A league apart

When I was visiting Mumbai recently, my friend Rakesh Joshi called me.

“I have to tell you about the revolution taking place in Indian sports!” he gushed over the phone.  We agreed to meet that evening for a drink.

When I reached the bar, Joshi was already there, a half-consumed mug of beer in front of him.

As soon as I sat down he said, “Do you know how the sports scene in India is transforming into something spectacular and mind-boggling at the same time?”

He hadn’t even asked me what I would like to drink! This told me how excited he was because otherwise this polite man would never have committed such a breach of etiquette. However, I was not excited and my etiquette was very much intact; so I calmly ordered a mug of beer for myself, waited for it to arrive, took a deep sip, wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and then spoke.

“No, I have no idea. Please tell me.”

“Simple concept,” he said, “Learning from the huge success of the IPL – the Indian Premier League – for cricket, Indians have launched similar leagues to promote other games.”

“But I thought the IPL was a success because cricket is popular,” I said.

“So did I! But we were wrong. It appears that cricket is popular because IPL is a success!”

I frowned and tried to concentrate. “I’m sorry, I don’t get that. What do you mean, cricket is popular because IPL is a success?”

“Not sure,” he said briskly. “It sounded nice, so I said it.But what I do mean to say is that by shortening the format of cricket, IPL has made cricket even more popular. And it’s doing the same to badminton and kabbadi and hockey!”

The problem with tennis in America

In my youth – that is, a few years ago – America was known for Big Business, Disneyland and Tennis. Having observed (with mild amusement) British aristocrats in white flannels and full-sleeved shirts moving sedately around the court and sipping tea afterwards, the Americans took up tennis with gusto and soon began to dominate it. In the eighties and nineties the US had so soundly established its supremacy over the game that it was difficult to find a non-American male player in the top 10. Today things are reversed: Sam Querrey, the highest-ranked American man, is at Number 20!

When I visited the United States two weeks ago, I came face-to-face with the problem with tennis in the country. I landed on the weekend of the Rome Masters 1000 tennis finals, a much-anticipated repeat of the phenomenal rivalry between Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, Obviously the first thing I did, even before ironing my shirts, was to check out the room television set.

“Wow, digital!” I said and began looking for Tennis, the only channel showing the match. After clicking through the hotel’s 43 channels three times, I rang the concierge.

“I can’t find the Tennis channel on television.”

“Which channel, Sir?” he asked.

“Tennis.”

“How do you spell it?”

After I helped him out, he checked while I waited.

“Sorry, Sir. We have many options: entertainment, sports, news, travel… we just don’t seem to have this particular channel.” His tone conveyed a hint of reproach at my unreasonable, exotic request. “Perhaps you’d like to watch the action-packed thriller Taken 2 available ‘on demand’?”

Man's quest for beauty

Man has always been besotted with beauty in his beau. But with the woman moving from kitchen to boardroom, the child becoming more mature – or cheeky – at a younger age and the inanimate object becoming sleeker and technologically advanced, it is only appropriate that man is no longer stuck to this hidebound, restricted notion of beauty. He now desires it for himself.

After writing about this phenomenon (in my usual incisive fashion) last fortnight, I met an old friend Sumit Chatterjee at his club. Chatterjee, careful about his appearance even in college, had become increasingly dapper and well-groomed over the years; therefore I was surprised to see his shaggy look today.

“What happened?” I asked. “Did you lose your razor? Are you waiting for an auspicious day to buy a new one?”

He looked annoyed as he softly ran his fingers around his stubble-bearing cheek and chin.

“I don’t use a razor any longer,” he said coldly. “I use a beard trimmer.”

“That’s not a beard!” I corrected him. “Grow it two more weeks; then call it a beard.”

“I have no intention of calling it a beard,” Chatterjee said. “It’s fashionable stubble. Have you typed ‘Brad Pitt images’ into Google?”

Grouse to Glee at the Olympics

In a previous column I had written about how the English are using the 2012 Olympics to practise their three favourite sports: complaining, expecting the worst and cursing the authorities. However, the Games proceeded smoothly, bookended by charming opening and closing ceremonies; security was competent; the weather held up by London standards (meaning no more than a few hours of rain each day); and commuters never found it easier to get to work. But most important, Great Britain won medals. And Britons have suddenly switched from “despondency to delight”, according to George Cohen of The New York Times. The Economist contrasts the pre-Olympics pessimism about “bungling bureaucracy; national humiliation (and) rain” changing to elation as “the country crescendoed, like a table of diners singing ‘happy birthday’ in a crowded restaurant”. And in the Financial Times, Lucy Kellaway writes that her earlier pessimism about the Olympics “was the biggest pile of hogwash I’ve ever written” and she wants to “retract every whiny, ill-judged, scaremongering word of it”.

I wondered about my English friend Henry Smith, the die-hard prophet of gloom, who had whinged to me two weeks ago about how the Olympics was making life miserable for the commuter (as “transport is in shambles: subway plans are an utter chaos and the bus services are in absolute disarray”), the small businessman (who could be “prosecuted and fined for using the word ‘Olympics’”) and the hapless construction job-seeker (because “construction jobs were taken up by Lithuanians, Romanians and Czechs”). I called him to find out if he was also singing a different tune.

“Hi Henry,” I said, “How were the Olympics?”

“Great! Superb!” he cried. “Couldn’t be better!” he added to drive the point home.

The Olympic English Grouse

I recently learnt that the three most popular sports in the United Kingdom are football, rugby and tennis.  My first feeling was resentment to see that cricket was missing. This is the country that introduced us to the game and watched us make it a national obsession. How would you feel if the person who introduced you to smoking and watched you climb to 20 cigarettes a day gave up the habit himself?

Then I read that these were the three most popular sports that Brits view, not play. For example, 46% watch football but only 10% play it. 18% watch tennis; only 3% play it. Resentment gave way to curiosity: what sports do Brits actually participate in?

A week later I found the answer in an article by Toby Melville in the New York Times. The top three sports that Brits participate in are: “complaining, expecting the worst and cursing the authorities”. When asked what they feel about the Olympics, Mr Melville reported that Brits “gave answers that included bitter laughter; the words ‘fiasco’, ‘disaster’ and ‘police state’; and detailed explanations of how they usually get to work, how that is no longer possible and how very unhappy that makes them.”

My English friend Henry Smith always whinges about the weather: I thought it was because it’s always raining or drizzling in London when I speak to him. But on reading Mr Melville’s article, I remembered meeting Henry once on a bright, sunny April day; the sky was clear, the air was crisp and cool and, even in the heart of the metropolis, we could hear the chirping of birds.

“Hi Henry!” I cried, “Glorious day, isn’t it?”

“It is sunny now, I suppose,” he admitted with a scowl, “but the forecast for tomorrow is thunderstorms in the afternoon. And this is after three rotten days of rain last week! On Tuesday, I was trying to…”

Squinting in the afternoon sun, he described the inconveniences caused by last week’s wet weather.

A Filmy Rescue of Cricket

I belong to a group of middle-aged, slightly-spherical Indian men that plays an enthusiastic and clumsy game of tennis every weekend. We were relaxing at the court-side after an energetic session a few weeks ago, when a fellow player announced in a voice reeking with smugness: “Sorry, Folks, I can’t play next week. I’m off to Australia to watch the game.”

“Wow!” I said, “When are you going to Melbourne?”

“The Melbourne game is over, ass. I’m going to Perth tomorrow for the third test in the four-test series.”

“There’s another game going on in Melbourne,” I said, “It’s called tennis. It’s the game we just finished playing. But of course it’s only a Grand Slam event, one of the four biggest tennis tournaments of the year. That’s nothing compared to an India-Australia cricket test.”

Sarcasm about the magnificence of cricket slides past a die-hard cricket enthusiast like ice cubes on a marble floor.

“Exactly!” he said, “Unfortunately I’ll only catch the last two days of the test.”

How to buy a tennis racquet

I found playing tennis much easier twenty years ago. If you’re thinking, “This fellow was likely in his twenties twenty years ago; he must’ve found everything – including walking and breathing – easier then,” you’re right. But it’s not just running and hitting the ball that I find more difficult – it’s coping with the advances in technology that have invaded the game.
 

Twenty years ago, I would buy a tennis racquet in ten minutes. The shopkeeper would show me a couple of Dunlop models (in wood); I’d choose one and tell him my grip size. Things are vastly different today. I recently went to a large sporting shop to buy a new tennis racquet. I found at least five major brands, each made of different material, with varying head sizes. They were also different in weight and how this weight was distributed. I had to not only examine light and heavy racquets but also light ones that were head-heavy and heavy ones that were head-light. The salesman, true to form, was not able to offer any help except to suggest that I research the internet.

So I returned home and did this. “Choosing a tennis racquet,” I typed into Google and pursued the first hit. According to tennis-warehouse.com, I needed to consider Head Size, Length, Weight and Balance, Frame Stiffness, String Pattern and Grip/Handle Systems. I didn’t know where to start. Even buying an aeroplane wouldn’t involve as many factors, I thought.