At a time when Indian Super League and wider television coverage made Indian football storm back into the Indian consciousness, Star Sports took an appreciative step to give the sport its personal platform. Adding to its wide bouquet of sports channels in India, the Star Sports network has decided to launch Star Sports 3, a channel exclusively dedicated to Indian football. As per a tweet released by the Channel, Star Sports 3 will be launched on September 15. Sunil Chhetri was seen promoting the new channel on Twitter, where he mentioned that this channel is for the football enthusiasts of India. It is indeed an appreciative step considering the way the sport has gained momentum in the country and if the channel runs some interesting programme to go with the live matches, it may help Indian football more than ever. 

While Star’s step was one fine step, 102-year-old Man Kaur’s achievement at World Masters Athletics Championships is another feel-good story of grit and determination. Kaur clinched a gold medal in 200m event at the Championships in Malaga, Spain. Prior to this achievement, Man had also secured a Gold in the 100m event at the World Masters Games, held at Auckland, New Zealand. The Punjab lady started her career at the age of 93 and had finished her first 100m race in only 61 seconds and still at the age of 102, she is the oldest female athlete in the country - a sheer inspiration if nothing else. At a time when people in our country often decide to take retirement from their profession in their 50s and put themselves under the clouds of old-age, Kaur has craved own niche and set an example for many.

Talking of bad, it couldn’t have been worse for Indian sport this week. First, Indian shuttlers put up one terrible performance after another in the Japan Open before Indian football team were comprehensively beaten by Maldives in the SAAF final. Maldives had reached the semi-finals after a coin toss against Sri Lanka, but their 3-0 win over Nepal was as commanding as it could get and India should have been warned enough. The team were shaky on the field and their attack lacked penetration. While the stakeholders of Indian football may point to the fact that this was a young team, that just highlights the fact that India didn’t take the tournament seriously. Although Stephen Constantine has always spoken about most of the under-23’s not receiving regular game-time in the Indian Super League, the SAFF Cup came up as an opportunity to make a statement. Due to the falling standards of Maldives, it was any day going to be India’s game to lose and this loss would be a huge loss for Indian football. While football downed India big-time, Indian shuttlers made sure they did the same. Not a single player - male or female - managed to enter the semi-finals of the event and it was only Kidambi Srikanth who could go on till the quarters. After a historic 2017, it was supposed to be India’s year to shine in badminton, but as it turned out so far, it is nothing but a shame.

Racial abuse in cricket hasn't been a new thing with the Harbhajan Singh-Andrew Symonds saga taking it to a whole new level in 2007. While Imran Tahir had to suffer the same fate in England once, most of the Pakistani players of the yesteryear had to tolerate a lot of racial abuse. And now, Moeen Ali is the latest one to have come out in public about the existence of racism in the game and he was abused during the first Ashes Test at Cardiff in 2015. Moeen revealed that one of the Australians had come out and called him "Osama". Another person in Australia had even asked him when his kebab shop was opening. In a world where we call ourselves progressive, this type of behaviour is certainly not acceptable and Australian cricket is gaining nothing from this sort of problematic behaviour of their cricketers and fans.