Monday, September 29, 2008

Indian Sports : A Torch Relay



I stumbled upon this video hosted on Youtube from a friends Orkut Profile and it took me back 10 years when I used to wait to see this video. I have already, now seen this video 3 times today. Wonderful!!!!!

It was one of my dreams as a sportsman to be part of a torch relay. It remained unfulfilled primarily because I changed school after 10th std. If I had continued, I would definitely have been the torch bearer for the school. In my new school I was not there long enough to stake claim to be the torch ot flag bearer.

Coming back to the video, i was trying to identify each sportsman and heres the ones that I have got. Correct me if I am wrong and help me name the rest :

  1. Krishnamachari Srikkanth, the dashing opening batsman and now Chief of Selectors
  2. PK Bannerjee, who is the Dhyan Chand of Indian Soccer.
  3. Shiny Wilson, multiple Asian Gold medallist and represented India in a distinguished Athletics career. Was part of a Golden era of Indian womens athletics.
  4. PT Usha, like the video rightly shows, shes the gazelle of Indian athletics and the heroine of the era I mentioned earlier.
  5. Ramanathan Krishnan, one of Indias Tennis greats
  6. Ramesh Krishnan, completes the father and son duo, another Tennis great
  7. Nawab Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi, flamboyant cricketer and youngest captain of India. (Id s it Soha Ali running with him?)
  8. Kapil Dev Nikhanj, needs no introduction. Champion par excellence
  9. Milkha Singh (from one Pa'ji to another) . Indias Best Athletics Olympian
  10. Michael Ferreira, ace cueist
  11. Merwyn Fernandes, former Hockey captain and Olympian
  12. Sunil Manohar Gavaskar, first cricketer to 10K Test runs
  13. Erapalli Prasanna, one of the Indian champion spinning quartret
  14. Dilip Vengsarkar, distinguished cricketer, scored centuries at Lords in all of his innings there.
  15. Srinivas Venkatraghavan, another from the famous Spinning quartret (Bedi and Chandrashekar are the missing ones)
  16. Prakash Padukone, first Indian to win the All England Badminton Championship.

If I were to make a video like this currently, here are the people I would cast in it :

Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Saurav Ganguly, Anil Kumble, Bhaichung Bhutia, Dhanraj Pillay, Major Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore, Abhinav Bindra, Vijendra Kumar, Sushil Kumar, Leander Paes, Mahesh Bhupathi, Anju George, Pullela Gopichand, Vishwanathan Anand, Geet Sethi.

I have a feeling I am missing someone really special here.

With goosebumps, I sign off.

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