India National Thread

[tirtha22 238]

Tennis

 

Indian Davis Cupper Saketh Myneni moved to the second round of the US Open Qualifiers with a straight set victory over Albano Olivetti

[Prashanth 184]

2 minutes ago, tirtha22 said:

Tennis

 

Indian Davis Cupper Saketh Myneni moved to the second round of the US Open Qualifiers with a straight set victory over Albano Olivetti

 

He is Indian #1 player....

[Prashanth 184]

very sad to hear that India not sending a team for Jr World Wrestling Championships

[shrikant 3]

Saurav got defeated against Ramy ashour... former world no 1 and a great player.....

[Madhusudhan 12]

On 8/23/2016 at 20:13, Govind said:

Hi Team,

 

Can you please tell me is portal where we can know about Promising Young athletics in each Sport for India .. let Neeraj Chopra in Athletics, or Nikhat Zareen for Boxing etc .. just want to track them till next Olympics..

I also would like to track them... Rather than simply following them can't we do some thing more

[Madhusudhan 12]

13 hours ago, Steve_RP said:

That's utter nonsense...did the whole world conspire against Narsingh???

His complaint affidavit is full of contradictions ....somewhere is says his food was contaminated and a cook saw something being mixed..

2nd part of the affidavit says his drink was kept on the side of the mat and somebody spiked it...

Last time WFI said the saboteur was a junior wrestler...

now they say junior officials of SAI and NADA are involved

 

However, CAS on the other hand say that there is no concrete evidence to prove sabotage....

on the contrary, CAS appointed expert say that Nasingh willfully took the drugs orally in a tablet form

They are making fools out of us... Never ever seen President of sports federation supporting an athlete involved in doping scandal to this extent... 

[Govind 9]

2 hours ago, Prashanth said:

very sad to hear that India not sending a team for Jr World Wrestling Championships

 

bad idea..

[kapil857 31]

On 8/22/2016 at 11:48, Dolby said:

Continuing my assessment, next is Athletics. 

 

We qualified record number of athletes. Also, a large number of National records were broken in the process. But, somehow I don't feel excited about them. In fact, improvements shown by some is suspicious. AFI re-appointing a doping tainted coach for the women's 4x400 relay team also increases my fears. 

 

In the Olympics, except Lalita Babar, Manish Rawat, T Gopi and Kheta Ram nobody came even close to their Personal Bests. I know, that a large number of them had already pushed themselves to the limit to qualify for Olympics and hence, were not in peak form, so it should have been expected, but still it was sad to see. I expected more from Vikas Gowda and Seema Antil. They are experienced and had qualified fairly early, so they should have done better but now it is clear that they are past their prime. As for Tintu Luka, we need to accept that she is not going to come even close to the level that we had hoped for. She will hover around 2 minute mark. Occasionally drop below 2 minute mark and win medals but thats it. I think, she should give 400m a try. Maybe it will be a better fit. Our relay teams promised much but failed to deliver. After the result in 800m, there will be increased attention on hyperandrogenism and hence on Dutee Chand. I hope we support her no matter what the IAAF/CAS decide. We should not fail her like we failed Santhi and Pinky. 

 

Since 2014, AFI has followed a policy of not sending 'tourists' to Asian Games and CWG. But, it was interesting to see AFI not selecting Tintu in the initial relay team (they even tried to not select Nirmala and Anas in the team but were not allowed due to IAAF rules) even though she was always going to run the relay. Only reason for doing so is that they wanted to inflate the number of athletes qualified. This is nothing but hypocrisy. If sending 'tourists' to AG and CWG harms our image then let us not send 'tourists' to Olympics as well. If artificially inflating number of athletes is kosher for Olympics, why stop deserving athletes from going to AG and CWG. 

 

Also, AFI should seriously think about hiring an intern who can read a 2-3 page qualification document. Not knowing that athletes qualified for 400m HAVE to be selected for relay team is simply unprofessional. Also, they should have known that there are no wild cards in athletics. Still they wasted time in trying for a wild card for Neeraj Chopra. They even sent the useless media on a wild goose chase regarding that. Fans and Neeraj were given a false hope. They even made a fool of themselves by starting a Change.org petition asking for wild card for Neeraj. 

 

The way AFI is run is an indicator that having ex-sportspersons as head of National federations is not the "Raam-baan ilaaj" people think it is. 

 

For the future, in Neeraj we have a genuinely good athlete. It would be interesting to see how he progresses. Other promising youngsters in the recent past (Durgesh Pal and Navjeet Dhillon) didn't transition to the seniors easily. They are still young and improving so there is still hope. For Tokyo, I would be happy with a large team qualifying early and couple of finals. 

 

P.S. The way people are calling Lalita's incredible performance, best by an Indian athlete since PT Usha saddens me a lot. It shows that we have already forgotten Anju Bobby George, Vikas Gowda and Krishna Poonia's performances. Also, I rate JJ Sobha and Soma Biswas's performance at 2004 Olympics quite high. 

 

Great write-up but just a couple of counter-points. The diff between "tourists" at AG/CWG and Olympics is that to go to the Olympics, you have to qualify while to go to AG/CWG, there is no qualification process and India can send a certain number of max athletes to each and every event without any qualification crtieria. Thus, there is a logic to prevent "tourists" at AG/CWG but to just send all qualifiers to the Olympics. With that said, the relay team inflation by keeping Tintu/Nirmala/Anas out was plain ridiculous. Unfortunately it will continue till the authorities, the media and even the fans (even knowledgeable fans like some on this forum) keep caring about the size of the contingent as opposed to the quality of the contingent...

 

And as far as reading rules go, it will unfortunately never happen. It has been drained into the Indian psyche - both of authorities and the media - that rules are not final and meant to be broken (can speak on this based on personal experience of interacting with journalists on twitter as well as in Rio). Thus, doesn't matter if rules are clear, the authorities have to officially ask if they can be broken.

[kapil857 31]

On 8/22/2016 at 12:09, Dolby said:

In Boxing, there is not much to write. Only 3 boxers qualifying for Olympics was a big step back from London. Thapa had a nightmare draw, eventual gold medal winner in Round 1. We are without a National Federation for quite some time now. First step on the path to recovery would be having a federation. We were on the right track till London, so have hopes that if we get our house in order, situation will improve.

 

But, even if we do all the right things, there is no certainty that results will come. AIBA is a mafia. India was never on their radar and hence, our boxers could be discriminated against easily. Sarita's outcry at Asian Games would not have helped. It would also be interesting to see if AIBA has the balls to take on powerful Irish federation or they will simply ignore the way Conlan lambasted them. And if they do take action against them, I am expecting a strong reaction from Irish team. Hopefully, something positive would come out from it. 

 

I think Sarita and Mary would both retire now. I feel for Sarita. She had to move 2 weight classes to accommodate Mary at 52kg and got a horrible draw in 2012. She was robbed in Incheon. After that, she was never going to qualify for Olympics. She was too emotionally drained. Also, AIBA would never have allowed her to win or even qualify for Olympics after that.

 

For Tokyo, I have no hopes from Boxing. There are too many uncertainties. 

 

I think only way Boxing situation can improve is if India starts bidding to host AIBA events. It is making a deal with the devil but seeing that the devil is in charge, u can either make a deal with it or give up. Of course, with not even a federation in place at the moment, hosting AIBA events is way into the future...

[tirtha22 238]

13 hours ago, tirtha22 said:

Badminton

 

Recovering from a knee injury, P Kashyap has shifted his base to Bangalore for a couple of months to train under coach Tom John and get back to his best for the upcoming tournaments in Indonesia, Japan and Korea.

Dont know this is noteworthy or not but today it was pointed out by a sports daily questioning some mysterious reasons as to why players like Saina , Jwala and now Kashyap are leaving Gopi's academy and shifting their base.