the game. His batting, however, still has the ‘what if’ look of Ridley Scott’s ‘American Gangster’. All those beautiful shots… if only we could have had a little more depth. With a bit more application, Vettori would have a much better batting average than 30.10.

So. An Australian and a New Zealander.

Besides a healthy antipodean dislike for each other, they share another common ground: pressure brings the best out of them.

Langer averages 68.75 batting in the fourth innings of Test matches away from home. That’s almost 23 runs more than his career average. Vettori’s fourth innings average away from home is (for a bowling allrounder) a very impressive 38.50, almost 8 runs higher than his career average.

Batting in the fourth innings of a Test is, by common consent, one of the more difficult tasks in cricket. By the time the fourth innings rolls around, it’s usually at least Day Four of a 5-day Test match and the pitch has more cracks on it than a Bollywood actress’s face without makeup. The ball turns, keeps low, spits up, reverse swings. It’s a tough grind at the best of times. When playing away from home, it gets even harder. The reputations of many a fine career have been dismembered in these sessions.

I am a fourth-innings man. I work best when under the pump. When working against an imminent deadline, sat in front of the computer, I go into a pensive mood, cradling my chin on my right thumb, with the index finger pointing to the skies in a classic Godfather pose. My family knows better than to disturb.

In a more serious vein, man is said to be at his most creative when faced with daunting odds. Even renowned business schools follow this model. Students are divided into groups, given minor sums of money and asked to multiply it within a particular time-frame, say 2 or 3 hours. Delhi University students recently generated Rs 1.22 lakh from just Rs 7,500 within six hours on the streets of Delhi. It’s a way to challenge yourself.

These past few months, I did some of my best writing when applying for admission into Master’s programs in journalism. I got into some, could not accept their offers because they didn’t offer a scholarship, and didn’t get into others. Regardless of the results, the experience of writing Statements of Purpose has proved to be unexpectedly enriching. The very name — Statement of Purpose — had suggested a drab experience wherein I’d furnish platitudes about how elite the Master’s program at a particular institution was and how privileged I’d be to be admitted there.

But it was, instead, a wonderful voyage of self-discovery. For instance, I realised that my father has been the most influential person in my life. (Easy to say, hard to realise); that David Halberstam’s ‘Summer of 49’, which I once picked up for Rs 100 (about USD 2 then), was the most important sports book I’ve read; that ‘The Verdict’ is my favourite movie and that Economics can actually be a very interesting subject.

Writing SOPs (Statements of Purpose) has resulted in a strange phenomenon. Nowadays, when I place my hands on my laptop, the left ring finger hovers over the Ctrl key and the right index finger deftly rests on the Left Arrow. This is because I edit stories backwards i.e, I move from the period, back to the part that needs correction by using the Ctrl+Left Arrow combination.
Once I finish the correction, I go back to the start of the paragraph and run over the entire content, from right to left, using the Ctrl+Right Arrow combination. My hands have become so used to the rhythm of this process that sometimes my fingers look as if they’re involved in a sexual act with the keyboard. Such is the plight of aspiring writers.

Anyway, here are the final couple of articles that were published at http://www.ibnlive.in.com in April. I couldn’t update them as I was caught up in the application process.

a) Why Barcelona Must be Afraid

This was written just before the UEFA Champions League semifinal clash between Barcelona and Bayern Munich. Bayern had just steamrollered Juventus, the champions of Italy, in their quarterfinal meeting and I had said Barcelona better watch out for the Germans. Bayern duly gave a footballing masterclass to the Spaniards, winning the tie emphatically by an aggregate score of 7-0. They also went on to win the Champions League final against Borussia Dortmund.

http://ibnlive.in.com/blogs/arunpradeep/3389/64482/champions-league-why-barcelona-must-be-afraid.html

b) Bayern Flex Muscles, Real Just Glide
This covered the first leg of the quarterfinal clashes between Bayern and Juventus, and Real Madrid and Turkish side Galatasaray. Bayern were dominant even in the first leg and could have wrapped up qualification then and there. Juve were lucky to survive. Real strolled to an easy 3-0 win against Galatasaray, but would make life difficult for themselves in the second leg. They eventually went out in the semifinals, losing out to Jurgen Klopp’s underrated Borrussia Dortmund.

http://ibnlive.in.com/blogs/arunpradeep/3389/64458/champions-league-bayern-flex-muscles-real-just-glide.html

Milan Find the Tables Turned on Them

Thanks for an online course I once did on sports writing, I’ve cultivated the (extremely useful) habit of jotting down important moments during a football match. It goes like this:

4′ – Arsenal score! Great cross along ground frm right by Walcott, Giroud scores. Wenger doesn’t celebrate.

6′ – Kroos long range shot, saved.

10′ – Bayern corner. Gustavo goes close, but strike goes over. Too high?

And so on. But on Tuesday, March 12, when Barcelona hosted AC Milan during the second leg of their Round of 16 Champions League match, I could barely take my eyes off the screen to jot down the important passages of play. There were just too many of them. That first half performance, which yielded Barca 2 goals, has been called arguably their greatest display in recent years — and that’s saying a lot, considering they’ve played in Champions League finals, semifinals and innumerable El Classicos during this period.

All Milan had to do was score once and Barca would have needed four goals to ensure qualification to the quarterfinals. Four. (Milan had won the first leg 2-0.) But the lone goal never came, and I gotta say it’s an absolute privilege we’re getting to watch this glorious team at its peak. (They can still cut out on the diving, though.)

That first-half display reminded me of another extraordinary first-half, by Milan against Liverpool during the 2005 Champions League final. Paolo Maldini had scored — his first goal in I don’t know who many seasons — in the 3rd minute, and Hernan Crespo had picked up a brace before the half-time whistle. When the players trooped off at half-time, Ricky Kaka had run Liverpool absolutely ragged from the middle of the pitch. It was of this performance that the great Brian Glanville wrote, “Milan had a great first-half. A half, but what a half!”

Liverpool fought back to eventually win the final, but that first-half remains one of the best displays of Carlo Ancelotti’s great Milan side of the early and mid 2000s.

I wrote on the same theme, along with another of this week’s Round of 16 tie, for my piece on the IBN blog. The other match saw Arsenal beat Bayern Munich in their own backyard, with a performance that left you shaking your fists furiously at the television screen, wondering aloud where all this guts and gumption had gone during their first leg, which Arsenal had lost 1-3. Wenger’s boys (and they’re still boys) won 2-0 on the night, but were eliminated on aggregate. What a waste.

The link:

http://ibnlive.in.com/blogs/arunpradeep/3389/64413/champions-league-harsh-lessons-for-ac-milan-arsenal.html

Wenger: Not so clever, boy!

Im writing this on the night Tottenham have dispatched Internazionale 3-0 in the first leg of their Last 16 match up of the Europa League at White Hart Lane. Inter were so outclassed it was shocking. Spurs play a fluent, passing game with a lot of mobility in their shape but Inter looked like QPR on saline. It’ll take a historic performance in the second leg in Italy for Inter to qualify for the Quarters but I think that’s beyond this team on current form.

Anyway, four days before running the rule over Inter, Spurs dominated Arsenal in the North London Derby, winning 2-1 thanks to goals from Gareth Bale and Aaron Lennon.

They could have scored much more. Following which, of course, Arsene Wenger claimed that all Tottenham had done after gaining a 2-0 lead was “defend well”. Nice try but unbecoming of a club like Arsenal. It’s interesting, but it’s extraordinary how Arsenal seem to be harbouring the same delusions that Milan did for the past 4-5 seasons, vainly claiming the club was good enough to challenge for trophies when it was clearly regressing.

On March 6, I wrote a piece on the Arsenal capitulation, and what it could mean for their future. It’s come out well. One of the rare recent instances in which I was kinda “alright'” with what I wrote.

Here:

http://ibnlive.in.com/blogs/arunpradeep/3389/64373/epl-arsenal-in-freefall.html

The only glitch was that they failed to add the hyperlink I’d sent them to add in the 5th para. I mean it’s alright if people know Spurs are also known as ‘Lillywhites’ but the hyperlink was for those who didn’t. Anyway, I was promised it would be corrected, but it’s all helium so far.

Pick a Number.

Preparing for the GRE when you’ve been out of the loop for 10 years in mathematics is enough to make a grown man wince. At 27, I wince every day nowadays.

What on earth is the connection between journalism (the normal see stuff, observe stuff, reflect stuff, write stuff genre and not the astrophysics and gene mutation genre) and mathematics? Mathematics? As Thompson would ask, what in the name of crippled, half-mad jesus are they trying to pull?!

“That’s it,” I told my mom a couple of days ago. “Im not giving the GRE. What’s the connection between journalism and maths? It makes no sense”. I threw my mobile down and sat on the cot.

My mom is a chemistry major — no, wait — but she’s also my mom, so she understood. However, I’ve been banging my head against maths for a month now and she said I might as well give it a go.

So Im gonna give it a go, one-hard-spank-in-the-ass and that’s it.

In other news, here are two other articles I managed to push through for IBNlive.in.com. I had to blank it in one of the intervening weeks due to the ridiculous power outages in Tamil Nadu, thanks to dear old lady J. As Dame M would say, “you got a bloody cheek”. She can say that.

1) http://ibnlive.in.com/blogs/arunpradeep/3389/64098/serie-a-capricious-milan-roll-over-mighty-juve.html

That went up today, and it was a fantastic match. Milan had looked lost as recently as two weeks ago, but they’ve started showing encouraging signs since the 2-2 draw with Napoli on Nov 17. Ricardo Montolivo has finally been handed the opportunity to play for a big club and he’s come of age this season, emerging as one of the real leaders of a still-evolving Milan. El Sharaawy, who has 12 goals already this season, didn’t score against Juve but his energy seemed to translate to the entire team. I still can’t believe he had scored only 4 top-flight goals before the start of this season.

2)  http://ibnlive.in.com/blogs/arunpradeep/3389/64080/la-liga-atletico-madrid-gatecrash-realbarca-party.html

This was a tribute to Atletico’s brilliant start to the season, in which they trail Barcelona by just three points. Falcao’s certainly the headboy of this team but they also got some serious talent like Arda Turan, Raul Garcia and Diego Costa. Add to that a coach that doesn’t seem to have a price, they’re certainly on to something.

Outage and Outrage

Tamil Nadu, one of India’s most industrialized states, has been suffering power cuts of 16 to 18 hours a day lately. By ‘lately’, I mean the past couple of weeks. This is inexcusable, and a similar callous government in the West would have been sued by now. This is a State — with a population of over 70 million — that suffered no power outage between 1987 to 2007, save for the weekly shut-down that was enforced to carry out maintenance work. Adding to the outrage among citizens here, Chennai, the capital of Tamil Nadu, loses power only 2 hours a day. I mean, I know it’s the capital but this is grossly disproportionate and unfair. It’s even illegal, harming our fundamental rights. As things stand, the present government in Tamil Nadu is busy blaming the previous regime in the State and the Central government of India (we have a federal set up) for this almighty mess.

All of which makes watching a game of football, writing your blog or even taking a long, warm bath impossible. I can’t even watch Seinfeld. Yesterday, I read to my mom funny anecdotes from Reader’s Digest. It was fun, but the rate the power is failing on us I’ll run out of jokes soon. It’s a vicious thing wiling away your time cussing and bitching about your government. After a while, the rage and indignation fade away, replaced by resignation and negativity.

Anyway, I did manage to string along a couple of articles for IBNlive.in.com, and I have no idea how Im gonna turn in the one Im due tomorrow.  They’re killing Independent Arun!

1)The most recent article, on Nov 5:

http://ibnlive.in.com/blogs/arunpradeep/3389/64042/rudderless-arsenal-exposed-by-clinical-united.html

It wasn’t a dramatic game, but the fascination lay with Wayne Rooney’s tactical evolution. As I’ve said in the article, he was everywhere. If United keep up this momentum and rate of scoring (Ferguson has targeted 100 league goals this season after 29 in their first 11 matches), they’ll be very, very hard to stop.

2) The previous article on Oct 29:

http://ibnlive.in.com/blogs/arunpradeep/3389/64020/epl-david-moyes-brings-new-steel-to-everton.html

For the first time in many a meeting with their illustrious cross-town rivals, Everton looked confident and self-assured. The dramatic fall in quality in Liverpool’s line-up over the years also had something to do with it, but David Moyes would tell you it was more of a “mental thing”. Kevin Mirallas was outstanding on the left flank for Everton, and would surely have been Man of the Match had he not be injured just before half-time.

And Luis Suarez. What an utterly compelling whacko.

The guy’s still a cheating bastard, but seems to be one of those who’s at his best when goaded by the opposition.  He was brilliant against Everton. If only he could stop diving and winding people up — but you would’ve lost a matchwinner then.

I was with Two Italians, One Argentine, One Portuguese

Hey ya! Here’s the next batch of my blog posts on IBNlive.co.in.

1) I’ll start with the most recent post, and proceed backwards. It was published on Oct 23, focusing on Roberto Di Matteo, Chelsea’s Italian hotshot who guided the club to its maiden European Cup win last season and has inspired an unbeaten start to the new EPL season.

Link: http://ibnlive.in.com/blogs/arunpradeep/3389/64007/epl-an-unlikely-saviour-rejuvenates-chelsea.html

2) The previous  post was published on Oct 8. Due to club football being suspended during the international break for World Cup qualification, I had to give the blog the slip for a weekend ending Oct 13th.

The blog was on the eagerly expected El Clasico face-off between Barcelona and Real Madrid. In a memorable match, Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, the two totems of present-day football, scored twice each to claim a 2-2 draw.

http://ibnlive.in.com/blogs/arunpradeep/3389/63970/el-clasico-messi-and-ronaldo-bring-out-the-best-in-each-other.html

3) The final entry, published on Oct 2, was about Juventus’ unbeaten start to the Serie A season. The Turin giants have picked up where they left off last season, which they finished unbeaten, and are now three points clear at the top of the table with 8 games played.

http://ibnlive.in.com/blogs/arunpradeep/3389/63945/serie-a-unbeaten-juventus-aim-to-keep-flag-flying.html

 

I’ll add my next blog in a couple of days, as soon as it’s up and running! Thanks for reading 🙂

What I Wrote About When I Was Not Writing

And, we’re back — not that I ever stopped writing.

In the days leading up to my last post on this blog (‘The Power of Rajinikanth’), I wangled a deal, thanks to good friend Sattwik Biswal, to write for the website of CNN-IBN, one of India’s leading English news channels. I’d write on football and tennis, thanks to my record as a sports journalist and experience in covering both sports. I’d have loved to write on cricket too, considering I’ve covered international cricket tournaments, but in India it’s better to be a sportswriter willing to write on cricket and being turned down than the other way around, believe me. There are just too many writing on cricket in India.

Anyway, as luck would have it, Andy Roddick had announced he would retire from the sport when his 2012 US Open campaign came to an end. He lost in the fourth round to Juan Martin Del Potro in four sets,  and on Sept 7, I wrote a tribute on the IBN blog:

http://ibnlive.in.com/blogs/arunpradeep/3389/63877/andy-roddick-carried-usa-hopes-admirably.html

(They’ve got a fancy banner in the blog with my pic on it, and Im desperately searching for a better pic. Taking a presentable photo of yourself  on your own has to be up there with reviving Mel Gibson’s acting career.)

The piece had come out kind of alrighty, though I told myself later that it had a rushed feel to it and I could’ve done much better in a calmer state of mind.

The following two weeks saw me write on Italian and English Football, both of which impressed the editor.

A write-up on the tribulations of AC Milan this season (Sept 17):

http://ibnlive.in.com/blogs/arunpradeep/3389/63909/champions-league-ac-milan-in-battle-to-reclaim-lost-glory.html

My latest article, a piece on Arsenal’s unbeaten season to the English Premier League season (Sept 25):

http://ibnlive.in.com/blogs/arunpradeep/3389/63929/epl-arsenal-start-to-dream.html

Watching the Spanish League at Indian hours, with matches kicking off at 1 am and even later, is inhuman. But Im a night person and making notes while catching the matches means Im seldom passive, and by extension, bored. And the commentary is excellent — restrained and insightful.

The First Time I Saw Rahul Dravid

At Work: Dravid’s Committment To The Game Was Total

I was reading about Cheteshwar Pujara recently and the young man was insistent he’s not the next Rahul Dravid. No, he said. He’s a legend, I cannot replace him.

“It’s impossible to replace him”.

His words made me remember the first time I saw Rahul Dravid.

It was in 2008 and Dravid was in the midst of his worst batting slump after he had established himself in the Indian team. He averaged 30.96 for the calendar year — well short of his career average of 52.31 — and as I entered the M A Chidambaram Stadium on December 11, I had consoled myself that I’d probably not get to watch the master make a century.

I had arrived along with my colleagues ahead of the 9 am start and as we checked our tickets and shuffled across to our seats, my eyes rested on a giant out on the field.

With legs like tree trunks, his knees jutting out from beneath massive pads fastened to his shins, he was waving the willow in his hand like a badminton racket.

It was the first time I saw Andrew Flintoff.

He was in training, in the ‘nets’ prior to the toss. He didn’t connect every ball, but when he did, you could hear a shrill, hard crack.  When he walked across the green mat, it was as if a convoy had resumed after stopping to refuel.

Okay, I told myself.  This is the big league. It was the first Test match I watched in person. My annoyance with what I had considered the snobbish habit of using a capital T when writing about Test matches suddenly disappeared.

Soon, England won the toss and chose to bat. It was time for India to take the field.

A curious thing happens when Indian cricketers field in India. Whenever the ‘home boy’, i.e. the cricketer native to that particular region where the match is taking place takes a catch or even makes an interception, the crowd roars in approval. This is of course natural. But when the fielder in question happens to be Sachin Tendulkar, the location does not matter.

No matter where he plays, be it Chennai or Mumbai, Nagpur or Dharamsala, Sachin is always “Sa-chinnnnnnnn, Sa-chin!” to the crowds. Even his misfields are cheered. Today was no different.

Andrew Strauss, the England opener, clipped one off his legs and the ball came racing down to fine leg, where we were seated. And giving the ball chase was Sachin Tendulkar.

“Sa-chinnnnnnnn, Sa-chin!”.  “Sa-chinnnnnnnn, Sa-chin!”.

Tendulkar chased down the ball and lunged it back to M S Dhoni, who was doing the wicketkeeping. With Tendulkar at such close vicinity for the first time in the match, people at our end kept chanting his name and broke out in applause. We joined in the applause too, and didn’t let up till he made a quick half-turn on his way back and gave us a rapid wave before turning back again. A huge roar went up from our end.

As Tendulkar took his place in the slips beside Dravid, the roar was still going. It was now Dhoni’s turn to amp up the spectators. He turned around in our direction and raised his hands overhead in a clapping motion, again and again, till the volume from the stands increased a couple of notches.

Rahul Dravid is not the type to demand applause. Maybe Dhoni had done what he did to liven up the atmosphere, for Test matches are hard enough to play with the support of cheering spectators. A mute home crowd is worse than an empty stadium. But Dravid is not Dhoni. He has his own way of communicating with the public.

Play resumed. As if to check if he would be accorded the same kind of adulation given to two of his colleagues, Dravid slowly, shyly, turned his head just a crack to look over his shoulder in our direction.

Only the head, mind you, for his hands were still resting on his thighs. He had been standing in that slightly crouching position he usually adopted in the slips, intensely concentrating on where the next ball would travel. It had not come his way and it was then he turned, almost imperceptibly checking if anyone noticed him.

Not many did. Not many broke into an applause because Dravid immediately turned back to concentrate on the next ball. But I noticed him. And clapped in applause. It was the first time I saw Rahul Dravid.

Goodbye, Lance

Farewell: Armstrong Couldn’t Ride This One Out

Lance Armstrong said bye today. No farewell ride, no more Vollebak,  no more tight Texan jaw uncoiling into a grin as he crossed the finish line.  Lance Armstrong did something today I’ve never seen him do in his entire career.

He gave up.

He was hounded out of a sport he dominated like no other. I don’t know if Armstrong doped but I’d have liked to see him given a fair chance to defend himself. As it was, the USADA (United States Anti-Doping Agency) dredged up a probe that US federal prosecutors had shelved in Feb 2012 after a two-year investigation into alleged doping by Armstrong and his former teammates. The crux of the USADA’s argument was that many of Armstrong’s former teammates and associates had fingered him and so he must have doped.

He never failed a drug test, but has been persecuted by a vindictive and biased USADA driven by its hawk-like CEO Travis Tygart. ( A 1999 urine sample showed traces of corticosteroid in an amount that was not in the positive range. A medical certificate showed he used an approved cream for saddle sores which contained the substance*.)

After a US federal court had ruled against him on Aug 20 in a case challenging USADA’s jurisdiction to press doping charges against him, Armstrong had two choices: accept the sanctions imposed by the USADA or go for an arbitration, in which many of his former teammates could potentially have sang on him publicly.

“If I thought for one moment that by participating in USADA’s process, I could confront these allegations in a fair setting and – once and for all – put these charges to rest, I would jump at the chance,” Armstrong said in his statement today.

Armstrong alleges other riders have been offered “corrupt inducements” by USADA. Maybe, maybe not. But the real shame  is, we’ll never know the truth.

Is Armstrong’s cop out an admission of guilt?  If some of Travis Tygart’s former colleagues allege that he killed the Ethiopian Prime Minister, who died recently, but there is no real evidence to prove it, does it mean he really did it? If Tygart says he won’t contest a guilty verdict because the case was being handled by an agency bent on crucifying him, does it mean he’s afraid of the truth?

I don’t know if Armstrong doped. But I’d have liked to.

Notes:

*Source: Wikipedia, which quoted: http://velonews.competitor.com/2005/08/tour-de-france/lequipe-alleges-armstrong-samples-show-epo-use-in-99-tour_8740

India’s Olympics: Show Me The Money

Now We See You: It’s All Very Well Backslapping Yogeshwar Dutt But Do We Really Care Beyond That?

I was flipping through the TV channels and stopped when I saw two rowers racing neck and neck with another team in a fight to the finish. It turned out one of the teams was from India and I sat down right there, calling out to my mom and brother. As we watched in delight, Sandeep Kumar and Manjeet Singh first overtook, then surged away from their Egyptian competitors, ultimately finishing more than four seconds ahead.

Was it a gold or silver, my brother wanted to know. Aware of the notoriously difficult conditions our rowers conduct training in, I asked him to hold on. It could be a qualifier to enter the next round.

It was a qualifier all right, but a qualifier to decide who would finish last.

Our rowers finished 19th in the Men’s Lightweight Double Sculls in a field of 20 teams, handing the ignominy of last place instead to their Egyptian rivals.

It was crushingly disappointing to realise what we had been cheering them on for. However, it has to be said that rowing is among the fringe sports in India, where sports itself is on the fringes.

The Indian way of life is geared towards stability. We don’t like risks. Safety is as much a staple as salt in Indian households. We have a paranormal fear of losing. It’s as if every Indian has the words of Howard Hughes’ mother ringing in his ears: “You are not safe! You are not safe!”.

To realise what needs changing in the Indian mentality, lets fly west across the Arabian, Red and Mediterranean Seas and on to England. The legendary late English football manager, Brian Clough, had been operated upon for liver transplant and was recovering in the hospital. His doctor, a brilliant surgeon named Derek Manan, visited Clough to check up on his progress.

Clough was a livewire who could be relied upon to produce ingenious one-liners in almost any circumstance. “Hospitals are wonderful places when you need them,” he recalled later. “But you need to break the ice from time to time”.

Clough asked Manan what his hobby was. It turned out to be golf.

“Any good?” asked Clough.

“Not bad, I am off fifteen”.

“What’s your weakness?”

“My short game, chipping to the green”.

“Well,” Clough said, “I’ll tell you what you’re doing for a start”.

“You don’t know what I do. You’ve never seen me play golf,” the doctor said.

“Maybe not but I bet you’re never up. I bet you nearly always leave the ball short of the hole”.

Seeing the doctor smile, Clough asked if he could offer any advice. Sure, he said. “Never up, never in — that applies to a lot of things in life”.

The trouble with a majority of Indian households is a fear of what would happen to their child if he/she fails to make the cut as a sportsperson after compromising study.

A dominant number of Indian sportspersons take up sport as a career either because (i) they have no other choice or (ii) they can afford to fail and have an upper-middle-class (or better) family life to fall back on.

A majority of school and college-level athletes hail from rural backgrounds, managing to get an education by virtue of their exploits on the field. In my years as a sports correspondent and a student office-bearer in college, I’ve come across only a handful of athletes from the middle-class.

And no revolution can meaningfully start unless the middle-class takes it up. All roads in a consumer-oriented globalised world are starting to make inroads into middle-class India. Middle India is the swelling, soaring monolith whose spending power makes its cricketers figure among the world’s richest sportspersons despite the game’s span being stretched over eight to ten countries.

The argument of the middle-class is that there is no money in other sports as in cricket, and they’re right. World class athletes like Mary Kom and Gagan Narang should have at least half as much air space in advertisements as Virat Kohli and Gautam Gambhir. When success is measured by different yardsticks in different sports, it is natural parents and their wards are wary of making an unrewarding career choice.

But success, however hard it may seem, breeds success. Just look at what Michael Phelps has done for swimming. Or closer to home, what Vijender Singh and co. have done for boxing after their exploits in Beijing 2008.

While Vijender was the lone Indian among the 5-member all male contingent to make the semifinal back in 2008, this time around three Indians have an opportunity to make the last four stage, including the imperious Mary Kom.  In a team much stronger than the one that left for Beijing, Vikas Krishnan too made the quarters before being controversially knocked out following a successful appeal by the U.S. against him.

Moreover, letting children do what they want, what they are good at, will mean a much greater success rate of talent conversion and frankly, happier lives. Would a state-level athlete settle for a job in a bank if he has accommodating parents who encourage him or a corporate culture that is willing to back him? Children need heroes to look up to. Stability is a desirable quality in life, but there are no certainties in life, only probabilities. To dare is to live. To fear is to shrink.

“Never up, never in”.