A for Awards
In 1981, billiards champion Michael Ferreira turned down the Padma Shri because Sunil Gavaskar got the Padma Bhushan. Milkha Singh turned down the Arjuna Award in 2001 calling it a “tamasha”. In 2009, cricketers MS Dhoni and Harbhajan Singh didn’t even turn up for the awards function. There’s never a dull moment with sports awards. Sometimes deserving people are left out and sometimes they go to the undeserving. Now they're introducing the Bharat Ratna in the sports category too!
B for Badminton
In 1997, frustrated with the way the Badminton Association of India was being run, the great Prakash Padukone launched the rival Indian Badminton Confederation. Luckily for India, a merger took place and we had champions like Pullela Gopi Chand and Saina Nehwal. Badminton was also in the news recently when a rule making it mandatory for women players to wear skirts kicked up a storm.
C for CWG
This is the big daddy of all the scams. Crores of rupees went missing Charges of favoritism. Shocking delays. Shabby infrastructure. Unwanted international media attention. Bigwigs like Suresh Kalmadi and Sheila Dixit squirming. Everyone heaved a sigh of relief when the 2010 Commonwealth Games ended. But some were convinced it could have been a lot worse.
D for Doping
The flavor of the season. An open secret of sorts, this time it became a big issue because eight athletes were caught in a short span of time. A shadow has been cast on the on field success at the 2010 Commonwealth Games. While the authorities seem to have been shaken up, it remains to be seen what concrete measures will be taken in the future.
E for Eden Gardens
This cricket stadium has seen protests even before Independence. It saw major crowd riots in both the 1960s and 1990s. It’s probably the only Indian ground to have booed the Indian national team, protesting against the omission of local icon Sourav Ganguly. Despite being the country’s largest cricket ground, it’s been snubbed regularly, missing many important tours.
F for Fixed matches
The match-fixing scandal came like a storm on Indian cricket in the 1990s. Some prominent players were retired. Viewership went down. Many lost their faith in cricket for good. Luckily it blew over when Sourav Ganguly took over and since then Indian cricket has been going from strength to strength.
G for Guru Greg & Ganguly
What happens when the most controversial captain (Ganguly) meets the most controversial coach (Greg Chappell)? Sparks are sure to fly. In the end, both cut each others careers short.
H for Hockey
It is difficult to believe that India won six straight Olympic Golds from 1928 to 1956. In fact the Golden era of Hockey probably ended when we got our first and only World Championship in 1975. There was also the Gold of the 1980 Olympics, but that was marred by the US-led boycott. Since then, Indian hockey has been hurtling from one controversy to another without a single achievement that comes close to the past.
I for Indian Olympic Association
The IOA has always been run in an arbitrary manner in India and Kalmadi was just one of its quirks. Things came to a head in the beginning of 2011 when the Executive Board of the International Olympic Committee threatened to ban India from the Olympics. One hopes that such a black day never comes.
J for Jagmohan Dalmiya
Dalmiya took on the might of England and Australia in world cricket and won. But he has also been criticized for commercializing and politicizing international cricket. While he has many great contributions to cricket, he was ousted from the ICC, subsequently expelled from the BCCI and finally arrested (and released) by the police.
K for KPS Gill
Gill was the hero of the Punjab insurgency counter-attack, but he was also a target for human rights groups. Involved in a sexual harassment case, it is no surprise that his tenure with the hockey association has been rocky. He was president of the Indian Hockey Federation and fought more off-field battles than those on the field. In the end, the IOA suspended the IHF indefinitely over corruption charges.
L for Lalit Modi
Modi's middle name is probably controversy. The IPL has seen charges of corruption, nepotism and match-fixing. The former IPL head honcho's egomaniac personality saw a bitter battle with former union minister Shashi Tharoor. In the end both lost their jobs. Modi still faces a lot of charges and will battle them for some time to come.
M for the Mahesh Bhupathi & Leander Paes
Now they’re together. Now they’re not. This tennis doubles pair seemed to have had as many fights as grand slam titles. They had an on-field chemistry that did not translate into an off field one. Once Leander even questioned Bhupathi's commitment to Team India. Their longest re-union (after almost 8 years) took place in 2011, when they lost in the finals of the Australian Open.
N for NADA-WADA
The National Anti-Doping Agency has come into sharp focus thanks to the latest doping scandal and has started conducting surprise checks. While most sports comply to NADA and the World Anti-Doping Agency, one of the biggest resistors has been cricket. Some years back a controversy broke with top players claiming they did not want to give the location of their whereabouts due to 'security' reasons
O for Officials
How much officials have ruled the game in this country. The top official is invariably a politician who wants power and a chance to make money. The officials lower down the order fare no better and are responsible for our poor show at many sports events.
P for Pakistan
Cricket captain K Srikkanth once got his shirt torn in a Pak stadium. The Pak cricket board always cries victimization by the BCCI with the IPL's absence of Pak players being one such example. Whenever a team loses, there are protests and effigies being burnt on one side of the border. There's never a dull moment in Indo-Pak clashes.
Q for Quotas
Unofficial quotas for sportsmen in all games have always been a problem. The politics of regionalism has been a big issue and many a deserving have been left out because of it.
R for the Rebellion of 1989
Indian cricket players have by and large been docile creatures. Only once did a captain in the form of K Srikkanth and some senior players threaten to boycott a tour (Pakistan, 1989) on the issue of graded payments. While India drew the series, Srikkanth found himself out of a job shortly thereafter.
S for Sania Mirza
Everything she does is controversy. What she wears, what she says and who she marries. She has probably displaced Anna Kournikova in being the most talked about female tennis player despite winning the least amount of titles.
T for Tickets
No country reserves its stadium tickets for sports officials and VVIPs as does India. As a result we have stampedes and lathi-charges near stadiums and a flourishing black market. Many sports loving fans totally miss out on live stadium action thanks to this travesty.
U for UDRS
The BCCI alone has been resisting this for ages but it has finally come bolstered by technologies like Hot Spot. Interestingly in the first India-England Test at Lord's, MS Dhoni had Kevin Pietersen out when he was on 73. Only the decision was reversed thanks to DRS. Pietersen went on to score a double century and India lost the match. Talk about foresight!
V for Volleyball and other leagues
Why is it that the IPL is so successful and all other leagues simply bite the dust? Attempts like the Indian Volleyball League and Premier Hockey League are nowhere near as popular as IPL. And while football is the most popular game in the world, football leagues in India suffer too.
W for Weightlifting
Indian weightlifting started getting medals. Then the drug charges came. Then a coach was suspended on sexual harassment charges. Lately weightlifter Renubala Chanu returned her Commonwealth Games gold because she was overlooked for the Arjuna Award.
X for Xs
In 1960 when Abbas Ali Baig scored a half-century in an India-Australia Test match, a woman ran on to the field and planted a kiss on his cheek. Decades later in the IPL, we saw more instances of PDAs with Siddharth Mallya and Deepika Padukone kissing in the stands followed by Shane Warne and Elizabeth Hurley.
Y for Yuri
Athletics coach Ukranian Yuri Ogorodnik is many problems rolled into one: A beleaguered foreign coach. Doping in sports. The conspiracy theory in the form of death threats and before anything could happen, he simply flew out of the country!
Z for Zero
We are a nation of one billion people and yet we have drawn a blank at most major sporting events, the football world cup comes to mind. India doesn't even dream of a singles men's or women's champion in tennis. In the Olympics, from the 1950s to the 1990s we drew a blank in many an edition. And now we go crazy when we win even one Olympic medal.
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