The Good, Bad and the Ugly ft. Sachin Tendulkar, Indian badminton team and Ram Mehar Singh

The Good, Bad and the Ugly ft. Sachin Tendulkar, Indian badminton team and Ram Mehar Singh

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SportsCafe

Another week has passed by and it was majorly the week of the 18th Asian games. And here, from Sachin Tendulkar’s decision to back out from selectors’ appointment to the downfall of Indian badminton and Kabaddi at Asiad, we get you covered the good, bad and the ugly happenings of the week.

The Good

Master Blaster Sachin Tendulkar refused to take up the responsibility to select a selector for the National Junior Selection Committee. Tendulkar, despite being a member of the Cricket Advisory Committee (CAC), decided not to get involved in the process of appointment of junior selectors considering the issue of conflict of interest. The legend’s son Arjun Tendulkar plays under-19 cricket and was recently a part of the youth Test team that toured Sri Lanka. The Little Master’s decision comes at a time when people earlier trolled Arjun’s selection and many even termed it as nepotism in various social media platforms. Senior Tendulkar himself deciding to stay away from the appointment sends a very positive message to the cricket lovers about how accurate and clean the team selection can be. 

While that is a very good gesture by the Master Blaster, Indian athletes have also kept on making the Indians proud in Indonesia. After Hima Das' unprecedented achievement almost a month ago, Muhammad Anas and Arokia Rajiv qualified for the semi-finals of the men’s 400 metres at the Asian Games in Jakarta and Palembang on Saturday. While Anas running in Heat 1, clocked a time of 45.63 seconds and topped the list of qualifiers overall, running in lane 3, the 23-year-old Mohamed Abbas finished ahead of his Qatari rival, who finished the race in 45.81 seconds. The duo's success, coupled with Hima Das and Dutee Chand's terrific performance at the international level came as a breath of fresh air for the Indian athletics, which found itself in a limbo after the glory days of 90s. This also gives rise to a hope that if players can keep at it like the way they have done at the Asian Games, India is going to be on the athletics map once again.

The Bad

Both the Indian men’s and women’s badminton team were knocked out in the quarter-final round of the ongoing Asian Games in Indonesia which proved be the worst nightmare for badminton fans all across the country. At a time when the Indian shuttlers were doing so well, this event shook the entire nation which was expecting a podium finish from both men and women. The men’s team lost to hosts Indonesia after the women went down to Japan both with an identical score of 1-3. India finished with a gold at the Commonwealth Games in the mixed team event earlier this year and the shuttlers looked much confident with a calm and composed Pullela Gopichand at the helm of the affairs but things went horribly wrong for Indian badminton after that. The performance in the team event was below par and somewhere there is an urgent need of introspection for the shuttlers especially while competing against quality opponents. Among the top-seeded players, only PV Sindhu managed to win a match during the team events while Saina Nehwal lost to Nozomi Okuhara and Kidambi Srikanth to Anthony Sinisuka Ginting. 

Another incident of the week which will go down as bad is the social media trolls against former West Indian legend Michael Holding. Cricket fans went berserk after all-rounder Hardik Pandya’s five-wicket haul against England in the first innings of the third Test match and started trolling Holding for his recent comments on the Baroda all-rounder. Holding was brutally trolled which is certainly not in sportsman’s spirit and that to, for a comment which was misinterpreted. Holding later clarified that his comment was misunderstood by many. He was actually critical about people who were comparing Pandya with legendary all-rounder Kapil Dev. People trolling a legendary figure who has been associated with the game from a long time now is not in a good taste and before criticizing someone because of his/her comments, one should properly take a note of the comment. And when there is a legendary personality on the other side, you better be careful enough before taking it on the social media.

The Ugly

The Indian men’s kabaddi team went down to Iran in the semi-finals and settled for a bronze while the women’s team lost to the Iranian girls in the final and managed to win a silver in the 18th edition of the Asian games. This is India’s poorest performance in kabaddi in the history of the games. Although we can’t term the failure of both men and women Indian kabaddi teams ugly but certainly the comment from Indian kabaddi coach Ram Mehar Singh can be called one. Ram Mehar went on to allege that skipper Ajay Thakur’s over-confidence resulted in a defeat in the semi-finals against Iran. At a time when the entire nation is shocked after the terrible performance against Iran in the semis and when the morale of the team is very low, such a comment from the coach himself opens up the differences. Taking a look at the team selection we can find flaws in that with India leaving out two experienced defenders Surjeet Singh and Surender Nada which meant India went without a cover defender which usually was Surjeet’s position and he has the requisite skills for it. Another thing that went against India in the semi-final is Thakur’s injury. Thakur was out of the mat because of an injury which had a huge impact on the team is what experts believe. And among all these issues a comment like that from someone who is in a responsible position of a coach is not acceptable.

Earlier in this article, we have already talked about Sachin Tendulkar’s decision to back out from the appointment of the national junior selectors because of conflict of interest. Here, the scenario, however, is ugly, albeit involving one former Indian skipper. Mohammad Azharuddin has been roped in by the Goa Cricket Association (GCA) to coach the cricketers selected for the 2018-19 season of the Ranji Trophy and at the same time his son Mohammad Asaduddin, who hasn’t played a single first-class match, has been included in the team as a professional cricketer. This decision by the state cricket board has raised many eyebrows as how can someone without an experience of domestic cricket can get a status of a professional? Asaduddin tried his luck in Uttar Pradesh and failed miserably and many including Goa cricketer Shadab Jakati have alleged that it is unfair for the talented players from the state.

“Azhar was a great cricketer but does that mean his son should walk into the state Ranji team, at the cost of talented Goan players? Asaduddin hasn't played any first class match. He tried his luck in Uttar Pradesh and failed, yet Goa is welcoming him with open arms,” said Shadab Jakati.

Jakati also went on to say that Goan cricket has become a laughing stock because of decisions like these which we believe to be true. The selection of Azhar’s son might be the biggest blunder ever committed by Goan cricket and certainly is the ugliest incident of the week. 

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