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BALANCING ACT

T ICC reins in big, fat bats to The level the playing field

DEFINING MOMENT

A look back at India’s epochal vvictory in the T20 WC 10 years ago

KING OF 64

Garry Kasparov K is m making the moves m to take on VVladimir m Putin Pu

INSIDE

MARC MÁRQQ MÁRQUEZ FREE POSTER

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OC O OCTOBER 2017 20 7 VOLUME O 8 NO O 10 0 ` 100

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FOOTBALL

28 Brazil’s Talisman

DDEPARTMENTS

0 Inbox 06 008 Leading Off

By Brian Straus 114 Scorecard 116 Sports Science FOOTBALL 38 Boots On The Ground 118 For The Record The Under-17 World Cup could mark a 220 Gaming: PES 2018 Review football revolution in India 221 Gear

By Tanmoy Mookherjee 222 Perspective CRICKET 224 Tweet Talk 50 A Magical Night The T20 World Cup win in 2007 changed 226 Faces in The Crowd the face of Indian cricket forever 996 Point After Indian pace bowlers are

By Vimal Kumar turning on the heat

Neymar, one of the best of his generation, wants the World Cup

TENNIS

58 A New Star Is Born

By Pradeep Magazine

Sloane Stephens overcame loss and injury to win a historic U.S. Open title

By S.L. Price CRICKET

64 The Batsman’s Weapon

The new ICC bat rule hopes to restore balance between the willow and the ball

By Jasvinder Sidhu BASKETBALL

70 Moving Up A Notch

The Indian women’s team is back in Division A. They must work to stay there

By Priyanka Sharma SPECIAL OLYMPICS

76 Iron Will

The Special Olympics is determined to do good despite many constraints

By Mary Davis BADMINTON

80 Shuttle In Flight Despite P.V. Sindhu's loss in Glasgow, Indian badminton is on the move

By V. Krishnaswamy MOTORSPORTS

86 A Few Mad Men

The Rainforest Challenge is setting the benchmark for off-roading in India

MAIN MAN After disappointment in 2014, Neymar is aiming to lead Brazil to a World Cup win in 2018.

By Govindan Kishwar

90 Long Way From Home

COVER: Neymar photograph

by Robert Beck

By Jack Dickey

Photograph by Miguel Schincariol/AFP/Getty Images

CHESS

Once the greatest chess player, Garry Kasparov is taking on Vladimir Putin

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WHAT’S MSD’S ROLE IN MSD R-N?

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THE SLOW RISE OF WOMEN IN F1

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RAIDING THE ZANARDI’S GOLDEN GREAT HIMALAYA COMEBACK

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HRT IS MAKING GOOD PROGRESS

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FREEER POST E INSID

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MICHAEL SCHUMACHER

MAY HAVE CHOSEN TO RETIRE FROM F1 BUT HE WILL NOT BE FORGOTTEN

BY THE SPORT HE DOMINATED FOR TWO DECADES.

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All rights reserved throughout the world. Reproduction in any manner is prohibited. Published by Xavier Colaco from Exposure Media Marketing Pvt. Ltd., Plot No. 378-379, Second Floor, Udyog Vihar, Phase IV, Gurugram-122015, Haryana. Printed at Kala Jyothi Process Pvt ltd, S.No.185, Kondapur village, Serilingampally municipality, Ranga Reddy district, Hyderabad - 500 133. Managing Editor: Vivek Mukherji, Sports Illustrated India does not take responsibility for returning unsolicited publication material. All disputes are subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of competent courts and forums in Delhi/New Delhi only. Opinions expressed in the articles are of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the editors or publishers. While the editors do their utmost to verify information published they do not accept responsibility for its absolute accuracy. Unsolicited material is sent at the owner’s risk and the publisher accepts no liability for loss or damage. Materials in this publication may not be reproduced, whether in part or in whole, without the consent of Exposure Media Marketing Pvt. Ltd. Copyright © 2017 SPORTS ILLUSTRATED. The name “SPORTS ILLUSTRATED” and the SPORTS ILLUSTRATED logo are registered trademarks of SPORTS ILLUSTRATED, and used under license by Exposure Media Marketing Pvt. Ltd. All rights reserved.

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INBOX

It’s easy to criticise FOR SEPTEMBER 2017 sportspersons for f not performingg well once they are a in their 30s, butt the story, Eightth Wonder, on Roger Federer shows just how difficult it can be after a certain point and that it is only dedication that keeps them going. Federer crashed out of the U.S. Open last month, but that will w ll not take away from the fact that he won w Wimbledon at the age of 36, when no one o gave him a chance. More stuff on the legend, please!

CO ER COV

It was nice to see Ajinkya Rahane on the cover, and Batting Simplified portrayed perfectly his importance in the Indian team.

Fans are obsessed with big names, and most pieces are dedicated to the Dhonis and Kohlis.

Rahane is a superb cricketer, and the story was a great read.

Rohit Kapur, Karnal

Shweta Advani, Pune

Sam Johnson, Delhi

PAGE

34

We are aware of the situation in Kashmir, and after a story on the Kashmir willow in the July–August 2017 issue, Willow Bridge Over Troubled Waters, the story A Revolution In the Valley in the September issue brought to light even more details on what life is like for the youngsters there. I admire what Mehrajuddin Wadoo is doing to promote football. However, the government first needs to ensure that the region is peaceful and without civil unrest.

The summer may not be over, but the story Afghan Spring definitely made one of my summer mornings more bearable. Whenever there is any mention of Afghanistan on the TV news, it is unpleasant.

The story focussed on what the people are going through, and how they are using sport as their ticket out of there.

Pranav Bhatnagar, Guwahati

R. Srinivasan, Chennai

CONTACT

SPORTS ILLUSTRATED

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If there is one thing missing from cricket, it’s recognition for the women’s game. The sport is nicknamed ‘The Gentleman’s Game’ and needs to get with the times.

Out Of The Shadows was concise while also delving into the various problems and challenges faced by women in the sport.

Sneha Mahadevan, Mumbai

LETTERS E-mail SI at siindia@emmindia.com or sportsillustrated@emmindia.com. Letters should include the writer’s full name, address and phone number and may be edited for clarity and space. CUSTOMER SERVICE AND SUBSCRIPTIONS call 0124-3083590/616 or email circulation@emmindia.com Download the digital copy on magzter.com, zinio.com

SPORTS ILLUSTRATED / OCTOBER 2017

A L B EL LO/G E T T Y IM AG E S (F ED ERER); WA K IL KO H S A R /A F P/G E T T Y IM AG E S (A F G H A N SPRIN G); S T U F O RS T ER /G E T T Y IM AG E S (O U T O F T H E SH A D OWS)

I really enjoyed reading the story Leaping For A Slam Dunk on the NBA Academy India. It seems the Indian sports scene has been undergoing a steady transformation over the past five years. While cricket is still the dominant sport, others are slowly gaining a foothold in the country, and I have no doubt that basketball too will be a major player soon. Academies like these will only help develop a sport that is already popular on television.

1

of

3

Leading Off

What’s Vertigo?

■ American Andy Jones dives from a 27-metre platform during the fourth stop of the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series at Possum Kingdom Lake, Texas, U.S. Jones was fifth after four rounds with 410 points.

Great Britain's Blake Aldridge is leading with 480 points.

PHOTOGRAPH BY

DEAN TREML/ RED BULL VIA GETTY IMAGES

2 of

3

Leading Off

Epic Start ■ What’s a recipe for disaster? A combination of rain, 20 high-tech cars designed for speed being driven by the most competitive drivers on the planet and a night race, for good measure.

The Singapore GP had an explosive start, with the polesitter, Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel, blocking Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, who veered into a speeding Vettel’s teammate, Kimi Räikkönen. The end result was Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton winning a race that saw eight drivers retire. Who said F1 was getting boring?

PHOTOGRAPH BY

MANAN VATSYAYANA/AFP/ GETTY IMAGES

3 of

3

Leading Off

Snowcapped ■ Sebastien Toutant of Canada in action at the Winter Games FIS Men’s Snowboard World Cup Slopestyle finals in Cardona, New Zealand. Toutant finished seventh with 1,240 points, well behind winner Redmond Gerard of the U.S., who finished first with 2,460 points.

PHOTOGRAPH BY

HANNAH PETERS/ GETTY IMAGES

For The Record

Drama In Indian Hockey

18

Gaming

Social Media

Is Nadal The GOAT?

The Crowd

20

24

26

Reboot The System As the new sports minister, Olympic silver medallist Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore needs to usher systematic change BY VIVEK MUKHERJI

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SPORTS ILLUSTRATED / OCTOBER 2017

of the 2010 Delhi Commonwealth Games, and was tasked with cleaning up the mess left behind by his predecessor, set a cracking pace. He undertook a number of initiatives to make the ministry more sportsperson-friendly, set the ball rolling for putting in place a national sports policy and attempted to make the national sporting federations, who are a law unto themselves, fall in line. Maken even took on party colleagues like Suresh Kalmadi under whose watch the corruption-ridden Games took place.

Never before in the history

of this ministry has there been a minister who has been an Olympic medal winner. As such, the appointment of Col (retd) Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore as the sports minister

by Prime Minister Narendra Modi after the latest cabinet reshuffle on Sept. 3 is one of the few bright spots, especially coming at a time when the government is getting panned for the demonetisation disaster, economic slowdown, spiralling unemployment and rising social tension, among other critical failures.

As a sportsman, Rathore’s achievements rank right

GOOD CALL? Rathore has just 18 months to make his mark as sports minister, with the next round of elections in 2019.

up there. He won silver in the 2004 Athens Games in double trap to bring home India’s lone medal from that Olympics. He is a multiple medal winner in the World Cup, Commonwealth Games and Asian meets. Between 2002 and ’06 he won 25 medals at the international level.

Although the Indian Army played a significant role in providing a support system during his active years as a sportsman, he has first-hand knowledge and experience of what an athlete goes through when dealing with the system and a heartless bureaucracy.

R A J. K . R A J/ HIN D US TA N T IM E S V I A G E T T Y IM AG E S

MOST CAREER POLITICIANS consider the Ministry of Sports and Youth Affairs as a lightweight ministry, if not an outright punishment posting.

They have tended to mark their time before moving to a more high-profile ministry. Over the years, though, there have been a few notable exceptions who genuinely challenged the status quo in an attempt to shake up things.

In more recent times, Ajay Maken, who took over from M.S. Gill in the UPA-2 government in January 2011 after a slew of scams broke in the national press in the aftermath

Faces In

PES 2018 Review

W IL L I A M W E S T/A F P/G E T T Y IM AG E S (R AT H O RE); PAU L EL L IS /A F P/G E T T Y IM AG E S (P O G BA); G O H C H A I HIN /A F P/G E T T Y IM AG E S (M O R A D I); PIER M A R CO TACC A /G E T T Y IM AG E S

as pocket allowance. Within a few days, he made yet another announcement after the Union Cabinet approved the revamped Khelo India initiative of the Ministry of Sports and Youth Affairs. Under this scheme, 1,000 talented athletes will receive `5 lakh per year for a period of eight years and 20 universities will be promoted as centres

of excellence, which will enable talented sportspersons to pursue a career in sports along with quality education.

At first glance, these announcements look very impressive, and are expected from a man who has competed at the elite level. But a deeper probe reveals that this is merely scraping the surface. For starters, many talented athletes like Dattu Baban Bhokanal, who became the first rower to qualify for the Olympics and finished 15th in Rio, haven’t made it to the list of TOPS beneficiaries.

Even though Bhokanal is a realistic medal contender at the Asian level. Similarly, javelin thrower Davinder Singh Kang, who qualified for the finals at the World Athletics Championships in London in August, is missing from

the list. Even more surprising is the omission of Shiva Keshavan, India’s only winter sports athlete who has won medals at the international level—10 medals, including three golds—and will be making his sixth Winter Olympics appearance at the 2018 PyeongChang Games in February 2018. Then, there is long-track speed skater Vishwaraj Jadeja, who is just a few points away from qualifying for the Winter Olympics, which could mean shattering another glass ceiling in the global sporting arena.

These omissions are just an indicator of the systematic problems that exist in India’s sports ecosystem. Rathore, having competed at the elite level, is well aware of the real issues that have held back many homegrown talents from spreading their wings.

He also knows that for Indian sports to take the big leap, the entire ecosystem has to be rebooted and the building blocks have to be put in place.

That means grabbing the bull by its horns and stepping on a lot of toes of the various power centres. The question that needs to be asked is, does Rathore have the fire in his belly that he had as a topflight shooter and the iron will to change the system or has he already become part of the system after donning the khadi? It will take a lot more than making big announcements on Twitter to press the reboot button. After all, he has just 18 months at his disposal before the 2019 elections are called. ±

£581.2 m

Naturally, Rathore’s appointment ushered in a streak of euphoria and optimism among sportspersons and hope of changes in the ministry. On Sept. 3 his Twitter timeline exploded as congratulatory messages poured in from some of India’s biggest sporting icons such as Leander Paes, Abhinav Bindra, Virender Sehwag, M.C. Mary Kom and Vijender Singh, among others.

The minister, on his part, in one of his first television interviews to state broadcaster Doordarshan, said the right words—that sportspersons will be given “respect” and “facilities” on priority and will be treated as “fi rst citizens” of the country.

Since taking charge, he has given the impression of being a man in a hurry.

One of the first things he did was to clear the expanded list of athletes who have been included in the Target Olympic Podium Scheme (TOPS) after the fourth meeting of the TOPS Elite Athlete Identification Committee that was held two days before his appointment. The expanded list now covers 152 athletes across 14 disciplines. They will receive state funding for training with the aim of winning medals in the Commonwealth Games, 2018 Asian Games and 2020 Olympics.

On Sept. 15, he announced on his Twitter handle that the sports ministry will give these 152 athletes an additional `50,000 per month

Owing to the signing of big stars such as Paul Pogba, Manchester United posted record revenue for the second successive year, rising from £515.3 m to £581.2 m for the year ending June 30, 2017.

413 kgg Iranian Olympic champion weightlifter Sohrab Moradi broke the longest standing world record to win gold at the Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games, lifting 413 kg for the combined total.

2:03:32 Olympic ud champion Eliud Kipchoge n won the Berlin h marathon with a time of two hours, three minutes and 32 seconds, missing out on to’s ’s Dennis Kimetto s st 2:02:57 by jus 35 seconds.

OCTOBER 2017 / SPORTS ILLUSTRATED /

15

SCORECARD

Sports Science

The Mind Of A Champion A life in sport is a life in search of mastery, and mastery is the knowledge of what you want and the vision to understand how to achieve it BY SHAYAMAL VALLABHJEE

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SPORTS ILLUSTRATED / OCTOBER 2017

lages are socio-economically similar to Iten, but we fail to produce athletes. In England, the Lawn Tennis Association poured millions of pounds into tennis development models, but were without a champion for decades. This disparity has made me question what makes the fabric of a champion.

Honestly, I’m still searching for the answer to that, but over 20 years, I’ve noticed a few remarkable traits that are common among those who stand above the rest. Here are some of the lessons I’ve learnt.

PREPARATION: THE NOT-SOSECRET, SECRET Bruce Fordyce is a South African ultramarathon runner who is best known for his eight consecutive Comrades Marathon titles—a 90-km ultra race (with five daunting hills) that is run between Durban and Pietermaritzburg in KwaZuluNatal, South Africa. I was fascinated by how someone could dominate an event for eight consecutive years during an era when sports science and exercise physiology were nascent. It was only when I interviewed Bruce that it all seemed to make sense.

In a little under 30 minutes, Bruce explained how he studied every past winner’s training schedule, knew their diet and supplement regimes, understood every square inch of the route, tested the best

shoes and apparel, monitored hydration and sleep, trained in similar conditions, paid attention to recovery and analysed his competitors. In a nutshell, Bruce left no stone unturned in his preparation.

For him and every other athlete who has enjoyed a decade of success, preparation is meticulous and precise. So much so that winning is an expectation and not a hope.

SUCCESS IS A LONELY ROAD Becoming a champion is like running a marathon. You may think you have a lot of people

around you but 90 percent of the time, you are alone.

Here’s an extract from my book Lessons from the Wild to illustrate this point: ‘Solitude is a chosen state of being. It is an all-empowering state that reaffirms one’s self-competence through reflection and contemplation. It is a form of personal nourishment that comes from oneself, which is integral for mental growth and stability, personal assessment and the opportunity to allow your creative juices to flow. But, most important, solitude leaves you with noth-

SHI VA N G I K U L K A RNI

ONE OFTEN reminisces about the good old days.

I know I do, especially about my days on the sports field.

Running shuttles with the cricketers or watching my tennis pros fine-tune their cross-court backhand. I’ve spent almost two decades on the sports field, pushing my athletes physiologically and psychologically beyond their imaginations. I can remember each practice session like it was yesterday.

A number of athletes I’ve worked with were supremely talented but failed to harness their talent. There were also athletes who compensated for their lack of talent with hard work—these were the ones who made it all the way to the top, etching their names in halls of fame.

A life in sport is a life in search of mastery, and mastery is the knowledge of what you want, the vision to understand how to achieve it, the courage to walk the road less travelled and the belief to push on when no one else is there. That’s also the guiding philosophy of Herbalife, with whom I’ve been associated as a nutrition and fitness coach and whose products are used by winners across the globe.

In Iten, Kenya, I witnessed great athletes mould the next generation without any support. It is sheer grit that’s driving human performance to the next level. In India, some vil-

ing but yourself and it is in that state that one’s true self is exposed. It is where you become conscious of your own thoughts and experiences, and it is from here true personal growth is born.’

Most people are not comfortable being alone. From someone who has endured the long lonely roads of ultramarathon running, know and trust this: embrace solitude.

If you practise being comfortable with yourself, you will learn the art of rejuvenating your soul when times are tough. The athletes who go on to become champions are the ones who master solitude and actually use that time to redefine themselves.

ATTENTION TO DETAIL If there’s one trait that’s common among champions, it has to be their meticulous attention to detail. Sir Roger Bannister and Sir Edwin Moses are two wonderful examples of athletes whose attention to detail and conscientious use of science helped them create records that were unfathomable during their era.

Bannister broke the mile into four quarters and had a strategy for each quarter separately, while Moses decoded the art of lane discipline and stride length. It was this clinical precision that laid the foundation for their successes.

In sport, the athletes I train measure their success with how well they execute the things others take for granted.

Undoubtedly, this is what gives them the competitive edge.

tracks, no stadia or stateof-the-art gyms, no worldrenowned sports scientists or coaches and no university laboratories to test them. Yet, more than 90 or the Top 100 Fastest Times have come from runners residing there.

In the Rift Valley, they have one saying: “Good people make people great!”

The runners who’ve enjoyed global success support the upcoming talent, often for many years. Creating an environment that attracts the best talent helps them push each other to tap into the upper limits of human potential. It is the quality of the people around you that sets the tone.

Champions select those they want around them with the most stringent of measures.

DISRUPTION FOLLOWS SUCCESS I have witnessed millions of training rituals that seek to boost motivation or give athletes a psychological advantage. Yet, only a handful of these athletes have the ability to ‘raise the bar’ on performance year after year.

The one trait consistent among them is their ‘quest for perfection’ after they have won. While the rest enjoy the victory and the resting, legendary athletes look to disrupt their game when they are on a psychological high. They experiment the most when their confidence is soaring.

This is the biggest differentiator between good and great.

The greats push on to extend their advantage while the rest savour the moment, often for longer than they should.

GOOD PEOPLE MAKE PEOPLE GREAT Iten, Kenya—‘Home of the Champions’—is home to more than 44 percent of the world’s best marathoners. It is a high performance ecosystem in itself, except that it has no fancy buildings or tartan

Shayamal Vallabhjee is a sports scientist, EQ consultant and cricket expert. He is a Herbalife Consultant—Fitness and Education—and has trained elite athletes, filmstars and advises many teams and corporates.

Is it okay to have a protein drink during training?

—RAJIV SRIVASTAV, Lucknow It’s very difficult to consume protein during training. Protein requires a little more digestion time, is generally thicker and could make you a little thirsty. But, most important, it does not have the fuel that is needed immediately. I would either stick to an electrolyte drink or water, as it will quench your thirst, hydrate the body and allow you to feel light during training. A great option for this is Herbalife’s Afresh energy drink mix.

If you feel you want to drink a protein drink during training, make sure it’s very watereddown. The thicker it is, the harder it will be for you to train. In any case, one of the best protein solutions is Herbalife’s Formula 1 nutritional shake mix or Personalized Protein Powder. Also, Herbalife 24’s Formula 1 Sport and Prolong are two great supplements.

I’ve worked out my whole life, but now I’ve developed back pain. What do I do?

—ARJUN KUSHWAHA, Pune Lower back pain can be linked to weak lower abdominal muscles, weak back extensors or even tight hamstrings or gluteus medius muscles.

Being someone who actively trains, I doubt that your abdominal muscles are weak so that can’t be the reason for your back pain. In my experience, active individuals and athletes who have back pain are generally predisposed to tight hamstrings and gluteus muscles. I would advise you to see a physiotherapist and get these looked at first. Also, focus on mobility exercises like pelvic tilts for your lower back.

What’s the optimal way to develop a training regime? I’ve just gotten back to fitness.

—HARISH TIWARY, Kolkata Start slow. Consistency is the key to success.

Find an event or activity you can train towards, because there’s nothing like having a goal to keep you motivated. Find a training partner, someone who already has a set routine. Focus on setting smaller goals, probably weekly, that can be achieved easily. Trick the mind into believing that success is easy by achieving these smaller goals and, before long, you will be set in a routine.

From there, you can start challenging yourself.

Have a nutrition, fitness or sports question for Shayamal?

Write to us at SIAdvisor@emmindia.com.

OCTOBER 2017 / SPORTS ILLUSTRATED /

17

SCORECARD FOR THE RECORD

Lacking Consistency The Indian men’s hockey team gets yet another head coach in Sjoerd Marijne but unless he brings titles, there will be a successor in no time BY GOVINDAN KISHWAR

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SPORTS ILLUSTRATED / OCTOBER 2017

coaches on a whim, but the replacement for Oltmans is baffling. During its European tour, the men’s team lost the first two of its five matches, both against Belgium, but the takeaway from the five games was that there were six debutants in the team. There were eight different scorers for the 11 goals and India won their remaining three matches, including two against fourth-ranked Netherlands. The logical replacement for Oltmans then, would have been Harendra Singh. Yes, the one who led the junior team to success at the Hockey Junior World Cup last year. Instead, Harendra was appointed the high-performance specialist coach of the women’s senior team.

With the men’s team going through a transition period, when more juniors will be promoted to the senior side in the coming

Unless the team performs well at the World Cup, Marijne could well be the next coach to be cast aside.

years, as was evident during the European tour, wouldn’t appointing a man who knows Indian hockey be a better option? It’s a different matter that Harendra has never coached a women’s team before.

Marijne has his work cut out, more so because up until Sept.

20 he had commitments with the women’s team. He will have to ensure he gets his message across to the players at the earliest if India are to remain favourites in the Asia Cup. Beyond that, the World Cup is taking place at home next year.

Unless Marijne can deliver a run to the latter stages—India have not finished better than fifth since Sydney 1994, and the last medal came at Kuala Lumpur 1975—he could well be the next coach to be cast aside.

He might just benefit from giving Harendra a call or two. ±

M A N A N VAT S YAYA N A /A F P/G E T T Y IM AG E S

IF THERE is one thing that you’re sure to get if you follow Indian hockey, it’s drama. Roelant Oltmans’s stint as the head coach of the men’s senior national team ended in September, just days ahead of the Asia Cup, which is due to take place in Dhaka in October. He lasted longer than most and his successor, the former women’s team coach, Sjoerd Marijne, will be well aware of the demands of the job and of dealing with the federation.

What is surprising, however, are the reasons given by Hockey India (HI) for his termination. HI’s highperformance director, David John’s words in the aftermath of the HI conclave are confusing, to say the least. It points to the internal machinations of the federation that often spill into the public domain.

“Oltmans gave a series of presentations about his long-term vision but we need short-term results,” John told PTI following the decision. However, he then went on to say that they want ‘consistency’.

How? Paul van Ass, who preceded Oltmans, took charge of the team towards the end of January 2015 and during his short stint as coach there were numerous instances of friction between him and the federation.

Before him, Australian Terry Walsh parted ways with the Indian team in 2014, citing “difficulty adjusting to the decision-making style of the sporting bureaucracy in India.”

Walsh had guided India to its first Asian Games gold medal in 16 years.

But why Marijne? He replaced Neil Hawgood as the women’s coach, under whom the team finished last at the Olympics last summer (it is ranked 12th in the world).

Also, Marijne has very little experience of coaching a senior men’s side at the international level.

HI is no stranger to sacking

HOMEING MEING IN

SAY WHAT?

Who said what in the world of sport to make us laugh and make us cry “I don’t want to look like I’m going to be his boyfriend, no? We don’t want to talk about these things before an important match. We have a lot of respect for each other, no? We played a lot of times. I think we did important things for tennis. We appreciate that.”

—World No. 1 Rafael Nadal joked when asked to describe what he admires most about his long-time rival and friend, Roger Federer

JASPRIT BUMRAH

ANIRBAN LAHIRI

The 23-year-old was the stand-out performer during India’s tour of Sri Lanka.

During the five-match ODI series, he claimed 15 wickets at an average of 11.26. Bumrah’s impressive figures, which helped him jump 27 places to a careerbest fourth place in the ICC bowlers’ rankings, are a record haul by any pace bowler in a bilateral ODI series of five matches.

The golfer added another feather to his glittering career by making it to his second President’s Cup, after International captain Nick Price picked him as one of the wild cards for the Sept. 28–Oct. 1 event. The 30-year-old, who was the first Indian to play at the President’s Cup two years ago, had also made the cut for the FedEx Cup playoffs.

“It’s a pleasure to have shared all these years with you, Neymar my friend, I wish you luck in this new stage of your life.”

—Barcelona stalwart Lionel Messi took to Instagram to wish his former teammate, Neymar, well ahead of the latter’s world-record move to Paris Saint-Germain FC

“I am dealing with trying to understand what happened and overcome this in the next few hours, days, weeks, whatever. The way I played or am playing right now, it’s not good enough in my opinion to win this tournament. It’s better I’m out and somebody else gets a chance to do better than me.”

—Nineteen-time Grand Slam champion Roger Federer after his shocking loss to 28th seeded Argentine Juan Martin del Potro in the U.S. Open quarter-finals

“Bit too old to walk, I think. Wheelchair for his next birthday.”

—Former Sri Lanka captain Mahela Jayawardene has a dig at old friend Kumar Sangakkara after seeing a Twitter photo of him sitting on a baggage carousel

PU NI T PA R A N J PE /A F P/G E T T Y IM AG E S (B U M R A H); S T UA R T F R A N K L IN /G E T T Y IM AG E S (L A HIRI); TOSHIF U MI KI TA M U R A /A F P/G E T T Y IM AG E S (PR A NN OY ); SI IND I A

OUTSIDE EDGE By Satish Acharya H.S. PRANNOY

GAURAV GILL

Kidambi Srikanth and H.S. Prannoy crashed out of the Japan Open Super Series badminton tournament, both losing in the men’s singles quarter-finals.

China’s Shi Yugu comfortably won the opening game 21–15 against Prannoy. He then won the second game 21–14. Eighth seed Srikanth lost to defending world champion Viktor Axelsen 21–17, 21–17.

Gaurav Gill won the 2017 Rally of Hokkaido in Japan to take the lead in the FIA Asia Pacific Rally Championship (APRC) title standings.

The final round of the APRC will be held in India in November. Gill, of team MRF Śkoda, and co-driver Stephane Prevot have 135 points while Christian Veiby, also of Team MRF, has 115.

Robert Blomberg of Sweden is third with 68 points.

OCTOBER 2017 / SPORTS ILLUSTRATED /

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SCORECARD GAMING

Missed Pass PES 2018 is the most authentic football game you could buy—with subtle changes across the turf—but how does it fare off the pitch?

B Y G O V I N D A N K I S H WA R

REMEMBER THE BARCELONA team under Pep Guardiola? The Spaniard took charge of the Catalan club in 2008, and led them to the treble in his very first season.

However, had it not been for a few simple words from Andrés Iniesta, that Barcelona team which laid the foundation for future success may have shaped up very differently.

Following an opening league defeat to Numancia, which was followed with a 1–1 draw with Racing Santander, Guardiola was under pressure, and his abilityy p to lead ead the t e team tea

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SPORTS ILLUSTRATED / OCTOBER 2017

was already being questioned.

The story goes that one day, when Guardiola was in his office trying to figure out what to change in the team, Iniesta popped in and said, “Vamos de puta madre!,” which roughly translates to “We’re in f*****g great shape, we’re playing bloody brilliantly.” Guardiola still remembers that moment.

Barcelona went on to win their next nine league games.

No matter which club you were a fan of, one could not help but marvel at the football Bar Barcelona played. p y Eveery now and then, yyou had to tune in..

KONAM O MI’s latest footyy offfering, then,, iss a bit like that.. A As far as footbaall games go, g on ne could argue g that Pro o Evvolution Soccer (PES) ( ) 2018 iss the most authentic aut e t c simulation s u at on of the beeau a tiful game but m g much like a ne neut utra raal fan watchin ral ng Barcelona, it doesn’t feel liike your team—one you y would watch

ever. This, however, each week over is where the fun ends. your first love.

The thing with On the pitch, modern games is that, PES has improved as much as gameplay significantly in counts, content wins. the past year, with This is where PES player movement, Rating: 8/10 falls short yet again. passing, and The franchise still dribbling feeling Available for doesn’t hold a candle more like the real `3,499 on PS4, to FIFA when it comes thing. Players Xbox One and to league and team lican now use PC, and `2,499 cences, and as a result each part of their on PS3 and a club like Manchesbody to control Xbox 360. ter United is called the ball, which ‘Man Red’ while Real Madrid leads to some beautiful firstbecomes ‘MD White’, nor does touches to set yourself up for it pack as much depth in its a shot. Passing too feels more game modes. Fans were promrealistic, and no longer like ised an overhaul to Master a game of pinball where it’s League, where you become impossible to make a wrong the manager of a team, but pass. It’s only aided by players those changes feel half-baked being more aware of their and all other modes, including surroundings. Dribbling has myClub, have little changes been improved as well, and here or there. Finally, the less someone like Lionel Messi will said about the decade-old feelfeel nimble and deft, while a ing menu screens, the better.

Paul Pogba will be the kind PES, then, is not the footy of battering ram that ploughs game that will keep playing through a midfield. for hours on end, but it is the All of this is polished off one that will feel the most with graphics getting a fresh authentic no matter what you coat of paint, with players and put it up against. ± stadiums looking as lifelike as

SCORECARD GEAR

To Make You Sweat

A look at sports gear out right now that will allow you to be at the top of your game whether you hit the gym, the running track, or just plan to go for a long bike ride

BY TEAM SI

GIANT ROAM 3

REEBOK PRINT RUN RUNNING SHOES With the summer over, it’s the perfect time to get out there and exercise, without worrying about the heat. Any exercise regimen needs a good pair of running shoes and the Reebook Print Run series could be the ideal pair. These casual running shoes are lightweight, durable and promise to provide precise cushioning to ensure your feet are as comfortable as can be during a run. `7,999–8,999

UNDER ARMOUR ECLIPSE This non-wired sports bra is designed to ensure women feel as comfortable as possible during exercise. Made with 89 percent nylon and 11 percent elastane, it is built for mid-impact support and has a soft fabric. The bra claims to have a moisture transport system which wicks sweat to ensure you stay cool and focused. `1,200 onwards

Cycling is a great way to increase your fitness levels, while at the same time it is something recreational that requires only an initial investment. The Giant Roam 3 is a hybrid bicycle that combines the best of road and mountain bikes. The Roam 3 comes equipped with Shimano derailleurs and shifters, as well as Tektro mechanical disc brakes on both wheels. `32,500

WILSON PRO STAFF RF85

FITBIT

The famed racquet manufacturer released the RF85 as a tribute to Roger Federer, who used the racquet in his younger days. The RF85 is supposed to provide greater control due to its weight, allowing players to hit pin-point groundstrokes. The simple design’s highlight is an engraved image of Federer himself. `16,000

One of the best ways to keep track of your fitness is with a Fitbit. The fitness tracker will track your daily steps, distance, calories burned, floors climbed and number of active minutes. It can even track how long and how well you sleep. Both the Fitbit Charge 2 and Fitbit blaze are perfect for anyone aiming to stay fit. `14,999–19,999

OCTOBER 2017 / SPORTS ILLUSTRATED /

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SCORECARD PERSPECTIVE

Money Talks The 2017 transfer window witnessed some

£1.4 bn spent by Premier League clubs,

breaking the previous summer’s record for the sixth year running.

exceptional deals, with teams paying over the odds in an inflated market. In the second of our two-part series, we look at which positions were most popular, as well as the big takeaways from the window

1,687 deals were completed in the

top five European leagues, worth £3.98 bn.

B Y G O V I N D A N K I S H WA R

£124.65 m spent by Manchester City on defenders alone as they brought in Kyle Walker, Benjamin Mendy and Danilo.

WHERE THE MONEY WENT

Football is becoming more attacking, but clubs know the value of building from the back and are investing in defenders and midfielders

EPL clubs focussed their attention on strengthening the spine of the team, with 73 of 128 arrivals being defenders and midfielders.

128 Players 16

19

171

Players

15

13

12

With 19 ’keepers, 52 defenders, 42 midfielders, 33 wingers and 25 forwards, the Spanish ensured they maintained balance in their starting 11s.

43

52

7 75

alkeepe Goalkee G oalkeepe oa eeperss eepe

33

a

144

45

Forwards

19 25 22

127

31 26 20 33

126 Players

The Germans not only bought the least players, but also took on loan the least, 17. However, the league has only 18 teams.

T R A N SF ERS ACCO U N T F O R C LU B A RRI VA L S O N LY, IN C LU D IN G LOA N S .

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SPORTS ILLUSTRATED / OCTOBER 2017

216

Wingers 17

251 Players

Midfielders 67

46

The Italians are known for their defence and, true to their nature, bought 100 defenders, of which 27 were on loan.

178

Players

Thirty-one wingers and 33 forwards out of 178 signings shows just why French football is a delight to watch.

J E A N -SEBA S T IEN E V R A RD/A F P/G E T T Y IM AG E S (N E Y M A R); L LU IS G EN E /A F P/G E T T Y IM AG E S (D EM B EL E); DA N IS T I T EN E /G E T T Y IM AG E S (LU K A K U); T H AN A N U WAT SRIR A S A N T/G E T T Y IM AG E S F O R I CC (M O R ATA); MIK E H E WI T T/G E T T Y IM AG E S (M EN DY ); S T U F O RS T ER /G E T T Y IM AG E S (WA L K ER); I A N WA LT O N /G E T T Y IM AG E S (M AT I C , ED ERS O N); J U L I A N FIN N E Y/G E T T Y IM AG E S (BA K AYO KO); C L AU D I O V IL L A /G E T T Y IM AG E S (B O N U CC I); J O H N WA LT O N / PA IM AG E S V I A G E T T Y IM AG E S (RU D I G ER); G R A PHI C S BY V IJAY EN D R A

MOST EXPENSIVE 11 2017–18

4 Alvaro Morata

5 Benjamin Mendy

6 Kyle Walker

7 Nemanja Matic

ST £58 m

1LM Neymar £197 m

2

Oussma s ane a Dem mbeele Dembele

RM £97 m

RB £45 m

LB £52 m

CM £40 m

Lukaku 3ST Romelu £75 m

8 Tiemoue Bakayoko 9 Leonardo Bonucci

44

CM £39.7 m

CB £35 m

100

292

Defenders 53

30 42 31

MBAPPÉ IS A PARISIEN No one believed that Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) would actually pull off a deal for Barcelona’s Neymar Jr., who had a release clause of €222 m. With reports that PSG would be investigated by UEFA for breaching Financial Fair-Play rules (FFP), rumours of them getting Kylian Mbappé for €180 m were taken with a pinch of salt. However, PSG pulled another rabbit out of the hat, announcing a deal for the 18-year-old on loan with an option (pretty much obligatory) to buy.

ARSENAL AND WENGER ARE LOSERS, AGAIN One can’t help but sympathise with Arsenal fans. Arsène Wenger’s team

10 Ederson

GK £34.9 m

11 Antonio Rudiger CB £33.3 m

finished outside the top four for the first time since the Frenchman took over in 1996. Calls were made for Wenger to step down but the board stuck by their man, and a huge transfer kitty was made available to strengthen the squad. The transfer window came and went, and all Arsenal had to show for it was defender Sead Kolašinac and forward Alexandre Lacazette arriving. But the worst bit was their star-man Alexis Sánchez requesting to leave and then failing to do so. Tough times ahead.

MAHREZ AN EXAMPLE OF PROFESSIONALISM More often than not, when a player wants to leave, clubs have little choice but to sell. Players sometimes go on strike, but Leicester City’s Riyad Mahrez was a prime example of professionalism. The Algerian, integral to their superb title-winning season in 2015–16, made it clear he wanted to leave and the club agreed to the sale if the right offer came along.

However, that did not happen, and Mahrez continued to play, splendidly so, setting an example for the rest.

OCTOBER 2017 / SPORTS ILLUSTRATED /

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SCORECARD TWEET TALK

Who Is The GOAT? Rafael Nadal came back from injury to have one of the best seasons of his career. Is he on the road to surpassing the Swiss master? BY TEAM SI RAFAEL NADAL’S 16th Grand Slam title at the U.S. Open has reignited a debate—who is the Greatest of All Time (GOAT)? The Spaniard’s 6–3, 6–4, 6–3 win over Kevin Anderson not only earned him a third U.S. Open title, but was also the fifth title of 2017 and the 74th of his career. Such was the nature of the victory that Nadal went on to describe 2017 as “one of the best” years of his career.

However, Roger Federer’s blazing form earlier this year— winning the Australian Open and Wimbledon—had made fans conclude the Swiss was the GOAT. It was only once Nadal resurrected his career that the debate began again.

The world No. 1 has matched Federer in terms of major titles this season, winning the French and U.S. Opens.

Nadal is 31, five years Federer’s junior, and pundits believe the in-form Spaniard could match, and then surpass, Federer’s 19 Grand Slam wins in two years.

Besides fans, current and former players also took to Twitter to predict the GOAT, while also congratulating Nadal. Fellow Spaniard Fernando Verdasco (@FerVerdasco) wrote: “@RafaelNadal you are the best Spanish athlete in History!! #16thGrandSlam.”

Meanwhile, former Indian tennis stalwart Mahesh Bhupathi claimed that the GOAT debate needs to be put on

hold for now. “Rog and Rafa sweeping the majors, two of the greatest ambassadors of our sport, surely the GOAT discussions must be put on hold for now :)?,” he wrote on his Twitter handle, @Maheshbhupathi. Many retweets followed with fans picking sides. “Why doubt? At 36, still hunting majors and challenging everyone.

With just one clay court, he is goat #peRFect,” wrote a user.

Some, however, were just glad to have witnessed two of the greatest players of all time,

and wished the sport well.

“Dream year for tennis! There can’t be a better year. Hope they fight each other in final of the world tour in London,” said one. The Australian Open Twitter handle also posted a picture saying: “Rafa Nadal’s win at the #USOpen has got a lot of people talking about GOATs...”

One fan saw the funnier side: “Nadal is obviously an all-time GREAT! As a fan it’s annoying to see him picking his a** all match. Diff underwear or looser shorts maybe???” ±

INSTAGRAM

All Action and All Play

Serena Williams is a mother, Conor McGregor is being McGregor and Arsenal are ripped

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How Do They Not Win? Arsenal striker Alexis Sánchez poses with teammate Danny Welbeck at the gym.

Why they don’t score more is a mystery @alexis_officia1

A Champion Is Born?

Tennis queen Serena Williams welcomed daughter Alexis Olympia Ohanian Jr. on Sept. 1 @serenawilliams

M AT T H E W S T O C K M A N /G E T T Y IM AG E S

Filling Up “You need to get yourself a wealth belly, kid. It's the new six pack,” wrote UFC star Conor McGregor @thenotoriousmma

SCORECARD Shapath Bharadwaj | Meerut | Shooting The 15-year-old impressed at the ISSF Junior Shotgun World Cup in Porpetto, Italy, winning a bronze medal in double trap. Bharadwaj, who is coached by Yogendra Pal Singh, qualified for the final in second place, shooting a 131 out of 150. He shot a 48 in the final to finish behind Britain’s James Dedman (70) and Miki Ylomen of Finland (66).

Akanksha Bhan | Ahmedabad | Tennis Bhan kept her fine run going as she won the girls’ singles crown at the Hyderabad International Tennis Federation junior (U-18) tournament with a 6–4, 6–2 win over Shivani Amineni in the final. In August, the 16-year-old won the girls’ singles title in the junior national clay court championships in Chennai, outplaying Shivani Manjanna 6–0, 6–3.

UPDATE

The Kid Who Wins On Clay ■ Local boy Suresh Dhakshineswar was in top form during the national junior clay court tennis championships, held at the SDAT-Nungambakkam tennis stadium, Chennai, winning both singles and doubles titles.

Seventeen-year-old Dhakshineswar outplayed Abhimanyu Vannemreddy of Delhi 6–2, 6–4 in the boys’ singles final.

Dhakshineswar then paired with Parikshit Somani to beat Vannemreddy and Javia Dev 6–2, 3–6, 10–7 in the doubles final.

Earlier this year, Dhakshineswar won his first major title—the national U-16 Fenesta Open. En route to the title, he shocked top seed Siddhant Banthia 5–7, 7–5, 7–6 (1). Dhakshineswar began playing tennis at the age of five, and trains under former Commonwealth and Asian Games winner Somdev Devvarman. ±

Lakshya Sen | Almora | Badminton The 16-year-old continued to make a mark on the international badminton circuit, winning the Bulgaria Open International Series.

Sen, a protégé of the Prakash Padukone Academy in Bengaluru, overcame second seed Zvonimir Durkinjak of Croatia 18–21, 21–12, 21–17 for his second senior international title in Sofia.

Ankur Mittal | New Delhi | Shooting The 25-year-old has won three gold medals and one silver in 2017. At the Asian Shotgun Championship in Astana, Kazakhstan, he won the individual as well as team gold in men’s double trap. The promising shooter shot 71 in the individual final. In the team event, Sangram Dahiya (43) and Mohammed Asab (34) added to Mittal’s final total.

Kuhoo Garg | Uttarakhand | Badminton The 18-year-old is one of the most promising doubles players in Indian badminton. Garg and Rohan Kapoor, trainees at the Pullela Gopichand Academy, won their first international series title at the Hellas Open in Livadeia, Greece. They prevailed over compatriots Utkarsh Arora and Karishma Wadkar 21–19, 21–19 in the final.

Nihal Sarin | Thrissur | Chess The third youngest International Master in the world, the 13-year-old has taken the chess fraternity by storm with his performances. At the ChessMine rapid All-India Open Chess tournament, he won all six of his games on the opening day, but lost to eventual winner Abhijeet Gupta in the last round, finishing 14th in the tiebreak.

Nominate a Name Now j

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SPORTS ILLUSTRATED / OCTOBER 2017

To submit a candidate for Faces In The Crowd, e-mail us at siindia@emmindia.com or sportsillustrated@emmindia.com.

Second Fiddle FOOTBA LL

No More Messi and Ronaldo are winding down—too old.

Host Russia is a political mess—too depressing.

The U.S. should qualify, but barely—too dubious.

Less than a year out from World Cup 2018, it’s all about the inevitable rise of Brazil’s N EY MAR . But is he ready?

By BRIAN STRAUS

Photograph by LIONEL BONAVENTURE/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

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NEY MA R

the world’s 100 most influential people. (“I’ve always been struck by his humility,” David Beckham wrote for TIME. “He’s respectful and wants to learn. . . . He lives to play the game, and I imagine he approaches it now the same way he did as a boy.”)

Neymar says he can’t explain his inclusion on that list—and then he tries to do just that: “Maybe because I’m an athlete or maybe because I do a lot of things on social media. But I don’t know. I don’t like to talk about myself. I try to be a good role model for my son, my family, my friends, and then I try to be a good role model for the rest of the people, too. . . .

I try to be myself without being anything different.

I’m only one Neymar—for my family, for the public.

I’m always the same person.”

When Neymar acknowledges that, yes, the next 12 months, climaxing with the World Cup in Russia, will probably be “the toughest season of my life,” he believes it. The world will read those words and discuss and dissect them, and then they’ll become even more true. The spotlight is about to get even brighter, and Neymar, who’s been football’s next big thing for nearly a decade, will have to confront his destiny.

IF CRISTIANO RONALDO or Lionel Messi have anything in common with Crash Davis—if there’s any sort of cultural crossover between the archetypes of global sports glitz and minor league baseball grime—it’ll show itself when the tape recorder starts rolling. That’s when the icons in their posh private jets heed the wisdom Davis imparted on a bumpy bus, whether they’ve seen Bull Durham or not. “You’re gonna have to learn your clichés,” Crash says in the 1988 classic. “They’re your friends.”

The galácticos have little choice but to follow this advice. Combine the fanaticism surrounding global soccer with the minimal access afforded the media covering it, and you have an environment where every crumb becomes content, where innuendo is louder than insight, where the tiniest spark can become a bombshell. In short: The less said the better; be safe, not sorry. So it’s significant, then, that in the middle of what should be the most relaxing summer of his adult life, Neymar da Silva Santos Jr. is willing to let you in, share his concerns and maybe even make a headline. He can’t hide from who he is, nor from the momentous, legacy-defining season to come.

The quiet but charismatic 25-year-old Brazilian forward has never won a World Cup. He has never been named FIFA’s player of the year.

And had he stayed at FC Barcelona (which was up in the air throughout the summer transfer window; if he hadn’t moved to Paris, it would have been a surprise), he would have had to wait a bit longer until he’s even considered his own team’s centrepiece. But he’s universally deemed soccer’s best player after Ronaldo and Messi, and he’s beloved in a way that neither of them ever will be. And a big reason for that is his indifference to the Book of Crash.

Neymar can’t fake it. He’s not packaged, and he’s not a product—and as a result, he sells lots of them: Nike, Gillette, Panasonic, Beats by Dre. . . . In 2013 he was named the most marketable athlete in the world

by SportsPro and Eurosport. In January he was ranked the most valuable player on the European transfer market by Switzerland’s CIES Football Observatory. And in April, he was the only footballer on TIME’s list of

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SPORTS ILLUSTRATED / OCTOBER 2017

his was Neymar’s first summer without a national team commitment since 2010, when his exclusion from Brazil’s ill-fated World Cup squad caused an uproar at home.

Brazil has already qualified for Russia, so he’s had the chance to indulge. He hit Oracle Arena for Game 2 of the NBA Finals, sitting courtside with Formula 1 champion Lewis Hamilton and posing afterward with Odell Beckham Jr. and Kevin Durant. Neymar wasn’t at all concerned about whether the Warriors’ megastar was a fan; this was no ego trip. “I don’t know if he’s seen me play,” Neymar told SI, “but I had the pleasure to meet him.”

In another photo the 5' 9" Brazilian stood on a chair and playfully lorded over 6' 7" Draymond Green. Neymar enjoys being around famous and accomplished people—he reunited with Green in Ibiza last month—not because of how it reflects on him but because he’s a fan, genuinely in awe of what they can do.

In the last year he performed a short, silly scene in which he juggles a napkin holder in Vin Diesel’s most recent Xander Cage movie—a role only for the athlete who doesn’t take himself too seriously—and kicked a ball across Hollywood Boulevard on Jimmy Kimmel Live! He’s joined musicians onstage, singing and dancing at concerts back home.

Neymar has a piano at his house in Spain—it was there when he moved in, he says, and he has been teaching himself to play with YouTube videos—but at a Los Angeles photo shoot for this story it takes some convincing to get the man watched by tens of millions every weekend to tap out even a simple tune

A L E X C A PA RR OS /G E T T Y IM AG E S

on a rented grand. He sits, gets up and wanders a bit before settling back in. Songs are suggested. How about Barcelona’s club anthem, “El Cant del Barça”?

A Nike marketing rep asks that the studio’s ambient music be turned up, not down, so Neymar might feel a bit less scrutinised. He’s not an action figure to be played with. He’s human; he gets nervous. He says he felt it when he met Michael Jordan in Las Vegas and when he lined up to take what would be the winning penalty kick in the Olympic gold medal game last summer in Rio. Before the confidence bubbled up at the penalty spot, he admits, he endured the “worst sensation—all of the responsibility is on you.”

The Olympics play a distant second fiddle to the World Cup, but that U-23 tournament stubbornly remained the one international competition Brazil hadn’t won. And with the 2016 Games being contested on home soil two years after World Cup humiliation (also at home), Brazil named Neymar one of its three over-age players. He delivered, scoring four goals in six matches and converting that gilded penalty against Germany. Neymar was in tears almost immediately. For him, delivering the final piece of Brazil’s trophy puzzle was an immense achievement. For

the public that adores him, however, it’s still NOT NO. 1 not enough.

Messi, Suárez and “It was like the Yankees finishing with the Neymar made for a best record in the regular season: O.K., that’s deadly strikeforce.

However, at Barça, kind of cool, but they measure everything Neymar was still around here by World Cup championships,” No. 2 to Messi. says Brian Winter, a Texan who co-wrote Pelé’s 2014 autobiography and who now runs Americas Quarterly, a political, business and cultural journal covering Latin America. As Reuters’ chief correspondent in Brazil for five years, he knows well how the nation’s sports, economics and politics intersect; he was living in São Paulo when Germany dismantled the hosts 7–1 in the ’14 Cup semi-finals. That game in Belo Horizonte, he says, marked “the start of a long descent into hell for Brazil,” which has been reeling from financial and political crises since.

Neymar’s penalty and Olympic gold offered only temporary respite.

“It was cool for, like, a day,” says Winter. “It created the sensation that hosting the Games hadn’t been a total waste. But once the lights went off, it was so clear that all of the promises linked to the Olympics— improved policing, infrastructure—had fallen short.” Brazilians, he says, are “desperately hoping for a reason to be happy in 2018. And so often—maybe too often—Brazilian soccer and politics mix.”

So the nation turns to Neymar. Four years after the misery of the so-called Mineirazo drubbing by Germany, which Neymar missed with

When Neymar acknowledges that the next 12 months will probably be “THE

TOUGHEST SEASON OF MY LIFE,” he believes it. The world will read those words and then they’ll become even more true.

OCTOBER 2017 / SPORTS ILLUSTRATED

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NEY MA R

a fractured vertebra suffered in a quarterfinal Thunderdome match against Colombia, Brazil has a viable shot at redemption in Russia. The 7–1 stain will never go away, but this World Cup will feature Neymar in his prime, shouldering the hopes of a country desperate for a reversal in fortune. This is the season in which it all could turn around.

The season in which Neymar might finally fulfil his promise.

CRASH COURSE

Neymar’s back injury against Colombia sidelined him for Germany’s 7–1 rout, but he led the charge at the Olympics.

verybody wants that Neymar be the protagonist in the World Cup,” says Ricardo Kaká, the Orlando City midfielder who was part of Brazil’s 2002 title-winning team (and who, incredibly, is the last man other than Ronaldo or Messi to be crowned world player of the year—10 years ago). “This is unfair sometimes, but it’s also because of who he is as a player, for his potential, how he can decide a game, how he’s a protagonist in Barcelona. There is going to be pressure on him.”

Kaká is certainly familiar with scrutiny, but as good as he was, he never became the long-term, tactical focal point of the Seleção. Nevertheless, Neymar looks up to the former Brazil number 10, who’s 10 years his elder. Neymar admires Kaká’s piety, and Kaká appreciates Neymar’s willingness to listen and learn. They’re both part of a textmessage group reserved for Brazilian national team veterans, making it one of the most exclusive clubs in the world: Kaká, Roberto Carlos, Denílson, Elano. . . . Neymar joined recently, and he employed the group’s advice during the Olympics.

Kaká explains: “The first games, Brazil didn’t play so good, everyone was criticising Brazil—and he was the most important player. He tried speaking with the press, and then I said to him, ‘Now as a player we have a very good opportunity to answer without saying; we have the field to [show that] we care and that the situation is important to us.’ In the end he won the Olympics, and that was the best answer he could give.”

The members of the group, Kaká says, believe Neymar is “very smart to understand that these guys can give him something different, something that could help.”

Brazil needs Neymar because, increasingly, Brazil is Neymar. Though rocked by recessions and political scandals, the nation has seen massive gains made by the nascent middle class over the past couple of decades.

For years, socioeconomic classes “often resembled castes,” Winter says.

There were five—A through E—and it’s the C that’s been on the rise.

C is roughly where you would have found a young Neymar. The son of a journeyman pro player, he wasn’t impoverished growing up on the southern fringe of the São Paulo megalopolis, but his family didn’t have much either, and making ends meet was a chore. Now, Paris SaintGermain will pay him some $350 million over five years before tax, according to Forbes. He’s living the modern Brazilian dream.

“Neymar has the deepest connection with the people of Brazil of any

soccer player of this generation, particularly with the rising middle class,” Winter says. “The way he talks, his street-wise charm—he appeals to that segment.

He’s the best pitchman in a generation.”

That appeal also dovetails with the millennial generation. Neymar is a master of social media. His image isn’t meticulously crafted or self-celebratory like Ronaldo’s; it’s not homey or reticent like Messi’s.

That video of Neymar playing soccer in a backyard with Justin Bieber is more effective than anything a consultant might stage. It’s organic and honest, a window into Neymar’s effortless cool.

He’s fashionable. And he’s got a wonderfully wry sense of humour. “Social media tends to ferret out the phonies,” Winter says. “People love watching for their idols to show a glimpse of insincere behaviour—but you really don’t see it from him.”

There’s a 2011 video of a 19-year-old Neymar in the locker room at his old Brazilian club, Santos, in which he dances and sings and thrusts along to Michel Teló’s cover of “Ai Se Eu Te Pego.” The more sighs and eye rolls Neymar gets from teammates in the video, the more committed he becomes. He’s comfortable, unvarnished and fearless in the moment—the sort of person anyone with spunk or spirit would like to be around. The clip has more than 25 million views, and Neymar has 78 million followers on Instagram,

record in the regular season,” says Winter. “That’s cool, BUT THEY MEASURE

EVERYTHING AROUND HERE BY WORLD CUP CHAMPIONSHIPS.” 32

SPORTS ILLUSTRATED / OCTOBER 2017

O D D A N D E R S E N /A F P/ G E T T Y I M A G E S

When Brazil took gold at the Olympics, “it was like the Yankees finishing with the best

NEYMAR

LU C A S U EB EL /G E T T Y IM AG E S

THROUGH THE YEARS

making his account th he 14thhmost popular in the w ld a world, hair above Messi’s.

Ronaldo has more, but Google “CR7 dancing” and among the first few hits are clips of the Portuguese star gyrating in a pink bathing suit in front of a crowd in Ibiza and another of him cavorting on a private plane. Search “Messi dancing” and you’ll find videos of the Argentine and his wife. There’s no better illustration of the differences among the three men.

Kaká certainly sees it. “Neymar just tries to be himself,” he says. “What’s in your character [takes] you where you want to go. Messi is a little bit shy, so he wants to be more out of the light. Cristiano wants to be not just a soccer player, but also a celebrity.

There’s not a right way, it’s just a choice. Neymar is the nice guy who wants to be everywhere, but he’s humble and simple. When he takes a picture with Kevin Durant, it’s: ‘This is the man, not me.’ ” The soccer-loving world may worship now at the feet of Messi and Ronaldo, but that’s humanity’s appreciation for the divine and incomprehensible.

Messi plays as if there are fireworks attached to his boots—the ball moves so quickly from one side of his foot to the other that it seems to occupy two places simultaneously. He’s all controlled chaos, staccato soccer. He is a savant, essentially, who doesn’t seem to be truly comfortable anywhere but on a field, and he’s been the driving force behind a three-time European champion that’s arguably the greatest side the sport has ever seen.

If Messi is from Mars, then Ronaldo hails from

SANTOS

2009 2010 2011 2012 2013

TROPHIES Campeonato Paulista Copa do Brasil Copa Libertadores Recopa Sudamericana

BARCELONA

Goa a als

48 60 47 47 23

14 4 42 42 24 4 43 3 13

2010, 2011, 2012 2010 2011 2012

2013–14 2014–15 2015–16 2016–17

TROPHIES La Liga Copa del Rey Supercopa de España UEFA Champions League FIFA Club World Cup

App Appearances

Appearances

Goals

41 51 49 45

14 39 31 20

2014–15, 2015–16 2014–15, 2015–16, 2016–17 2013 2014–15 2015

Appearances 79 Goals 52 OCTOBER 2017 / SPORTS ILLUSTRATED

33

THE PLOTS THICKEN SIX MORE NON-NEYMAR STORY LINES THAT WILL DOMINATE THE RUN-UP TO WORLD CUP 2018

BY AVI CREDITOR

1

FROM RUSSIA WITHOUT LOVE As the nexus of political controversy (not to mention alleged shady FIFA dealings), the host nation will command the spotlight for reasons far beyond sports.

2

OH, SAY, CAN YOU . . .

QUALIFY? Bruce Arena’s USMNT have nine points in eight games.

Now it’s on his players—hello, Christian Pulisic—to clinch a win and draw in the final two games to secure a top-three place in CONCACAF and earn automatic entry to an eighth straight Cup.

4

OOH LA LA, LES BLEUS Saying that France is stacked would be an understatement— even its C team could make a deep run in Russia. The battle to make this roster will be fierce. Consider: Out of Olivier Giroud, Antoine Griezmann, Alexandre Lacazette, Ousmane Dembélé, Kylian Mbappé, Kingsley Coman and Karim Benzema, several world-class attacking stars will be left home.

5

6 3

ADIOS AND TCHAU Each of this generation’s transcendent talents— Argentina’s Lionel Messi and Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo—has a World Cup trophy-sized hole in his résumé. This is likely their last chance to fill it . . . assuming they, too, qualify.

Argentina is onto another manager and teetering close to the edge; Portugal is in decent shape but could find itself in UEFA’s do-ordie playoff.

EL TRI-RIFFIC Unlike three years ago, Mexico is cruising to the World Cup. And with a golden generation of attacking riches led by Chicharito, this could be the year El Tri breaks its stretch of six straight round-of-16 exits and cracks the world’s upper tier.

his is where PSG entered the picture. The powerhouse French club was always going to feature in Neymar’s story, thanks to an astonishing Champions League round-

J A M I E S A B AU / G E T T Y I M A G E S (P U L I S I C); F R A N C K F I F E /A F P/ G E T T Y I M A G E S (G R I E Z M A N N); L AU R E N C E G R I F F I T H S / G E T T Y I M A G E S

WIN, HOIST, REPEAT? No nation has won backto-back Cups since Brazil in 1958 and ’62. Germany—which steamrollered through the Confederations Cup this summer with its B team—most definitely can end that streak.

Mount Olympus. He’s like one of us but better, perfected. He plays like the physical specimen he is: with strength, power and panache. He’s more attractive than the statues of him. If Neymar markets to the C class, Ronaldo aims his CR7 brand, with its underwear and fragances, at those in the A+. The guy has not only an airport but a galaxy named after him.

Yet for all their supernatural prowess, neither Messi nor Ronaldo is as adored in his homeland as Neymar is in Brazil. Argentines and Portuguese may look up to their respective icons, but Neymar prefers to look you in the eye.

Asked if he’s a little bit Ronaldo and a little bit Messi, Neymar says, “I think I’m like that. Sometimes I’m a little flamboyant, an extrovert. Sometimes I’m quiet.”

Whether he’s their peer is less important to the soccer world than whether he’s their successor. The Messi-Ronaldo duopoly has combined to win six FIFA Club World Cups, eight Champions League titles and a boatload of other honours. But Messi is 30, Ronaldo 32. Next summer’s World Cup will be the last for each man in his prime. At some point, it must be Neymar’s turn.

The Brazilian says that FIFA’s player of the year award is “very important” (Crash Davis wouldn’t like that answer), but he shrugs when asked if and when he’ll break through. “Everything happens in the right time,” he says. “The main focus is to keep playing well, keep winning games, and when the time is right, I’ll get mine.” (I’ll get mine—that wouldn’t pass the Crash test either.)

Back in June, when Ronaldo celebrated Real Madrid’s second consecutive Champions League crown with fans at the Plaza de Cibeles, he made his case for a second straight world player of the year award with a microphone and a chant. The thought of it—of using a team event to tout his case for an individual honour—makes Neymar squirm.

“No, I wouldn’t do that,” he says.

He attracts attention in other ways. His play, like his demeanour, borrows a bit from both Messi and Ronaldo. But whereas Messi slices and Ronaldo surges, Neymar glides. He’s smoother and more efficient than either, outstanding with both feet and blessed with the creativity and vision of his great Brazilian predecessors. But his game, like his personality, is more accessible. Train long enough and hard enough, and maybe you, too, could play like Neymar. He’s human, mortal, and he speaks with a voice the next generation understands.

L I O N EL B O N AV EN T U RE /A F P/G E T T Y IM AG E S

NEY MA R

of-16 series that will live forever in the lore of both PSG and FCB. Last season was a tough one by Barcelona’s standards, and its puzzling lack of ruthlessness was exposed in a 4–0 first-leg Valentine’s Day massacre at the Parc des Princes. Neymar says he was embarrassed by the performance, and he corroborates the story that he promised friends he’d net two goals in the March 8 decider at Camp Nou— which he ultimately did, in the 88th and 91st minutes, before setting up Sergi Roberto’s clincher in a 6–1 thriller.

On a team as loaded as Barça, there aren’t many moments when a player can and must take command. But with his European season on the line Neymar was unstoppable, and for many it seemed like a turning point on his climb to soccer’s summit.

In TIME, Beckham wrote that it would “be remembered as the moment he stepped up to take on the mantle of best player in the world. Neymar is ready to make his move.”

But as July came to a close, it appeared more and more likely that move might take him away from Messi and back to Paris, where PSG was looking for a way to fi nance the payment of his record $261 million release clause. Yes, Neymar would have to wait for Barcelona to become his team—but if and when it did, then his team would be Barcelona. He has left for PSG, and joins a lesser league and a club that has the cash but not the chemistry to make a deep Champions League run.

In NBA terms he’s moving from the Warriors to the Clippers. And instead of Durant, whose desire to win trumped his need to be the man—as Neymar’s did when he left Santos for Barcelona in 2013—the Brazilian will now be channelling Kyrie Irving, itching to get out from under LeBron James’s shadow.

Asked which of his two favourite NBA players he identifies with more—James, who was raised in the spotlight, or Steph Curry, who came up quietly at Davidson, mirroring Neymar’s lower-profile beginnings—Neymar chooses LeBron. Let us not forget, then, James’s ultimate decision to break from the Big Three after winning superteam trophies in Miami. In order to be soccer’s biggest name, perhaps Neymar has to shine further away from Messi, Luis Suárez and Barcelona’s band of superstars.

Now at PSG, he’s paid like a king and expected to inspire a desperate club that hasn’t advanced beyond the Champions League quarter-finals since 1995.

He has the headlines and the billboards to himself.

When those are shared, knocking a ball around with Bieber endears you to fans. When they’re yours alone, a Bieber moment may raise questions of focus, maturity or leadership. There will be no outlets at PSG, no excuses. He also has to prepare mentally and

physically for the rigours of a must-win World Cup. But it’s all manageable. It always has been—so believes the man with LIFE IS A JOKE tattooed across his left biceps. He was Brazil’s Olympic talisman, and he was thriving at the 2014 World Cup before getting hurt. “We only have one life, so we have to figure out a way to be happy,” Neymar says. “Don’t take it so seriously. That’s pretty much it. Enjoy your life.” eymar’s relationship with his homeland remains strong.

Not even the court cases concerning his controversial 2013 transfer to Barcelona have dented his reputation.

In July, he was cleared of tax evasion in Brazil; a Spanish investigation is ongoing. (“Tax evasion,” Winter points out, “is next to soccer as the national sport in Brazil.”) Neymar’s countrymen, meanwhile, remain grateful for the gold medal and for his staying with Santos as long as he did.

His Q rating is unscathed.

The only thing that could hurt him at home is, of course, failure to win in Russia. After he was forced to watch the semi-final rout by Germany while recuperating, Neymar told his fellow Brazilians, “We are going to do all we can so that I can fulfi l my dream.

My dream is to be the champion of the world.”

Three years later he’s asking for help.

“I THINK YOU CAN BE A LEGEND WITHOUT WINNING A WORLD , Neymar y says. y Maybe, y but not in Brazil.

CUP,” “I want to win a World Cup,” he says, “but it’s not only me, you know?

There are other factors. There are teammates. There are a lot of things going on.” He’s certainly right, if the Mineirazo was any indication.

But then he concludes, “I think you can be a legend without winning a World Cup.” Maybe, but not in Brazil. Sócrates and Zico, for example, were great players and remain well respected. Many pundits think their 1982 squad, which lost to eventual champion Italy in the second round, was better than the ’94 side, which won it all. But on a team with five stars on its jersey, the bar is so much higher. “If Neymar doesn’t win at least one World Cup, as much as people love him today, he will be forgotten,” says Winter. “Brazil isn’t short of epic personalities who’ve won World Cups.”

Neymar tries to make light of the pressure. “It’s very normal,” he says. “The thing is, if you win a World Cup, they’ll tell you that if you want to be the best, you have to win another World Cup! When you’re one of the top players, this is going to happen all the time.”

Perhaps it has all felt routine until now. But the next 12 months will be anything but ordinary. A new chapter has begun, and while the end is uncertain, it’s sure to be blessedly free of clichés. ± OCTOBER 2017 / SPORTS ILLUSTRATED

35

SPECIAL FEATURE

STARS AND

STARDUST The Maruti Suzuki Sports Illustrated Sportsperson Of The Year Awards were the biggest celebration of sporting glory in India.

It was an event to remember for its glitz and glamour

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SPORTS ILLUSTRATED / OCTOBER 2017

SPORTSPERSON of theYEAR Charity Gala

T

HE MARUTI SUZUKI Sports Illustrated Sportsperson Of The Year Awards are a ll about g uts, glor y and glamour. When India’s brightest sportspersons and Bollywood celebrities came together in Mumbai, it turned out to be an evening when everyone ‘played glamorous’.

With the awards being graced by some of the most prominent names in Indian sports, the atmosphere was electric and set the tone for the evening that was hosted by popular television celebrity Shibani Dandekar.

But there was another star of the show: The Maruti Suzuki Vitara Brezza. With its sharp lines, sleek shape and elegant stance, the Vitara Brezza stood out as the guests and the stars posed with the striking car.

Shuttler P.V. Sindhu was honoured with the Sportsperson Of The Year award for an outstanding 2016 that was topped by an Olympic silver medal. Other winners included Abhinav Bindra (Lifetime Achievement), K. Arumugam (Outstanding Contribution To Sports), Shiva Keshavan (Extreme Performer Of The Year), Gaurav Gill (Athlete Of The Year), the junior men’s hockey team (Team Of The Year), Milkha Singh (Living Legend), K.L. Rahul (Gamechanger Of The Year), while Milind Soman’s mother, Usha, received the award for Community Development Through Sports on behalf of her son. The evening was made even more special by the presence of Bollywood actors Taapsee Pannu, Angad Bedi and Richa Chadda. ±

AN EVENING TO REMEMBER Taapsee Pannu (left) strikes a pose with the Vitara Brezza. Some of India’s biggest sports stars like Sindhu (top), Bhaichung Bhutia (top right) Keshavan (right), Gill (centre left), Bedi (centre right) and British boxing champion Amir Khan (bottom) paused to admire and autograph the gorgeous car.

The Maruti Suzuki Vitara Brezza with its sharp lines, sleek shape and elegant stance stood out amidst stars OCTOBER 2017 / SPORTS ILLUSTRATED /

37

A STAGE FOR THE WORLD

India is all set to not only participate in its first global football tournament, but will also host the best young teams on the planet. It must ensure this lays the foundation for progress

By Tanmoy Mookherjee Photograph courtesy of AIFF

O

N DEC. 5, 2013, India’s dreams of becoming a football nation finally achieved some form of fruition as it bagged the rights to host the 17th edition of the FIFA Under-17 World Cup. In the history of FIFA’s prestigious football tournaments, across age groups and genders, this is the first time India will participate in a global football event. Unlike the fiasco in the leadup to the 2010 Commonwealth Games, the preparation this time wasn’t the challenge as the All India Football Federation (AIFF), with help from FIFA at various junctures, ensured infrastructure was thoughtfully laid-out and on schedule.

The added pressure of being a participating host nation meant putting together a capable team. And for all that the country has experienced in its journey of bringing in the monies and fans through the Indian Super League (ISL), and hosting of frequent senior friendlies, the system couldn’t contribute to the junior set-up. Remember South Africa hosting the 2010 FIFA World Cup? For most footballing nations, the Under17 tournament—Under-16 until 2007—acts as a foundation for junior players rising up the ranks in professional football with the aim of representing senior teams of their respective countries. For India, though,

38 /

SPORTS ILLUSTRATED / OCTOBER 2017

it was a different beast altogether. Unlike other football nations, India didn’t have a junior league until 2015, where players come through academies set up by local football clubs. Until 2015, nearly two years after India won the bid, they hadn’t even started preparing a team for the competition.

The lack of a proper feeder system at the grassroots level meant a haphazardly put together string of international visits to continental Europe and other parts of Asia, which many would argue was the only solution to the problem. The appointment of German coach Nicolai Adam was hailed as a masterstroke, until it fell flat on its face just months ahead of the tournament, and the coach was sacked. Whether this was due to poor results, or players criticising his aggressive training methods was not important. Finding his replacement was.

Portuguese coach Luís Norton de Matos took over, and not only revamped the team but had to convince players to adopt a different playing style to that advocated by his predecessor with no time to waste.

Scouting programmes across the country were held, some succeeded while some failed. Amidst logistical, cultural and administrative roadblocks, a pool of players was put together within a year, two of them coming from the overseas scouting programme—one from the U.S. and another

from Canada. The latter even gave up his Canadian passport as India doesn’t allow dual citizenship.

India’s exposure trips yielded far from satisfactory results but for the odd wins against second-string club sides. A draw against Chile in a friendly and a 3–3 against Saudi Arabia in the AFC Under-16 Championships were the high points for an inexperienced team. Props to them for effort, but the major sentiment widespread is whether this team will be able to stand up against USA, Ghana and Colombia in what appears to be a formidable Group A. Matos’s assessment that the gulf in the standard of football between India and the rest of the world is “enormous,” is spot on.

Yes, football offers a more level playing field in comparison to other sports but to expect India to win against any of the teams in their group would be going too far. Yet, the results may not show immediately but the foundation has been laid, and India would be wise to not let it die a slow death like it did in the 1950s and ’60s, a period regarded as India’s golden years in football.

There has been a concerted effort from

football renaissance. Pair it with the second-largest popuNumber of teams 24 lation in the world crying out for sporting success outside of Current champions Nigeria cricket and, to an extent, badMost titles Nigeria (5) minton, and the cupboard of Host nation India India’s sporting achievements Venues Delhi, Mumbai, Goa, looks decidedly bare. When Kolkata, Kochi, Guwahati the television ratings came in Mascot Kheleo, the for the 2014 FIFA World Cup clouded leopard held in Brazil, India had conDates Oct. 6–28, 2017 tributed a major chunk of it.

Final Oct. 28, Kolkata The other daunting challenge for the team is playing in front of capacity home crowds. At the launch of the team’s jersey FIFA as well as India’s football administrafor the tournament, senior team captain tion to bring an international tournament Sunil Chhetri may have just given them to the country for a multitude of reasons. a window into the life of an international Make no mistake, football is the most-played sportsperson. “This moment is not going sport in the world but despite its feverish to come back. This tournament, the three popularity among the masses, FIFA hadn’t games you are going to play… is probably managed to tap into two of the biggest pogoing to be the most important of your tential markets for years—China and India. lives,” he said to them. Chhetri meant well While China is undergoing a revolution of course, continuing with his advice to of its own with a lucrative league, which just enjoy the moment, but whether has prised away some big names from Euit lifts them, or otherwise, remains ropean clubs, India has yet to experience its

2017 FIFA UNDER-17 WORLD CUP

to be seen.

India can also learn from what the fi rst ever senior football World Cup held in South Africa did for that country. The multi-billion-dollar investment pumped in to prepare for the event resulted in a financial fillip to the economy, even though the fortunes of the national team have remained more or less the same. Dwindling crowds in local games and rising maintenance costs notwithstanding, there has been a surge in local talent coming through the junior ranks thanks to a renewed focus in the youth system.

Like South Africa, India’s job doesn’t end at hosting the tournament. While the short-term implications can look bleak, a sustained effort in making the system more professional, transparent and structured could be the best outcome the country needs to revamp its fortune in football.

India is already becoming a hub for multiple sporting leagues, and the audience is hungry for more. All they need is a team to be proud of and this team of 17-year-olds could form a long-term relationship with the expectant fans. ±

GROUP INDIA

GHANA

Coach Luís Norton de Matos Best performance Debut in 2017

Coach Samuel Paa Kwesi Fabin Best performance Winners, 1991, 1995

MAKING THEIR debut in a FIFA competition as the host nation, India are under no illusion that they will not have their work cut out, and are grouped with two-time champions Ghana, the USA and Colombia. The coach himself has conceded that the gulf between the hosts and other participating nations is huge. This experience for India’s future generation of footballers could be career-defining.

USA Coach John Hackworth Best performance 4th place, 1999

40 /

9

Goals scored by Ghana at Gabon 2017, to add to the nine scored in the qualifiers. No team scored more at the CAF U-17 Africa Cup of Nations finals.

5

Almost half of the 2017 CONCACAF U-17 Championship’s ‘Best XI,’ as voted by the Technical Study Group of the tournament, were from USA.

3

Goals scored by Santiago Barrero, Juan Penaloza and Jaminton Campaz.

Between them, the trio accounted for 75 percent of Colombia’s goal tally during qualifying.

SPORTS ILLUSTRATED / OCTOBER 2017

AFTER DOMINATING the junior unior tournament in the 1 h h reached h d 1990s, where they f our consecutive finals, f G na’s per ffor ma nce s Gha h have tapered off f since.

T f f They have qualified for t he fi rst time in 10 years.

Af After a strong showing in th he continentall competi-t ion this h year where h h they w l were runners-up to Mali, Gh d an early l state-Ghana made m h ment off a resurgence in the ju k . unior ranks.

COLOMBIA C Coach h Orlando Restrepo po Best performance p 4th 2003, 2009 4 place, p 9 S I N C E T H E I R fo four t hp f inish in Nigeri place rii a in l b are n 2009, Colombia m k making a return to th d ld he Under-17 World C Cup aff ter secur-ing t hird place in h continentall n the ch h h championships this y h may not b year.

They be o h picks k to pro-one off the c d f rom t h p ceed heir g roup, but a surprise victory over the favourites could put t hem t hrough to t he knockout stages.

Komal Thatal India

Midfielder

CO U R T E S Y O F A IF F

THEY MAY have had a disappointing run in the 2015 edition of the competition in Peru, but the USA have since resurrected their junior programme, with former Major League Soccer manager John Hackworth taking over the reins, under whom the Stars and Stripes made it to the fi nal of the 2017 CONCACAF Under-17 Championship, the continental equivalent. They remain the favourites to top Group A.

7

The number of times India have participated at the AFC U-16 Championship. In 2002 the team managed to make it to the quarter-finals, their best result to date.

A

GROUP

B

NEW ZEALAND

PARAGUAY Coach Gustavo Morínigo Best performance 5th place, 1999 F O R M E R PA R A G UAY i nter nat iona l Gu st avo Morínigo knows a thing World Cups, or two about a h hav ing represented his countryy in both the U-20 aas well ll as a the senior World Morínigo now Cups. And A has the ttask of imparting all h his expeerience to his wards wh who h havve qualified for the competittion on the basis of h thi hird-place finish in their h South American Underthe h mpionship.

17 Cham

1.77

Goals-per-game average during the qualifiers. With 16 strikes in total, they had the second most potent attack of South America’s four qualified sides behind that of champions Brazil.

27

New Zealand scored 27 goals in just five qualifying matches, yet two of their wins were by a single goal.

Coach Danny Hay Best performance Second round, 2009, 2011, 2015 N E W Z E A L A N D h av e had better returns at the junior level compared to t he senior team, which made its FIFA World Cup debut as recently as 2010.

The junior team, however, has made it to the second round of the competition on three occasions, and will be helmed by coach and former K iw i international Danny Hay, who has been around the team since the last edition.

0

MALI M

M A R T IN B ERN E T T I /A A F P/G G E T T Y IM AG GES

Coach Jon Jonas Komla Best performance Runn ners-up, 2015

Fernando Cardozo Paraguay Forward

AFTER BECOMING the f rst eveer team to defend fi f ican Under-17 Cup the Afri th ns, Mali are looking off Nation to go onee step further than their ru nners-up fi nish at h 2015 5 Under-17 World the Cup. Maali have experienced a revivall in fortunes thanks to a susstained growth in h jun nior football. They their h digree to look up to have ped as well—former Barcelona ll man Seydou Keita made his mark in the 1997 Under-17 World Cup.

In the semi-finals of the Africa U-17 Cup of Nations, Mali defeated Guinea on penalties. Goalkeeper Youssouf Koita did not let the ball get past him once during the entire encounter, including the shoot-out.

1

Turkey have one continental crown to their name after lifting the 2005 UEFA European Under-17 Championship. Midfielder Nuri Şahin won the best player award, while Tevfik Köse was the top-scorer.

TURKEY Coach Mehmet Hacioğlu Best performance 4th place, 2005 SEM I-F INA L ISTS in 2005, Turkey have only participated in two editions of the FIFA Under17 World Cup before this year, but have the stability of coach Mehmet Haciog˘lu who has been with the junior team for three years.

Continental champions in 2005, Turkey’s campaign back then was led by Nuri Şahin, who went on to play for Real Madrid and Liverpool, and is now with Borussia Dortmund.

OCTOBER 2017 / SPORTS ILLUSTRATED /

41

GROUP

4

IRAN Coach Abbas Chamanyan Best performance Second round, 2009, 2013 I R AN ARE coming into the FIFA Under-17 World Cup on the back of their superb r un in t he A FC U n d e r-1 6 C h a m p i o n ship, where they fi nished runners-up to Iraq after a penalty shoot-out. Coach Abbas Chamanyan was at the helm of affairs of the junior team between 2002 and 2005; he returned to ensure the team qualified for the 2017 edition with strong performances.

Iranian players who scored a total of three goals at the 2016 AFC U-16 Championship. Ali Reza Asadabadi, Allahyar Sayyad, Mohammad Sharifi and Mohammad Ghaderi scored 12 of the 13 goals, with Amir Khodamoradi bagging the 13th.

17

The number of goals Germany scored in five games at the European qualifying tournament.

No other European team found the net as frequently.

GERMANY Coach Christian Wück Best performance Runners-up, 1985

C

STRANGE AS it may seem, Germany have never won the Under-17 World Cup p in spite of the succeess off their all-conquering sen nior teams, but coach Christtian Wück k has high hopess from f his players in Indiaa, after f his team exited the 2015 com-petition in the Ro d off 16. ound All eyes will be on striker k Jan Fiete-Arp in IIndia, d who h is coming into th he tourna-ment with seven goals g l in the h continental cham h . mpionship.

6

GUINEA Coach Souleymane Camara Best performance 4th place, 1985

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16

The number of goals that Costa Rica scored without reply in four matches in central American qualifying for the CONCACAF U-17 Championship.

SPORTS ILLUSTRATED / OCTOBER 2017

COSTA RICA Coach h macho Breansse Camacho mance Best perform Quarter-fina l, 2015 5 COS TA R IC A arrive in Ind ia on t he back b of a successful run att the CONCACAF Under-177 Champih onships in Mexiico, where h they finished seecond be-hind the hostss. Despite their heavy deffeat at the hands of Mexi co,, Costaa Rica were able to pump in 11 goals from their five games in the competition, and will pose numerous threats to Germany, Guinea and Iran in Group C of the competition.

Alexander Nitzl Germany Defender

RI C A RD O N A S C IMEN TO/G E T T Y IM AG E S

A F T E R T H E I R fourthplace finish at the inaugural competition in China way back in 1985, Guinea haven’t made it past the first hurdle, exiting after the first round in their next four attempts, including the 2015 Under-17 World Cup in Chile. Their third-place finish in this year’s Cup of Nations sealed their entry into the world event, but under coach Souleymane Camara they will have their work cut out against stiff competition.

Aside from finishing third at this year’s U-17 Africa Cup of Nations, Guinea left Gabon with another accolade to their name, as Djibril Fandje Toure finished as top-scorer with six goals to win the competition’s golden boot award.

GROUP

D

KOREA DPR

BRAZIL

Coach Yun Jong Su Best performance Second round, 2005, 2007, 2015

Coach Carlos Amadeu Best performance Winners, 1997, 1999, 2003

NORTH KOREA’S semifinal finish at the A FC Under-16 Championship h year was enough to this sseal qualiification for the d World Cup, but Under-17 W h come iinto the competithey g won just two of tion having fi matches.

Former their five m iinternation nal Yun Jong Su iis at the h he helm of the team, aand dh oached the senior has co n nationall team as well as the d Under-20 sides, and won the d r-16 title in 2010.

AFC Under

2

Despite reaching the semi-finals of the AFC U-16 Championship, North Korea won just two of their five matches.

7

The number of clean sheets Brazil kept in the South American qualifiers, with all those games ending in victory for them.

UNSURPRISINGLY, BRAZIL’S best years in the Under-17 tournament came at a time when their senior team also dominated world football through the 1990s and early 2000s, and they come into this year’s competition undefeated in the South American Under-17 Championship. In India too, they will look to play with their typical flamboyance and trickery in front of goal.

1

NIGER NI

M A R T IN B ERN E T T I /A F P/G E T T Y IM AG E S

Coach C Tiemog go Soumaila Best performance pe Debu Debut in 2017

Alan Guimarães Brazil

Midfielder

NOT NO O T TO be confused with ccontineental cousins and tthe tw wo-time defendiing ch hampions Nigerria, Ni ger, like India, aare mak king their debut iin a FIF FA competition aacross age a groups. And iit comes on the back of a stunning run at the 2017 Under-17 Cup of Nations, where they shocked Nigeria on their way to a deserved fourth-place fi nish to book their seats on the plane to India.

This is the first time Niger have qualified for a World Cup finals competition and it will most likely not be the last, as a number of development programmes have been launched in the country.

8

Substitute Nacho Diaz had been on the pitch for only eight minutes when he scored against England in the final of the 2017 European U-17 Championship to make it 2–2.

SPAIN Coach Santi Denia Best performance Runners-up, 1991, 2003, 2007 SPAIN ARE making a return to the Under-17 World Cup after their third-place fi nish in 2009, and sealed their qualification for India 2017 by winning the Europ e a n Under-17 t it le, beating England in the final. Former Spain and At lét ico Madrid player Santi Denia has been with the team since 2011, and he will hope captain Abel Ruiz is able to inspire the team to their fi rst Under17 title.

OCTOBER 2017 / SPORTS ILLUSTRATED /

43

GROUP HONDURAS Coach José Valladares Best performance Quarter-final, 2013 JOSÉ VA L L A DA R ES’S boys come into the tourna ment on t he back of an impressive continental campaign where they eventually lost to USA, but their road to India also featured a comprehensive 7–1 victory over Cuba, which included hat-tricks from two of their players. Their coach has been with the team since 2013, and will look to move beyond the fi rst round.

7

The number of matches it took for Honduras to win their first U-17 World Cup game.

Their seventh match at the global finals was against the hosts at UAE 2013.

6

New Caledonia’s qualification means they will become the sixth current OFC member to feature in a FIFA World Cup.

NEW CALEDONIA Coach Dominique Wacalie Best performance Debut in 2017

E

NEW CA L EDONIA join hosts India and Niger as first-time participants in p a FIFA competitiion after f a hugely impressivee run in the h continental cham h mpionships, the OFC Under-117s, where h they lost to New l d w Zealand in the fi nal. Theey are also the youngest fo b ll ootballing nation from Oceeania, and d are helmed by coaach h Dominique Wacalie, wh d who retired from professional b ll al ffootball as recently as 20114.

24

JAPAN Coach

Hirofumi Yoshitake Best performance Quarter-final, 1993, 2011

44 /

9

Star attacker Gouiri scored a record-breaking nine times in five matches at the 2017 U-17 EURO in Croatia, eclipsing the tally of eight goals that compatriot Odsonne Edouard racked up at the 2015 tournament.

SPORTS ILLUSTRATED / OCTOBER 2017

FRANCE CE Coach uxel Lionel Rouxel mance Best perform Winners, 2001 2 THEY MAY be p past champions, but Fran d t nce don’t have a rich histo h ory in the Under-17 FIFA World W ld Cup, and were knocked h d out in the Round of 16 in th he last edition. They had to work kh d hard for qualification af after beingg eliminated in the quarter-finals of the Und der-17 Eu-ropean Champio h but b t onship, sealed a spot throu h a playl ugh off against Hun ll ngary. All eyes will be on star striker Amine Gouiri, who pumped in nine goals at the Euros.

Amine Gouiri France Striker

A L E X A N D ER H A SSEN S T EIN - FIFA / FIFA V I A G E T T Y IM AG E S

DESPITE PUTTING up impressive performances in the group stages in a majority of the past Under-17 World Cups, Japan’s campaigns have then petered out during the knockout stages. Even in this year’s Asian Championships, they were undone by Iraq in the semi-finals but had done enough to seal their spot in the Cup. But a longstanding coach stands resolutely behind his wards with experiences of past campaigns.

Japan were comfortably top-scorers in the AFC U-16 Championship.

They netted an incredible 24 goals in just five games to score almost twice as many as any of their rivals.

GROUP

F

IRAQ Coach Qahtan Jathir Best performance First round, 2013 M A K I N G O N LY t he i r second appearance in the FIFA Under-17 World Cup, IIraq arrive in India after w he AFC Underwinning th h onship, beating 16 Champio ffavoured rivvals Iran in the ffinal, and beating Japan b a nd d Uzbek b k ist a n i n t he prev ious t wo rounds. k r Moha m med St r i ker d was named Dawood h play l yer of the tourthe namentt, scoring si x g l in the he competition. goals

6

After failing to find the net in the first two matches of the 2016 AFC U-16 Championship, forward Mohammed Dawood scored six in the next three matches, earning the top goalscorer and player of the tournament awards.

1-0

The scoreline in all five of Chile’s wins in the South American qualifiers. Chile know how to shut the opposition out, and are difficult to break past.

CHILE Coach Hernán Caputo Best performance 3rd place, 1993 HOSTS OF the last edition, Chile return to the Under-17 World Cup after their run to the quarter-finals. They hosted the South American Under-17 Championship this year as well, which served as the qualification for the World Cup in India, and finished runners-up to seal their spot. Coach Hernán Caputo will offer insights to the team after having coached the Under-15s a few years ago.

22

MEXICO MEX

N AT H A N S T IRK /G E T T Y IM AG E S

Co ach C Mario Arteaga A M Best p per formance B Winners,, 2005, 2011 W

Phil Foden England Midfielder

ME XICO HAVE MEXICO M H enjoyed f period at the a ffruitful p d llevvel, having won Under-17 h title l tw wice and made the f n 2013, when the final in h lost l they to Nigeria. They his year’s comcome into th p fter putting up petition aft d l display at the a dazzling F 2017, where CONCACAF h scored d a record 22 they g l and d a thrilling vicgoals tory in the classification stage final over USA. Their pace will be a threat to the tightest of defences.

The number of goals Mexico scored in just six games at the CONCACAF U-17 Championship, a tally not bettered by any of their opponents at the continental finals.

11

Matches won on the bounce by England throughout UEFA U-17 European Championship qualifying, elite rounds and the finals themselves before the 2–2 draw in the final against Spain, which preceded their penalty shootout heartbreak.

ENGLAND Coach Steve Cooper Best performance Quarter-final, 2007 DESP I T E T H EI R illustrious footballing history, England haven’t enjoyed much success at the Under17 level in the past, but have momentum leading into the tournament in India after finishing runners-up to Spain in the continental championships. Winger Jadon Sancho, who scored five times in the European competition, is a product of t he Manchester Cit y academy and joined Borussia Dortmund.

OCTOBER 2017 / SPORTS ILLUSTRATED /

45

ADVERTORIAL

THE MAKINGS OF A SPORTS DESTINATION

With the unstinted support of the state government, Odisha is fast becoming the most preferred destination for hosting major international events and a centre of sporting excellence

STATE OF THE ART

The world-class Kalinga Stadium that hosted the Asian Athletics Championships occupies pride of place in the state᾽s sporting heritage.

O

disha has been at the forefront of major development in all sectors and sports has been a major contributing factor in the development of the state. With world-class events coming to Odisha, the state has quickly become one of the emerging hubs for sports in the country.

In March 2017, the International Hockey Federation (FIH) and the

It is expected around 1,000 players from 16 nations will participate in the World Cup. Around 20,000 foreign visitors from various countries are expected to come to Bhubaneswar

Government of Odisha ofcially conrmed that the Men's Hockey World League Final 2017 and Hockey Men's World Cup 2018 will be held in Bhubaneswar.

It was also conrmed that Odisha will be the title sponsor for both events. The ofcial event titles will be the 'Odisha Men's Hockey World League Final Bhubaneswar 2017' and the 'Odisha Hockey Men's World Cup Bhubaneswar 2018'.

The World League Final 2017 will take place over Dec. 1–10 and will welcome eight of the world's best men's teams who, in addition to the hosts, qualied from this summer's Hockey World League Semi-Finals. The Hockey World Cup 2018 will take place from Nov. 28 to Dec. 16, 2018. The 18-day hockey extravaganza will witness 15 teams joining the host country, India. This is the third time India will host the prestigious World Cup and Odisha is proud to get the chance to host it in Bhubaneswar.

India had hosted the Hockey World Cup for the rst time in 1982 in Mumbai and the second time in 2010 in New Delhi. It is expected around 1,000 players from 16 nations will participate in the World Cup. Around 20,000 foreign visitors, including the players and ofcials from various countries, are expected to come to Bhubaneswar for the event.

Fans will descend upon the Kalinga Stadium to share the glory of two of hockey's biggest sporting spectacle, where World Hockey League and World Cup champions will be crowned. The venue itself is already familiar to hockey fans. Not only did it successfully host the 2014 Men's Hockey Champions Trophy, it is also home to the reigning champions of the Hockey India League, the Kalinga Lancers.

The state government has already started giving a facelift to the Kalinga Stadium Hockey Complex as per FIH

standards, which includes construction of new galleries for the main pitch to double the current capacity from 9,000 to 18,000, installation of new irrigation systems, construction of new dressing rooms and facilities for the second pitch, new synthetic turfs for both the pitches, state-of-the-art facilities for technical ofcials, media, broadcast, etc. The state government will leave no stone unturned to harness Odisha’s potential as a favourable sports destination by delivering world-class infrastructure in record time.

E

arlier this summer, the Government of Odisha played host to the 22nd Asian Athletics Championships (AAC), Asia’s biggest athletics event, over July 6–9. This was the third time the premier continental track and eld event was held in India after New Delhi (1989) and Pune (2013). Nearly 1,000 athletes from 45 countries participated across 42 track and eld events. With just 90 days given to prepare, the Government of Odisha pulled off an incredible success story by putting together the event and world-class infrastructure at Kalinga Stadium in record time. The meticulous and methodical approach taken by the Government of Odisha

COMMON CAUSE

With the patronage of the Navin Patnaik government, sports has become a cause for celebration for the people of the state.

The Kalinga Lancers hockey team in the Hockey India League is the only professional sports team in any league that is promoted by any state or Central Government or its agencies

in the execution of the massive task at hand meant that it went beyond the call of duty to full every requirement and set the stage for hosting the 22nd Asian Athletics Championships.

The Government and PSUs have been patronising sports directly and indirectly for a long time. However, it is worthy of note that the Kalinga Lancers hockey team in the Hockey India League is the only professional sports team in a league format across any discipline to be promoted by any state or the Central Government or its agencies. The Hockey India League is an annual sporting event in Bhubaneswar, which draws enthusiastic spectators from all walks of life. All the home matches of Kalinga Lancers are hosted at Kalinga Stadium, which

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provides world-class infrastructure for such international tournaments. Every match sees Kalinga Stadium packed to its full capacity of over 9,000 people.

The response of the spectators over the years has been phenomenal. Because of the overwhelming response, Bhubaneswar has become a focal point for staging international hockey tournaments in future.

Besides conducting major sports events, the Government of Odisha is steadily working towards the development of sports at the grassroots level with special emphasis on hockey since Odisha has been the nursery of Indian hockey. To turn it to reality, the government is constructing new synthetic turfs in Sundergarh district, including remote

locations like Saunomora village, which happens to be the hockey belt of Odisha. The state plans to improve the sports infrastructure in the hockey-centric regions to enable budding hockey players to avail of excellent training facilities and get an early breakthrough into the national and international sporting scene.

The Government of Odisha has also patronised the conduct of the Biju Patnaik Rural Hockey Championship, which happens to be the largest rural hockey championship with participation of approximately 1,500 teams from Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Odisha.

The tribal children from the Chota Nagpur belt are naturally gifted and hockey is genetically encoded in their DNA. Such initiatives will provide a

platform for talent scouting, and with further development and training, can produce some of India’s nest hockey talents in the future.

The efforts of the Government of Odisha towards promotion of sports have been recognised at the highest level. The Odisha Industrial Infrastructure Development Corporation (IDCO), a state-owned PSU, was recently conferred the prestigious Rashtriya Khel Protsahan Puraskar 2017 by the President of India at a function held in Rashtrapati Bhawan on National Sports Day for its contribution to and encouragement of sports through CSR. Hosting the Asian Athletics Championships has propelled the emergence of Odisha as a sports powerhouse in the making. With the rapid growth of Bhubaneswar as a major sports destination, the state government has recently announced the setting up of a Sports City with worldclass infrastructure in the capital city of Bhubaneswar. Besides, integrated sports complexes will be established in other major cities of the state such as Cuttack, Berhampur, Sambalpur, Rourkela and Jeypore with facilities like multipurpose indoor hall with provision for gym, indoor games such as badminton, table tennis etc., standardsized swimming pool, tennis court, basketball and volleyball courts, playing eld for football and other outdoor sports, administrative building with training hall and conference hall.

Bhubaneswar is a city ready to welcome the world. Its passionate sports fans coupled with the experience of the state government in hosting world-class sporting events will create an incredible atmosphere for staging two of the biggest events in hockey. The Government of Odisha looks forward to encouraging fans from across the world to come together and support their teams. In doing so, the fans will also get to experience rst-hand the rich culture and warm hospitality offered by this amazing part of the world—Odisha. ±

CRICKET

Feels Like

Yesterday A decade after India’s T20 World Cup triumph, the magical moments of that match in Johannesburg and the aftermath are still fresh in the memories of the men who brought the cup home

By Vimal Kumar Photograph by Hamish Blair/Getty Images

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SPORTS ILLUSTRATED / OCTOBER 2017

10 YE ARS OF T20 WORLD CUP

“India, so suspicious of Twenty20, will now surrender entirely to it.”

T

52 /

SPORTS ILLUSTRATED / OCTOBER 2017

change for me is that bowlers are never going to get those kinds of conditions Owing to the win in the again. You will hardly find the ball 2007 T20 World Cup final, swinging in T20 cricket. Now, only India achieved the historic batsmen dominate. In South Africa feat of winning the World Cup in three formats—60 160 was a competitive score and I don’t overs (1983), 50 overs think there were too many 200-plus (2011) and 20 overs (2007). scores,” says R.P. Singh.

Call it sheer lack of planning or utter casualness on the BCCI’s part, but just four days before their first match at the T20 World Cup, India were in England playing an ODI series. The frenetic schedule and the seemingly disdainful approach to preparation for such a high-profi le tournament meant hardly anyone could have predicted India reaching the last four, let alone winning the trophy. A persistent drizzle in Durban—where India were to play their opening game against Scotland—didn’t help matters.

The match was abandoned, costing India important points they were certain to get. There was no break for India as they had to play another match after 24 hours.

In the next match against arch-rivals Pakistan, India won a tense game in the bowl-out. Misbah-ul-Haq’s run-out off the last ball of the match meant the game was tied; however, tournament rules didn’t allow for the points to be shared. It may have looked like a lottery win at that point in time but India outsmarted Pakistan in the bowl-out because Virender Sehwag, Harbhajan Singh and Robin Uthappa had been

ICONIC

S A EED K H A N /A F P/G E T T Y IM AG E S

–David Hopps his statement by the veteran cricket writer in The Guardian couldn’t have been more prophetic. Hopps wrote this after India defeated Pakistan in the inaugural T20 World Cup final in Johannesburg, South Africa, on Sept. 24, 2007. If Kapil Dev’s 1983 World Cup victory changed the face of One-Day International (ODI) cricket in India (and subsequently the world) in the following years, Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s 2007 victory was perhaps even more revolutionary. India embraced the T20 format with such alacrity that it’s hard to believe the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) was against it in the beginning.

“Ten years is a long time but it feels like it happened just yesterday. Our mindset was great in that tournament. Our domestic structure wasn’t ready for the T20 format but it hardly mattered as we took it match by match. We got some ideas and confidence after beating Pakistan,” recalls Rudra Pratap Singh, who took 12 wickets (the most for India, behind only Pakistani Umar Gul’s 13) at an average of 12.66 and economy rate of 6.33 in that tournament.

It’s been a decade since the inaugural T20 World Cup was held in South Africa, which remains the most organised tournament by the ICC. India have played in five World Cups since then and despite the colossal infrastructure of the IPL, are still waiting for an encore. That makes the only World Cup win in the format even more special. Owing to that win, India also has the distinguished record of winning the World Cup in 60 overs (1983), 50 overs (2011) and 20 overs (2007).

Of course, India played splendidly in that tournament, but what has been the most enduring image of that triumph is the grand reception the Indian cricket team received in Mumbai upon their return. “We are told that Mumbai is a city which is always on the move. My boys and I have brought the entire city to a standstill today,” Dhoni famously said at the Wankhede stadium.

“It still feels unreal when I think of the kind of reception and warmth we got. Our passionate fans make this game so special, and they stopped Mumbai for close to six hours. Yusuf bhai (Pathan) was telling me that he hadn’t witnessed similar frenzy even after winning the ODI World Cup in 2011 in Mumbai,” all-rounder Irfan Pathan says, who played a pivotal role in the 2007 tournament.

“The open-bus parade from the airport to the Wankhede was a staggering experience. People were standing on both sides of the roads and throwing biscuits, flowers, gifts and fruit. It was pure love and passion and I have never seen anything like that before, or since. We won the 2011 World Cup but the reception wasn’t as memorable as 2007,” recalls Lalchand Rajput, who was the manager of the 2007 World Cup-winning team.

If the opening game (West Indies vs. South Africa) of the T20 World Cup was any indication, then none could have predicted India’s victory. Bat dominated the ball with 36 fours, 18 sixes, and 413 runs coming in total. However, as the tournament progressed, it was evident that swing and pace were going to play a crucial role, and India were fortunate to have a balanced attack for those conditions.

“A lot has changed in the past decade but the most significant

practising for such an unlikely scenario. It was ludicrous to watch specialist bowlers like Yasir Arafat, Gul and Shahid Afridi all missing the stumps by a fair distance.

“I remember vividly Misbah playing a blinder (53 from 35 balls) and it almost took the game away from us. I still find it difficult to digest that he needed just one run from the last two balls and failed to get it,” recalls Rajput.

Perhaps one of the most enduring images of the tournament was Uthappa’s bowl-out deed, which meant that his half-century is largely forgotten. “It was Uthappa’s excellent half-century which rescued us. [Mohammad] Asif had troubled our top order [India lost their top four for just 36 runs] and we managed something around 140 [141 for nine] but without Uthappa’s knock we would not have been able to fight till the last ball,” says Irfan Pathan.

India were quick out of the blocks against New Zealand in the third game, with Gautam Gambhir and Sehwag adding 76 runs in less than six overs while chasing 191. However, they lost the remaining nine wickets for just 87 runs to suffer their only loss of the tournament by a margin of 10 runs.

It is impossible to fathom that the ICC can set a fi xture with two back-to-back matches pitting India against England and South Africa in any major tournament. But that was exactly the case in 2007 when Dhoni’s team faced England

D U IF D U TO I T/GA L LO IM AG E S /G E T T Y IM AG E S

“It feels unreal when I think of the reception we got. Our fans make this game so special, and they stopped Mumbai for close to six hours. YUSUF BHAI (PATHAN) WAS TELLING ME THAT HE HADN’T WITNESSED SIMILAR FRENZY EVEN AFTER WINNING THE ODI WORLD CUP IN 2011 IN MUMBAI.” in Durban and 24 hours later South Africa. But, fatigue was hardly going to be a factor for a team whose captain had to come into a press conference on the eve of the tournament straight off the plane from London without even having the time to change his clothes.

E

nough has been written about Yuvraj Singh’s glorious six sixes in an over against Stuart Broad, and yet fans are still not tired of watching the clips on YouTube, which have garnered close to 20 million views. Yuvraj’s management agency is now rumoured to be making a special documentary to commemorate 10 years of his astonishing feat. Members of the winning team have been requested to send their thoughts via video messages.

“I put this record on a par with Anil Kumble’s 10 wickets in an innings in a Test. This is never going to be broken because no one is going to take 11 wickets in an innings and no one is OCTOBER 2017 / SPORTS ILLUSTRATED /

53

going to hit seven sixes DESTINY in an over either,” says Following an former India captain inauspicious start to their Sourav Ganguly.

World Cup campaign, Gambhir and SeIndia performed like clockwork and their win hwag had an opening against England was a partnership of 136 testament to that. runs with both making half-cent uries.

However, it was Yuvraj’s innings (58 runs off 16 balls) that is widely spoken about and is still fresh in public memory. “We always knew that Yuvraj was a class stroke player but six sixes in an over and that too in an international game against someone like Stuart Broad was unbelievable,” says Pathan.

By the time India came up against the hosts in Group E, the situation was loaded with interesting permutations and combinations—South Africa, New Zealand and India all had a chance of making it to the semi-finals. “We simply forgot about the complexities of net run rate and all that. We were simply told that it was a knock-out match and we had to win,” recalls R.P. India were 61 for four at one stage and it was young Rohit Sharma’s 50 and Dhoni’s 45 that provided the much-needed runs.

“Rohit was playing in the middle order. He may not have scored a lot of runs in the tournament but he played some crucial innings.

I still remember his controlled aggression against South Africa,” says the former India left-arm medium pacer.

H

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SPORTS ILLUSTRATED / OCTOBER 2017

“In Indian cricket, I don’t think anyone can match Joginder’s fame despite playing so few matches. His imprint on the title is indelible. People talk about his last over as a tukka (fluke), but it was a planned move. WHY FORGET THAT HE BOWLED THE LAST OVER AGAINST AUSTRALIA AS WELL.” 1996. They had made it to the finals on the past four occasions and it seemed stalwarts such as Adam Gilchrist and Matthew Hayden would make it five-in-a-row.

Yuvraj was in sensational rhythm during that week and after his marauding act against England, he picked the Australians to express his violent streak. Five sixes and an equal number of fours in a 30-ball innings resulted in 70 runs that took the match away from Australia.

After winning four games in Durban, the Indian team had to

S A EED K H A N /A F P/G E T T Y IM AG E S (2); A L E X A N D ER J O E /A F P/G E T T Y IM AG E S (IN D I A N T E A M)

owever, it was R.P’s destructive spell of four for 13 which stunned South Africa, and India’s 37-run victory sealed a place in the semi-final against Australia. At one stage South Africa were 12 for three and then 31 for five. To say the match was over in under 10 overs wouldn’t be farfetched.

“I was never seen as an impact player. It was a career-defining match for me. People always remind me about my swing bowling in that encounter. The other day a sardarji came to my table while I was having dinner in a restaurant just to say ‘thank you’ for that effort,” says R.P. “People often talk about our batting and bowling in that tournament but very few discuss the way we fielded. The energy and intensity in our fielding against South Africa in that knock-out game was amazing. Beating the home side in a World Cup was massive,” recalls Irfan.

However, beating Australia in a high-profile semi-final of a World Cup was an intimidating prospect. The Australians had not lost a single ICC World Cup semi-final (in 50-overs cricket) since

10 YE ARS OF T20 WORLD CUP

‘YOU WANT EVERY DAY TO BE LIKE THAT DAY’ A young team, Punjabi jokes and the captain’s trust—the recipe for a World Cup-winning over

By Joginder Sharma

I

H A MISH B L A IR /G E T T Y IM AG E S

suppose it’s destiny. Mahendra Singh Dhoni has been India’s most successful captain, and perhaps ranks among the all-time bests in the world. However, any conversation on his captaincy will invariably begin with his first win as skipper. Be that as it may, if a group of people were to sit down and talk about him, at some point during the course of the conversation his decision to entrust me with bowling the last over in one of the most high-pressure matches of the World Cup—the 2007 T20 final—will definitely come up. It was heartening that the captain trusted me with the most difficult over and it’s very satisfying that I didn’t let him down.

How could I let him down? He has been a friend for a long time. I don’t know how many people are aware of this fact, but both of us made our international debut against Bangladesh (in December 2004) together. He has always been the same cool and relaxed person that he is today.

It is pleasing to know that my name will always be there with Mahi’s but the victory in 2007 was not just about my final over or Mahi’s charisma.

It was a complete team effort; one where each and every member of the team contributed magnificently. The versatile pace attack where we had two different kinds of left-arm seamers in Irfan Pathan and Rudra Pratap Singh, a world-class spinner in Harbhajan Singh, superb stroke-players such as Virender Sehwag and Yuvraj Singh, an emerging talent in Rohit Sharma and a hungry

batsman in the form of Gautam Gambhir who was trying to prove his worth to the world—we sort of had a dream team.

You always want every day to be like that day, or every tournament to be like that tournament. However, time doesn’t stop or wait for anyone. We have all moved on since. Indian cricket has undergone a transformation in the years since. Today, the Indian team is No. 1 in every format. There is a certain aura around the current team. Great talent is coming up from each part of the country and so many potentially great players are available. The talent pool has increased tremendously since 2007.

That was a different era and different time, and this is an entirely new era. We had done something very good in 2007 and I am glad for that. A lot has changed since 2007 in terms of talent, attitude

leave its lucky venue as the final was to be played in Johannesburg. However, the Indians were so confident that they didn’t even practise before the final. This, despite the fact that their only defeat of the tournament had come at that venue. “Dhoni was a new leader but he was able to keep the dressing room very relaxed. It was a young team but team meetings were brief. We were not bogged down by the pressure of expectations as the team was so young,” says Pathan.

Gambhir’s great form—he was among only three players to have

and achievements. But the memories of the World Cup are forever, and will never fade from public consciousness. After all, you don’t win a World Cup trophy every year.

You can say that the last over against Pakistan, and Misbah-ul-Haq’s wicket, has given me a special identity.

However, my life or career has never been about just that one over. I have played a lot of cricket for my state (Haryana) and my zone (77 first class and 80 List A games) and have always given my best. I have been among the best performers as well. Yet, there is no denying that people remember me solely for that one over. I have no complaints as long as they remember me.

Cricket has given me a lot in my life and certainly the last three balls of that match had a huge impact on my career.

I have stopped counting the number of times people have asked me about the story behind that last over and my reaction. I have nothing dramatic to add. I was given a responsibility and I did my best.

A lot of people often ask me whether Dhoni and I have ever spoken about that over. No. I played with him in the Indian Premier League (IPL) for Chennai Super Kings and we have spoken about many topics but never revisited the memory of that one over. What I remember about the 2007 title triumph is we played as a great unit. The biggest reason for our victory was our combination. The captain’s positive thinking.

We had a great dressing room too. We used to have a lot of fun; Harbhajan was the joker among us and used to rouse the team spirit with his Punjabi jokes.

It was a young team so it was a very informal set-up. And that probably played the most important part in our winning.

—As told to Vimal Kumar

scored over 200 runs in the tournament—with the bat continued in the final as he top-scored with 75 (no other player managed a half-century from either side in the fi nal) but once again it was Rohit’s cameo (16-ball 30) that took the Indian total to 157.

Man of the Match Pathan bagged three important wickets but eventually it boiled down to Joginder Sharma’s historic last over.

A lot has been said about Dhoni’s gamble with Sharma and also how Harbhajan refused to bowl the last over.

“That was the best option available. Harbhajan didn’t bowl OCTOBER 2017 / SPORTS ILLUSTRATED /

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10 YE ARS OF T20 WORLD CUP

his last over very LEADER well. I thought if Dhoni was tasked with a medium pacer leading a young dressing bowls it would be room that lacked experience slightly difficult on the big stage. He passed since Misbah was the test with flying colours, timing it very well with his team showing the maturity of veterans. against Harbhajan, who was also not 100 percent sure about his yorkers. And Joginder had enjoyed a decent spell till that point in the match, so I decided to go with him,” Dhoni had explained.

“In Indian cricket, I don’t think anyone can match Joginder’s fame despite playing so few matches. His imprint on the title triumph is indelible. People talk about his last over as a tukka (fluke), but it was a planned move. Why forget that he bowled the last over against Australia as well,” says Rajput.

“Dhoni’s awareness about the game has improved a lot since then, but his leadership qualities were ever present. Taking bold decisions wasn’t a big deal for him. Convincing your teammates about decisions was a great move. I don’t think that the Joginder move was a fluke, sau munh sau baaten (everyone has a different theory). But you can judge it from the bowl-out. Neither me nor Irfan was chosen for that, but Sehwag was. Dhoni always believed overs between 15 and 19 were most crucial. Jogi was always trusted for the 20th over,” reveals R.P.

D

honi is not someone to bask in past glory.

Despite repeated attempts, the captain has chosen to play down the significance of his role. Dhoni says he has nothing new to add to what he has already said. “We were not favourites, nobody expected us to reach the super eights or the knock-out stage. Whenever expectations are low, determination is high. We did not do well in the (ODI) World Cup. As a result, it (T20 World Cup) was the perfect stage for the team. We took it one match at a time and treated the fi nal as just another match and that helped,” Dhoni had said in Mumbai after the team’s arrival.

“That was not merely a World Cup win for us but a great philosophical lesson. Only six months back, we had failed to go past round one in the 50-overs World Cup and it was one of the most depressing moments of our careers and here we were with a World Cup. Victory told me that no matter what happens yesterday, there is always a fresh tomorrow,” says Pathan.

Just before the start of the tournament, Dhoni had spoken about the need to make split-second decisions, staying openminded and taking the best alternative. The fi rst match and SPORTS ILLUSTRATED / OCTOBER 2017

final match victory against Pakistan only reaffirmed his theory.

All’s well that ends well. Yet, there are still some members who feel that they haven’t got their due despite accomplishing something remarkable. “The only regret I have is that I haven’t got the recognition which I think I deserve. People say that I was just a manager while forgetting that I was a cricket manager. This was the same designation for Ravi Shastri, who had gone for the Bangladesh tour before I joined. Perhaps I failed to cash in on the glory and always kept a low profi le.

But no one can erase my contribution, how little it may be. It is immensely satisfying,” Rajput concludes. ±

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“Dhoni was a new leader but he was able to keep the dressing room very relaxed. It was a young team but team meetings were brief. WE WERE NOT BOGGED DOWN

BY THE PRESSURE OF EXPECTATIONS AS THE TEAM WAS SO YOUNG.”

dukeindia.com

in

SLOANE STEADY U.S . OPEN

After a gruelling rehab from foot surgery, unseeded SLOANE STEPHENS, 24, rediscovered her love for the game and surprised even herself in winning a historic U.S. Open

By S.L. Price Photograph by Matthew Stockman/Getty Images

SLOANE STEPHENS

BY A CERTAIN POINT, what with all the milestones and landmarks celebrated at the 2017 U.S. Open, it seemed fair to wonder: Can a sport overdose on significance?

Because if you weren’t hearing about the 60th anniversary of Althea Gibson’s first U.S. title, you were hearing a speech about the 50th anniversary of Billie Jean King’s. Or reliving, with the coming release of a new movie, King’s barrier-busting victory over Bobby Riggs in the “Battle of the Sexes” in 1973. Or marking, with four U.S. women in the semi-finals, the seeming revival of American might.

That, of course, was underpinned by the historic fact that three of those women are African-American, which led to the first major final ever contested by two black players not named Williams. With the crowning of Sloane Stephens, 24, as U.S. Open champion, the generation inspired by Venus and Serena had, at last, arrived.

“Tennis has gotten out of the country clubs,” says Chris Evert.

“The barriers have really been torn down. It’s not a snobby, white, rich sport anymore.”

Indeed, from the junior ranks to the President’s Box to the milling crowds, the changing face of American tennis was on display all fortnight. There, grinning after guiding Stephens—injured and unable to even walk until April 18, ranked 957th in July—to a 6–3,

“I told you,” Copeland-Muse said, laughing.

“You told us!” Smith agreed.

The two hugged and laughed, and the sweet moment served as a reminder. USTA marketers and media sure love the big picture, and legacy-enthralled tennis fans sure love the idea that by winning his 16th major on Sunday with a 6–3, 6–3, 6–4 win over Kevin Anderson of South Africa, Rafael Nadal, 31, showed that he’s ready to chase old Roger Federer and his 19 titles for at least another year.

But for most players a major tournament is an intensely personal walk, full of little paybacks, private motives, highs and lows that can

“We are FOLLOWING IN VENUS’S FOOTSTEPS,” Stephens said of her semis opponent. “Maddie [Keys] and I are here to join her and represent just as well.”

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alternate by the minute. Nadal’s less-than-grandiose mission this year was to win his first hard-court major in four years, to play at a level only he can gauge; becoming No. 1 seemed more a by-product than a goal. For Stephens, meanwhile, Flushing Meadows elicits highly charged feelings. It was there, in 2009, that she learned that her father, former Patriots running back John Stephens, had been killed.

“I was sitting right in front of the transportation tent, and my sister called me and was, like, ‘Dad died last night in a car accident,’ ” Stephens said late Saturday night. “I was hysterical.”

Her parents divorced when she was an infant; Sloane didn’t meet John until she was 13. But they then spoke often by phone and grew close; she was 16 and preparing to play in the U.S. Open junior tournament when she got the news. Hungry for information, Sloane hit the Internet and discovered that her father had pleaded guilty to rape in 1994—and was facing another sexual assault charge when, at 43, he lost control of his truck and hit

M AT T H E W S T O C K M A N /G E T T Y IM AG E S (2)

6–0 demolition of Madison Keys in last Saturday’s final, was her 36-year-old African-American coach, Kamau Murray, whose Chicago academy has a 70% black enrolment and will soon move into a new, $15 million facility. There were Stephens and Keys, both in tears, hugging forever at net; there was Stephens just before the trophy presentation, crossing to Keys’s side and pulling her chair close to her friend’s. And then, just as Stephens and Keys were chatting and giggling, Katrina Adams, the first black president of the U.S. Tennis Association, leaned down and gave each a kiss on the cheek.

“Many, many things have changed,” said Leslie Allen outside the players’ lounge on Saturday. As Allen—the first black woman to win a top-level tour event, in 1981, after Althea Gibson’s last victory in ’58—ticked off other black faces now in power within the U.S. tennis establishment, a door opened. Fresh from the stands, Stephens’s mother, Sybil Smith, stepped out and hugged former pro Kyle Copeland-Muse, who, at a 2005 USTA clinic tabbed the 12-year-old Stephens a star.

a tree near Shreveport, Louisiana.

NOTICE SERVED She attended his funeral and flew Playing with a newfound back the next day. After winning her tenacity, Stephens made second-round match in three sets, just six unforced errors in she lost and went home. the title match.

“And I didn’t think I would ever be able to regroup here, at this place, because it was just filled with so many emotions—and not good ones,” Sloane said. “If someone told me when my dad died that I would end up winning the U.S. Open years later, I would’ve been, like, You’re crazy. It is crazy. But I’ve had so many great moments here, and so many sad moments here, that winning, here, makes it even more special.”

Keys, who has a black father and a white mother, never remarked on the racial import of this year’s Open. But Stephens called their advance into the semis—with Venus and CoCo Vandeweghe—“amazing for me and Maddie. We are following in [Venus’s] footsteps; she’s

represented the game so well as an African-American woman.

Maddie and I are here to join her and represent just as well.”

Even so, Stephens seemed more engaged with her own narrative—which she calls “insane” and her mom, the first black swimmer to be named a first-team All-America, at Boston University in 1988, rightly sees as progress. “It’s incredible that it’s happened,” Smith says, “but these women have worked really hard for what they’ve accomplished, and colour really has nothing to do with it at the top.”

Such drive was conspicuously absent from Stephens’s early career. Great speed and heavy ground strokes made her one of the tour’s more dangerous counterpunchers; a dramatic win over Serena Williams at the 2013 Australian Open, coupled with a whipsmart wit, made her the Next Big Thing in American tennis. But what with ripping Serena publicly (“They think she’s so friendly,” she told ESPN The Magazine in May 2013. “That’s not reality!”) and an on-court demeanour that, as Evert says, often betrayed “a lack of fight and blasé body language,” her first dance with fame OCTOBER 2017 / SPORTS ILLUSTRATED /

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SLOANE STEPHENS

became a slog. She shuttled through coaches—Roger Smith, Paul Annacone, Nick Saviano—and whispers spread about her work ethic.

“Before, you weren’t sure how deep Sloane was going to dig,” says two-time U.S. Open winner Tracy Austin. “She wasn’t always a battler.”

Late in 2015, Stephens began working with Murray, whose academy has sent 46 kids to colleges on tennis scholarships. “A lot of these players have warm-and-fuzzy relationships with their coaches, but we weren’t friends then,” Murray says. “It was like, ‘Go to the gym, go to the court, and then I’ll go to my hotel.’

“I expect every ounce of effort, and we’re still working on it.

I think we’ve made dramatic improvement on not quitting. I’m from Chicago: Nothing is given, and everything is earned. We come to do work.”

Stephens won their second tournament together, the ASB Classic in Auckland in January 2016, and followed that with victories in Acapulco and Charleston. But she also began feeling pain in her left foot, and by the Rio Olympics could barely walk; an MRI revealed a stress fracture. Four months of rest helped, but when Stephens tried playing in an Australian Open tune-up in Sydney last January, the pain resumed. Surgery,

METTLE Stephens played a brilliant U.S. Open, but her best win was against Venus Williams in the semi-finals.

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C L I V E B RU N SKIL L /G E T T Y IM AG E S

M AT T H E W S T O C K M A N /G E T T Y IM AG E S

which involved grafting bone from her heel, was set for Jan. 23.

Ordered to stay off her foot completely for 12 weeks, she was carried upstairs by her mom and brother Shawn Farrell. Stephens feared her career was done.

“It was horrifying,” she says.

Keys, who was also sidelined then, by left-wrist surgery, was one of the few forces sustaining Stephens. “When Sloane was down and out, Madison was messaging her and calling and FaceTiming her: What are you doing? And Sloane would do the same,” Smith says. “I feel good that in this very solitary sport, my daughter has someone to rely on.”

In late April, Stephens took to a court for the first time, sitting on an old coffee table and batting back balls; on May 16 she stood up and hit for the fi rst time. “Coming back, being really excited to be back on court, I have a different mind-set: Stay super positive and compete really hard,” Stephens says. “That

was a game-changer for me. I had nothing to lose.”

Pain-free after 11 months, she took two fi rst-round losses at Wimbledon and Washington, D.C., but, in Toronto in August, then gutted out a trio of three-set matches and beat Petra Kvitova and Angelique Kerber before losing in the semis. Another deep run in Cincinnati raised more eyebrows. “I saw the flip: Sloane just kept battling,” Austin says. “That’s the difference—she’s battling now.”

She kept proving herself after arriving at Flushing Meadows ranked 83rd, with three-set wins over 11th-seeded Dominika Cibulkova, 30th-seeded Julia Goerges, 16th-seeded Anastasija Sevastova and, especially, Venus in an epic semi-fi nal. Serving at 4–5, 30-all, two points from elimination, Stephens fi nished off a 25-ball rally with a lasered backhand pass, then drilled a 97-mph service winner down the T to hold. Then came the haymakers—a stunningly perfect lob, a flash forehand off Venus’s net-cord volley, a flurry of pinpoint ground strokes. By the end Williams’s chest was heaving. One of the game’s stoniest wills had been ground into exhaustion, broken.

Keys was waiting for her own semi-fi nal, watching on the gym TV, when Stephens raised her arms in victory. On the Friday before the Open they’d practised together, their best session ever: “Like they’re trying to kill each other,” says Mur-

“I didn’t think I would ever be able to regroup here, at this place, because IT WAS JUST FILLED WITH SO MANY EMOTIONS, and not good ones.” ray. “Informal, not many cameras, so we’re all talking crap. It was fun.” Now Keys teared up, and felt chills: They had both missed so much time, together.

“I was just so happy for her,” Keys said after the final.

She should be. Because more than any big, manufactured theme, the significance of this year’s Open was about a few pure and spontaneous moments, and one woman’s impressive growth.

Perhaps the clearest takeaway from that fi nal is how good can result from injury, mistakes, fear and loss; Stephens would never have learned these truths about herself without them: “That I’m a real fighter, that I have a lot of grit,” she said. “Surprising.”

And without the win, nobody outside her circle would’ve known about Stephens’s loyalty or empathy or simple cool; comforting Keys oncourt called for all that. Then she invited Keys to the victory party. “She can buy me drinks,” Keys said.

“All of the drinks.” Perfect. Such gestures, today, deserve a hearty toast. So this is where we raise a glass. ± OCTOBER 2017 / SPORTS ILLUSTRATED /

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Taming

Bat C R I C K ET

The

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Over the past decade, cricket bats with massive swell and thick edges became weapons for bowlers’ destruction. But now, the ICC hopes to restore the balance by freezing the dimensions of the willow

By Jasvinder Sidhu Photographs by William Vanderson/Fox Photos/Hulton Archive/Getty Images OCTOBER 2017 / SPORTS ILLUSTRATED /

65

ABOUT FOUR YEARS ago, Australian cricket legend and ex-India coach Greg Chappell ignited the debate about monster bats tilting the balance of the game in favour of batsmen. He argued in one of his newspaper columns that Donald Bradman would have averaged over 120 with modern bats and would have been unstoppable.

Chappell further wrote that Bradman must be turning in his grave, seeing how the game is being distorted by these bats. In effect, the straight-talking Aussie set the proverbial cat among the pigeons.

Chappell made a valid case, pointing to the way modern-day batsmen, even those making up the lower order or the tail, brutalise quality bowlers in all formats of the game. The ease with which batsmen seem to hit the ball out of the park, often lodging it in the stands or parking lots, shows the imbalance between the bat and the ball.

Chappell is not alone in his observation.

Another former Australian captain, and a great in his own right, Ricky Ponting, too lent his weight to the campaign against “weapons of bowlers’ destruction.”

“We feel that in the last few years it has actually gone a little bit too far in the favour of batsmen,” Ponting said. “We can’t make the grounds bigger, so certainly one of the concerns was the middle of the bat, because the shape of the bat is increasingly getting bigger and bigger every year.”

With the increasing popularity of T20 leagues around the world, which is inherently skewed against the bowlers, the usage of thicker bats made contests even more lopsided. In the 2017 IPL, 698 sixes (4,188 runs) were hit compared to 638 in the ninth edition. Ten years before the IPL, batsmen in India used bats with edges measuring between 32 mm and 35 mm. But in some cases, the edge of the bats had become as thick as 50 mm, with heavy swell that expanded the sweet spot. Cricket bats with this kind of architecture help batsmen impart enormous power to their hits, often sending the bowlers and fielders on a leather hunt.

Last year, the Cricket Committee of the International Cricket Council (ICC) received a research paper from the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC)—the guardian of the laws of the game—citing a wealth of scientific and statistical evidence showing that in recent times the new-generation bats have been imparting more power to hits, primarily due

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“We can’t make grounds bigger, so one of the concerns was the middle of the bat. The bat is increasingly getting bigger and bigger every year.”

WILLOW THROUGH THE AGES 17TH CENTURY

18TH CENTURY

One of the earliest mentions of the cricket bat is in an infamous incident from 1624. It was the first time a cricketer died during a match. Batsman Edward Tye accidentally struck fielder Jasper Vinall on the forehead while trying to hit the ball a second time. The bat during this period was similar to today’s hockey sticks as bowling was underarm and the ball rolled, rather than bounced, on the ground.

The modern-day bat began to take shape, and looked similar to today’s mongoose bat with a long handle. However, the swell of the bat was towards the bottom to counter bowlers, who had been allowed to loop the ball around the 1770s.

Width limited to 4.25 inches

QUICK FACT The Monster Bat Incident of 1771 was the reason behind a limit on the width. Thomas White came out with a bat as wide as the wicket, and a formal protest was made following the match.

C O D E O F L AW

TAILOR-MADE Players like Kohli and Gayle are known for their big hits, aided by bats sculpted to suit their playing styles.

to a bigger sweet spot. It forced the ICC to take note of the MCC’s report and asked the lawkeeper to suggest ways to restore balance between the bat and the ball.

There is also a commercial angle to the burgeoning shape of the cricket bat that started its humble journey in the late 17th century looking more like a hockey stick.

With the advent of T20 cricket, more specifically T20 leagues, the market value of a batsman, to a great extent, depends on his ability to score quick runs. This necessitated hitting sixes and fours off even good deliveries. It became a common sight to see mis-hits and outside edges flying over the ropes. This in turn forced manufacturers to design bats

with thicker edges and bigger swell because players demanded exactly that.

Last December, the MCC proposed in its new code of laws, the first since 2000, specified limits on the complete dimensions of a cricket bat. After lengthy consultations with bat manufacturers, the Federation of International Cricketers’ Associations, the ICC, the MCC’s World Cricket Committee, the Umpires Associations and other global governing bodies, the MCC this March decided to specify the exact measurements.

The new Code of Laws, that became operational from Sept. 28, 2017, restricts the maximum dimensions of a cricket bat to 108 mm in width, 67 mm in depth and, most important, 40 mm at the edges. “The bat size issue has been heavily scrutinised and discussed in recent years,” says John Stephenson, MCC Head of Cricket. “We believe the maximum dimensions we have set will help redress the balance between bat and ball, while still allowing the explosive bighitting we all enjoy.”

Batsmen no longer have as much of an advantage over bowlers. Here is how the willow has evolved over the years 21ST CENTURY

19TH CENTURY

20TH CENTURY

Roundarm bowling became the norm but in the early 1800s, bats weighed a hefty 2.26 kg, making it difficult to swing with force. This caused a radical change and led to bats shaped like they are today, with most of the weight in the middle.

John Newbery and Gray Nicolls began experimenting with the weight distribution during the 1970s. This redistribution of weight from the middle to the edge allowed manufacturers to increase the “sweet spot” on the bat. Newbery was responsible for the introduction of a steel spring handle. By now, drying of the willow had begun, which removed moisture from the wood.

For the first time since 2000, the MCC changed the regulations for the dimensions of bats in 2017. The batsman’s weapon will now be allowed a maximum width of 108 mm, depth of 67 mm and the edges will be limited to 40 mm. But there will be a moratorium period that will allow players to use their existing bats. The length remains unchanged.

Weight: 0.9 kg to 1.1 kg

Edges: 40 mm

Weight: 2.26 kg Length: 38 inches

QUICK FACT Bat manufacturer C.C. Bussey began using the sapwood of willow in the 1890s, making the bat lighter than ever before.

Width: 108 mm Depth: 67 mm

OCTOBER 2017 / SPORTS ILLUSTRATED /

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C O D E O F L AW

WATCH YOUR HEAD Umpires and fielders have been victims of speeding shots. The new restrictions on cricket bats hope to prevent future mishaps.

A bat gauge will ensure that the new limits are adhered to in professional cricket.

But the ruling comes in the middle of a busy international season.

In the absence of any ICC law on thickness of the bats, West Indies big-hitter Chris Gayle and Australian David Warner played with bats that had edges measuring 45 mm to 50 mm and a 70-mm spine behind the sweet spot. Indian stars like M.S. Dhoni and Virat Kohli preferred bats with edges between 40 mm and 42 mm with a 70-mm spine.

According to the MCC, a bat gauge will ensure that the new limits are adhered to in all forms of professional cricket. But there will be a moratorium period that will allow players to use their existing bats which might be in breach of the new Code of Law in amateur games. The new ruling came into effect bang in the middle of a packed international season, giving international cricketers very little time to get used to new bats.

What kind of impact the new rules will have on the game is yet to be seen, but there is a sense of relief among bat manu-

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facturers. “Of course, it’s good news,” says Rakesh Mahajan, director, BDM, one of India’s leading bat manufacturers. “Making thicker bats became a headache as India doesn’t produce bigger clefts which is required for such type of bats. Since international cricketers have been playing with bats with thick edges that helped them to hit big, there used to be a big demand for these kinds of bats. It was very difficult to meet the demand. Hopefully, this madness will end now.”

Most of the Indian players had different types of bats that they used in different formats of the game. According to one manufacturer, Dhoni preferred bats weighing between 1,250 gm and 1,300 gm in T20 matches, while Kohli used a 1,180-gm bat for T20. Likewise, Rohit Sharma’s IPL bats weighed 1,170 gm.

“Players demanded different types of bats, depending on the format,’’ says Paras Anand, director, Sanspareils Greenlands,

the makers of the famous SG brand of cricket bats. “In the last 10 years, players wanted more meat at the back to help them in their strokemaking.” It’s little wonder then that such bats not only made good bowlers look ordinary, they also posed a threat to umpires. There have been quite a few incidents where either the bowler or the umpire at the non-striker end narrowly escaped getting seriously hurt by the fasttravelling ball that gave them very little time to take evasive action.

In January, in the Big Bash league, Sydney Sixers pace bowler Joe Mennie suffered a skull fracture and minor brain bleed after he was bludgeoned by a sharp returning ball that was hit by teammate Michael Lumb in the practice nets. Last March, during a practice match between Australia and the West Indies, umpire Bruce Oxenford came to the ground with a forearm shield to protect himself from the balls coming straight off the batsmen’s bats. Two years ago, Australian umpire John Ward had to be hospitalised after he was hit on the head by a returning ball at very high speed in a fi rst-class match between Punjab and Tamil Nadu in Dindigul.

Punjab’s Barinder Sran hammered a full toss from Tamil Nadu’s D.R. Chandrasekhar straight at Ward’s head. The ball travelled so fast that the umpire was just a sitting duck. As a result of that knock on the head, Ward collapsed to the ground and had to be rushed for emergency treatment. “We’ve seen some umpires being hit in recent times and it’s becoming quite dangerous, certainly in T20 and one-day cricket,” ICC umpire Richard Kettleborough told cricket.com.au shortly after he was struck on the leg during Australia’s home ODI series against India in January last year.

It’s too early to say if the change in dimensions of the cricket bat will have any impact on big-hitting in the shorter formats of the game, but even if it just makes umpires safe it’s worth the effort. ±

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I N D I A’ S N o .1 PA R E N T I N G M A G A Z I N E

B ASKETB ALL

NEW DREAMS A promotion to Division A for the 2019 Asia Cup and an Arjuna Award recommendation shows the Indian women’s basketball team is in the limelight for all the right reasons, following years of disappointment

By Priyanka Sharma Photographs courtesy of FIBA

F

ROM NOW, LET’S WIN. These words boldly emblazoned on the massive

hoardings at the entrance of the stadium gave an indication of what to expect. Although the Sree Kanteerava Stadium is located in the heart of Bengaluru, very few taxi drivers get the location right in the first instance. It’s usually confused with the Koramangala Indoor Stadium, which also played host to the FIBA Women’s Asia Cup basketball tournament over July 23–29.

Basketball is a long way from becoming a dominant discipline in the consciousness of Indian sports fans, but Bengaluru is one of the few places in the country that has a strong connection with the sport. The Basketball Federation of India (BFI) is headquartered in the city. Most of the national camps are conducted at the Sports Authority of India (SAI) south Bengaluru centre. Besides, BFI president K. Govindaraj, a Congress leader and Member of the Legislative Council (MLC), is from here and has worked for the development of basketball for a long time in his capacity as senior vice-president, before assuming the top post in the federation. His personal involvement with the championship meant the arrangements for the tournament were impressive. Expectedly, the arena was buzzing with activity and the music between games and timeouts added to the carnival atmosphere. But people in the know revealed how everything was put together at the last moment.

Realistically speaking, it didn’t seem too big a task for India to finish atop Division B in this edition of the Asia Cup. The only other teams that looked superior were Lebanon and eventual runners-up Kazakhstan, who remained unbeaten until the final loss. The Lebanese girls were physically strong and the Kazakhs even stronger, but India’s head coach, Zoran Visic, with a better understanding of the opponents owing to his past

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ASI AN B ASKETBA L L C HA M P IONS HIP

experience of coaching in the Lebanese league, chalked out plans to tackle them. And his girls executed them to perfection. Visic joined the team just over a month before with one objective—to make the team “well-prepared for the Asia Cup.” “I want to congratulate the girls, they played very well.

Defensively and offensively, it was very difficult to play against teams like Kazakhstan or Lebanon,” the Serbian told SPORTS ILLUSTRATED INDIA. “They took their chances and executed the plan well. They trained hard for this tournament. We did well to hide the weaknesses and played to our strengths.”

For several years—from 2007 to ’13—India held a place in Division A but they were relegated to Division B after a winless outing in the 2015 edition. Till date, their best performance from 17 appearances in the tournament was a fifth place in 2013. More than the title, the promotion to Division A that came with the win had been the sole objective of the team.

The side, currently ranked 40th, also underwent a transition in the past few years, with more juniors coming in while senior members such as captain Anitha Paul Durai, Anjana Prasannan Geetha and Raspreet Sidhu lent experience and balance. The impassé within the BFI over the past two years, when two opposing factions claimed to be the rightful entity to run the sport in the country, also played a role in the decline. The Asia Cup, then, was a big chance for the hoopsters and the newly-affiliated BFI to regain their lost status.

For fans, the Asia Cup was also a great chance to witness top teams like Japan and China, besides Oceania heavyweights Australia and New Zealand. In fact, this was the first time Australia and New Zealand were included in the Asia zone. Despite being favourites to win the Division A title, world No. 4 Australia lost to defending champions and 13th ranked Japan 73–74 in a thrilling final, much to the heartbreak of the crowd. The top four teams from Division A, including China and South Korea, qualified for the 2018 World Cup in Spain.

A RAY OF HOPE The last time the Indian girls played at an international event was in the same competition two years ago. To say they were bereft of some real competition would be an understatement. A national camp in Indore in March was followed by another one in Bengaluru. The coaching staff was intent on building a good team. But would it be good enough when it mattered most? The arrival of Visic in June ushered the much-needed winds of change to blow away years of mediocrity. The eagerness to play in front of the home crowd also had its effect on the players.

They started gelling well in the camps that helped them to forge a strong bond.

The exposure trip to Chinese Taipei for the 39th William Jones Cup in early July also played a crucial role in

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“THEY PLAYED LIKE A TEAM, A COMPLETE PACKAGE. I BELIEVE A TEAM WHICH CAN SCORE MANY POINTS FROM THE BENCH IS A TEAM ONE SHOULD LOOK AT.” their progression. After months of training, the tournament turned out to be the test that Visic’s team needed to gauge whether or not the preparations were paying dividends. But they lost every match, which had a sobering effect and gave an idea to the coach where the girls stood. Over the years, the team was lacking in execution, both in technical and tactical terms. But things changed in the Asia Cup. Assistant coach Shiba Maggon has observed the progression of the team closely. She believes that the team isn’t extraordinary. “But they definitely made an extraordinary effort. Their fighting spirit and chemistry were great,” she said of the Asia Cup performance.

“They played like a team, a complete package where everyone was scoring and assisting. I believe a team which can score many points from the bench is a team one should look at.”

“The William Jones Cup was very important. Despite losing all five matches, we got an idea of where we stood after five weeks of training. The last two to three weeks (before the Asia Cup) we rectified mistakes. So, when the girls came into the tournament, they were all prepared for the challenges.

WELL-PREPARED They knew what to do, and how The Indian women’s basketball to do it to reach the goal.” team were underdogs at the Asia The team’s performance and Cup, but the tactical prowess of confidence improved with each the coach saw them go all the match. In the semi-finals, when way to the final, and win it. they faced Lebanon, all the hard

‘WE TRY TO REMOVE OBSTACLES’

concern players from only Islamic countries (Middle East and Africa), but from across the globe including Jews, Sikhs and players of certain faiths and sex.

FIBA Asia executive director Hagop Khajirian opens up about a landmark ruling and Indian women’s basketball

What influenced FIBA to revise a rule that had been in place for decades?

We (FIBA) always look for ways to increase the number of participants and improve the level of the sport; this is our main goal. There wasn’t any change of mind, because first of all, there wasn’t any decision made on this issue. The no-headgear rule has been there for a long time. So, when the case was presented to us, we studied it, and before taking any decision, we preferred to test it. After the review, a decision was made unanimously. The headgear issue was like an obstacle.

And we try to remove all obstacles that could keep us from having the maximum number of participants. I am sure administrators of other sports are doing their utmost to do something as well.

T

K A R I M J A A FA R /A F P/ G E T T Y I M A G E S

HE RECENT INTERNATIONAL Basketball Federation (FIBA) ruling, which allowed players to wear headgear oncourt, was one of the mostawaited decisions by FIBA to which the basketball fraternity, especially women, has reacted positively. FIBA had followed in the footsteps of football, with FIFA, world football’s governing body, allowing players to wear headgear since 2014.

In the past, teams had pulled out of major meets, the most famous incident being the Qatar women’s team (pictured) pulling out from the 2014 Incheon Asian Games in protest against the headgear ban.

FIBA Asia executive director Hagop Khajirian said that the original ban was in effect for “safety reasons,” but hoped that the change would help increase participation in the sport. Khajirian spoke to SPORTS ILLUSTRATED INDIA on the ruling, Indian basketball and its future. Excerpts: Your thoughts on the ruling?

The decision to revise the previous ruling was made by the FIBA Congress in 2014. We gave ourselves a two-year trial period, during which headgear was permitted in the local leagues of several countries. We wanted to see how this permit will develop basketball and later decide if a decision regarding the uniforms is necessary. We asked the national federations to give figures periodically about the change in numbers of players (especially women) in their countries. After the two-year period, the Central Board concluded that it doesn’t

What was the feedback following the landmark ruling?

We received a lot of good comments and praise not only from players but fans from across the world. There are people who will see the glass as half-full, but there are also those that see it as halfempty, and we accept their comments.

If there is something that we feel will be beneficial to the sport, we do that. We don’t need to explain to everybody the details of the working process we follow.

Your opinion of Indian basketball and its future?

In men’s basketball, India have improved a lot in the last two years, both as a team and individually. But the progress has been negligible in the case of the women even though they did very well

at the Asia Cup. I believe there is a missing link between sports in schools, college-level and professional basketball in India, and this link must be found so that the progress these players make in school or college continues. The breach between these two levels should be filled, and this could be done through the efforts of the national sports federations and school administrations.

What needs to be done to make India a basketball powerhouse?

Improvements in coaching and referee standards as well as at the administrative level are vital. In school and college sports, you have enough administration in place while at the professional level in India, only some sports have that management, but still aren’t at the level of other national federations like cricket and hockey.

These bodies are professional but still incomparable with other countries.

The administration is like a pyramid; everything has to go together—money, administration, interest of the government, other stakeholders like market, TV, fans and so on. Their interests need to align in order to have a successful sporting nation. ± —Priyanka Sharma / OC O OCTOBER 201 2017 / S SPORTS O S ILLUSTRATED S

73

ASI AN B ASKETBA L L C HA M P IONS HIP

work was vindicated. They were prepared for the Lebanese challenge, one of the toughest teams in the division. It reflected in the scoreline at the final whistle—India won by a comfortable margin of 79–69.

“If you were at our matches against Uzbekistan and Sri Lanka, our main players were on the court only for 19 to 20 minutes. So, they were fresh for their next match, especially the semi-finals and finals. Whereas in teams like Lebanon, their important players were playing throughout the 40 minutes, which left them tired,” Maggon said.

Visic’s arrival was paying off.

BELIEF WAS KEY With only the winners of Division B being promoted, a loss in the final against Kazakhstan would have meant all the hard work would come to nought. The final was a closely-fought affair with Kazakhstan appearing stronger due to the bigger build of their players. It gave them an advantage as centre Nadezhda Kondrakova scored from all corners to pick up quick points. But the Indian girls regrouped quickly to match their opponents with a different strategy.

For India, Shireen Limaye was aggressive in her drives, while guards Durai and Sidhu created space to knock down jumpers. Jeena Skaria’s 20 points were also significant.

In fact, backed by a packed house, the hosts held their nerves in the pulsating final quarter to score 25 points.

After a neck-and-neck fight, it all came down to some smart calls. With 19 seconds to go, the scores were level at 73–73. In the dying moments, Limaye had the ball.

But she didn’t rush in to score. Instead, she allowed a few seconds to tick away with deft dribbles and a few passes before launching into a final drive for the final dunk that took the score to 75–73, snatching a thrilling win. “It’s a very emotional moment. This is what we were working for all these months,” an elated Durai said after the game, still dripping with sweat from that intense encounter.

Durai, who is a chief ticket collector with the Indian Railways, has devoted her life to basketball. She credits her family for her long spell of 18 years with the Indian team. “It’s like my second home. And for these girls, I am like their mother. I am playing this role both at home and on the court. This is a young team and they always need someone to motivate them. It feels great to be someone who can inspire and motivate the younger players,” the 32-year-old shooting guard said. “I want to lead the team as long as I can. Earlier I was thinking of retiring after leading India to the Asia Cup Division A but now I want to represent India at the 2018 Asian Games.”

“The belief that they can do it was important,” said Maggon. “For the past few months, it was more about mental preparation than physical training. Our core preparation was done focusing on Lebanon and Kazakhstan. We knew we can’t compete with girls of 6'1" in average height. A lot of video analysis was done to show our

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girls how they should play, how they can build chemistry. These things worked.”

Maggon had the added advantage of knowing most of the youngsters in the team, as she coached them at the Under-16 and Under-18 levels.

It appears that things were slowly falling in place. Days after the progress of the women’s team, former senior team member Prashanti Singh was recommended for the Arjuna Award. Surely, this was a matter of great pride for the entire basketball fraternity with the honour being bestowed after Geethu Anna Jose received it in 2014.

However, Prashanti superseded captain Durai for the award. Many in the community expressed shock over the development, saying that Durai’s achievements—a staggering nine national gold medals for Railways, top steals at Asian Championships, golds at Asian 3x3 basketball, among others—are more praiseworthy.

Both Maggon and Durai are of the view that a lot more needs to be done so that results like this wouldn’t be a one-off affair.

“For the last two years, there were problems within the federation. So, there was no exposure. Now things are changing for the better and we are playing more tournaments. We are proving ourselves and I believe the federation is taking note of that. It’s a new beginning for women’s basketball in India. From 2007 to ’13, we have been playing in Division A and we know what it takes to maintain our position there. We are ready to work hard,”

LONG ROAD AHEAD While the return to Division A will be welcome, the federation needs to ensure this success is not a one-off, and that steady progress is made in the coming years.

“THE ELITE NATIONAL CAMPS ARE NOT MEANT TO TEACH PLAYERS THE BASIC FUNDAMENTALS. WE SHOULD HAVE SCOUTING AT GRASSROOTS LEVEL.” said Durai, who played the Asian meet for a record ninth time.

NO PROPER SYSTEM Maggon felt that training at grassroots level is needed for the development of the sport. “The elite national camps are not meant to teach players the basic fundamentals like how to catch the ball or dribble. There are a lot of responsibilities on the coaches, so we should have scouting at grassroots level and development camps, where the basics are taught to the players before they graduate. In the senior camps, we should only focus on advanced tactics,” the 41-year-old coach from Haryana pointed out, referring to the strong development programmes that are in place in countries like China and Japan. Visic too echoed Maggon’s sentiments.

But this is a problem not in basketball alone. It’s symptomatic of

India’s lack of vision in all major Olympic sports. “In a short span, I have realised that there is no proper system, no good system for team selection. India is a big country, so surely there are enough good players like in China or Japan,” said the 60-year-old Visic, who has worked with teams like Serbia, Romania and Russia. When the BFI was asked about the roadmap for the women’s team, secretary-general Chander Mukhi Sharma said: “We are taking a professional approach now. We are focussing more on physical fitness and tactical skills of the teams.

The results are already showing. Earlier, the girls were dribbling more but now the strategy has changed. We have also started giving freedom to coaches.” It’s clear from her answer that the BFI still hasn’t really grasped the nature of the problem—the lack of a proper pan-India developmental structure.

Sharma also informed that Visic’s contract has been extended for another year after he delivered results in just eight weeks since his appointment. But the Serbian will be joining the senior women’s team at the end of 2017, instead of mentoring the U-16 women’s side till the Women’s Asia U-16 Cup in October in Bengaluru. Looking ahead to the 2018 Asian Games, the coach said the next step for the senior team would be getting ready to tackle Chinese Taipei and North Korea for the 2019 Asia Cup and the Asian Games. No doubt, Visic will have his task cut out when he re-joins the girls for the next goal. ± OCTOBER 2017 / SPORTS ILLUSTRATED /

75

GROWING The Special Olympics has grown steadily since its inception in 1968, and hopes to enlighten the world on the inclusion of those with intellectual disabilities.

An Incessant Journey Of

S P E C I A L O LY M P I C S

me immense joy and satisfaction that we had an impact on so many lives.

For several years we had our regional Asia-Pacific office in India, and this allowed us to establish solid ground here.

Although the office has shifted to Singapore, we had a number of people who devoted their time and energy in order to ensure a good, strong and diverse programme in operation.

India is one of our greatest programmes around the world as we have over 1.3 million athletes involved. The Special Olympics Bharat programme that we have in place in the country is the strongest on the planet, and it continues to grow. Considering the numbers that are involved, it is incredible to witness the development that has taken place. Seeing some of the regions in the country astounds me, as they are doing an astonishing amount of work even though they are operating on a shoestring budget. It is down to the level of commitment that the volunteers have shown; their dedication to the work that they do, expecting nothing in return, is also something that most of our programmes By Photographs by Special Olympics Bharat can learn from. I appreciate what India has done with the Young Athlete Programme, that people with intellectual disabilities am honoured to have been a part which is for the development of young chilare aided in living the life they deserve. of this journey of Special Olympics dren, aged two to seven. The amount of During my time as the national director for close to four decades now. It was engagement that’s happening across the of Special Olympics in Ireland, we tried back in 1978, when the founder of nation in relation to this programme and several things to improve the programme Special Olympics, Eunice Kennedy the Youth Programme is very encouraging. and strengthen it. We organised the first Shriver, brought this unique programme to Since India is a large country comprising European Games across 19 countries which Ireland. Her vision and leadership qualiof a lot of youth below the age of 24, it’s necwas followed by the World Games in 2003, ties inspired me to become a volunteer for essary to reach out to these young people. where I served as the chief executive officer. the Special Olympics movement as I used Our organisation in India has grasped the It was a huge achievement for us all as it to be a teacher in a special school in my idea of involving youth in the Special Olymwas the first time that the World Games homeland and always had the ambition to pics Programme, which in itself reiterates were held outside the U.S. Fourteen years work for, and with, these special people. our global ambition of playing sports in a later, I am now the chief executive of this The movement was set in motion by unified manner. Not just sports, we are prestigious organisation after working Shriver in 1968, but was still new to me BY teaching people to live in a unified way in Europe–Eurasia as the president and when I joined 10 years later. The experience where we can be more understanding of managing director for close to eight years. of being a volunteer for this programme be more accepting of difference OGR APH Y/SPORTS ATED/GE T difference, T Y IMAGES It isBRUT very gratifying to beILLUSTR in this position went a long way in mouldingPHO meT into the BY SIMON and create more inclusive communities for and experience its growth and developperson that I am. The basic aim for every the intellectually disabled. That is exactly ment—something that began in the U.S. is individual working in this programme is what we strive to do in Special Olympics— now spread across 172 countries. It gives to keep improving and strengthening it so we use sport as a platform to ensure our athletes are fully accepted and fully integrated in society and in the societies they live in.

As Special Olympics turns 50 next year, I feel contented on seeing the development of the

Doing Good The Special Olympics will turn 50 next year and in the time since its inception nothing has come in its way of sending out a clear message of compassion for those with intellectual disabilities Mary Davis

I

TIM L AYDEN

W E A R E T E AC H I NG PEOPL E TO BE MOR E U N DER STA N DI NG A N D ACCEP T I NG OF DI F F E R E NC E

OCTOBER 2017 / SPORTS ILLUSTRATED /

77

S P E C I A L O LY M P I C S

organisation as a whole and the expansion of the various programmes in particular.

Initially, Special Olympics was very much a sports training and competition programme which has now developed into a movement—a movement for young people, a movement for children and a movement for large families. Almost 100,000 family members are involved in the programme here in India. Over time, we’ve had millions of volunteers working in all our programmes and I can say with a fair degree of confidence that it is a sustainable model.

While we do face challenges in terms of resources and finances, we manage to do a lot of work in every country with even the bare minimum. I believe it is because of the sheer passion that everybody working in the organisation has, regardless of what level they are involved in. In India, where infrastructure can become

stop us from what we want to achieve.

At Special Olympics, we use the power of sport to change the lives of athletes and, in fact, change the lives of people around the world whether they are disabled or not. For all athletes participating in sports, being in good health is a must for which we have regular health checks. It is common knowledge that sports makes people healthier both physically and mentally, therefore, apart from the skill set that they learn in sport, they are also transformed into leaders through our Leadership Programme.

GOOD CAUSE With over 1.3 million athletes involved, the Special Olympics Bharat programme has been a resounding success despite running on a shoestring budget.

a huge transformation from mere participation of an athlete in sports to the day-to-day lives and opportunities that exist for the athletes.

India has been a key support to the Special Olympics programme as we have had great partnerships with a number of sports federations as well as institutions such as the Lions Clubs International, which has helped develop the Special Olympics Healthy Athlete programme, the Opening Eyes programme, the Young Athlete programme, and the Unified Sports programmes.

We’ve also had contributions from v a r iou s c i v ic b o d ie s, gove r n me nt agencies and from the corporate community as well.

It is important to understand what Special Olympics is trying to do here in India in conjunction with the entire Asia-

W E US E S P OR T TO C H A NGE L I V E S OF AT H L ET E S A N D CH A NGE L I V E S OF PEOPL E A ROU N D T H E WOR L D a bit of an impediment, especially in the rural parts of the country, it is almost admirable the way people keep doing good work despite obstacles. I remember when I started with Special Olympics in Ireland, we had nothing. We had no playing field and no running track, but that didn’t stop us setting up our own area and making it work for the athletes so that they could do their training. I don’t think infrastructure should necessarily

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SPORTS ILLUSTRATED / OCTOBER 2017

W

e have two well established Leadership Academies since we launched this programme in India. The skills that they gain through sports and the leadership programme are equipping them to be more involved in their societies, making them more capable and accepted in the community.

There’s more knowledge and awareness about the ability of the people with intellectual disability. There is defi nitely

Pacific region. Most significant, it aims to provide good quality programmes to athletes because it is easy to grow numbers but delivering poor quality of programmes will hamper the ultimate objective. We don’t want that, so we want to take time out often and focus on what we have got, to make sure it’s well developed, to make sure there are great opportunities for the athletes, not just in sports, but in all other programmes.

I have no doubt that Special Olympics Bharat will grow a great deal in the coming years. ± The writer is chief executive officer of Special Olympics International.

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BADMINTON

SHUTTLING

TO THE TOP P.V. Si PV Sindhu dh may have h llostt iin th the W World ld Ch Championships i hi final but, there is enough evidence that points to a bright future for Indian badminton at the biggest stages

By V. Krishnaswamy Photograph by STRINGER/AFP/Getty Images

BADMINTON

P

.V. SINDHU’S 110-minute three-game loss to Japan’s Nozomi Okuhara by a wafer-thin margin in the 2017 World Championships was still fresh but her coach, Pullela Gopichand, was cool and calm.

“She played a great match. Maybe a little more experience and she would’ve won,” he said. And then he told a colleague, “I don’t regret the loss. But 10 years from now, if Sindhu still hasn’t won a World Championships gold, only then will I regret this day.” From one medal coming India’s way at every World Championships since 2011, it was now two in 2017—a silver for Sindhu and a bronze for Saina Nehwal.

Clarity and perspective have been Gopichand’s hallmark.

There are three crucial takeaways from this World Championships in Glasgow. First, and the most obvious, is the historic achievement of two medals at a World Championships for the first time. India has had a medal at the

Worlds in 2011 (bronze for Jwala Gutta and PROMISING Ashwini Ponnappa in women’s doubles); Nehwal’s rapprochement with 2013 and 2014 (bronze for Sindhu); 2015 Gopichand could signal the (silver for Nehwal); and 2017 (silver for start of a triumphant phase of Sindhu and bronze for Nehwal). Second, India’s dominance in women’s there was a reaffirmation of the depth singles badminton. in Indian men’s badminton, despite the elimination of all four in the fray before the semi-fi nals. And, last, the rapprochement between Nehwal and her former coach, Gopichand.

India has also been winning medals at the Olympics, the Commonwealth Games and Super Series consistently. The progress and growth are evident.

This year alone, apart from the World Championships, Indians have won titles at various levels—one at the World Super Series Premier (Kidambi Srikanth in Indonesia) and three in the Super Series—Srikanth in Australia, B. Sai Praneeth in Singapore and Sindhu in India.

In the Grand Prix Gold, Sameer Verma (in the Syed Modi International, India), Praneeth (in Thailand) and H.S. Prannoy (in the U.S. Open) added to the kitty, so did Nehwal (in the Malaysia Masters) and Sindhu (the Syed Modi International, India).

Down the pecking order, Shubhankar Dey (in Iceland), Anand Pawar (in the Dutch International) and Lakshya Sen (in the Bulgaria Open) added men’s titles and Shikha Gautam (in the Mauritius women’s singles) in the International Series. Smaller events they may be, but our players are making a mark.

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SPORTS ILLUSTRATED / OCTOBER 2017

DON’T BREATHE

After three close games and a 73-shot rally, there was one champion but two winners

F

or close to two hours, or at least the last hour of the match, more than 5,000 people inside the packed Emirates Arena and a billion Indians around the world seemed to be holding their breath, lest it blow away the feathered bird in the wrong direction.

And then, after 110 minutes of nervewracking shuttling back and forth, good enough to give the staunchest of supporters a crick in the neck, the match ended by the slenderest of margins in favour of Nozomi Okuhara, a badminton player from Japan, who could have done a marathon runner proud that August Sunday in Glasgow. On the other side of the net was India’s P.V. Sindhu, a winner even in defeat.

A fair collection of titles, besides a decent number of runner-up and semi-final finishes have made for an excellent collection of honours for Indian badminton.

Yet, five years ago, while reporters were celebrating India’s fi rst Olympic medal in badminton—won by Nehwal in London—and milling around her for an interview, Gopichand stood smiling a few metres away.

Asked if he felt happy at India’s success in badminton with the Olympic medal, he wasn’t getting carried away. “This is not the real success, nor will we see it in 2016. If we contend for medals in all categories at the 2020 Olympics, only then can we say that badminton has been successful,” he had said.

We are still three years away from the Tokyo Olympics, but it can safely be said that we have made significant headway towards that goal. Medals are coming in but, more crucially, depth is increasing.

There is barely a week when Indian players are not competing in some part of the world. Badminton is now truly global—the

There is almost a 10-inch difference in their heights—Sindhu stands at 1.79m to Okuhara’s 1.55m—but the size of their hearts was huge. Bigger than ever seen in the sport. That one of them had to lose on the day was a pity. It was a gold for one and a pat on the back for the other. The history books will show Okuhara won the world title, beating Sindhu 21–19, 20– 22, 22–20. But the effort it took Okuhara, or the pain it caused Sindhu, will never be felt unless you were there at the Emirates Arena in Glasgow.

It was the first World Championships gold for Japan, and India will have to be content with its second silver, two years after Saina Nehwal brought one in the 2015 edition of the Championships in Jakarta.

When the match finally ended, the scene on the court resembled that of a decathlon or heptathlon finish in athletics. Two players sapped of energy.

They danced like ballerinas, slugged it out like boxers, focussed

like monks and each swish of the sabre (call it a badminton racquet if you must) was answered with a better swish.

Each sinew had been strained just as every breath had been taken away from the spectators. A 73-shot rally was the standout in a match where 50- to 60-shot rallies abounded.

Okuhara now has an Olympic bronze, an All-England title and a World Championships crown.

Sindhu has her own set of

moments, but mostly bronze or silver in hue—at the Olympics and World Championships. Her time will come.

They came to Glasgow with a 3–3 head-to-head record, with Sindhu winning their last two encounters—the semis at the Rio Olympics in August 2016 and in the 2017 Singapore Open Super Series four months earlier. But Okuhara paid her back with a stunner in the Worlds final. The score now reads 4–3 in favour of the Japanese.

Okuhara’s win was welldeserved—on three consecutive days she beat Olympic and reigning world champion Carolina Marin in the quarters, 2015 World Championships runner-up Nehwal in the semi-final and, finally, Olympic silver medallist Sindhu in the final.

Okuhara and Sindhu are both young and their recent clashes in Rio, Singapore and Glasgow suggest that this may just be the beginning of a long rivalry between two immensely talented stars. Watch this space.

—V. Krishnaswamy

“I don’t regret the loss. But 10 years from now, if Sindhu still hasn’t won a

World Championships gold, only then will I regret this day.”

Badminton World Federation (BWF) has 191 competitions listed on its calendar and they range from the elite events such as the World Championships and the Continental Championships to the World Super Series Premier and Super Series. Further down the ladder, there are the Grand Prix Gold, Grand Prix, International Challenge and International Series.

Some players are funded directly by the government, some are funded by various other schemes of the central and state governments, and then there are the numerous private sports promotion bodies. At the lowest rung are the self-fi nanced players, who count each dollar and rupee and pay their way to tournaments where prize money is not enough to cover expenses.

One of the players who made his way via

this hard route but now makes enough to subsist, despite being some way from being a ‘star’, says: “It is a tough life. Looking for cheap flights, cheap hotels... colleagues to share rooms and meals with. But we all dream of being where our superstars have reached—like Nehwal, Sindhu, Srikanth and many others.”

They knock on federation doors, they knock on sponsors’ doors. Sometimes successfully, but mostly not. Yet they continue their journey. That journey may or may not be recorded in small items in newspapers, but the latter are all fresh in the minds of each one of them and their colleagues. It is a world of their own. A badminton world where superstars are feted and celebrated and others left to fend for themselves. It is no different from any other section of society.

Badminton has been making big strides. The proof of that is not in the titles won by Sindhu, Nehwal, Srikanth, Prannoy, Praneeth, Verma or whoever else, but the number of Indians in the top 25, 50 or 100 of the men’s and women’s singles world rankings.

There are three Indian men in the top 25 of the world rankings, six in the top 50 and 11 in the top 100. However, it is the next 13 players between 101 and 200 who signify the growing aspirations. The world’s top 200 men’s OCTOBER 2017 / SPORTS ILLUSTRATED /

83

BADMINTON

GLASGOW LITES One of football’s biggest rivalries, heartbreak and a fangirl mother from Spain

Football Is A Way Of Life The way the Glaswegians speak is often referred to as ‘Glasgow patter’—a dialect that is distinct but difficult to understand for outsiders. But there is no mistaking their warmth and love for football.

The Emirates Arena, which hosted the BWF World Championships, is a stone’s throw from Celtic Park, home to one of the major football clubs in the city—Celtic F.C. Just a few miles from Celtic Park is the Ibrox Stadium, home to Rangers F.C. To say this is one of the world’s biggest football rivalries would be an understatement. Just type “Celtic

Rangers” on YouTube, and the first result is “Celtic Rangers fight.”

“There is always something going on here and at other times, there are physical fitness classes, gym and much else, it is like a venue for sociosporting activities,” said a local. By the way, the Scots never tire of telling you that the world’s first international match took place in Glasgow in 1872. That match, between Scotland and England, ended 0–0.

When Saina Broke Glaswegians’ Hearts Badminton is quite popular in Glasgow, so the crowds were no surprise when the local lass, Kirsty Gilmour, turned up for her matches.

The seasoned Gilmour, who grew up in Glasgow, was a favourite among locals. “It would be lovely to see Kirsty win a medal at the Worlds,” said my host, Lorraine, who with her friend, Kay, was at the Emirates Arena every single day of the Championships.

Lorraine and Kay also had their loyalty earmarked for the Indian players. They had spent a few weeks in India and loved it. “There are so many Indians here in Glasgow... we will be cheering for them,” she said at the start of the week.

And then Gilmour came up against Saina Nehwal in the quarter-finals.

“Oh, my God,” said Lorraine. “I suppose you wouldn’t mind if Kirsty

D

OUBLES, THOUGH, HAS always been a problem for Indians. But that is now looking better than ever. From the solitary pair of Gutta and Ponnappa, who won medals at various levels from the World Championships to the Commonwealth Games, the players are increasing but the medals are yet to come.

That could change if one goes by the number of Indian pairings in the top 50 of each section. India now has three pairs in men’s and women’s doubles each and two in the mixed in the top 50 with a couple just outside.

Staying away from the various debates on whether doubles gets its due or

84 /

SPORTS ILLUSTRATED / OCTOBER 2017

Mother Marin A good number of Indian sports fans came in from as far as London, Leicester, Birmingham and other places to watch the Indians in action.

But they seemed to be more interested in getting autographs from Nehwal and P.V. Sindhu. They stood patiently outside the Emirates Arena for the opportune moment. By and large, both players obliged all of them.

But what took us all by surprise was a Spanish lady waiting for pictures with Sindhu’s mother, P. Vijaya, and Nehwal’s father, Harvir Nehwal.

That lady was Toni Marin, mother of Carolina Marin, who beat Nehwal in the 2015 All-England final and then beat Sindhu in the 2016 Rio Olympics final.

—V. Krishnaswamy

not, we cannot shy away from the fact that doubles does need more attention. But, we cannot afford to slacken in singles either.

With Gopichand being assisted by Indian and foreign coaches, there is some progress indeed, and, hopefully, more will be made soon.

While we wait for a Sindhu or Nehwal or a Srikanth or Praneeth to bring in more medals, let us also not forget that the support structure for badminton has increased manifold through a whole lot of bodies ranging from government to private, but there is still a great deal to be done.

As Gopichand once said, we need a medal in each section and then some. ±

M A RK RU N N AC L E S /G E T T Y IM AG E S (F O O T BA L L); CO U R T E S Y O F A B HIJ EE T K U L K A RNI O N T W I T T ER

players have no less than 24 Indians—one in every eight.

There are six women in the top 10, with the number shifting a couple here or there. There are 11 more between 100 and 200, making it 17 among the top 200. India can now compare itself with badminton’s elite nations, be it China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Denmark or Japan.

won.” Well, what could I say?

As things turned out, Nehwal won the match but Gilmour won hearts with her great fight.

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★★★★

MOTORSPORTS

MUD BATH AND RAIN

THE FOURTH EDITION OF THE RAINFOREST CHALLENGE HIGHLIGHTED TWO THINGS—THAT BEING MAD ISN’T ALWAYS A BAD THING, AND THAT THERE IS MORE TO GOA THAN ITS SUNNY BEACHES By

GOVINDAN KISHWAR

Photographs by

T

COUGAR MOTORSPORT

HE VIEW COULD not have been prettier. Grass as green as the familiar Windows XP wallpaper went on endlessly like a velvety carpet across the undulating lay of the land, and the overcast sky, the gurgling stream and the cool breeze complemented each other perfectly. If HBO wanted, they could have shot an episode of Game of Thrones here.

This, though, is not somewhere in the foothills of the Himalaya or the Western Ghats in South India, this is Goa. The same Goa that’s known for its sunny beaches, cheap liquor and a laid-back way of life where it’s never too early for a beer, and never too late for a drive to a beachside shack.

“Every year, countless people visit Goa, and almost 100 percent go to the beaches.

When you say Goa, you think beaches but most don’t realise that it has some of the most beautiful hinterland in the country,” says Ashish Dukle as he navigates his way past the rocks.

Dukle is the Competition Relationship Officer (CRO) and member of the Competition Committee of the Rainforest Challenge (RFC) of India. “Other than the RFC, people so far had no reason to venture into

86 /

SPORTS ILLUSTRATED / OCTOBER 2017

these areas,” he says, just before slipping on a rock, twisting his ankle. He claims he’s okay and keeps walking, before finding a picturesque spot to sit down.

“This is quite a view, huh?”

It was, indeed, but it wasn’t long before the sound of the river was drowned out by something much louder—a V8 engine getting tuned to tackle (read plough through) the scenery in front of us. Now in its fourth year, the RFC, the toughest off-road event in the country, has become even tougher, dialling the difficulty level up to 9,000 rpm, making other off-road events look like a drive on the expressway.

The first thing that comes to mind after one look at the greased-up drivers, codrivers and mechanics is: Have they lost their minds? What possesses someone to squander a small fortune on equipping a vehicle and spend months fine-tuning it, only to come here and drive it at singledigit speeds and most likely topple at the first obstacle?

“Madness, once the bug gets you, it’s difficult to let go,” says Jagat Nanjappa.

He would know, as he’s a nine-time national two-wheeler rally champion, and now, almost 60, still chooses mud, slush, intermittent rain and, of course, being upside down in a car over sitting in peace

★★★★

RAINFOREST CHALLENGE

on his coffee plantations.

This is Nanjappa’s second RFC. He fi nished eighth last year. He would have made it to the podium in 2016 too had it not been for a `15 bolt failing on a car that cost him around `26 lakh to build.

There isn’t even any prize money to justify the fi nancial, physical and personal outlay, and all those present are doing it for the same reason—the bug. The event isn’t recognised by the Federation of Motor Sports Clubs of India (FMSCI), but what it does hope to achieve is to make the RFC the benchmark for all other offroading events in the country while at the same time increasing the popularity of the sport among the locals. The latter is harder said than done.

“We went to see it last year, saw almost all the stages,” says Satish, a local restaurant owner, as he shouts at Cadbury to get off the road. That’s the dog, aptly named for its milk white and chocolate brown coat. “This year, we didn’t go, we saw it once just to see what it was all about, plus the stages are longer, so can’t see much.”

The obstacle courses, called Special

Stages, are changed each year to keep things fresh. David Metcalfe, the course master for all four editions, who has designed 800 to 1,000 courses in his career since 1998, believes that events like the RFC are always going to be about teams pushing themselves and their machines to the limit and about the hunger to improve each time.

“I’m 63 and I’m still setting up courses.

It’s about enjoyment, recreation,” he says.

“Being mad in the head certainly helps.

Not everyone can do this. Some of their winches are worth more than the cars.”

A

S DUKLE LOOKS on, the first car on the stage charges down the hill towards the stream before driving into it. Once it’s gone, the water that was crystal clear— locals took the liberty to enjoy the stages and take baths at the same time—is now muddy brown with the earth beneath coming loose. “This is a good stage,” he says as the vehicle takes a sharp U-turn and faces a steep climb over rocks. That’s where the importance of communication between a driver and co-driver becomes apparent.

★★★★

Overall Winners RFC India 2017 Champion

Gurmeet Virdi & Kirpal Singh Tung

1st Runners-Up

Jagat Nanjappa & Chethan Changappa

2nd Runners-Up

Sanbir Singh Dhaliwal & Gurpratap Singh 88 /

SPORTS ILLUSTRATED / OCTOBER 2017

Points

2,019

1,906 1,685

★★★★

EASIER SAID THAN DONE The RFC, now in its fourth year, prides itself on setting up some truly challenging courses. On Day 1, no one finished SS 2.

A driver can only see as wide as his windshield, while the co-driver, one could argue, is the brain and eyes behind the operation. He will inspect the course, make a note of all the possible snags, the winching points and the ideal line to tackle an obstacle and hope that the driver can execute his instructions. This is easier said than done. The older guys, in their late 30s, going all the way up to Nanjappa, know when to take it slow, when to power up and when to shut up and listen to their codriver. The younger ones, however, more often than not, seemed to follow one rule— power through it all and do as you please, co-driver be damned. If the co-driver says left, he goes right. The co-driver says stop, he guns the engine. The result: failure, usually in the form of turning upside down.

“The thing with the older guys is that they respect each other and even if they fail they won’t start pointing fingers,” says Ashish Gupta, the founder director of Cougar Motorsport, which organises the event.

“With the younger guys, they have no respect, as long as things are going fine, it’s all good. The moment a mishap happens, it’s gone. The driver will shout at the codriver, while the other one will think ‘what an idiot, I could have driven better.’ That is what these guys don’t have—respect.”

Gupta started Cougar Motorsport in

The co-driver says left, he goes right.

Co-driver says stop, he guns the engine.

THE RESULT WAS FAILURE, USUALLY IN THE FORM OF turning upside down.

2009. He harbours no illusions about the fact that the event is now as big as it will ever be, but hopes that it can set the standard for off-roading in India.

“RFC is never going to grow in terms of more participants, like 100 participants.

This year we are at the absolute limit at 40.

We start at nine in the morning and go on late into the night. We can’t handle more.

“The growth is going to come from the following: people take something back to their cities. So local events move up to the level of RFC. And that’s what has happened. The level of local events has really gone up. We hear people saying things like ‘an RFC-spec Jeep’ or ‘I’m preparing an RFC vehicle.’ It has become a benchmark.

Whether he is coming to compete in RFC or not, what he means is that he is going to have a top-spec off-road vehicle. Or saying something like ‘the stages were as tough as RFC in this event.’ Their consciousness about safety has increased too. A lot of club events used to be without seatbelts, roll cages, all that,” Gupta says. “It’s the hardest off-roading event in India. I’ve done three Raids (Raid de Himalaya) and I’d be hopeless at this.”

The prize for the winner is a direct entry into the mother event in Malaysia, RFC of Malaysia. Gurmeet Virdi, last year’s winner from India, finished 11th overall and first in his category. While off-roading is by no means inexpensive, it’s cheaper than track

racing or rallying. That is where, according to Gupta, Indians can make a mark. “Look at international racing events and Indians haven’t done much. Now, in something like the Dakar we are making inroads but overall to have someone like Virdi, who finishes at the top in his category in which, I think, there were six teams from China... just one Indian there who came out on top,” he adds.

Maybe the RFC will continue to be an event where participants with deep pockets come for a summer break, but it could also genuinely help the motorsports culture in the country. As Metcalfe says, he wants “locals to be able to relate to the cars and think ‘hey, that’s a Gypsy or a Thar, I have one, I could do that.’”

Gupta says at the end of each RFC, he tells himself, “This is the last one, never again,” only to come back. If nothing else, the RFC has at least shown that there is more to Goa than what is seen on the postcards. After all, who doesn’t like a cool breeze, a gurgling stream, soft grass and a cold beer. And perhaps a roaring V8. ± OCTOBER 2017 / SPORTS ILLUSTRATED /

89

special feature CHESS

Garry

KASPAROV Perhaps the greatest chess player ever, the former world champion has become a ďŹ erce critic of his native Russia and an advocate for freedom around the world. While his views have attracted a loyal following, he has needed all his wiles to stay a move ahead of his rival, Vladimir Putin

By JACK DICKEY Photograph by E R IC K W. R A S C O

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90

garry kasparov

IN FEBRUARY 2013 the Investigative Committee of Russia gave Garry Kasparov’s 76-year-old mother a call. They were looking for her son.

Kasparov had been one of the nation’s brightest lights for decades. In 1985, at 22, he became the youngest winner in the history of the World Chess Championship. He was suave and cocky, a virtuoso, and he captivated the chess-mad U.S.S.R., where every world champion became a household name. He is widely considered the greatest player ever.

Twelve years would pass, and the Soviet Union would fall, before he lost his fi rst match, and even then he remained ranked No. 1 until his 2005 retirement, when he abandoned chess to become a political activist.

Russian president Vladimir Putin had been running the country for only five years, but already Kasparov saw the nation hurtling backward. Kasparov and his compatriots called for fair elections; instead Russia held votes that were presumed to hav e be en r ig ge d. T he more Putin clamped down— silencing dissent, eliminating enemies—t he more urgent Kasparov’s mission became.

In 2007, he was jailed for protesting and then denied the opportunity to run for president. (Putin’s comment on the arrest: “Why did Mr. Kasparov, when arrested, speak out in English rather than Russian?”) Then, in 2012, Kasparov was arrested and detained while protesting against the imprisonment of the dissident feminist punk band, Pussy Riot.

A Russian court acquitted him soon after on the charges that he bit an officer. But still the Investigative Committee, Russia’s equivalent of the FBI, wanted to have a chat.

“They ‘invited’ me,” Kasparov says, “to be questioned as a witness in one of the many political cases they were investigating.” For guidance he called his friend, Boris Nemtsov, another opposition leader. Nemtsov told him, “Garry, you enter the building as a witness, and if you exit the building, it’s as a suspect.

Stay away.”

Kasparov by then was spending most of his time in New York City. Now, more than four years later, he has yet to return to Russia. He lives on Manhattan’s Upper West Side with his wife, Daria, and their daughter, Aida, 11, and son, Nikolas, 2. (He has another daughter and son from two prior marriages.) He crisscrosses

the U.S. and Europe as chairman of the Human Rights Foundation, which promotes democracy around the world.

As for Nemtsov? He was gunned down in Moscow in 2015, hours after he spoke in support of a protest against Russia’s war in Ukraine.

“I wish Boris had followed his own advice,” Kasparov says.

According to Akhmed Zakayev, a Chechen leader in exile in Great Britain, Putin and Chechen dictator Ramzan Kadyrov resolved after protests in 2012 to punish four major opposition leaders: Alexei Navalny and Sergei Udaltsov would be jailed, and Nemtsov and Kasparov would be killed. Kasparov notes that indeed Navalny and Udaltsov were sentenced to prison terms, and Nemtsov was killed— “so maybe it’s a real story.”

Kasparov has even been getting an unusual question at book signings recently: Why aren’t you dead? To these queries he replies that at this point, his death would only negligibly burnish Putin’s strongman credentials; he has already made his point.

As the grandmaster sees it, Putin reached a point in early 2014 where he had run out of moves domestically. “You need confrontations with the free world to stay in power [in Russia],” says Kasparov. So Putin

MOMENTS IN MAN VS. MACHINE HISTORY

92

1950

British scientist Alan Turing develops the Turing test for gauging a computer’s artificial intelligence capability.

1984

The Terminator (left), starring Arnold Schwarzenegger as a cyborg sent back in time, assaults U.S. box-office.

invaded Ukraine and annexed Crimea. Although the new territory bolstered his neo-Soviet reclamation project, retaliatory sanctions from the West manacled the Russian economy. (A coincidental collapse in the price of crude oil had already jeopardised Putin’s agenda.)

But Putin, pressured to retreat, chose instead to counterattack. He increased Russian involvement in Syria, casting his country as the courageous enemy of ISIS. The menace Putin posed troubled Kasparov enough for him to publish a book, Winter Is Coming, his fi rst non-chess title, in 2015.

In it he likened Putin’s past decade to Hitler’s 1930s, and he fi ngered Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Gerhard Schröder as latter-day Neville Chamberlains.

As with every Hitler comparison, it struck some as hyperbolic and alarmist. Well, it did back then. “I tried to tell people that winter was coming, and they didn’t want to hear it,” Kasparov says. “Now people all want me to tell them to be afraid.”

Kasparov was reminded recently of his 2015 book-tour appearance on Bill Maher’s HBO talk show. Maher told Kasparov to wake him up when Putin invades Poland. Kasparov says it took all he had not to jump up and down on his chair. “Well,” Kasparov says now, “it seems as though he skipped over Poland and went straight to Wisconsin.”

D

O YOU REALLY want to know what happened with the Russian meddling in U.S. affairs?

Kasparov is a man of many theories—that’s all they are, theories—but they’re shaped by years of tussling with Putin, and untainted

SHU T T ERS TO C K .CO M

P

1786

Scotland’s Andrew Meikle invents a machine to separate seeds from grain.

In the 1830s agricultural workers riot over lost jobs.

1989

A DA M N A D EL /A P

Kasparov beats IBM’s Deep Thought, which had become the first computer to beat a grandmaster the previous year.

1996

Deep Blue beats Kasparov in the first game of their match; Kasparov bounces back, and he wins the series 4 –2 .

1997

A more powerful version of Deep Blue bests Kasparov in a rematch (above), becoming the first computer to beat a world champ.

by any great yearning for President Hillary Clinton. (Kasparov’s American political hero is Ronald Reagan, thank you very much.)

“In Putin’s eyes, Trump was the perfect counterpart,” he says.

“The way Trump views the world is all about doing business, about deals.” Kasparov figures Putin aspired to approach Trump with the deal of all deals: “NATO, the EU, who gives a damn? Let’s redesign the map; you’re FDR, I’m Stalin. Maybe we bring in Angela Merkel, or the president of China—we’ll be the new Big Three. Equals! Who cares about Estonia, Latvia, Syria? We’ll play the game. Mmm, for Trump, that’s music to his ears!”

How would such a deal get done? Who would even be able to put it in front of the president, knowing that it contravened American doctrine and would not make it through the ranks of career foreign service officers at the State Department?

That, Kasparov says, is where Michael Flynn came in: “I’ve been saying from Day One that he was compromised.” Former acting attorney general Sally Yates says she told the White House in January that Flynn was vulnerable to Russian blackmail. Kasparov says Putin must have figured Flynn would quietly advance Kremlin’s interests.

With Flynn in control of the national-security apparatus and in back-channel communications with Russia, and with Rex Tillerson, a Russia-friendly dealmaker, atop a threadbare State Department (nearly 200 posts stood empty as of late April), all the pieces had fallen into place. Putin had influenced the U.S. election and now he could do the same to U.S. foreign policy.

But in early February, top-level government sources leaked to

2017

A PricewaterhouseCoopers study projects that 38 % of U.S. jobs could be lost to automation within 15 years.

2017

Google’s DeepMind AlphaGo AI programme defeats Ke Jie, the world’s top-ranked player of the board game Go.

The Washington Post that Flynn had discussed with Russian ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak the possibility of lifting sanctions Obama had placed on Russia, and then had lied about it to FBI agents. Four days later, Flynn was fi red.

P

OLITICIANS AND COMMENTATORS have long treasured chess as a metaphor for diplomacy. (Even Trump: “You can’t terminate [multilateral pacts]—there’s too many people, you go crazy. It’s like you have to be a grand chessmaster. And we don’t have any of them.”) It’s not a bad metaphor, as metaphors go: Diplomacy, like chess, offers multitudinous but not limitless options for moves and countermoves, and rewards careful evaluation of your position and your opponent’s.

When Kasparov rose to prominence, though, chess was not just a geopolitical metaphor but a vehicle for geopolitics itself. The game has always been thought of as a relatively pure measure of intellect, and the presence of a Soviet atop the world rankings signalled to the empire’s subjects, no matter how poor and starving they may have been, that they pos-

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93

garry kasparov

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94

I

T IS UNFORTUNATE that a great many people happen to know Garry Kasparov— the pro-democracy crusader and probably the best chess player ever—as the grandmaster

who lost 20 years ago to a computer.

After all, Kasparov had beaten two of that computer’s forerunners, and had he played up to his usual standards, he says he would have beaten the computer in 1997 too. He makes this clear in Deep Thinking, his new book concerned primarily with artificial intelligence writ large but which also provides Kasparov’s fi rst extended commentary on his loss to IBM’s Deep Blue.

In the book he writes about the machine’s handlers with the sort of spite usually reserved for dreaded rivals: “Secretive and antagonistic . . . IBM wasn’t only building a chess machine to beat me at the board, but a machine to beat me, period.”

At the dawning of computer chess, grandmasters could easily tailor their games to machines’ obvious strengths and weak nesses.

Carnegie Mellon researchers predicted in 1957 that a computer would beat the human PRESENCE OF MIND champion by 1967; they were Kasparov was a champ 30 years off. Computers unat 12 (below); 37 years later, he derstood chess mathematiwas as famous for protesting cally rather than intuitively, against the policies of the Russian government. which meant that while they could thrive in the middle game as pieces were strategically traded, they would struggle elsewhere. Computers simply lacked the processing power to see as far ahead as humans.

Then again, unlike humans, they never lose focus.

And by 1997 the machines had got ten stronger and c loser to v ic tor y—De ep Blue I had taken a game f rom K a spa rov i n t hei r match the year before. Even so, to hear Kasparov tell it, he initially saw nothing sinister in IBM’s request for a rematch once the machine had been suitably souped up. He thought it’d be a pleasant rivalry that would challenge (and enrich) both sides.

He was wrong. Kasparov and his team were denied access to records of games Deep Blue had played to train for the rematch, though he had received them before the fi rst match. The machine had been taught human ploys, including pausing before making moves it knew it wanted to make. IBM hired several more grandmasters than Kasparov was aware of to stuff the machine with opening moves chosen for their particular effectiveness against him. Some of this value was lost, though, because Kasparov didn’t play like himself in the Deep Blue matches—he switched to a style he thought would accentuate the computer’s limitations.

The world descended on the 35th floor of the Equitable Center in midtown Manhattan that May to observe the match. Newsweek’s cover had christened it THE BRAIN’S LAST STAND. Kasparov won the first

NIKO L A I N AU M EN KOV \TA SS V I A G E T T Y IM AG E S

sessed some sort of superiority.

An unbroken run of Soviets had held the world championship from Stalin’s tenure to Brezhnev’s.

Then came Bobby Fischer. A decade before he beat then champion Boris Spassky in Reykjavik in 1972, a 19-year-old Fischer had alleged in SPORTS ILLUSTRATED that the Soviets had fi xed international tournaments and conspired to deny him a shot at the world title for the sake of propaganda. (They almost certainly had.) But he eventually did conquer Spassky.

Anatoly Karpov claimed the title in 1975, when Fischer’s mania prevented him from defending it. And Karpov still held it in 1984, when Kasparov came calling, determined to remake the image of the Soviet chess superstar as the U.S.S.R. itself was loosening up. Karpov was an ethnic Russian and a Communist Party darling; Kasparov was, in his words, “a half-Armenian, half-Jewish menace to this good Russian boy.” His attacking style also contrasted with his predecessors’.

Their first match took five months—and never ended. Karpov led five games to three (there had been 40 draws) when chess authorities called it off, ostensibly to protect the health of the players. (Kasparov contended that Soviet powers had prevailed upon the chess federation to suspend it before Karpov blew the lead.) The 1985 rematch in Moscow, contested under modified rules to prevent another marathon, saw Kasparov win 13–11.

Kasparov won again in ’86, and drew in ’87, retaining his title.

Kasparov characterised the matches then, in SI, as a “battle between democracy and totalitarianism.” In Playboy, in 1989, he complained about the U.S.S.R.’s sexual repression, its government and “the Soviet chess mafia.”

He threw his support behind the incipient pro-democracy, pro-capitalism movement.

And what happened to him? Nothing. “Because of my chess success,” he says, “I was untouchable.” That was no way for a Soviet to talk. But he was untouchable, and he had had unprecedented success, beating Karpov again in 1990. What more was there left for him to do in the chess world? The answer would come in the form of a humble “science experiment” backed by the sixth-largest company in the world.

game but lost the second, resigning in anger, he writes, after being “so concerned with what it might be capable of that I was oblivious to . . . how badly I was playing.”

The knife was twisted a day later when a member of Kasparov’s team told him that at the time he resigned, certain of defeat, the match had actually been a draw. The subsequent “shame and frustration made it nearly impossible to play.” They drew the next three games.

Kasparov would lose Game 6 in humiliating fashion; it was the fastest game he had ever lost and the first time he had lost a match, ever.

Kasparov made an early move—an unusual variation on a canonical opening, one that commentators roundly condemned as an unthinkable blunder—that he figured, nay, he knew, would trick the computer into retreat. Instead, Deep Blue attacked. Kasparov’s position was fatally

put in a month before the match, not during it.

Before he retired, Kasparov would fi nally lose to a human, Vladimir Kramnik, in October and November 2000, and then to Karpov. But nothing vexes him more than the loss to the machine followed by its immediate retirement from the sport. “I still have hard feelings,” he says, “but now we can look at this event as a part of history. From my fi rst loss to Deep Blue in 1996, that was it—from then on there was a clear path to machine superiority.”

M

ACHIN ES A N D THEIR coming domination of the U.S. labour market prompted a lot of pondering after the 2016 election, and Deep Thinking’s upbeat futurism is grist for that mill. Kasparov imagines man-machine hybrids pushing the U.S. toward staggering productivity in as-yet-undiscovered areas.

He is fond of discussing elevator operators: how they remained long after the arrival of push-button technology only because riders were accustomed to them.

Estimates are that automation will displace 38% of U.S. workers over the next 15 years, but the Trump Administration is unconcerned: Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in March that job loss due to mass automation was “not even on [the administ rat ion’s] rada r screen” and was 50 to 100 years away.

Such denial of the coming upheaval, not the upheaval itself, is what concerns Kasparov most. “Machines won’t make us obsolete,” he says, “but our complacency might.”

Yet Kasparov is heartened by what he has observed since Trump’s election. “He has brought a lot of people into the political process,” Kasparov says. “He has shown that American institutions are more resilient than we thought. I’m optimistic.” And hey, if the guy who lost to a computer and spent years in Putin’s crosshairs can still smile—why shouldn’t we? ±

H OWA RD B OY L A N /G E T T Y IM AG E S

Kasparov has even been getting an unusual question at book signings recently: “WHY AREN’T YOU DEAD?” compromised, and he became catatonic.

In a 2009 interview quoted in the book, one member of the Deep Blue team, Miguel Illescas, said that they had programmed that very override the morning of the match. Illescas also said—while maintaining that there was no connection—that IBM had hired a Russian-speaking guard to watch Kasparov during the match. Kasparov writes, “I will not repeat here the stream of profanities in Russian, English and languages not yet invented that escaped my lips when I first read that paragraph. . . . Am I alone in failing to make the leap of faith required to believe that the timing of this could possibly be innocent?” Kasparov does offer space to another member of the Deep Blue team, who says that the override was

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95

POINT AFTER

On The Fast Track ´ BY PR ADEEP MAGA ZINE HOW TIMES HAVE changed! If India today has one of

the most balanced attacks in the world, we as cricket fans in the 1970s grew up suffering from an inferiority complex at India’s lack of genuine fast bowlers. While Indian spin bowlers entangled the best of batsmen in their complicated web of deception, the absence of tearaway pacemen, or even a decent medium pacer, was a major drawback that stymied the all-round strength of the team.

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SPORTS ILLUSTRATED / OCTOBER 2017

Who do you think is India’s best pace bowler in the current team?

Join the discussion on Twitter by using #SIDebate and following @SITweetsIndia

The writer is a senior sports journalist and the author of the pathbreaking book Not Quite Cricket dealing with the scourge of match-fixing.

CO U R T E S Y O F P R A D E E P M A G A Z I N E

Tiger Pataudi, who led India with only one eye intact, had the vision to realise very early on in his captaincy that it was a waste of time to scout for fast bowlers in a country where the slow and low wickets discouraged even the strongest from hurling the ball at great velocity. While in the ’70s we rejoiced at a Chandra, Bedi and Prasanna foxing the most nimble-footed batsmen to their doom, our opening bowlers were meant only to wear the shine off the ball. Spin dominated the discourse and the Indian bowling remained so unbalanced that it could not become a worldbeating combination.

Whenever a mention of fast bowling was made, the reference went back to India’s nascent entry into the Test arena in the ’30s when Mohammad Nissar and Amar Singh bowled in tandem and struck fear among the Englishmen. As we read about their exploits, and how they forced England to take the Indian challenge seriously, one wondered why India had a onedimensional attack.

Then, in ’78, India discovered a strapping, lithe youngster from the geometrically designed city of Chandigarh, who promised to fill the void India were so desperately struggling to deal with. Kapil Dev Nikhanj was no ordinary cricketer. He could bowl quick, move the ball both ways and bat like a millionaire on a reckless spending spree. Despite having never seen a Test match in his life till he played in one, Kapil’s hunger for a fight and the desire to prove his talent in the most demanding of situations was the perfect balm for a wounded Indian attack.

The story of Kapil and his exploits does not end with what he achieved in his playing days. For a country whose opening attack was a joke for a substantial period of time, the emergence of Kapil as a match-winner had a cascading effect on the subsequent generations of Indians. Even though he slowed down with passing time, suffering from the inevitable consequences of ageing, there were new faces emerging on the horizon. Javagal Srinath, the genial giant from Karnataka, perhaps among the fastest India may have seen so far, was to take on the mantle from Kapil. Not always as accurate or lethal as the master, Srinath at his best was as quick as anyone in the world and in combination with Venkatesh Prasad formed a formidable pair that served India well.

The fast bowling revolution that Kapil had started had by

Today, if India believes that it can become an invincible outfit, a team that can win matches even on foreign soil with ease, it has a lot to do with the variety of fast bowlers it has.

now spread far and wide across the country. With better grounds, training facilities and coaching techniques, India were to suddenly discover that instead of searching for fast bowlers, they now have to make a choice from among a number of genuinely talented bowlers. Zaheer Khan is the best example of how India has now become home to some of the best fast bowlers in the world. Though he achieved much and many rate him the best fast bowler to emerge from the country, it speaks of his outstanding talent that had he not been plagued by injuries and fitness problems, Zaheer could have been the leading all-time bowler in the world.

Today, if India believes that it can become an invincible outfit, a team that can win matches even on foreign soil with ease, it has a lot to do with the variety of fast bowlers it has. It finds itself with a battery of quick bowlers who can match, if not better, the best in the world.

Umesh Yadav, like no bowler in the past, can bowl at speeds unheard of, that too for long spells. Mohammed Shami is not just quick, he can swing the ball even in conditions not too conducive, while Bhuvneshwar Kumar has shown phenomenal improvement after injuries had forced him out of the team. In Jasprit Bhumrah, India has a fast bowler whose accuracy and mastery over yorkers has befuddled the best of batsmen. Someone like Ishant Sharma might not have fulfilled the promise he had shown, but he is still lurking in the background and hoping to make a comeback.

For long India has been hoping to find another Kapil or, if that is not possible, someone who could come close to his allround skills. Though it would be heresy to compare anyone with the original genius, there is little doubt that in Hardik Pandya India might have unearthed a jewel who could be the all-rounder we are so desperately in search of.

There will be no greater tribute to the genius of Kapil than if India finally finds a replacement for him as it makes a serious bid to become the most formidable team in the world, whether playing at home or abroad. ±