Good, Bad & Ugly ft. Rishabh Pant, Manu Bhaker, Rohan Bopanna and Divij Sharan
With Rishabh Pant swelling our hearts with his generous move to babysit, to Rohan Bopanna and Divij Sharan starting the 2019 calendar year promisingly, to Manu Bhaker giving us a timely reminder of what limits not to cross, we bring you a healthy dose of good, bad, and the ugly from the last week.
Good
When one says Cricket has progressed by leaps and bounds, it doesn’t necessarily imply the cut-throat competition of today, or the new parameters introduced to make the sport more entertaining. With the stump mics and individual opinions getting more and more vocal every day, nothing is ever under the carpet anymore. Hence, one isn’t left with many options other than to be tolerant towards the snarky on-field remarks. While that sounds like a lot of work, the end is actually very peaceful as Rishabh Pant exhibited. After Tim Paine’s proposal from behind the stumps for Pant to babysit his kids went viral, the 21-year-old did the most unbelievable thing. While both the teams were visiting Australia’s Prime Minister’s house during a meet, Pant agreed to take a picture with Paine’s wife Bonnie Paine and kids with the caption reading “best babysitter”. Not only did it cool down the simmering tension amongst the fans, the gesture pretty much cleared the resentment and insecurities out of Pant’s soul. The result – after Paine admitted, “I wish I played that way when I was his age. He looks like he has
Talk about taking one step forward and two steps
Bad
Since its inception in January last year, the Supreme Court-appointed Committee of Administrators (COA) has been in the news for all the wrong reasons. While one external body was provided to keep a check on BCCI’s notorious monopoly and repeated corruption allegations, the COA has only made the picture murkier. After the BCCI and COA feud, the conflict has crept in the house with Vinod Rai and Diana Edulji at loggerheads. With the controversy shifting to India’s women’s cricket, the former Indian women’s team captain has been very vocal and simultaneously, painting a bad image. Her support for former coach Ramesh Powar, who was involved in bad blood with Mithali Raj, didn’t make him a good figure and BCCI-COA’s decision to end tenure was the right decision. Edulji’s continuous attempt to stop the process has raised suspicion. As if that wasn’t enough, Edulji has now come in the way of the appointment of WV Raman as the next women’s coach. She has written to Rai asking Raman to travel New Zealand as an interim coach and let the Cricket Advisory Committee (CAC) pick the new coach, thereby leaving a small window for Pawar to make a comeback.
The I-League telecasting mess has finally been sorted with the All India Football Federation (AIFF) informing that all the matches of the top-flight Indian football league would be shown on digital platforms of Hotstar and Jio TV. The sudden announcement of Star cutting down I-League matches in the Star Sports 3 channel from 110 to total 80 games had caused a massive uproar among fans, the club owners and by AIFF themselves. Many had even accused Star of promoting Indian Super League as India’s biggest football league despite it having
Ugly
The reason mob justice has survived the test of time over the centuries is because that the outcome is almost always the most expected one, regardless of it being fair or unfair. The very latest such example was the “Me Too” movement where the increasing number of sexual allegations on social media could bring instant name shaming and blame game. It resulted in many officials forced to step down from their posts temporarily but eventually, they faced no consequences. The desire for short attention span is real, hence, it was not surprising to find Manu
We’re happy to conclude that we are starting 2019 with a scenario where the good things have overweighed the ugly aspects of sports this week, and we hope to see more such weeks in the coming year.
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