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Friday, August 27, 2004

Another day in paradise ..

Quoting one of U2's songs ( Phil Collins actually .. my bad :p ) ... can't help it ...
Its just one of those days ...

The past few days had been quite upside down ... College going on as usual ...
Had a test today ... didn't study much for it though ... wrote lots of crap ... ended up with a big smile on my face ...

The sun's finally out nowadays and I kinda miss the rains ...
Got a couple of things to comment about ...

The Olympics are almost over ... and I must say, it was one of the most interesting ones to watch ...
Other than the fact that the media hyped it up so much, I got to catch quite a bit of the action and it was a lot of fun ...
Especially the silver at the rifle shooting event ... :)

The Indian Hockey team, however, sucked big time ...
I managed to catch almost all their games, and it was really sad ...
Believe me, you can consider yourself lucky to have missed the games ...

Except the one against South Africa, everything else sucked ...
I mean, the quality expected at THAT level was not there ...
According to me, except Dhanraj Pillai, Dilip Tirkey and Gagan Ajit Singh to some extent, the remaining people played school level hockey ...
The two sardars in the team ( don't know their names ) who I bet must have gotten in due that Gill, sucked big time ...
Imagine not being able to trap the ball ...
Thats like we playing basketball and not being able to catch the passes ... Like playing cricket and fumbling big time everytime the ball came to you ...
It was pathetic :(
None of the goals scored were due to any teamwork or individual brilliance ... all were plain fluke ...

Saw the women's finals yesterday ... Germany vs Netherlands ... ( thats how I study for the test )
Apart from the fact that it was a women's game and that they were all good to look at :p, the game was brilliant ...
Hockey was never that fun to watch ...
Their co-ordination was top notch ... passes were near perfect, defence great and was generally a treat for the eyes ...
Germany won an upset game ... 2 - 1 ... after having lost 4 - 1 to Netherlands just a few days ago ...
It was not Netherlands' day ... they must have had ball posession for 75% of the game and must have had ten times the shots on goal that Germany had ... but when its not your day, nothing goes ...
However, it was good fun, and I can bet on it that either of the teams could have taken up the Indian Men's team and thrashed them royally ...
This is the sad state of sport in our country ( well, except cricket ... but that too only a handful of nations play anyways )

The other new thing with me is ... well ... my mom bought me a bean bag :D
I have always wanted one ... Though my dad ain't to happy about it, I love it :)
Have kept it in front of the TV ... and will watch all the movies sitting in the ultimate comfort ...

7 comments:

Hawkeye said...

hey saurabh,

catching your blog regularly now. reminds me of my own college days :-) especially the "backstabbing" blog. had a few of those in my college too. its a nice place to start learning about the world.. this college :-) tell me if nithin doesnt support your mass bunk plans. i'll beat nithin up :-).

btw .."another day in paradise" is by phil collins :-)

Saurabh said...

yeah ... my bad ...
Should check my facts from now on :p

Anyways, as for Nithin, he doesn't need any coaxing at all ... so he can live a bit longer ... I think ...

Anonymous said...

i dont want to start a huge discussion about our performance in Olympics, coz our media is enough for that , but want to remind u of some not-so-hyped achivements by our players.
FOA, was JJ shobha , who in her Hepthathlon event , ran 800M, even when her leg was injured coz of a previous event . It was a gr8 effort , and she managed to come 3rd in that race.

Second was the Tennis Men Doubles, and leander-paes though dissappointed us,gave their best performance as a team ever .

I think more than looking at the medals that our players can bring, we should see the efforts and determination of our players that is increasing , as compared to what they had in the previous Olympics .

Saurabh said...

I agree with you that this time's Olympic performance has been one of the best ...

My only argument here was the Hockey team's performance ...
The media hype and the amount of dreaming that the team management and Gill were doing before the start of the tournament, I had a certain picture of the Indian Hockey Team ... some standard ...
But after seeing all of their matches, I have lost all faith in them ...

They should consider themselves lucky to even have finished at the 7th position ... they should have finished a lot lower ...

And also, as they weren't in the top 6, they won't qualify for the Champion's trophy...

Hawkeye said...

the critisism should actually be directed at India in general and IOC (kalamdi's clown show) in specific.

The critisism should not be directed at the athletes or participants. They should be appreciated for coming this far inspite of being in india and inspite of having IOC. its thier own effort.. they are doing a service by dedicating the medal to india because frankly our country does not deserve anything.

given the amount of money we have ( no we arent a poor country) and given the amount of intellectualls we possess we should have implemeneted a system 30 years b4 that wud now be giving us gold medals. that we have not done so is because of our corrupt mentality. i will hate india and IOC forever because of this reason!

Saurabh said...

I completely agree with Bharath ...
Hadn't looked at it from that angle as yet ...

There is rampant politics in Indian Sports and I have seen it first hand ...
Have been selected to about 4 basketball state selection trials ... and it is really pathetic ...

At one time, three girls from Bombay got into the state team ... and they could not even catch the ball ( literally ) just because one was some minister's niece and the other two had people in the selection committee.

From my school itself, this guy ( two years junior to me ) made it to the Under 14 state team because his dad had a little chat with the Selection Committee president and agreed to get his company ( Uncle Chips ... he was at a high post or something ) to sponsor the team ...

My other team mates, who were really very good got left out and imagine the dejection ...
Who will want to try again ?

The entire system needs to be flushed out from the grass root level itself ...

This is for Basketball ... which is not that widely played in India ... imagine the state of Cricketing Affairs !

jomy said...

this is nothing.....
imagine the corruption involved in cricket...
So little that has been brought out...imagine all the stuff that has been hushed up......stuff that we 're not even aware of...and somehow the lucky ones always get into the team.....

Not forgetting the deserving ones like dravid and sachin ...
and somehow in india, politics is got into everything...the moment that stops , i think everything will turn out to be fine...