Abhinav Bindra just won India's first individual Gold medal in Olympic history!!!! This is absolutely unbelievable! This happened just a few minutes ago and thanks to the power of the internet, I was actually able to follow the scores in real time on the official website for the Olympic Games, as the event unfolded!
At around 9:00 PM in Los Angeles, I was on Rediff.com, following their live Olympic updates to see which Indian athletes were in action today. I was checking the Badminton schedule to see when Saina Nehwal would be playing Chen Wang of Hong Kong, when I read about Abhinav Bindra's qualification for the 10m Air Rifle final.
So, I checked the Olympics site to see when the Final for the event was to be held. When I saw the "Live Results" link next to the "Start List" for the Final, I realised that the event was happening at that moment! As I clicked on the live results, I saw Bindra's name in 2nd place and I thought he had won Silver! My heart jumped out but I quickly looked at the score sheet to understand how the competition works and if this was actually the final score. Just then, the page got automatically refreshed and Bindra's name was on the top of the list! I figured out that the contestants had made the first 7 of 10 shots up until that point and he was leading all contestants with 3 more shots to go!
I started studying the scores as the updates kept coming every 90 secs or so. I saw that our man had done very well to take the lead from the two other guys who performed better than him in the qualifying rounds, Henri Hakkinen from Finland and, local favorite, Qinan Zhu from China. In the 8th round, Bindra recorded his worst score of the final, a 10.0. Hakkinen remained in 2nd place but had closed the gap to just a tenth of a point. Zhu recorded a 10.6 and was closing in as well.
At this point, with just 2 more shots remaining, I realised that Bindra was well ahead of Alin George Moldoveanu who was in fourth place, and that Bronze was almost a guarantee....barring any unforeseen circumstances. I mean, he couldn't mess it up from here, could he!???
I waited desperately for the scores to get updated, and here I have to hand it to the Olympics website which is very easy to navigate and updates are posted almost instantly for all the events. Bindra posted his second worst score in round 9, a 10.2, and gave Hakkinen the chance to catch up and tie the scores. Since Hakkinen scored highest in the qualifying rounds, he took over 1st place from Bindra, even though, they had the same score. Zhu, in the meantime, closed the gap even further by scoring 10.6 in the 9th round, and was very much in striking distance to take Gold. I looked at the scores of all contestants and saw numbers ranging from 9.2 to 10.8 and thought that, Bindra could still finish out of the medal positions if he makes a bad final shot under pressure with a Gold medal opportunity on the line.
Shame on me for being so cynical......because, Bindra saved his absolube best for last! He scored 10.8 on his final shot and blew away Hakkinen who choked and posted a 9.7! Zhu posted 10.6 and passed Hakkinen for 2nd place but no one was touching Bindra who ran way with Gold!!!
I ran in to the bedroom to tell my wife what had just happened. We waited for the news to be officially posted on Rediff.com, just to make sure that we had understood things right. I furiously clicked on the refresh button to see if any headlines were updated on Rediff's home page. We waited for a few minutes and then....there it was. "Abhinav Bindra wins GOLD"!!!! What a moment!
Sunday, August 10, 2008
Saturday, July 26, 2008
The Third Heaviest Defeat Ever
Well, after a tiring day at work, I fell asleep at around 10 PM last night and by the time I woke up the 4th day of the 1st Test Match between India & Sri Lanka had ended. I decided to go to the loo and then brush my teeth before going to Cricinfo to check the score. (I live in the US, by the way, and I don't subscribe to Indian channels on DISH network). While I was doing my business in the bathroom, I was imagining ways in which India must have progressed towards saving the match. I dreamed of a Laxman hundred and a Kumble fifty in the 1st innings. I also hoped for 2-3 hours being lost due to rain. I figured that this would still not be enough to avoid the follow-on but that just meant that Sehwag would have the opportunity to score the first-ever triple-hundred on the fifth day of a Test Match......Yeah, I really thought that all this could happen.
As I was logging on to the net, it did occur to me that it was very possible that we could also have lost all 14 wickets and lost the match. But that was just a brief moment and I kicked that thought out of my head. Of course, as soon as I read the headline "Murali and Mendis Maul India", the ugly thought became a reality and I had to accept the bitter truth. The rain never came and all I got was a fifty from Laxman, with the entire team scoring less than half the 300 runs that I had hoped Sehwag would score. I have to say, this week hasn't been a good one for Indian sports and it has been quite an inauspicious start to this blog. I'm sure these two events are not related......right???
Well, I've never been one to press the panic button, but the performance of some of the stalwarts has been less than impressive in the past months. Kumble has been ineffective in the last few tests in the subcontinent and Dravid has scored just one hundred and four fifties in his last 29 innings going back to the series against England last year. Since the end of that tour, he resigned as test captain, was dropped from the one-day team and led the Bangalore Royal Challengers to 7th place out of 8 in the IPL as he was being humiliated in public by the idiot owner of the team (Vijay Mallya). I think it's safe to say that this past year has been a nightmare, professionally, for Dravid. The question is, can he bounce back to being The Wall again? Can he become the rock of the middle-order again?
After the annihilation at the hands of Sri Lanka in the 1st test, the likes of Dravid, Kumble, Harbhajan, Ganguly & Sehwag will have to dig really deep to come up with a fighting performance in the next Test. We have fought back from defeat before, as recently as the beginning of this year when Kumble's men won the Perth test after the devastating loss in Sydney. To have any chance at Galle, though, we'll have to figure out how to tackle the threat of Muralitharan and Mendis within the next few days. If these guys can't turn it around in the remaining two Tests, I think it's safe to say that changes will be made ahead of the next series. Funnily enough, I don't think Laxman will be on the chopping block this time around. It'll be Dravid, Ganguly and Harbhajan. Let's hope it doesn't come to that. But this time, even I have my doubts.
As I was logging on to the net, it did occur to me that it was very possible that we could also have lost all 14 wickets and lost the match. But that was just a brief moment and I kicked that thought out of my head. Of course, as soon as I read the headline "Murali and Mendis Maul India", the ugly thought became a reality and I had to accept the bitter truth. The rain never came and all I got was a fifty from Laxman, with the entire team scoring less than half the 300 runs that I had hoped Sehwag would score. I have to say, this week hasn't been a good one for Indian sports and it has been quite an inauspicious start to this blog. I'm sure these two events are not related......right???
Well, I've never been one to press the panic button, but the performance of some of the stalwarts has been less than impressive in the past months. Kumble has been ineffective in the last few tests in the subcontinent and Dravid has scored just one hundred and four fifties in his last 29 innings going back to the series against England last year. Since the end of that tour, he resigned as test captain, was dropped from the one-day team and led the Bangalore Royal Challengers to 7th place out of 8 in the IPL as he was being humiliated in public by the idiot owner of the team (Vijay Mallya). I think it's safe to say that this past year has been a nightmare, professionally, for Dravid. The question is, can he bounce back to being The Wall again? Can he become the rock of the middle-order again?
After the annihilation at the hands of Sri Lanka in the 1st test, the likes of Dravid, Kumble, Harbhajan, Ganguly & Sehwag will have to dig really deep to come up with a fighting performance in the next Test. We have fought back from defeat before, as recently as the beginning of this year when Kumble's men won the Perth test after the devastating loss in Sydney. To have any chance at Galle, though, we'll have to figure out how to tackle the threat of Muralitharan and Mendis within the next few days. If these guys can't turn it around in the remaining two Tests, I think it's safe to say that changes will be made ahead of the next series. Funnily enough, I don't think Laxman will be on the chopping block this time around. It'll be Dravid, Ganguly and Harbhajan. Let's hope it doesn't come to that. But this time, even I have my doubts.
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Introduction
Hi everyone,
Ever since I was a child, I have loved sports, whether I was playing or watching on TV. Growing up in India, my first passion was cricket......no surprises there. But, as I grew up and got the opportunity to follow several other sports, I realised that as much as I loved the India cricket team, above all, I would give my complete support to any person playing any sport as long as they were representing India. It didn't have to be Sachin Tendulkar or Rahul Dravid on the TV screen to draw my complete attention. It could just as well have been P. Gopichand playing Badminton or Jeev Milkha Singh playing golf or Sania Mirza playing tennis or....... I could go on and on.
Of course, this didn't mean that I had no interest in sporting events which had no Indian representation whatsoever. Heck, that would mean missing out on innumerable moments of outstanding endurance, skill, determination and glory. Take the 2008 Wimbledon Mens' Final between Roger Federer & Rafael Nadal. I wouldn't want to miss that for the world, and watching that epic was an amazing experience.....but, wouldn't it mean a million times more if an Indian was on the court in a heated battle for the title? The sad truth is that the list of sports with no Indian representation is very long. Thankfully, though, slowly but surely it's getting shorter and nothing excites me more than that.
When it comes to sports, there are a lot of things that I want to talk about. But I don't want to engage in deep conversations with myself either! If you have a passion for sport or if you just have an opinion about anything related to the wonderful world of sports, then I am all ears! I'd love to hear your thoughts. So, don't hold back! Let it rip! Let the fun begin!
Thanks!!
Ever since I was a child, I have loved sports, whether I was playing or watching on TV. Growing up in India, my first passion was cricket......no surprises there. But, as I grew up and got the opportunity to follow several other sports, I realised that as much as I loved the India cricket team, above all, I would give my complete support to any person playing any sport as long as they were representing India. It didn't have to be Sachin Tendulkar or Rahul Dravid on the TV screen to draw my complete attention. It could just as well have been P. Gopichand playing Badminton or Jeev Milkha Singh playing golf or Sania Mirza playing tennis or....... I could go on and on.
Of course, this didn't mean that I had no interest in sporting events which had no Indian representation whatsoever. Heck, that would mean missing out on innumerable moments of outstanding endurance, skill, determination and glory. Take the 2008 Wimbledon Mens' Final between Roger Federer & Rafael Nadal. I wouldn't want to miss that for the world, and watching that epic was an amazing experience.....but, wouldn't it mean a million times more if an Indian was on the court in a heated battle for the title? The sad truth is that the list of sports with no Indian representation is very long. Thankfully, though, slowly but surely it's getting shorter and nothing excites me more than that.
When it comes to sports, there are a lot of things that I want to talk about. But I don't want to engage in deep conversations with myself either! If you have a passion for sport or if you just have an opinion about anything related to the wonderful world of sports, then I am all ears! I'd love to hear your thoughts. So, don't hold back! Let it rip! Let the fun begin!
Thanks!!
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