Tuesday, January 31, 2006

The Sports Quarter

There are too many things happening in the Indian Sports arena over the last week. Here are some.

The Magazine

One of the Sports weekly of India, “The Sportstar” has changed its format recently. It would be in a Tabloid format from now on. What has to be watched out is how much the readers would welcome the Tabloid format after getting accustomed to the Glossy Magazine over the years. For more on this

The Sportstar

--------
Cricket

It was a Dream Spell by Pathan in the on going 3rd test match against Pakistan. A pace man could not ask for me, a wicket in the 4th, 5th and 6th ball of the first over of the test match. Hats off to Irfan Pathan for his Hat trick. He becomes the first cricketer to take 3 wickets in the first over of the Test Match. This one was simple awesome for any cricket lover except for the shocked Pakistani cricket fan. In spite of this brilliance the match is in favour of Pakistan as of now. One has to wait for couple of more days to know the end result.

--------
Tennis

Roger Federer lifted the Norman Brookes Challenge Cup. I mean won the Men Single’s Title in the Australian Open Tennis Championship. This is his 7th Grand Slam Title. This number 1 seeded tennis player has never been defeated in any Grand Slam Final. He is yet to win the French Open. Cheers on winning the Norman Brookes Challenge Cup, and good luck for the French Open, will he win it this time around?

Mahesh Bhupathi won the mixed doubles championship in the Australian Open along with Martina Hingis. Kudos to him. This becomes his 10th Grand Slam Double’s title. And incidentally this is his first Australian Grand Slam title. He joins the elite club of tennis stars who have won all the 4 Grand Slams. The Australian, French, Wimbledon, and the US Open. If this winning pair is going to play together for some time in the future then I guess Mahesh would break even more records in the doubles championship.

---------
Formula 1

Narain Karthikeyan the fastest Indian on wheels finally managed to be in the Formula 1 championship as a Test Driver. After the debut season with Jordan now known as Midland, in 2005, he had to move out of the Midland team for whatever reason mentioned in the media. Without a team, many thought he has to stay out of the Formula 1 circuit in 2006. But that was not reality; he managed to become the Second Test Driver for the Williams Team. Williams being a top team in the F1, the experts hope that it would be an amazing learning experience for Karthikeyan. We need to wait and watch whether he would be back as a race car driver in the F1 circuit in 2007. That’s a very long time from now.

--------
Chess

Anand won the Corus chess tourney. Apart from the highly satisfying victory, Anand had another reason to cheer as he will now cross the magical 2800 ELO barrier for the first time in his career. After Russians Garry Kasparov and Vladimir Kramnik and Topalov, Anand will be the fourth player in the history of the game to achieve this peak.

--------
Hockey

Before I wind up, an update about our National Game. Though it is our national game, this definitely takes a beating when it comes to Cricket in this country. To promote the national interests in the national game, the Indian hockey think tankers came out with a idea of the Premier Hockey League an annual event. Here is the official Premier Hockey League address on the World Wide Web.

Premier Hockey League

In this second year, the league couldn’t have been more interesting. The 2 out of 3 most favourite or strongest teams are out of the finals. The best of 3 finals is been played between the Bangalore Lions and Chandigarh Dynamos. The latter being the top team both by results as well on paper, surprisingly lost out to the Bangalore Lions yesterday in the first final. Will this be yet another David beat Goliath Story, have to watch out today’s and tomorrow’s game for it. Pledge your support for this game. You would not be alone, I have come across good souls who watch this game just to support it, so that it does not get completely crushed by Cricket.

2 comments:

Ajay said...

yeppppeeeeee!!!!!
nice collection buddy

Pal said...

thanks ajay.

---
Further updates, in hockey the Bangalore Lions are the 2006 Premier Hockey League Champions.

----
In cricket, Pathan's dream spell was the only good thing happened to India in the third test. Pakistan won the test match convincingly.