Mad about the game
Football-crazy Kolkatans are all set to cheer their favourite players and teams during the World Cup, reports Subhrangshu Gupta

A middle-aged man, carrying brushes and colours, is engrossed in painting images of his heroes — Ronaldo and Ronaldinho — on a street wall in the Ballygunge area of South Kolkata.

Suren Kar, a third-year student of Calcutta Art College, has been hired by the Ballygunge Sports Club for painting walls with images of famous soccer players who are participating in the World Cup beginning on June 9.

Kolkata is a riot of colour with its walls splashed with eye-catching graffiti and posters. Artists, amateur painters and die-hard football fans have come together to display their enthusiasm for the game in different hues.

People are out on streets sporting badges, caps and T-shirts of their favourite teams and players. City traders, of course, are doing brisk business selling soccer souvenirs of top teams like Brazil, Germany, England, Argentina, France and Italy. Brazil, however, remains the hot favourite of Kolkatans this time.

Sports lovers, who had been busy not long ago burning effigies of Greg Chappell and Rahul Dravid in protest against Sourav Ganguly’s exclusion from Team India, have now turned their attention to the likes of Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, Wayne Rooney, Zinedine Zidane, Michael Ballack, David Beckham, Miroslav Klose, Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard. The Indian team’s defeat in the one-day series against the West Indies has also considerably decreased the cricket craze.

The fact that India is not playing in the World Cup does not bother Kolkatans. Kolkata has always been a soccer-loving city, where the century-old Mohun Bagan Club once dared to take on a British football team with a band of barefoot players. The Indian players went on to defeat the foreign team — an event still remembered as a historic victory against British rule.

For days now the city’s offices, schools, colleges, clubs and market places have been abuzz with talk — ranging from serious discussions to frenzied chatter — about the World Cup, participating teams, past performances, celebrated players and potential winners. A number of clubs and sports associations have already sent a good number of footballers and coaches to Germany so that they gain valuable experience and train budding players in a better way on their return.

While many people would be heading for Germany to watch matches, for others — who would be glued to the small screen — the city is making elaborate arrangements. The state Sports Department has installed several giant TV screens at strategic points in the city to facilitate the public to watch the matches day and night. Various clubs and associations have also made arrangements for their members to watch the game on TV. Cable TV channels in the city are organising round-the-clock screening of the World Cup matches along with the comments of football experts.

Famous footballers like Sailen Manna (Mohun Bagan), P.K.Banerjee (East Bengal), Chuni Goswami (Mohun Bagan), Amal Dutt (Mohun Bagan) and Subhas Bhowmick (East Bengal) did not get an opportunity to participate in the World Cup, even though they played a number of international matches.

Brazilian footballer Jose Barretto Ramirez, who guided Mahindra United to their maiden title victory in the National Football League recently but has now decided to play for Mohun Bagan, has been sent by the Indian Football Association to Germany as an observer. 

Wake-up call
Abhijit Chatterjee

India’s embarrassing 1-4 defeat in the one-day series against the West Indies must have punctured the ego of not only the team led by Rahul Dravid but also coach Greg Chappell, whose big dream of preparing the team for next year’s World Cup has suffered a setback.

The biggest casualty of Chappell’s “look towards youth” game plan has been the miserable performance put up by the youngsters, most of whom are touring the West Indies for the first time. For far too long, senior cricketers like Sourav Ganguly, VVS Laxman (who time and again has said that his troublesome knee has healed fully) and Anil Kumble, perhaps the most combating spinner in world cricket, have not even found a mention whenever one-day teams have been selected since Chappell took charge.

Rookie players like Suresh Raina, Munaf Patel and Robin Uthappa have neither come up to the expectations of the coach (even if he is ominously quiet now after India’s battering) nor of their fans. Raina had done well against Pakistan in Pakistan and then against England at home but came a cropper when he got an opportunity to perform outside the subcontinent. Irfan Pathan might have been a very successful one-down batsman in the subcontinent but was all at sea on the faster pitches in the West Indies.

Age is not a major factor while playing competitive one-day cricket, as exhibited in no uncertain terms by Brian Lara, who at 37 led the team from the front and showed what a sharp cricketing mind he has. He also reposed his faith in youth, who were not at all overawed by the reputation of the Indian team.

After their series victory over India, the West Indies have won 10 of their last 11 games, including one against New Zealand and five against Zimbabwe. Their position in the ICC rankings might still be low, but the way they are progressing they still might have some more tricks up their sleeves in the World Cup.

Maybe the youngsters in the Indian team will learn from their mistakes when they return eight months later to the Caribbean for the World Cup. But is the risk worth taking? This is the question that has to be addressed not only by the coach but also by the selectors as the team is scheduled to play over 30 one-dayers between now and the World Cup.

If they decide to repose their faith in only the youngsters than they might be doing so at great risk because experience is something which cannot come overnight. And as a senior player said sometime ago it is alright for youngsters to come into the team but they too must be judged by the same yardstick as the seniors.

Unfortunately, that has not been done in a number of cases, especially in the case of deposed captain Ganguly. It is of no use saying that the youngsters perform better than the seniors — they have to stand up and deliver time after time.

One player whom India missed sorely right through the series was Sachin Tendulkar. His very presence galvanises the team to improve the level of their game. In the West Indies, the team had just the skipper to look up to. And once Rahul was out, the batting simply crumbled.

However, the team management and the coach must start thinking of an era beyond Sachin since the superstar is beset with a number of injury problems and there is a big question mark over his return to international cricket.

India’s biggest drawback in the five matches in the West Indies was the fielding. Too many catches were dropped and the opponents were gifted far to many easy runs. This only negates Chappell’s policy to keep seniors away from the team since he is of the view that the youngsters are better fielders. Laxman or Kumble might not be great fielders, but their cricketing sense is definitely sharper than those of the youngsters. 

IN THE NEWS
Saina-sation

It was Sania all the way in 2005. This year could belong to Saina. The 16-year-old badminton player has shot into the limelight with a victory in the four-star Philippines Open. Virtually overnight, she has become the new wonder girl of Indian sports.

Trained by former All-England champion Pullela Gopichand at the Sports Authority of Andhra Pradesh Badminton Academy, Saina upset seventh seed Malaysian Julia Xian Pei Wong to pull off a landmark victory.

She had caused the biggest upset of the tournament by defeating world No. 4 Xu Huaiwen of Germany in the quarter finals before beating Japanese rival Ai Goto in the semifinals.

Gopichand thinks she has a great future. “She is very fast and her reach is fine with good shot selection and execution. What she needs is fitness. We had hired an Indo- Anglian trainer John Thomas last year. That training is now fetching results,” he says.

Saina won the Czech Open title three years ago and was a member of the Indian team which bagged the silver medal at the Commonwealth Youth Games in Bendigo (Australia) two years ago. Recently, she helped India win the bronze medal in the mixed team event at the Melbourne Commonwealth Games, shocking 2002 Manchester games champion Li Li of Singapore and silver medallist Hallam Tracey of England in the process.

Saina might have lost in the Indonesian Open qualifiers earlier this week, but she still has two major tournaments to go — the Singapore Open (June 5-11) and Malaysian Open (June 13-18).

“She is our star player, under the scheme ‘Go for Gold’. We have identified her as a medal potential for the Asian Games and the Olympics,” said KCH Punnaiah Chowdary, Honorary Secretary, Andhra Pradesh Badminton Association.

Born into a family of badminton players, Saina took to the game like a duck to water. Her father Harvir Singh (scientist at the Directorate of Oil Seeds Research, Hyderabad) and Usha Rani were former state champions in Haryana. — Agencies

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