Beijing 2008

Beijing 2008 Olympics has been a success and every body would acknowledge this fact. It has also been best ever India's performance in any Olympics. Thanks to Abhinav Bindra, Sushil Kumar and Vijendar Kumar for winning a medal each. Just three medals to a country with a sixth of world population. On other way the result is three times better than last Olympics in Athens where India ended up with lone silver medal. But can India continue this momentum to London 2012 games (a big question), but should India manage to do it, simple mathematics say 3 x 3 = 9. Getting up from three medals to nine won't be easy and the present facilities and other factors would certainly ensure it remains an impossible task for Indian Atheletes.
Only Indian Hockey Team used to win Gold consistently, but with so much effort and facilities provided by Indian Govt. and IHF all hockey team has managed is to remain out of Olympics. It is shame that National sports has degraded so much that Indian Team cannot even qualify for the Games, even if they some how managed to do it, I am sure they would have finished well below sixth position. One of the commentators said "In peak of Indian Hockey Team, it took 8 Olympics to get 8 gold for India whereas Michael Phelps got it in just 1 Olympics". This was said in appreciation of phenomenal performance by Phelps but it also reflected sorry state of Indian sports.
If India wants to increase any chances to win more medal in future Olympics there must be drastic changes made NOW.
Facilities --> Most sports require good facilities and every one is aware of it. Yet we don't have appropriate facilities set up. Goodness Gracious that Abhinav comes from a well to do family where he managed to have personal shooting range. Well how many people can have it in India ? Last year there was some badminton camp somewhere in Maharastra (Pune) and there were no shuttles. Boy o boy how can badminton players play badminton and how can such camp help players. After Sushil Kumar won bronze, media got crazy as usual, and showed place where he used to stay, 20 people in a room, 2 per bed. What exactly is this ? Is this place a jail, even jails may be less crowded. Shame Indian atheletes are treated worse than criminals. Criminals can end up with leisurely items in jail with cooler, TV , cell phones ant what not. You name it you will get it. Why would people think of becoming atheletes ? No one wants to end up into conditions worse than prison.
Politics --> Every one would agree there is no connection between politics and sports. Yet it is politics that is killing sports. Most sports federation has a politician placed as chairman / president ... Archery, football etc. It is definitely not clear why these politicians are at top of sports federations. Probably to fill their pockets with Govt. allotted monetary aid to sports, have control over who gets selected who doesn't and also get chance to travel abroad when Indian players make international appearances. Take case of Monika Devi, Indian weight lifter may have won a medal. But it sure was politics to declare her positive in dope test day before she was to leave and later declare her dope test was negative. Although, so called investigations are going on, actual truth would never come up. In India no investigating agency can be replied upon, as they tend to cover up things when there is pressure from politically powerful people.
Media --> Media now-a-days ends up putting too much pressure at players. When Saina Nehwal, Akhil Kumar, Jitendar and Vijendar reached quarter finals, media finally had some thing to cover so they dived into it. With flooding of TV news channels and no channel sparing their chance to talk with them / their family, Indian atheletes finally must have started feeling pressure. Pressure of 1.1 billion people which they are not used to handle, even cricket team which is exposed to this pressure frequently can't handle it. For individual players facing this pressure for first time is good enough to lose focus.
There are surely many more things to change before India may have better medals per million people ratio. It has been 0.0027 up from 0.001 from last games, still lowest in the world.

10 .. 9 .. 8 .. 7

COUNTDOWN .....
First thing that comes to my mind after hearing "COUNTDOWN" is a countdown before a space shuttle launch. 10 .. 9 .. 8 .... so on ....
Well, IPL might not be worth less than a space shuttle (sp. in INDIA) with the amount of money involved. With only 10 days to go, its perfect time to begin countdown from 10.

But it is indeed disappointing that websites have been banned from covering IPL matches. With no live scores, people may not be able to track when in work by just pressing Alt-Tab.

Hopefully, it would live up to the excitement. whether it is hype or not, only time will tell. After watching 2nd ICL final, one can really expect similar interesting games in IPL.