Cricket is a religion, let's talk about atheists

World billiards champion Pankaj Advani lodges his protest to step-motherly treatment
meted to non-cricketing fraternity.

Source: http://www.telegraphindia.com/1071001/asp/sports/story_8381305.asp

Justifying his decision not to attend the award ceremony Saturday, where 82 other sportspersons received awards, a miffed advani told reporters: “Had I been given the award eight years ago, I would have been happy, but now it is a case of too little too late.”

Protesting the discrimination meted out to other sportspersons after the state government announced awards for cricketers like Robin Uthappa, a member of the victorious ICC World Twenty20 team, Advani asked: “Why this discrimination? Why double standards?”

The state government, he said, should come up with a clear guideline on the specific amount of money to be awarded to the various title holders.

Stressing that the lacking of recognition for him was not an isolated incident, Advani said: “It applies to other achievers as well. Why do we have to fight for our rights,” he asked.

Was there some typing mistake?

Source: http://www.rediff.com/sports/2007/sep/05bonus.htm

A bonus amount of Rs 1000 has been offered for each goal scored by the Indian team in the ongoing BSNL seventh Asia Cup Hockey tournament; it was announced by the Indian Hockey Federation on Wednesday, 05 Sep, 2007.

IHF president K P S Gill said it is a token appreciation for the players for their fine showing in the ongoing tournament in Chennai.

A bunch of tribal students of Orissa have lifted an international trophy in rugby, a game almost alien to the vast majority of the population in India.

Source: http://www.newindpress.com/NewsItems.asp?ID=IEQ20070929151515&Title=ORISSA&rLink=0

The boys from Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences (KISS) in Bhubaneswar have beaten 10 nations to win the Touraid Under-14 International School Rugby Tournament at London’s Scottish Rugby Club on Saturday.

Jungle Crows, as they were named, defeated South Africa in the final by a huge margin of 19-5. Led by captain Bikash Chandra Murmu, the KISS team, which represented India in the tournament, started off as underdogs playing a foreign game on a foreign turf. But they went on to stun Zambia, Swaziland, Kenya and Romania in the Group B setting up a title clash with South Africa. South Africa, among the top rugby playing countries, had beaten Cambodia, Rwanda, Maldova and Kazakhstan in its Group A tier.

An old article showing the unbalanced sports coverage prevalent in the Indian media (online, television, print), by means of a case study of the leading English language Indian sports weekly Sportstar.

Source: http://www.bharatiyahockey.org/patrakaar/

This article focuses on the cover stories of Sportstar in 2002 and 2003. Cover stories have the benefit of prominent real estate on the magazine cover, a couple of in-depth articles inside the magazine, color photographs accompanying the text, and sometimes, a related editorial, interview or poster. A star or a sport gets much more exposure when featured on the cover than when hidden as an ordinary article in the inside pages of the magazine.

People who have recently watched bollywood film "Chak De India" can make more sense of the following accusation being made in year of 2003.

d. Sportstar ignored Indian women's hockey

The Indian women's hockey team won the 2002 Commonwealth Games hockey gold in Manchester and the 2003 Afro-Asian Games hockey gold in Hyderabad. In both cases, the Indian team upset much stronger teams like England, South Africa, New Zealand and South Korea en route to the titles.

Should not Indian women's hockey's double-triumph on the world stage be deserving of a cover story? Many of India's women hockey players are tribals from the Jharkhand-Sundergarh area of India, who came up the hard way in sports, and in life itself. Can't Sportstar do a human interest story on our tribal golden girls?