Reflections

Kick out sports' bodies!
Well, we have done it again! Lost in soccer to a club team from Brazil, three games to
nil. Lost the Indira Gandhi Memorial Gold Cup Hockey – placed third, beating lowly
Kenya. And, we are at the bottom of the table in Nehru Soccer, now being played in
Goa.
And if we get a thrashing against the West Indies, we should be able to take the
humiliation in our stride, for we will be playing against the kings of cricket, who have
thrashed everyone else in the world. So meagre are our consolations.
Understandably, sports' persons will feel dejected, sports' lovers despondent, sports'
critics will bitch as usual and there may be muffled noises in parliament too. But, do
we really care for sports?
In Delhi, when we built the stadium for the Asiads, we named it after Jawaharlal
Nehru. There, we also have an Ambedkar stadium and a Shivaji stadium. In Madras,
we have a Chidambaram stadium, in Bangalore, a Chinnaswami stadium, in Bombay,
a Wankhede stadium and in Hyderabad, a Lal Bahadur Shastri stadium. Not one
stadium is named after a sports' person.
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