Sports World - Tantalising Opinions

Karan Rastogi, India’s number three tennis player, is all set to make a comeback at an ATP Challenger tournament in New Delhi next month.

Rastogi, sidelined with a back injury during the ATP Mumbai Open in September, told the Indian Tennis blog that his back was better and he planned to play both the hardcourt challenger events in the Indian capital at the end of 2007.

The 21-year-old Mumbai resident, currently ranked 344 in the world, had won the Morocco F5 claycourt Futures in July this year.

News of Rastogi’s comeback should please fans of Indian tennis, which has seen many of its stars fall prey to injury this year.

Sania Mirza finished her season early while Prakash Amritraj, Harsh Mankad and Mahesh Bhupathi are also recovering from injuries. With Sunitha Rao withdrawing from two consecutive Challenger tournaments in the US this month, speculation about another injury scare were rife.

Rohan Bopanna and Leander Paes have also not played since the Stockholm Open and the BA-CA Tennis Trophy in Vienna earlier this month.

With the country’s top players taking a break from tennis courts, the India F10 Futures in Gulbarga got more than its share of attention.

But India’s second-string players, with the exception of world number 605 Sunil Kumar Sipaeya, failed to make it beyond the second round in the singles. Eighth seed Sipaeya lost to eventual champion Ivan Cerovic of Croatia in the quarter-finals.

There was better luck for India in the doubles with the second-seeded pair of Vijay Kannan and Kazakhstan’s Alexey Kedryuk beating Tushar Liberhan and Rupesh Roy 6-4,3-6,10-3 in the final of the $15,000+ hardcourt tournament.

Across the border, sixth seed Ashwin Vijayragavan justified his seeding by making it to the singles quarterfinals of the Islamabad Futures. Pairing up with Korean Jeong-Han, Vijayragavan lost to home crowd favourites Aqeel Khan and Asim Shafik in a closely fought doubles semifinal 6-2,4-6,9-11.

Other Indians had little success abroad. Mustafa Ghouse lost in the singles qualifiers of the ATP Seoul Challenger before he and Israel’s Dudi Sela bowed out in the opening round of the doubles event.

World number 728 Prerana Appineni also lost her opening singles and doubles encounters at the ITF tournament in Valencia, Venezuela. Down under in Traralgon (Australia), world number 359 Tara Iyer lost her singles opener and then forfeited her doubles quarterfinal match.

The action now shifts to the Pakistan F2 Futures grasscourt tournament in Lahore starting on Monday where a host of Indian players, led by Sipaeya, are in the fray.

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In a shocking decision taken by the 5 wise men, Indian ex-captain Rahul Dravid finds himself out of ODI series openers against Pakistan. He has been replaced by the erratic Sultan of Najafgarh. This series also marks a new era in Indian cricket team selection. For the first time since its inception the selection committee are going to rake in heavy moolah for their services. All this for ensuring accountability from the selection panel.

Dravid, the rock of Gibraltar of the middle order has seen his fortunes spiralling downwards from being the captain of the side to being a “drinks man” and now out of team. The last match of recently concluded Future Cup has marked only the second occasion of Dravid being left out of side since his debut. The selectors say that he has been “rested”, probably they don’t have courage to say that they have dropped Rahul. But this is unfair considering the past record of Dravid as an ODI batsman. He averages close to 40 in his last 15 games or so. The technically most correct batsman in the side and without whom we wouldn’t have won test matches and series abroad. There is something wrong within the board. There was shocking announcement by Dravid after England tour and decision to quit captaincy that took everyone by surprise. Then his body language in Australia series was questioned and he was not in his grooves as well. He was dropped for final ODI, challenger series and now for first two games against Pakistan.

You just cannot hope to regain form if you don’t spend time in the middle. But i will not be surprised if there is no hue or cry from the fans and media on this decision of the selection panel.

If Dravid was going to be dropped from the ODI then why wasn’t he given a chance in the ongoing Challenger Series like Sehwag, Kartik etc. Dravid as a cricketer had always been a true team man from opening in the tests to keeping in 2003 world cup. Dravid has always given the preference to team than himself. An underrated, low profile sportsman will hardly find any support from public as well. There will be no protests, no burning effigies, no rail block, no discussions in Parliament as was in the case of Ganguly and may be not even a prime time debate on any primary news channel.

The wall has finally collapsed and the way things are going on in Indian Cricket this might be the beginning of the end of Dravidian era.

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The big names of Indian tennis couldn’t weave much magic in tournaments this week, leaving little known players Stephen Amritraj and Ashutosh Singh to impress with breakthrough performances.

Amritraj, who grew up in the Californian city of Calabasas, partnered American Adam Davidson to reach the doubles semifinal at the ATP Calabasas Challenger.

The duo, who gained entry as lucky losers because of an injury default to Jan-Michael Gambill, stunned top seeds Bobby Reynolds and Rajeev Ram 6-3,6-4 in the opening round.

Amritraj, 23, and Davidson eventually lost 5-7,2-6 to fourth seeds Robert Kendrick(US) and Cecil Mamiit(PHI) in the semifinal.

Stephen, son of former tennis player Anand Amritraj, had partnered cousin Prakash to reach the semifinals of the Fergana Challenger earlier this year.

Back home in India, newly crowned National hard court champion Ashutosh Singh spearheaded the country’s challenge at the India F9 Futures in Bellary, Karnataka.

Singh’s splendid run in the singles event, which began with ousting top seed Pavol Cervenak of Slovakia 6-3,6-4 in the opening round, came to an end in the semifinals.

Singh, ranked 659 on the ATP list, lost to third seeded Austrian Rainer Eitzinger 4-6,3-6.

But he gained revenge by partnering Vivek Shokeen to beat Eitzinger and Philipp Oswald 7-6(4),3-6,10-5 in the doubles final.

Wildcard Rupesh Roy, who lost in the quarterfinals to Singh, also impressed with a second round win over Romania’s Adrian Gavrila.

Elsewhere in Europe, Sania Mirza lost in her Zurich Open opener before retiring for the season while Leander Paes and Martin Damm lost in the second round of the Madrid Masters doubles.

Sunitha Rao, who reached the finals at the ITF San Francisco Tennis Classic last week, withdrew from the ITF Lawrenceville Challenger at the last minute.

Down under in Gympie(Australia), Tara Iyer couldn’t do much against fourth seeded home favourite Monique Adamczak and lost 1-6,6-7(5) in the first round.

Partnering Nungnudda Wannasuk of Thailand, Iyer also lost to Adamczak and Briton Jade Curtis 7-6(2),6-7(3),5-10 in the doubles quarterfinal.

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Sania Mirza has returned to India after a string of first round defeats at European tournaments compounded by a strained abductor muscle.

India’s number one singles player pulled out of the WTA Generali Ladies Linz tournament starting next week and said she will not be playing any more in 2007.

“It has been a long and hard year for me, where I had to make repeated comebacks from two serious injuries and a surgery,” Mirza was quoted as saying by The Times of India.

“I am mentally tired and my body is crying out for a break. I’m looking forward to a rest and then a great season next year.”

Mirza, currently ranked 30 on the WTA list, had lost to lesser-ranked players in the opening rounds of the Kremlin Cup and the Zurich Open this month.

The 20-year-old ends the year with a 30-19 win-loss record on the WTA Tour having recently touched career best rankings in singles (27) and doubles (18).

Mirza reached the final of WTA Stanford in July and can boast of wins over the likes of Martina Hingis, Dinara Safina and Patty Schnyder in an injury-riddled season. A knee injury had kept her out of action in the first half of 2007 while a wrist injury forced Mirza to withdraw from Kolkata’s Sunfeast Open in September.

Her best Grand Slam result for the year was a third round spot at the US Open in August - eventually losing to good friend and nemesis Anna Chakvetadze.

Four doubles titles came her way this season with victories at Morocco (with Vania King), Cincinnati (with Bethanie Mattek), Stanford (with Shahar Peer) and New Haven (with Mara Santangelo). Mirza ended the year with a 32-11 record in doubles.

India’s performance at this year’s Hopman Cup mixed team challenge had earned Mirza and Rohan Bopanna direct entry into the 2008 edition in January but it remains unclear whether Mirza can recover in time for the event in Australia.

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If a random trawl of the blogosphere is any indication, Indian players travelling to Australia this winter should expect to cop more than a bit of heat in retaliation for the repeated barracking of Andrew Symonds by Indian crowds. Crowds at the fifth and seventh one-dayers in Vadodara and Mumbai taunted Symonds — Australia’s best performer by far and player of the series — with repeated cries and gestures seen as being racist by the Aussie players and media (Hindustan Times dated 19/10/07)

Racism is not a subject that crops up much in India — when it does, it is usually to comment on how Indians are its victims, rather than its perpetrators. So it is with bemusement that we see Indian cricket fans being accused of racist behaviour against the visiting Australian team, specifically against one of its star players, Andrew Symonds. He has been the victim of jeering and ridicule and on Wednesday, five fans were detained by the police for indulging in such shameful activities at the Mumbai match.
This said, is one sensing a sort of snobbish put-on among both the Indian spectator crowd and some of our players? And, one wonders whether this snobbishness has anything to do with our new found status as a fast growing Asian economy and the richest cricketing country in the world? Are we coming across occasionally as the new upstarts in the block?
Racial abuse is prevalent across the sporting world of Australia, including its cricket grounds, says the report titled ‘ What’s the Score? A survey of cultural diversity and racism in Australian sport’ that was released recently by Australia’s Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC). On Australian cricket, the report points to “racial sledging” of South African cricketers who “were referred to as kaffirs by a small section of spectators” at Perth in December 2005. It says that cricketers from Sri Lanka were “subjected to calls of ‘black c——’ at Adelaide, and adds that an ICC security official was punched by spectators in Melbourne.
But we should not worry about the Australians — we need to set our house in order. The BCCI, which rules Indian cricket, will have to now look at the issue seriously to conform to international regulations. Remember, we owe a lot to Cricket for giving us lots of moments of pleasure when we were not what we were, not very long ago, and it is our duty to see that we do not take the game into disrepute in the country or even internationally. Vadodra and Mumbai, apologize or give up your right to watch cricket on the ground; BCCI take action more for the love of the game than for love of money.

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