This blog is unfortunately not about Sports Biscuits...which are amazing! 

My dad asked me to do a blog about sport. He asked me to do one on the Indian cricket team, and the current Arsenal team. He wanted it to be about how over paid millionaires have no drive, or fight. He wanted me to do one basically bashing the Indian cricket team. I don’t need to write that blog. The Indian team’s capitulation, and total apathy (Dravid aside) and Arsenal’s shambolic performance at Old Trafford (what a joke!) does that for me. Millions of words have already been written about those two jokes. I don’t want to do that blog. I want to write about sport in a broader sense.

I have had a strange relationship with sports through my life. I like playing sports, who doesn’t? I love playing football, I will never be a dribbler, or a ball spraying midfielder. I won’t be a rock of a defender or a deadly striker, but that doesn’t matter. I watched Dennis Bergkamp and so have a vague idea of what I am supposed to do, and that is enough. I was always good at cricket, as is my birth right. I wasn’t a bowler, but I could bat. It is a shame that at my secondary school, the sports and PE teachers were mentally deficient and thought that if you were good at football, it meant you should play in every other sports team, regardless of ability, and hence I only made a handful of appearances…even though I was much better than half the dross they picked. I honestly believe there is a bit of institutional racism in schools when it comes to Indian kids and sports. We are seen as weak, not competitive, and incapable of playing sports. We are always seen as not strong enough, which partly has to do with the way football is taught in this country (Big centre back hoofs it up front to the fast kid). At primary school, in class 5, we would have myself, Joel Smith and one other player, vs the rest of our class for indoor cricket. Obviously we were only 10, but still. I was that good, and we often won. And the teacher who set that scenario was a Sri Lankan fella, which probably indicates why I got a chance.

In fact, any bat and ball game I was pretty good at, I played Little League baseball with the Enfield Spartans, and actually played for an ‘All London’ schools side. I was on average 3 years younger than the rest of the competitors, which made me think I must be pretty handy. I have scored a hole-in-one on a par 3 (sure it was pitch and put, but it was still over 120 yards!), and again, it is a sport that revolves around hitting a ball with some sort of stick. I won the triple jump in my final year at secondary school, and was also in the first leg of the relay team who won the 4x100 relay.

This brings me to the game I hate. I hate Rugby. I don’t mind watching it, but playing it was horrific. I remember being slammed to the floor by Mehmet Gurtin, and I am sure I dislocated a shoulder blade ( I don’t hold it against him). Then there was the time blood froze in my hand. I mean who wants to play a sport which you spent most the time either scrabbling about in the mud, or being bosched up by the bigger kids? It makes NO sense! Especially if you were a tiny, scrawny bean like me.

So sure, it isn’t a Daley Thompson style record, but I am quite proud of that. It proves that I enjoyed sports, and I took it as far as I could. However, it was never going to be anything other than a bit of fun. My parents never directed me in anyway when it came to subjects at school or work. They always just encouraged me to do what I enjoyed. They never pressured me, and I am sure if I said I wanted to be a professional golf player, they would have supported me. But some sort of innate need to learn over rode that urge, and so I went to Uni. Which brings me to the key point this blog is about…

Why aren’t there more Indian footballers? You’d think that with over 1 billion of us on the planet, we could muster at least one decent one right? WRONG! It seems there is an inherent laziness with Indian men (men I might add, not women) that means that all the work that would be required to become a top class footballer would be superseded by the need to sit on their arses and watching Wheeler Dealers on Discovery Turbo. Not only that, but IF they did get there, they sure as hell would end up like the Indian cricket team, fat, and complacent. The other thing being the stigma attached to being young and Indian in this country. Football academies wouldn’t sign them, when if they had any sense, they would find one semi good one, bung him in their side, and get 1 billion fans in a jiffy.

Why am I writing this? Because I read this blog today (http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/athletics/14667422.stm), by a young man, who at 25 is talking about his career being over, that doesn’t happen to doctors, lawyers or pharmacists. That is probably why Indian parents discourage their children from taking part in sports. There is no long term future in it. But reading that blog, it made me think about those young sports men and women. Those who dedicate chunks of their life, only to look at the times made by someone like Usain Bolt, and who must know they will never, ever, be that fast. Which begs the question, why bother? All great sportsmen, regardless of training methods, have a god given talent. Like Pele who was lithe and powerful, Maradona, all squat and low centre of gravity. Ali was fast, Tendulkar had impeccable technique, Michael Jordan was other worldly, and I was good at hitting a small ball with a stick. So at 23, surely you know if you are going to make it?

I am not saying give up on your dreams. Dreams are important. But they can so easily be broken, and then what do you have? Always have more than one dream, that is what I say. That way, when something awful happens, you can hop track and carry on chasing something else. There is a lovely bit in that blog, when he talks about all the rewards coming to those who make sacrifice and keep going, and he says that is not true. A brave thing to say I think.

- Anand