Jai Bhagwan through to 2nd round in world boxing championships in Milan. Akhil's recurring hand injury means he loses. So now, the Beijing brigade minus Vijender has lost. Perhaps some lessons will be learnt, not sure if this has to do with moving among weight categories.
Hockey goalkeeper Baljit Singh, who is being treated in the USA for his injured eye, is progressing well and will go through another operation next week. According to a top official of the Sports Authority of India (SAI), the two operations conducted on Baljit went off successfully and he is recovering nicely. “The third operation will be done around September 8 as the doctors are trying to get back his normal eye pressure,” the SAI official said.
“Baljit’s retina has recovered and now he is able to differentiate between colours. This is a big improvement (from the time he left India),” the official added. The Sports Ministry is bearing all the expenses incurred on the goalkeeper’s treatment in the USA.
Mike Russel plays for Qatar nowEUROPE TOUR REVIEW: Learning Curve leaps up (9/3/2009)
Indian senior men team returned home after the “preparatory tour” of Europe. Statistically, India lost 3 out of 4 outings. So, was this tour really helpful for the men in blue? S2h team talked to some key members of the touring side. They feel the defeats conceded in the tour didn’t matter much. “Coach had already made it clear that the tour was meant for the preparations for the home World Cup & Commonwealth Games” says Prabhjot.
“See, our main purpose was to learn and we had a good experience. We used to train in the morning and play matches in the evening, and that too when all the teams were gearing up for the European Championship. And I feel we played good hockey. But for the Spain leg, all the matches were very close.” adds Arjun. And how much did they learn? Prabhjot tells, “Coach had a certain strategy for the team and we played according to that. We lost some matches, that’s not very important. The important thing is that this tour will help us improve for the future. Team is in learning stage. We are learning quite a few things and enjoying it.”
Arjun sounds no different. He says that it is coach’s job to take the decisions regarding the tours and their importance or about the training schedule etc while players’ job is to follow him. " I am happy the way we followed coaches' decisions". Prabhjot seems pretty happy with the new coach. He feels that the European teams have a unique style of play, and to meet that bar, we need a foreign coach. “He is training us in the right direction, and we are enjoying that” says Prabhjot.
Talking of different style of play, does team India face any difficulty while working with a Spanish coach? Prabhjot disagrees. “All the European teams are very different from us. Every team has a unique style of play and we want to learn as much as we can to compete with them.” After competing with them in the previous tour, how much did India team gain? “We learnt a lot. We had this bad reputation of conceding goals in the last minutes, we improved on that. Rather we drew some matches after being 2-0, 3-0 down” says Prabhjot.
“Human beings are always learners. Playing some top-notch teams in a totally different atmosphere was a great learning experience. There were so many youngsters in the squad and all of us utilised this opportunity of learning new techniques” adds Arjun. Now, after this learning tour, everyone is talking about the World Cup and the Commonwealth Games, which are scheduled for the coming year on our soil. Being hosts, India will be the talking point, especially after so much turmoil at the administrative level. So, will India be able to put an impressive show? Both Prabhjot and Arjun are confident about it. “With the new coach, we are trying to learn plenty of new things. We will try to implement those, try to make our country proud of us” says the optimistic Prabhjot.
“Of course”, says Arjun in excitement, “those are big events and they are happening in India. So playing in front of the home crowd will give us an extra edge and we are sure we will do our best” he wraps up. We hope the coach proves some points, this learning process pay some dividends.
, what happened to the British tight-assed, we will keep our chin aright, comment?! Is Mike gonna do a Shaheen and change his name to Mohammed R-us-sil, that would be even cooler , paging that purveyor of purveyors, Shri Johann garu...
I dont like the following, knowing the stuff Silvio Danailov & co puts out, but then this was always in the offing...Written by Geet Sethi:
Qatar’s Mike Russell, the reigning and nine-time World professional billiards champion and India’s Dhruv Sitwala reaffirmed their stamp of authority in the ongoing 2009 World Professional Billiards Championship with emphatic victories over Ian Williamson and Michael Kreuziger respectively. Russell’s 889-269 win was laced with a break of 545, the highest of the event so far whilst Sitwala’s 957-154 victory saw him construct a fine effort of 405 in their second league matches at the Northern Snooker Centre, here in Leeds.
In Group ‘D’, I won an easy encounter against England’s Robert Hall 1329-206 late on Wednesday night, whilst Pankaj Advani, the current IBSF World Billiards Champion scored a fluent 1169-159 win over Austria’s Kreuziger on Thursday morning. With Advani, Sitwala and myself all in Group ‘D’, the outcome of each match now becomes crucial in case of a three-way tie. The early loss to Sitwala has injected an overdose of adrenalin into my system. Needing to score heavy to keep my points difference as high as possible, I compiled breaks of 111, 217, 91, 95, 99, 80, 90 and an unfinished 210 to average 66.5 in my match against Hall.
More importantly, the win by over 1100 points provides a comforting thought in case of that three-way tie. Advani, also realising this, performed with relentless consistency against Kreuziger to win by over 1000 points with runs of 133, 240, 154, 92, and 69. Due credit must be given to B. Bhaskar, who arrived into Heathrow from India early on Wednesday morning, caught the train to Leeds from Kings Cross at 11 a.m. and reached the venue at 2 p.m. and then played his first match against Sourav Kothari at 7 p.m. All this because his visa was rejected the first time due to insufficient documentation and he had to reapply for the same.
Peak physical condition
Clearly Bhaskar’s peak physical condition (he jogs 5km every morning for the last 10 years) helped him overcome the strain of a 16-hour journey from Bangalore to Leeds as he scored an emphatic 779-333 victory over Kothari with a 155 in his fifth visit, an 80 on his 13th visit and a praiseworthy 330 on his fourteenth visit. There’s a lot one must learn from the manner in which Bhaskar brushed aside the hardships he faced and focussed only on his match. Kothari was inexplicably all at sea initially, scoring only 29 points in the opening eleven visits. However he redeemed himself with a 202, which came as an immediate response to the 330 by Bhaskar. Bhaskar has sealed his place in the quarterfinal with a 529-295 victory over Gary Rogers this morning.
Goodwill qualifies
Martin Goodwill is the other cueist from this group to qualify for the last-eight stage. Goodwill had defeated Kothari on Wednesday morning by 20 points and later in the night he scored a 654-171 win over Gary Rogers. In a decisive Group ‘A’ encounter, Rupesh Shah overcame a two-day bout of flu and fever and his opponent Devendra Joshi by a 485-309 margin to have virtually qualified from the group. However, Shah has still to defeat Ian Williamson which given the latter’s form, should be just a formality. David Causier, the swashbuckling cueist from England and Peter Gilchrist from Singapore have both progressed unhampered in their league matches and will play each other to decide the No.1 and no.2 of the group.
Bulgaria to bid for Anand-Topalov match
Bulgaria is set to make a whopping €3-million bid to host the 2010 World chess championship match between champion Viswanathan Anand and challenger Veselin Topalov. Bulgaria’s pride, World No. 1 Topalov and his manager Silvio Danailov met Prime Minister Boiko Borisov on Thursday to discuss the possibility of their country hosting the match. Minutes after the meeting, Danailov was quoted by noted website Chessdom as saying, “At the meeting, the Prime Minister has guaranteed €3 million for the organisation of the event. The official bid will be sent to the FIDE office by the Bulgarian Chess Federation (BCF).”
The break-up
The site also gave the break-up of the bid offered by Bulgaria: €2 million for prize-fund, €400,000 for FIDE taxes and €600,000 for organisational costs. Before the meeting, Danailov had expressed optimism over Bulgaria making a bid for the match, slated for April next year. “Being a host of such a match is an incredible opportunity for advertisement and PR of Bulgaria. Anand is the sportsperson of the century in India and very popular in all Asia. The matches for the World championship are sports, social, and political events. Hosting such a match can put Bulgaria ahead and will be very positive for tourism and other areas of the economy,” said Danailov.
Resounding success
It may be recalled that last year’s championship match between Anand and Russia’s Vladimir Kramnik was a resounding success. It was the most followed world title match in chess history. Current estimates suggest that each game of the Anand-Topalov match will be watched live by over five million internet users around the world. So far, neither the All India Chess Federation nor the Indian Government has shown any interest in hosting the multi-million dollar event.
Though FIDE is expecting bids from other countries, Bulgaria has surely emerged as the frontrunner to host the match. It is learnt that its Prime Minister has agreed to head the Organising Committee. The last date for accepting bids is September 30 and the FIDE is likely to disclose the name of the host latest by October 9.
" for luck often enough, only to switch off the tv after a while. 
