So my football obsession is plunging new depths of shamelessness. But the way I see it, no one I know should be surprised at all, so in effect, all I'm doing is sticking to the script. In the latest chapter, I jumped into a football jersey discussion at my new office and demanded a Liverpool original for myself from a total stranger. And the best part is, it's mine now. Yesterday on my return from the 100-minute drive back home through agonisingly slow traffic after work, after which I'm usually too tired even for conversation, I opened the packaging and stared at the jersey for millions of minutes, a big smile on my face. The 'This is Anfield' stitched in onto the inside neck lining, the golden liverbird at the back, the very familiar Carlsberg logo, I just couldn't stop looking. Oh I have many Liverpool shirts, but they are from the roadside stalls of Bangkok. This, you see, is the real deal. And it's MINE, MINE, MINE. Happiness. Is football. True story.
In other good news, I finally feel like a proper sports journalist again. Today I took a trip through the dusty roads of Uttar Pradesh, chasing a World Cup medal-winning shooter and her 70-year-old mother who set the trend for pistol shooting in their village, and then further on into Johri, a village which is currently producing an incredible number of international-standard shooters. Of course, I couldn't bring back guns for everyone like I had said I will. Oh, well.
The point is, this trip and the earlier one to Patiala to see the pathetic conditions our Commonwealth Games cyclists have been training in made me realise that this, THIS is what I wanted to do. Write out these stories, the ones in which bravery shines through all the bleakness, where unnoticed revolutions finally force us to take note of commendable effort. And I'm glad I feel like hunting out these stories again. By the end of my time at IE, I had become too complacent, the days had settled into depressingly familiar routines that did nothing to inspire. Change can do the trick. But strangely enough, quitting the first time around was such fun, I'm looking forward to that feeling again. Where you know you'll be leaving so you can come in late, hang around, and then say your goodbyes when it's all over. Yes, just a month into my new job, you would think these are strange thoughts to have. Get this -- it cropped up in my head the DAY i got hired. Ah, the wonderful weirdness of my mind.
Just my luck, the day when I could have watched the French Open all through the holiday, it has to get rained out. Nadal's match has been postponed to tomorrow, after I went through all the effort to arrange my schedule around it. Unfair.
That reminds me, I must make up my World Cup chart. I usually can't resist writing out predictions for matches, even though I know it will have that incredible jinxing effect that follows me around, but I will try to hold back this time.
I've been reading some nice books, and my collection continues to grow, as always. Soccernomics by Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski is very very interesting. They attempt to explain why some nations are great at football while others suck, who are the biggest fans, and why football clubs are always going to be bad businesses so no effort should be made to make them otherwise. The only issue I have with the book so far is this observation the authors make: 'After their team gets knocked out of a competition, the person doesn't sink into depression and life goes on the next day.' I tend to disagree. Football depression is a big, big part of my life and I demand that it be recognised.
4 comments:
A friend of mine in the Caribbean is a journalist who has covered cricket. Have you ever heard the droll tale of Andrew Caddick's ears?
nope. what's that?
Back in 1994 (when WI had a Test side) England were on tour and their bowling line up featured Andrew Caddick who has a splendid pair of ears (check his portrait at cricinfo). A particularly irreverent local journalist by the name of BC Pires wrote an article that took the piss out of the ears. I’ll leave it to BC to tell it in his own words:
“I can never forget my first sight of Andy Caddick. It was at Sabina Park, Kingston, Jamaica in 1994, West Indies v England. Caddick, ball in hand, running up to deliver, struggling manfully against the wind resistance to his massive ears. My God, I thought, if he trips, he'll surely start to hang-glide. And so began more than 400 words of unkind jokes at poor Caddick's expense in the light-hearted column I still write weekly for the Trinidad Guardian.
The rest of the England team teased him enough for him to storm the press box in Guyana later in the tour and seek me out. I stood up, still a foot shorter than him though he stood on the tier below, took his extended hand, shook it and peered in mock awe at the ears themselves. 'Well,' I said after five seconds in which the press box fell to total silence, 'they're not nearly as big in real life - but, you know, television puts on 10 pounds.'
When his grip became vice-like, I realised Andy was not amused. For five minutes, he berated me, raising his voice, for all the press box to hear, furiously demanding an apology of equal prominence the next week. What else could I do? The next week, I wrote, 'I really did not want to cause distress to any human being. It was meant to be enjoyed, not litigated. Mr Caddick has demanded an apology and so I feel I must, with utmost sincerity, say that I am very sorry indeed that Andy Caddick has big ears.' He was apparently satisfied with that.”
Sport is good for health. Every sport has something good for the body .
orthopedic surgeon Mumbai
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