rest in peace.......

this piece was scribbled in 1988 in justifiable anger (mine). Those were the days of being at the mercy of Doordarshan.


twenty-fifth January ninteen eighty eight...

The sad demise of Indian sports. Indian sports which was ailing for quite some time, died a natural death on this day. Even as we bow our collective heads and try hard preventing our eyes from blurring, there is also a monstrous public sigh at something which should have had come to pass ages ago. The obituary to be written of that fateful day runs as follows.

Trivandrum. Final one-day match of the seven match series. Bald pitch (sign of old age). Srikanth, who should have been out first ball, goes on to score a career saving century, after which he promptly hangs his gloves. Commentators, those creatures with no knowledge of contemporary cricket and an abundance of memories of the past decade, (verbally indisputable because of low public memory) praise him as if his presence heralds the coming of the second messiah - cut.

The cameraman is in a dreamy cloud of inebriation, which explains why the camera zooms off to long leg while the ball is resting contentedly in the keeper's gloves. Again, showing a replay of a superb catch taken, whilst the one having done so is in a high state of euphoria, the catch having had been taken 10 seconds earlier - sob.

Siliguri. The land of football crazy people whose players are the cream of this land. Their opponents, the Bulgarians, are playing a football match while our not-so-young youngsters are watching. The Jawaharlal Nehru Cup For Communist Countires being played at Siliguri is a fitting cremation ground for the land of half-baked footballers - sad.

The alter ego for this highly regaling match is provided by the Door-dadkhan transmission which in a fit of nervious tension blanks out every time the players approach either D - sick.

Thus, the Jawaharlal Nehru Cup For Communist Countries and the Caribbean whitewash have provided an added impetus in hastening the sad but necessary demise of Indian sports, Amol Dutta's "chodna math" and Rajiv Gandhi's blah blah notwithstanding - amen.