While the trolls wasted no time in criticizing the media for their over-accentuation upon Atal Vihari Vajpayee’s demise at 93 years of age over the hundreds of people who were either dead or struggling to survive in the relentless Kerala floods, the sporting community showed quick thinking and altruism to collect fund for them. Among the notable few were Indian Premier League franchise Chennai Super Kings and Indian chess ace Viswanathan Anand. While CSK posted the bank account number of Chief Minister's Distress Relief Fund asking its supporters to pitch in, Anand provided a helpline number of Bhoomika Trust urging people to donate. Football clubs like Bengaluru FC and more importantly Premier League giants Liverpool FC have responded to the requests put by their Indian supporters group, which reflects a brilliant gesture on their part.

On the playing front, Indian chess had a glorious week at their disposal as Vaishali Praggnanandhaa and Nihal Sarin became the latest Grandmasters. The week was initiated by 17-year-old Vaishali, sister of the world's second-youngest Grandmaster R Praggnanandhaa, who is also India's highest-ranked woman chess player under the age of 18 and 17th overall in her age category. She was followed by the brilliant revelation of Sarin, as the 14-year-old drew against Uzbekistan’s Temur Kuybokarov in Abu Dhabi Masters chess’ eighth round to become India’s 53rd Grandmaster. While Anand finishing a disappointing loss at the St Louis Rapid and blitz was poor news, the future of Indian chess looks radiant.

The prospect of India winning medals in the ongoing Asian Games tennis is already slim and tennis legend Leander Paes further exaggerated it by announcing his withdrawal from the tournament at the eleventh hour. However, he can hardly be blamed for the decision. In his statement justifying his move, Paes clarified that the two options – Ramkumar Ramanathan and Sumit Nagal - were not feasible to give competitions in the doubles category. While Ramanathan has turned heads with his displays in the singles category, playing doubles will at best be a distraction. His other option of Nagal, who has been going through a lean patch at the moment, wasn’t an option as per Paes. Reacting to Paes’ decision of not participating in the Jakarta Games, the All India Tennis Association (AITA) said that it is now too late to announce a replacement and the Indian tennis players will miss Leander’s experience in such a major event but by making this a last-minute affair he’s actually robbed a deserving player of an opportunity. While both sides are partially right in their extent, things for the Indian team looks slim now.

The Indian squash players called their coaches irrelevant ahead of the Asian games in Indonesia. The players alleged that both Cyrus Poncha and Bhuvneshwari Kumari can only play the role of administrators and for technical advice, the players mostly depend on each other after the resignation of Egyptian coach Achraf Karargui who was providing technical and tactical instructions to the players in April 2018. Just before a major tournament like Asian games, players questioning the role of both the coaches is certainly an ugly incident in Indian sports. Eight players are going to represent in squash at the Asiad and they are training without a regular coach. Both Kumari and Poncha have been national coaches for a very long time but most of the players in the squad don’t train under them. The players have questioned the involvement of Kumari. Although with 16 national titles, no one can question her caliber as a player but being a coach, he has not helped the Indian squash is what the players allege. Around a month ago, India’s top squash player Saurav Ghosal did speak about the lack of good coaches in India. Now, as the Asiad has already started it remains to be seen what impact does this ugly incident has on the performance and morale of the Indian squash players.