Winning away therefore is rightly regarded as the ultimate accomplishment in Test cricket but in process, enormous shame and ignominy is attached to losing at home.
Test cricket is mostly described in the worst possible cliches – that it resembles life since it gives you a second chance, that it tests your character, your grit, and your willingness to fight back, that it separates men from the boys – every bit of truism worse than the last one.
This isn’t necessarily the fault of those who speak of Test matches this way. The cricket establishment itself firmly holds these views and in fact actively rewards their reinforcement in media and commentariat.
It’s not really a matter of life and death by any means. But it does great disservice to the aspects that actually exceptionalise Tests not only from other formats of cricket but probably from every other professional sport. And that defining character is conditions and the advantage they lend to one of the teams, often the team playing at home.
While in most sports, the ‘home advantage’ is measured in intangibles like crowd hostility, travel fatigue etc., it takes a very real form in Test matches. A contest overwhelmingly favours the home team owing to their familiarity and mastery of conditions – pitches, weather, outfield, ground dimensions. A home team almost always possesses the better resources in all departments that can exploit those factors.
Winning away therefore is rightly regarded as the ultimate accomplishment in Test cricket but in process, enormous shame and ignominy is attached to losing at home – it’s the disrobing of a team’s honour, the erasure of its reputation.
For the twelve years that the Indian Test team held on to its enviable streak winning every series at home, it was never quite celebrated with any real sense of fervour. It was treated as the bare minimum that could be expected of a team that enjoys disproportionately better resources and infrastructure than the rest of the cricketing world.
For twelve years the Indian Test team held on to its enviable streak winning every series at home. Photo: bcci.tv
There was hardly anything worth writing poetics about in beating teams woefully inadequate for the most part at dealing with these conditions.
The tendency to not treat a formidable home record as anything more than a routine feat stems from a place of waiting for the team to eventually fail at guarding it and then making it a matter of collective embarrassment. And things unfolded exactly that way as New Zealand finally became the team to breach the Indian fortress for the first time since England did in 2012.
Having gotten thoroughly outplayed under two different sets of conditions at Bangalore and Pune, Rohit Sharma’s men now face the serious threat of being whitewashed at home should the tide not turn in time at Mumbai for the final leg of their home season.
For the first time in a very long time, a visiting team has firmly outbowled and outbatted their opposite numbers and the hosts have found themselves completely out of depth to throw a counterpunch.
Well, the streak had to end at some point and it’s not like nobody saw this coming. It was building up for at least a couple of years. India’s impregnable home dominance wasn’t as straightforward as most took it for. It took the coming together of a core group of players and for their respective peaks to coincide.
Many prominent ones from this group have already been moved on from. And those still around – Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, Ravichandran Ashwin, and Ravindra Jadeja – are all aging, wearing, or at the very least not the players they once used to be.
What made this pack succeed like no other Indian team before them was they covered all the bases. It showed in how they were able to remain constantly competitive on tough overseas assignments but at home they were practically impossible to beat. The first half of this period was characterised by Kohli’s phenomenal rise as a Test batsman.
In his wings, he had resolute and bankable comrades in Cheteshwar Pujara and Ajinkya Rahane. While Rohit was relatively a late bloomer, it helped that his best years came at a time when runs started drying up for the other three.
But the strength of a batting unit only takes a team so far. It’s the quality, variety, and depth in bowling that builds for sustained success in Tests. And this is precisely where this particular team went a step ahead of every Indian team of past. Never had India boasted of an attack capable of ruthlessly bowling teams out in all conditions.
The spin wizardry of Ashwin and Jadeja meant India could often produce extraordinarily spicy wickets despite the knowledge that it could bring the opposition spinners in the contest. The team could afford risking lesser runs because the spin duo afforded them the confidence of bowling the opponents out even more cheaply.
Senior players such as Rohit Sharma are all aging, wearing, or at the very least not the players they once used to be. Photo: bcci.tv
And on days when the batsmen woke up feeling like big runs, the fast-bowling pack of Ishant Sharma, Mohammed Shami, Umesh Yadav, and – a little lately – Jasprit Bumrah made sure preparing truer and flatter surfaces was no problem either. India’s former coach Ravi Shastri, who himself oversaw the team during much of this period, once pompously proclaimed his team is agnostic to pitches and conditions anywhere around the world.
While Shastri’s words were characteristically hyperbolic, it indeed was the case while playing at home. And it isn’t quite the unexceptional feat as India offers a wide variety of pitches across different regions. But this team possessed all the weapons for any possible challenge thrown at them – batsmen capable of digging it out and scoring big, spinners adept at extracting life out of surfaces that offered modest purchase, and a battery of fast bowlers who carried patience, persistence, and pace in the right proportions.
Much lesser achievements and legacies have been celebrated in cricket with much larger fanfare. But somehow this incredible 12-year run has for the most part only been treated as something that ought to have happened; that there was nothing truly remarkable about this feat, that standards need to be set higher than celebrating mere ‘home wins’.
There’s an implicit assumption in this line of thinking that the Indian Test teams have always wielded this kind of home dominance. But a cursory look at the team’s record at home over the years will drill a hole in this fanciful narrative. The much heralded previous generations are now appraised way too flatteringly thanks to the force of nostalgia. But in their time, uninspiring stalemates were rather common at home.
On the other hand, the current crop in their best years – 2013 to 2022 were only beaten twice in 42 home Tests while only six were drawn. The win/loss ratio in this period is nearly three times better than the second best team’s.
Of the two losses, one came on the back of a Steven Smith classic that’s unqualifiedly the best innings played by a visiting batsman in India in a very long time. And the other one scripted by a masterful Joe Root double hundred with India missing two of its three frontline spinners. These caveats emphasise just how awfully hard it was for visiting teams to register even a solitary win, forget a series.
It’s of course not all come crumbling down overnight. The signs of a steady decline have been around. The win against Australia last year didn’t come cheap. England earlier this year manufactured situations that put India on the backfoot. New Zealand somewhat lucked out with getting to face them even further into the decline.
The difficulty in handling Mitchell Santner at Pune has had fairly recent precedents in Jack Leach, Ajaz Patel, Matthew Kuhnemann, and Tom Hartley. Ashwin’s lackluster spells have been more frequent than he’d like to admit while Jadeja has been a tad too wary of being swept from length and it shows in his speeds.
It’s rather easy to start clamouring for the veterans to be dropped. That’s what generates social media noise and YouTube algorithm actively incentivises reactionary petulance. None of Rohit, Kohli, Ashwin, and Jadeja should play another Test for India if those enraged by this loss had things their way.
It always takes a little too long in Indian cricket when it comes to transitioning from its underperforming superstars. That kind of intransigence is pretty much embedded in the country’s sporting ethos. But it may indeed not be too long before this group begins to perish, one at a time.
Finding replacements often seems harder than it is in reality. Photo: bcci.tv
Finding replacements often seems harder than it is in reality. There’s plenty in the first-class system banging on the door while many have already made their way in. The Test team should start looking markedly different before people realise. This loss was perhaps the final push that accelerated the process of transition.
Things aren’t getting any easier as India’s next few overseas assignments pose a very daunting task in front of an underperforming team. There’s every chance this group has played their last home series together. And should that be true, they didn’t quite get to leave behind the final memory they’d have manifested. But it’s puerile to view their legacy with a revisionist lens based on how it ended.
Greatness as a virtue is seldom duly recognised in its own time. Years pass, people come and go. And suddenly at some point in future, the past seems rosy enough to write effusively about. It won’t be any different for this team either. It ought to be but it won’t.
Remorse and execration are part of the deal. Once they run its course, suddenly someone will wonder whether winning 18 series at home on the bounce was slightly more respectable than they allowed themselves to believe. Who’s to tell though that by then, if Test cricket will even have retained its relevance for the realisation to truly matter?
‘On the evening of 22 December, after the federation elections, I knew I was never going to be able to get to Paris…With that I took out a pair of blue Asics wrestling shoes.’
The following is an excerpt from Witness, an account by Olympic bronze winning wrestler Sakshi Malik, written with Jonathan Selvaraj, and published by Juggernaut.
There is a tradition in wrestling that when you know you have wrestled your last match, you leave your shoes on the mat. It’s not an Indian tradition, but it’s always made sense to me.
Although they look like your regular high-top sneakers, wrestling shoes are very unique. Their soles are very thin. You can’t wear them like you would your regular jogging shoes. The only place they really belong is on the synthetic mat.
‘Witness,’ Sakshi Malik with Jonathan Selvaraj, Juggernaut, 2024.
They’ve always been special to me. It’s when I bought my first pair of shoes that I actually felt I was a real wrestler. People would sometimes think my attachment to my shoes was a little extreme.
If wrestling was a form of worship for me, then my shoes were one of the instruments of my devotion. That was what I truly believed.
They were as sacred to me as the Hanuman murti at the Chhotu Ram akhara.
The only time we wore our shoes was when we were going to wrestle. When we finish our practice, we take those shoes off and touch them to our head before we step off the mat. That’s the only place you are supposed to wear them. In India, you will not see a wrestler wear his or her shoes to the washroom or any place where they think they’d get dirty.
When I went to the world level, it always struck me as odd to see some of the international wresters wear their match shoes as they stood in line outside the toilets. I couldn’t ever get used to that.
On the other hand, if we Indians had to visit the toilet, we’d always have a pair of open-toed slippers handy. We would wear them over our shoes when we went to the washroom. I just couldn’t bear the thought of my wrestling shoes directly touching the washroom floor.
There was only one time of the year where my wrestling shoes would leave the competition or training hall, and that was on the eve of Diwali when we celebrate Lakshmi Puja. On that day, we Hindus worship the instruments of our trade. I’ve seen people worship books.
I’d always put my wrestling shoes in front of the image of Lakshmi and pray over them. To a lot of Indian wrestlers that might seem a little too extreme, but I’ve always insisted on it. I started doing the same after I moved to Satyawart’s home after my marriage, and although he found it odd in the beginning, he follows the same practice now.
After the Commonwealth Games, I had come to terms with my approaching retirement, but I wanted it to be on my terms. I expected to qualify for the Asian Games, and based on how I did there I’d have a good idea as to whether I was still good enough to wrestle with the best in the world. If I was, I’d try to qualify for the Olympics at the 2023 World Championships. If I managed to make it to the Paris Games, then after my final match, whether I won a medal or not, I would leave my shoes on the mat there. As it turned out, I didn’t go to the Asian Games or the World Championships after that. I wasn’t able to take the trials for those competitions, but I still had hopes that I would be able to qualify for the Olympics, and there I would go out the way I wanted.
At least, that’s what I had hoped for. On the evening of 22 December, after the federation elections, I knew I was never going to be able to get to Paris. We had already announced a press conference. I told the press just what I felt about what had happened. I said I didn’t feel I would be able to wrestle any more. I wanted to make it clear that I would not be going back on my word at any point.
As I spoke I started tearing up but got the words out of my mouth. On that day I had been squarely beaten. I’d put in my best efforts, but I was nothing in front of the machinations of a man who was much more experienced at another kind of game than I was. Since I could no longer wrestle on his terms, I had to leave.
With that I took out a pair of blue Asics wrestling shoes. They weren’t the shoes I would have worn in competition, but with our press conference just a few hours after the federation elections I didn’t have time to get them. These blue ones were the ones I had with me in New Delhi. I’d been training in them every morning at Karnail Stadium, getting ready for what I thought would be a final shot at the Olympics. I took that pair and placed it on the table. I announced my retirement from the sport and walked away from that press conference and from twenty years in the sport. I didn’t expect anything to come of that gesture. It did get a few people excited on social media. For a few hours it trended on Twitter.
I remember one channel came up with the headline ‘Dabdaba joote ki nok pe. (The fate of “power” resting on the tip of a shoe).’ But that wasn’t what I had planned. I just did it to leave the sport at least somewhat on my terms. It didn’t give me as satisfying a closure as I hoped it might. I knew that the federation was still going to be in Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh’s hands. For a few weeks after I announced I had quit the sport, I’d just cry for no obvious reason. I knew that my career as a wrestler was over.
It’s something I’m still coming to terms with.
Sakshi Malik is a freestyle wrestler. She won bronze in the 58-kg category of the 2016 Summer Olympics. She is the first Indian female wrestler to win a medal at the Olympics.
A bowler does not have the luxury of uninterrupted visibility, an enabling condition for producing empathy in sport.
Indian cricketer Rishabh Pant played on to his wicket at 99 in the Test match at Bengaluru against New Zealand. It was a devastating moment for him and the fans, especially after a fabulous display of strokeplay – under pressure – marked by several sixes including one out of the ground off Tim Southee.
The 99 in cricket is an unusual experience in sport at large. A batsman gets out, the crowd is in shock; commentator Ian Smith speaking through the moment at the stadium after the delivery from Will O’Rourke said “thousands become silent”. Pant walked off with a wistful expression borne of familiarity, this was his seventh dismissal in the 90s. But there was also a hint of satisfaction, a glow of wry contentment in a whirl of despair.
Come to think of it, this is all batter’s privilege; bowlers have no access to such moments. There is nothing in cricket that is the equivalent of 99 runs for a bowler – an experience that combines heartbreak and heroism, an event in the game and a slice of time that fortifies the connect between the crowd and a player, and inscribes a memory for good.
A bowler’s life cannot generate a comparable moment. A five-wicket haul is usually rated as equal to a century. Bowlers can bowl great spells and get four wickets but that is not same as a 99 is it? A catch dropped or a good leg before shout turned down when a player is on zero does not provoke as much anguish in a crowd for a bowler, like a batter’s failure at 99 does.
The game does not even have a long established tradition of marking a bowler’s achievement as a spectacle. Batsmen have been raising their bats to applause after reaching hundreds perhaps since the game began, but bowlers raising the ball to the crowd after a five-wicket haul is a more recent custom initiated by Glenn McGrath, according to the writer Gideon Haigh. One surely cannot imagine Imran Khan waving a ball in expectation of affirmation from a crowd. We will remember Sarfaraz Khan’s joyful run and wave after his maiden hundred but it is tough to recall many images of one’s favourite bowlers after reaching milestones as fifers.
Bowlers depend on swagger, endurance, skill, movement and celebrity to build a fan base in a game designed against them – they have to contend against humungous bats, largely friendly pitches, small fields, unfavourable laws, and a T20 format contrived to relish their slaughter.
Cricket seems a game that builds up legends about bowlers to set up their conquest by batsmen, a feature without which the game wouldn’t survive as a business. And therefore by design or social contrivance – bowlers do not have a 99-like experience dedicated for them, where their toil, nerve and skill impress all and are yet robbed at the cusp of attainment. They don’t get to have a lasting moment of tenderness with the crowd.
Perhaps the way the game is played is responsible for this. Batsmen are at the crease and in the spotlight for two or more sessions if they are going well. Bowlers bowl in spells and are often out of sight. Heck, they bowl only six deliveries at a time and disappear for a bit while another player gets a turn at the other end. In tennis, a player can come back from match point and win, the loser can lose and be much loved all the same because they’ve been in the game all the time. A bowler in cricket does not have the luxury of uninterrupted visibility, an enabling condition for producing empathy in sport.
Batters provide fans the raw thrill of vanquishing a foe who has been set up to fail. That high obscures a view of other elements in the game. It makes it easier to channel one’s emotions through a batsman’s ups and downs rather than relate to the ‘hidden injuries’ of those running in to bowl.
Sushil Aaron writes on politics and foreign affairs. A version of this piece was originally published on his Substack. He posts on X @SushilAaron.
The decision to cancel Rodrigues’s membership was taken at the annual general meeting of the club on Sunday (October 20).
New Delhi: One of the oldest clubs of Mumbai has cancelled the membership of Jemimah Rodrigues, after some of the members reportedly objected to her father Ivan using the club premises for “religious activities.”
The Khar Gymkhana cancelled the cricketer’s membership after the other members levelled allegations that events were organised to “convert” the “vulnerable”, reported The Indian Express.
The decision to cancel the membership of Rodrigues was taken at the annual general meeting of the club on Sunday (October 20).
“The honorary three-year membership given to Ms Jemimah Rodrigues was revoked pursuant to a resolution passed by the members who attended the general meeting held on October 20, 2024,” said Khar Gymkhana president Vivek Devnani.
Rodrigues and her father couldn’t be reached by the newspaper for comments.
“We came to know that Jemimah Rodrigues’s father was attached to an organisation called Brother Manuel Ministries. They booked the presidential hall for almost a year and a half and held 35 events. We all know what was happening there,” said Shiv Malhotra, member of the managing committee of the Gymkhana.
“We hear about conversions all over the country, but it’s happening right under our nose. There was dancing, expensive music equipment, big screens. As per Khar Gymkhana’s bye-laws Rule 4A of the constitution, Khar Gymkhana does not permit any religious activity,” he added.
This story was edited to correct the club’s name to Khar Gymkhana.
An entire generation of fans has learned to love tennis itself through their love for Nadal.
The inevitability of Rafael Nadal’s retirement had long been palpable. It could be seen in every successive comeback that he managed to pull ever since that abdominal tear at Wimbledon that put brakes to his dream run in 2022. There was a sense of déjà vu to it. It was all too familiar. Anyone having closely followed Nadal’s career would be aware of the relentless spate of injuries that have been permanent accompaniments to his journey in professional tennis. And too many have felt like the final one. To therefore admit this has to be the one, wasn’t the easiest – for Nadal himself or for the millions who swear by him.
But every successive comeback post this injury kept adding to the clarity. The movement had been significantly compromised, the forehand lacked the flavour, the judgement of drop-shots had taken a hit, and the all-round ruthlessness had become a thing of past. The aura of invincibility had dropped and Nadal was now at the very least delaying the inevitable, if not being outright in denial of what had become painfully clear.
What’s often obvious on the outside though isn’t quite as straightforward to players themselves; even less so to the most outrageously successful ones. Perhaps shielding themselves completely against the external noise and building up a bubble is essential to their success. But that belief takes a lot more to wear out than we imagine. Nadal struggling to find any rhythm in his shot-making in these last two years had become agonising to watch. It was getting increasingly harder to fight in social media fan wars against those relishing in schadenfreude.
And yet, none of that is sufficiently convincing for the player himself to admit it’s over. It takes a lot more. In Nadal’s case, it took one more injury on top of it all. It’s hardly unordinary for an athlete eventually having to surrender to the limitations of his body – particularly in a physically gruelling sport like tennis.
But despite that realisation, Nadal kept finding that desperate bit of hope to cling on to. He’d always defeated injuries. Maybe there was still a way. The tour isn’t at its strongest. Maybe it wouldn’t even require for him to be at his beastly levels to still be reasonably competitive. It’s possible Nadal would’ve grappled with a mishmash of these reveries before letting the emotion make room for reason. And reason, would quite resoundingly suggest, there was no ‘one more time’ left in his body this time.
Despite the constant struggle with injuries that had kinda become the defining theme of Nadal’s aura, he was always thought of as a physical specimen of sorts. Right from the days when he broke into the circuit, Nadal was faster, stronger, more resolute, and had more miles in his legs than most players he’d go on to face for the better part of two decades.
Place him among his fiercest rivals Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer; the trio, put together, are most definitively the three greatest players of all time. While Djokovic’s reputation is built on producing mechanically perfect tennis, Federer carved his brand out of the flair and artistry in his game. These perceptions of course aren’t the most scientifically defined ones but they aren’t entirely inaccurate either. Djokovic indeed is impossible to physically out-manoeuvre. Federer indeed possessed elements that allowed him access to spaces in a court that his opponents wouldn’t be able to.
‘The trio, put together, are most definitively the three greatest players of all time.’ Photo: X/@TheTennisLetter
Nadal’s greatness, among other things, lay specifically in cracking both these challenges and finding solutions to overpower both Federer and Djokovic separately at their respective peaks. It’s hard to state this unqualifiedly but perhaps no player in history of men’s tennis has had it tougher than this. While Nadal managed to comprehensively dominate the rivalry with Federer for majority of its duration, the duel with Djokovic remained much more even right till the end. That Djokovic managed to physically outlast him proved to be decisive in who came out on top in the title tally.
But reputations and legacies aren’t strictly a function of the final title count. Nadal’s always had to fight a rather disingenuously hatched up narrative of being someone whose dominance wasn’t necessarily surface-agnostic. The argument often forwarded in support of this notion is his grand slam count that’s heavily lopsided by the titles won (14 of 22) on the surface he most preferred (clay). The perception is so hard-wired, you could be forgiven for thinking Nadal was a surface-specialist of some sort who never mastered grass and hard courts.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Nadal’s Wimbledon and Australian Open record – two titles each – reads underwhelmingly for the same reason Federer and Djokovic’s reads negligible to modest at the French Open. The three have stood massively in each other’s way as long as their best years coincided. To cast doubts over the completeness of their game is plain ignorance at best and downright dishonesty at worst.
A contest of finest margins after a point is decided on factors that one isn’t entirely in control of. And Nadal has been on the receiving end of these a little too many times. With a few things falling in place, both his Australian Open and Wimbledon tallies would be reading way more flatteringly than they instead do. The heartbreaking losses in the finals of 2012 and 2017 at the Rod Laver Arena were for the longest time considered unhealable but the redemption at the same venue in 2022 more than made up for those.
‘It’s the miracle in Melbourne’ – As the words roared on TV screens with Nadal hitting the volley out of Daniil Medvedev’s reach, it marked what could arguably be called one of the most impossible wins of all time. Nadal had literally zero business winning that final after being two sets down and facing three break points in the third. What followed shall remain a turnaround for the ages. Nadal’s smile at the end of it carried as much bewilderment as it did relief.
And if it felt like things peaked in that moment, he would actually go on to beat Djokovic at the French Open quarterfinal the same year. In what was only the second time Nadal started as the heavy underdog at the Roland Garros – first since 2015 when he lost to Djokovic at the same stage – he ensured his reputation wasn’t taking any more beating before going on to win the title with two more emphatic performances.
That the injury he picked in the middle of Wimbledon that year put an end to this kind of run makes it doubly frustrating. But Nadal can take some comfort in the fact that it could’ve happened much sooner than it did. During the dry run of 2015-16, when he went two full years without bagging a major title, even the most loyal of fans had to find in the deepest recesses of optimism any hope for a comeback. The spell with injuries was unrelenting. Djokovic was beating him for fun. He wasn’t moving as swiftly on court. It was widely accepted that Nadal was done for.
Those feel like memories of a distant past now but at that point, only a hopeless romantic could’ve seen him win eight more slams. And it’s not like the physical chagrin had been put to bed once he found winning ways again. The entire second coming was interspersed with troubled knees, fractured ankles, and at one time a broken wrist that threatened to take sting out of his forehand for good. But the eponymous feature that defined Rafael Nadal for over two decades was his steadfast refusal of resigning against what looks inevitable.
It’s not uncommon among athletes for their perfectly blossoming careers to be cut short by injuries. Dominic Thiem was universally accepted to be The Guy who’d go on to dominate the tour as Nadal and Djokovic headed to their twilights. But in a cruel twist of fate, an untimely wrist injury forced his career to conclude even before Nadal’s and with only a solitary slam-win to show for.
Thiem’s distressing end becomes particularly contextual here given how closely Nadal’s avoided a similar fate – and more than once. It’d then be a bit greedy on part of his fans to brood about the injury denying him the chance to cash in on a relatively weak tour. A couple more majors would’ve contributed little beyond adding rows to his Wikipedia profile. The legacy has been long sealed.
It’s somewhat poetic Nadal made his last competitive Singles appearance against none but Djokovic at the Paris Olympics earlier this year. It was a one-sided affair on expected lines but no other player could’ve done adequate justice from the other side of the court to one of the greatest ever sporting careers coming to an end.
Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal. Photo: X/@DjokerNole
In much the same way, Nadal’s likely last ever Singles game – though only in an exhibition tournament – too was a faceoff with Djokovic in Riyadh the past weekend. Once again, a win for Djokovic was only a formality but some vintage groundstrokes – none more so than a forehand winner hit down the line – ensured the parting memory remained an extremely evocative one.
At the end of the match, Djokovic delivered a very moving speech that duly graced the occasion. Though very erudite and measured with his words for the most part, he couldn’t help but drop his guard and quickly slipped in a plea asking Nadal if he would still reconsider. In that moment, Djokovic was both the greatest rival and the biggest admirer of Nadal at once. In case, any last shred of validation was still missing, well, it wasn’t anymore.
An entire generation of fans has learned to love tennis itself through their love for Nadal. He symbolises the sport. He’s remained a constant for as long as they’ve followed the sport. His pain and struggles have been personalised and, in his triumph, have they found the fleeting sense of meaning. The emotional connect with sporting icons is never rooted in rational thought. But Nadal took the irrational a couple notches higher than most could.
The grunts and the groans will take a while to move on from. The signature forehand shall be crystalised through reels and shorts. There’ll be ample reminiscence for the historic decima whereas those wanting to experiment in masochist fetish, shall time and again bring up the 2012 Australian Open final.
Many shall announce the beginning of their detachment from tennis while a few others will cope writing verbose essays such as this one. But then, most would realise the other wunderkind from Spain isn’t half bad either. In fact, he’s already way more than a wunderkind, isn’t he? And that’d be enough to remain glued to the sport. We’ve always been suckers for this after all.
Today’s breed of commercially aware, profit-seeking US Premier League owners – pioneered by the Glazer family – understand there is a lot more value to come from English football teams.
When the Premier League broke away from the rest of English football in 1992, its 22 clubs generated £205 million in its debut season, and the average player earned £2,050 a week. Thirty years later, despite having two fewer clubs, the league’s revenue had increased by 2,850% to £6.1 billion and the average player earned £93,000 a week.
At the heart of this extraordinary growth is an American revolution. In the Premier League’s inaugural season, football was still in recovery from the horrors of the stadium disasters at Hillsborough and Heysel. Owners tended to be from the local area and with a business background. The only foreign owner was Sam Hamman at Wimbledon, a Lebanese millionaire who bought the club on a whim having reportedly been much more interested in tennis. The season ended with Manchester United (under Alex Ferguson) winning the English game’s top league for the first time in 26 years.
Now, if the Texas-based Friedkin Group’s recent deal to buy Everton goes through, 11 of the 20 Premier League clubs will be controlled or part-owned by American investors. The US – long seen as football’s final frontier when it comes to the men’s game – suddenly can’t get enough of English football.
Four of the Premier League’s “big six” are American-owned – Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal and Chelsea – while a fifth, Manchester City, has a significant US minority shareholding. Aston Villa, Fulham, Bournemouth, Crystal Palace, West Ham and Ipswich Town also have varying degrees of American ownership.
And it’s not even just the glamour clubs at the top of the tree. American investment has also been significant lower down the football pyramid, led by the high-profile acquisition of then non-league Wrexham by Hollywood actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenny, and Birmingham City’s purchase by US investors including seven-time Super Bowl winner Tom Brady. American investment in football has reached places as geographically diverse as Carlisle and Crawley in England, and Aberdeen and Edinburgh in Scotland.
Manchester United was the first Premier League club to come under American ownership – after a row about a horse.
In 2005, United was owned by a variety of investors including Irish businessmen and racehorse owners John Magnier and J.P. McManus. Their erstwhile friend Ferguson, the United manager, thought he co-owned the champion racehorse Rock of Gibraltar with them – a stallion worth millions in stud rights. They disagreed – and their bitter dispute was such that Magnier and McManus decided to sell their shares in the football club.
The Miami-based Glazer family – already involved in sport as owners of NFL franchise the Tampa Bay Buccaneers – had already been buying up small tranches of shares in United, but the sudden availability of the Irish shares allowed Malcolm Glazer to acquire a controlling stake for £790 million (around £1.5 billion at today’s prices).
The fact Glazer did not actually have sufficient funds to pay for these shares was a solvable problem. In the some-might-say commercially naive world of top-flight English football before the Premier League, Manchester United was a club without debt, paying its way without leveraging its position as one of the world’s most famous football clubs. Glazer saw the opportunity this presented and arranged a leveraged buy-out (LBO), whereby the football club borrowed more than £600 million secured on its own assets to, in effect, “buy itself” in 2005.
Despite the need to meet the high interest costs to fund the LBO, United continued winning trophies under Ferguson – including three Premier League titles in a row in 2007, 2008 and 2009, as well as a Champions League victory in 2008. Amid this success, the club felt that ticket prices were too low and set about increasing them, with matchday revenue increasing from £66 million in 2004/05 to over £101 million by 2007/08.
Commercial income was another area the Glazers were keen to increase. United set up offices in London and adopted a global approach to finding new official branding deals ranging from snacks to tractor and tyre suppliers – doubling revenues from this income source too.
But in this new, more aggressive world of “sweating the asset”, the debts lingered – and most United fans remained deeply suspicious of their American owners. (Following their father’s death in 2014, the club was co-owned by his six children, with brothers Avram and Joel Glazer becoming co-chairmen.)
Today, despite its partial listing on the New York Stock Exchange and the February 2024 sale of 27.7% of the club to British billionaire Sir Jim Ratcliffe for a reputed £1.25 billion, United still has borrowings of more than £546 million, having paid cumulative interest costs of £969 million since the takeover in 2005. But with the club now valued at US$6.55 billion (around £5bn), it represents a very smart investment for the Glazer family.
Indeed, while the prices being paid for football clubs across Europe have reached record levels, they are still seen as cheap investments compared with US sports’ leading franchises. Forbes’s annual list of the world’s most valuable sports teams has American football (NFL), baseball (MLB) and basketball (NBA) teams occupying the top ten positions, with only three Premier League clubs – Manchester United, Liverpool and Manchester City – in the top 50.
With NFL teams having an average franchise value of US$5.1 billion and NBA $3.9 billion, many English football clubs still look like a bargain from the other side of the pond.
The risk of relegation
The latest to join this US bandwagon, the Friedkin Group – a Texas-based portfolio of companies run by American businessman and film producer Dan Friedkin – is reported to have offered £400m to buy Everton, despite the club’s poor financial state.
“The Toffees” have been hit by loss of sponsorships as well as two sets of points deductions for breaching the Premier League’s financial rules, leading to revenue losses from lower league positions. While the new stadium being built at Liverpool’s Bramley-Moore dock has been yet another financial constraint, it will at least increase matchday income from the start of next season.
Everton’s new stadium at Bramley-Moore dock will open in time for the start of the 2025-26 season. Photo: Phil Silverman / Shutterstock
A wider reason for the relative bargain in valuations of European football clubs is the risk of relegation – something that is not part of the closed leagues of most US sports. While the threat of relegation (and promise of promotion) has always been an integral part of English and European football, the jeopardy this brings for supporters – and a club’s finances – does not exist in the NFL, NBA, Major League Soccer and similar competitions.
The Premier League, with its three relegation spots at the end of each season, has featured 51 different clubs since it launched in 1992. Only six clubs – Arsenal, Spurs, Chelsea, Manchester United, Liverpool and Everton – have been ever present, with Arsenal now approaching 100 years of consecutive top-flight football.
Other Premier League clubs have experienced the dramatic cost-benefit of relegation and promotion. Oldham Athletic, who were in the Premier League for its first two seasons, now languish in the fifth tier of the game, outside the English Football League (EFL). In contrast, Luton Town, who were in the fifth tier as recently as 2014, were promoted to the Premier League in 2023 – only to be relegated at the end of last season.
While it is difficult to compare football clubs with basketball and American football teams, the financial difference between having an open league, with relegation, and a closed league becomes apparent when you look at women’s football on both sides of the Atlantic.
Angel City, a women’s football team based in Los Angeles, only entered the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) in 2022 and is yet to win an NWSL trophy. But last month, the club was sold for US$250 million (£188m) to Disney’s CEO Bob Iger and TV journalist Willow Bay – the most expensive takeover in the history of women’s professional sport.
In comparison, Chelsea – seven-time winners of the English Women’s Super League and one of the most successful sides in Europe – valued its women’s team at £150 million ($US196m) earlier this summer. While there are a number of factors to this price differential, the confidence that Angel City will always be a member of the big league of US soccer clubs – and share very equally in its revenue – will have made its new owners very confident in the long-term soundness of their deal.
The story of Angel City FC, the most expensive team in women’s sport.
A further attraction for American investors is the potential to enter two markets – one mature (men’s football) and one effectively a start-up (the women’s game) – in a single purchase. In the US, the top men’s and women’s clubs are completely separate. But in Europe, most top-flight women’s teams are affiliated to men’s clubs – with the exception of eight-time Women’s Champions League winners Olympique Lyonnais Feminin, which split from the French men’s club when Korean-American businesswoman Michele Kang bought a majority stake in the women’s team in February 2024).
While interest in, and hence value of, the WSL is now growing fast, the women’s game in England is dwarfed by viewer ratings for the Premier League – the most watched sporting league in the world, viewed by an estimated 1.87 billion people every week across 189 countries.
These figures dwarf even the NFL which, while currently still the most valuable of all sporting leagues in terms of its broadcasting deals, must be looking at the growth of the Premier League with some jealousy. This may explain why some US franchise owners, such as Stan Kroenke, the Glazer family, Fenway Sports Group and Billy Foley, have subsequently purchased Premier League football clubs.
Ironically, for many spectators around the world, it is the intensity and competitiveness of most Premier League matches – brought on in part by the threat of relegation and prize of European qualification – that makes it so captivating. However, billionaire investors like guaranteed numbers and dislike risk – especially the degree of financial risk that exists in the Premier League and English Football League.
European not-so-Super League
In April 2021, 12 leading European clubs (six from England plus three each from Spain and Italy) announced the creation of the European Super League (ESL). This new mid-week competition was to be a high-revenue generating, closed competition with (eventually) 15 permanent teams and five annual additions qualifying from Europe. According to one of the driving forces behind the plan, Manchester United co-chairman Joel Glazer:
By bringing together the world’s greatest clubs and players to play each other throughout the season, the Super League will open a new chapter for European football, ensuring world-class competition and facilities, and increased financial support for the wider football pyramid.
The problem facing the Premier League’s “big six” clubs – and their ambitious owners – is there are currently only four slots available to play in the Champions League. So, their thinking went, why not take away the risk of not qualifying? However, the proposal was swiftly condemned by fans around Europe, together with football’s governing bodies and leagues – all of whom saw the ESL proposal as a threat to the quality and integrity of their domestic leagues. Following some large fan protests, including at Chelsea’s Stamford Bridge, Manchester City was the first club to withdraw – followed, within a couple of days, by the rest of the English clubs.
Under the terms of the ESL proposals, founding member clubs would have been guaranteed participation in the competition forever. Guaranteed participation means guaranteed revenues. The current financial gap between the “big six” and the other members of the Premier League, which in 2022/23 averaged £396 million, would have widened rapidly.
For example, these clubs would have been able to sell the broadcast rights for some of their ESL home fixtures direct to fans, instead of via a broadcaster. All of a sudden, that database of fans who have downloaded the official club app, or are on a mailing list, becomes far more valuable. These are the people most willing to watch their favourite team on a pay-per-view basis, further increasing revenues.
At the same time, a planned ESL wage cap would have stopped players taking all these increased revenues in the form of higher wages, allowing these clubs to become more profitable and their ownership even more lucrative.
American-owned Manchester United and Liverpool had previously tried to enhance the value of their investments during the COVID lockdowns era via ProjectBig Picture – proposals to reduce the size of the Premier League and scrap one of the two domestic cup competitions, thus freeing up time for the bigger clubs to arrange more lucrative tours and European matches against high-profile opposition.
Most importantly, Project Big Picture would have resulted in changing the governance of the domestic game. Under its proposals, the “big six” clubs would have enjoyed enhanced voting rights, and therefore been able to significantly influence how the domestic game was governed.
Any attempt to increase the concentration of power raises concerns of lower competitive balance, whereby fewer teams are in the running to win the title and fewer games are meaningful. This is a problem facing some other major European football leagues including France’s Ligue 1, where interest among broadcasters has dwindled amid the perceived dominance of Paris St-Germain.
So while to date, American-led attempts to change the structure of the Premier League have been foiled, it’s unlikely such ideas have gone away for good. The near-universal fear of fans – even those who welcome an injection of extra cash from a new billionaire owner – is that the spectacle of the league will only be diminished if such plans ever succeed.
And there is evidence from the women’s game that the US closed league format is coming under more pressure from football’s global forces. The NWSL recently announced it is removing the draft system that is designed (as with the NFL and NBA) to build in jeopardy and competitive balance when there is no risk of relegation.
Top US women’s football clubs are losing some of their leading players to other leagues, in part because European clubs are not bound by the same artificial rules of employment. In a truly global professional sport such as football, international competition will always tend to destabilise closed leagues.
Why do they keep buying these clubs?
Does this mean that American and other wealthy owners of Premier League clubs seeking to reduce their risks are ultimately fighting a losing battle? And if so, given the potential risks involved in owning a football club – both financial and even personal – why do they keep buying them?
The motivations are part-financial, part technological and, as has always been the case with sports ownership, part-vanity.
The American economy has grown far faster than that of the EU or UK in recent years. Consequently, there are many beneficiaries of this growth who have surplus cash, and here football becomes an attractive proposition. In fact, football clubs are more resilient to recessions than other industries, holding their value better as they are effectively monopoly suppliers for their fans who have brand loyalty that exists in few other industries.
From 1993 to 2018, a period during which the UK economy more than doubled, the total value of Premier League clubs grew 30 times larger. And many fans are tied to supporting one club, helping to make the biggest clubs more resilient to economic changes than other industries. While football, like many parts of the entertainment industry, was hit by lockdown during Covid, no clubs went out of business, despite the challenges of matches being played in empty stadiums.
Added to this, the exchange rates for US dollars have been very favourable until recently, making US investments in the UK and Europe cheaper for American investors.
So, while Manchester United fans would argue that the Glazer family have not been good for the club, United has been good for the Glazers. And Fenway Sports Group (FSG), who bought Liverpool for £300 million in 2010, have recouped almost all of that money in smaller share sales while remaining majority owners of Liverpool.
Despite this, the £2.5 billion price paid for Chelsea by the US Clearlake-Todd Boehly consortium in May 2022 took markets by surprise.
The sale – which came after the UK government froze the assets of the club’s Russian oligarch owner, Roman Abramovich, following the invasion of Ukraine – went through less than a year after Newcastle United had been sold by Sports Direct founder Mike Ashley to the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund for £305 million – approximately twice that club’s annual revenues. Yet Clearlake-Boehly were willing to pay over five times Chelsea’s annual revenues to acquire the club, even though it was in a precarious financial position.
Clearlake is a private equity group whose main aim is to make profits for their investors. But unlike most such investors, who tend to focus on cost-cutting, the Chelsea ownership came in with a high-spending strategy using new financial structuring ideas, such as offering longer player contracts to avoid falling foul of football’s profitability and sustainability rules (although this loophole has since been closed with Uefa, European football’s governing body, limiting contract lengths for financial regulation purposes to five years).
Chelsea’s location in the one of the most expensive areas of London, combined with its on-field success under Abramovich, all added to the attraction, of course. But there are other reasons why Clearlake, along with billionaire businessman Boehly, were willing to stump up so much for the club.
From Hollywood to the metaverse
While some British football fans may have viewed the Ted Lasso TV show as an enjoyable if slightly twee fictional account of American involvement in English football, it has enhanced the attraction of the sport in the US. So too Welcome To Wrexham – the fly-on-the-wall series covering the (to date) two promotions of Wales’s oldest football club under the unlikely Hollywood stewardship of Reynolds and McElhenney.
The growth in US interest in English football is reflected in the record-breaking Premier League media rights deal in 2022, with NBC Sports reportedly paying $2.7 billion (£2.06bn) for its latest six-year deal.
But as well as football offering one of increasingly few “live shared TV experiences” that carry lucrative advertising slots, there may also be more opportunity for more behind-the-scenes coverage of the Premier League – as has long been seen in US coverage of NBA games, for example, where players are interviewed in the locker room straight after games.
According to Manchester United’s latest annual report, the club now has a “global community of 1.1 billion fans and followers”. Such numbers mean its owners, and many others, are bullish about the potential of the metaverse in terms of offering a matchday experience that could be similar to attending a match, without physically travelling to Manchester.
Their neighbours Manchester City, part-owned by American private equity company Silverlake, broke new (virtual) ground by signing a metaverse deal with Sony in 2022. Virtual reality could give fans around the world the feeling of attending a live match, sitting next to their friends and singing along with the rest of the crowd (for a pay-per-view fee).
Some investors are even confident that advancements in Abba-style avatar technology could one day allow fans to watch live 3D simulations of Premier League matches in stadiums all over the world. Having first-mover advantage by being in the elite club of owners who can make use of such technology could prove ever more rewarding.
More immediately, there are some indications that competitive matches involving England’s top men’s football teams could soon take place in US or other venues. Boehly, Chelsea’s co-owner, has already suggested adopting some US sports staples such as an All-Star match to further boost revenues. Indeed, back in 2008, the Premier League tentatively discussed a “39th game” taking place overseas, but that idea was quickly shelved.
The American owners of Birmingham City were keen to play this season’s EFL League One match against Wrexham in the US, but again this proposal did not get far. Liverpool’s chairman Tom Werner says he is determined to see matches take place overseas, and recent changes to world governing body Fifa’s rulebook could make it easier for this proposal to succeed.
The potential benefits of hosting games overseas include higher matchday revenues, increased brand awareness, and enhanced broadcast rights. While there is likely to be significant opposition from local fans, at least American owners know they would not face the same hostility about rising matchday prices in the US as they have encountered in England.
When the Argentinian legend Lionel Messi signed for new MLS franchise Inter Miami in 2023, season ticket prices nearly doubled on his account. And while there is vocal opposition to higher ticket prices in England, this is not borne out in terms of lower attendances for matches against high-calibre opposition – as evidenced by Aston Villa charging up to £97 for last week’s Champions League meeting with Bayern Munich.
Villa’s director of operations, Chris Heck, defended the prices by saying that difficult decisions had to be made if the club was to be competitive.
Manchester United’s matchday revenue per EPL season (£m)
Kieran Maguire/Christina Philippou, CC BY.
For much of the 2010s, with broadcast revenues increasing rapidly, many Premier League owners made little effort to stoke hostilities with their loyal fan bases by putting up ticket prices. Indeed, Manchester United generated little more from matchday income in the 2021-22 season, as football emerged from the pandemic, than the club had in 2010-11 (see chart above).
However, this uneasy truce between fans and owners has ceased. The relative flatlining of broadcast revenues since 2017, along with cost control rules that are starting to affect clubs’ ability to spend money on player signings and wages, has changed club appetites for dampened ticket prices. This has resulted in noticeable rises in individual ticket and season ticket prices by some clubs.
However, season ticket and other local “legacy” fans generate little money compared with the more lucrative overseas and tourist fans. They may only watch their favourite team live once a season, but when they visit, they are far more likely not only to pay higher matchday prices, but to spend more on merchandise, catering and other offerings from the club.
Today’s breed of commercially aware, profit-seeking US Premier League owners – pioneered by the Glazer family, who saw that “sweating the asset” meant more than watching football players sprinting hard – understand there is a lot more value to come from English football teams. The clubs’ loyal local supporters may not like it, but English football’s American-led revolution is not done yet.
Kieran Maguire, Senior Teacher in Accountancy and member of Football Industries Group, University of Liverpool and Christina Philippou, Associate Professor in Accounting and Sport Finance, University of Portsmouth.
The match showcased superb cricket and great drama that a test match is capable of producing.
David Kynaston and Harry Ricketts’ book Richie Benaud’s Blue Suede Shoes: The Story of an Ashes Classic looks at one test match, England versus Australia, Old Trafford, July-August 1961, in deep focus. The only comparable book I can readily think of is The Greatest Test of All by Jack Fingleton on the 1960 tied test match at Brisbane between Frank Worrell’s West Indies and Benaud’s Australian side. Fingleton also watched the Old Trafford match as journalist and commentator.
Richie Benaud’s Blue Suede Shoes: The Story of an Ashes Classic, David Kynaston and Harry Ricketts, Bloomsbury, 2024.
Another book worthy of mention in this context is A Tale of Two Tests, written by Benaud himself. He captured in vivid detail and with some introspection the drama of the Brisbane tie and the Aussie victory at Old Trafford to retain the Ashes. Benaud’s book is thus a source for Kynaston and Ricketts’ gripping narrative. This recently published book about an “Ashes classic’’ will itself become a classic in the genre of cricket writing.
The word “source’’ is used deliberately as this book is a fortiori, a product of historical research and reconstruction. The authors were kids when the events at Old Trafford unfolded. Their narrative is based on newspaper reports, especially the reports of well known cricket writers like Jim Swanton, John Arlott, John Woodcock, Len Hutton, Jack Fingleton, Jim Laker, Ian Peebles and so on, some television footage, archives of radio commentaries and memories of some of the players.
What brings life to the sources is the keen understanding and love Kynaston and Ricketts have for the game of cricket. They are also able to provide a la C.L.R. James an overview of the socio-political and economic context that was influencing how cricket was being played and being viewed at that time. Of particular interest for cricket lovers is their analysis of the evolving dynamics of the relationship between amateur and professionals which was a peculiar feature of English cricket. There are other kinds of details as well. To take a saucy example: In the course of their account of the third test at Headingley in 1961 with England poised to win and level the series with two tests to play, the authors write, “It had been a day for the history books; and likewise, as would eventually transpire, the moment this Saturday evening when, by a swimming pool at Cliveden, the Secretary of State for War, John Profumo, was introduced by Stephen Ward to a semi-naked Christine Keeler.’’ Verily, what do they know of cricket who only cricket know.
There exist very good reasons for focusing on the 1961 Old Trafford test match and for considering it a classic. This goes beyond its significance in deciding the Ashes; the match showcased superb cricket and great drama that a test match is capable of producing.
The Aussies in their first innings were all out for a mere 190. England replied with 367. In their second innings, the Australians scored 432 but at one point towards the middle of the morning session of the last day, it seemed the match had slipped out of their hands — they were only 157 ahead with one more wicket to fall.
Alan Davidson and Graham Mackenzie were at the crease when the former went for off spinner David Allen who was bowling into the “rough’’ created by bowlers’ boot marks just outside the left hander’s off stump. This devastating assault on Allen was one of the pivotal moments of the match — one of his sixes went over long off, over the terraces to hit the brick wall by the railway yard. Davidson and Mackenzie put on 98 in 102 minutes and when Mackenzie was bowled by Jack Flavell, England was left to get 256 to win in 230 minutes.
This looked eminently doable especially when Ted Dexter played what Benaud described as the finest short innings he had ever seen. It was when Dexter was on 40 that Benaud had a brief conversation with his vice-captain, Neil Harvey. Benaud said, “We’ve had it as far as saving this, Ninna. The only way we’ll get out of it is to win.’’ Harvey grinned and replied, “Get into it then. I’m with you.’’
When Dexter was on 76, Benaud had him caught behind off a quicker ball. Another pivotal moment. But more was to follow. Bowling according to a well thought through plan (endorsed by Ray Lindwall in a private conversation that Benaud had had with him the previous evening), Benaud went round the wicket even to right handers so that he could land the ball on the rough. He bowled Peter May around his legs for a duck. It was the beginning of the end. England ended with 201 on the board. Benaud had figures of six for 70 off 32 overs. He had been innovative and fearless as a captain and had bowled with enviable accuracy. It was a famous victory. Kynaston and Ricketts capture the see-saw battle almost ball by ball. Their research is impressive.
In a sense, the book is not just about the Old Trafford match. The authors provide the build up. The draw at Edgbaston, the Australian victory (without Benaud) at Lord’s where the “ridge’’ at the Nursery end played up; and the English win at Headingley with Fred Trueman at his best on his home turf. This leaves the reader agog to learn about the Old Trafford drama. In this prefatory narrative, there is one vital element that is missing. And I cannot help wondering why. This is the role that Harvey played when he skippered the side at Lord’s. The authors do not have a word to say about his captaincy. It is almost as if the Australian side played without a captain. This is inconceivable. Benaud knew and acknowledged the crucial part that Harvey had played. When Davidson bowled Brian Statham at Old Trafford to register an Aussie victory, the first person Benaud rushed to was Harvey. This was not only for the support that Harvey had extended in the mid-field exchange referred to above. It was a public acknowledgement of Harvey’s captaincy at Lord’s. Benaud was to do the same in print in his book.
The only minor disappointment in this book are the last two chapters, both somewhat extraneous and perhaps irrelevant to the main narrative. The ideal ending would have been the following passage from Benaud, which the authors quote to end the chapter titled “Aftermath’’: “May and his men were kind enough to come in for a drink with us, and tender their congratulations. I know how they must have felt. I have been beaten myself when playing for Australia against England, and it seems as though the end of the world has come. Perhaps that’s why this is such a great game. It is the greatest leveller I know.’’
Cricket had brought together the gentleman cricketer from Charterhouse and Cambridge with the Australian sportsman who wore blue suede shoes (the authors think that it is too fanciful to assume that Benaud had heard the famous Elvis Presley song and had then bought the shoes) that would be infra dig and forbidden in the clubs May frequented.
Tailpiece: Since I enjoyed the book so much and because I am in awe of what is called the Golden Age of Cricket, I may be permitted to recollect my own gold nugget from this book. I found it in the authors’ account of the first test match at Edgbaston. Watching the match were three greats from the Golden Age: Frank Woolley, S.F. Barnes and between them Wilfred Rhodes, completely blind. Rhodes is “watching’’ the match through the descriptions provided by his two mates flanking him. And while Harvey was batting with his effortless mastery, Rhodes turned towards Fingleton to tell him, there should be a deep point for Harvey. Cricket in the mind.
Rudrangshu Mukherjee is chancellor and professor of History at Ashoka University.
As the Games come to a close, India has registered 29 medals, its highest tally yet.
NewDelhi: With 29 medals – its highest tally at any Paralympic Games – India stands at the 18th position as of Sunday (September 8), the closing day of the Summer Paralympic Games in Paris.
Seven of these medals are gold, nine are silver and the rest are bronze. Winning in the games’ archery, athletics, badminton, judo and shooting events, who are India’s 29 Paralympian medallists?
🥇 Gold medallists
1. Avani Lekhara: Hailing from Jaipur, Lekhara successfully defended her gold medal in the women’s 10 metre-air rifle standing SH1 event on Friday (August 30) with a score of 249.7, becoming the first Indian woman to win two gold medals over the course of the Paralympic Games.
At the Tokyo Summer Paralympic Games in 2020, Lekhara became the first Indian woman to win gold at the Paralympics as well as the first Indian woman to win multiple medals at a single Paralympics edition.
At the games’ shooting events, ‘SH1’ athletes are those who are able to hold their gun “without difficulty” and shoot either from a standing or a sitting position. If shooting from the latter position they could use a chair or a wheelchair.
2. Nitesh Kumar: The 29-year-old para badminton player and IIT Mandi electrical engineering graduate won gold in the final match of the men’s singles SL3 category, scoring a 21-14, 18-21 and 23-21 win over Great Britain’s Daniel Bethell on Monday (September 2).
Kumar, a native of Haryana’s Charkhi Dadri, made his Paralympic Games debut this year.
At the games’ badminton events, the ‘SL3’ category is for athletes who compete standing and who have a lower limb impairment and balance problems while walking or running.
3. Sumit Antil: He successfully defended his gold medal from the Tokyo Paralympics in the men’s javelin throw F64 class category on Monday with his 70.59 metre attempt, which also happens to be the new paralympic record.
According to the Olympics’ website, 26-year-old Antil surpassed his Tokyo best of 68.55 metres three separate times on Monday. The ‘F64’ category applies to field athletes with lower limb impairments competing with a prosthesis.
4. Harvinder Singh: Para-archer Singh, 33, beat Pole Lukacz Cizek 6-0 at the men’s individual recurve open final match on Wednesday (September 4) to become India’s fourth gold medallist at the Paris games.
5. Dharambir: Thirty-five-year-old Dharambir from Haryana threw his club 34.92 metres far to clinch gold in the event’s ‘F51’ category on Wednesday, in doing which he also set the Asian record. All athletes in the F51 category compete while seated.
6. Praveen Kumar: Setting another Asian record, Kumar, 21, cleared 2.08 metres in the men’s high jump event for ‘T64’ class athletes – which applies to track athletes with lower limb impairments and using a prosthesis. He was also India’s youngest para-athlete to win a medal at the Games’ Tokyo edition.
7. Navdeep: At 47.32 metres – 2.6 metres ahead of second place – 23-year-old Navdeep won gold in the men’s javelin throw event of the ‘F41’ category on Saturday (September 8). The throw was his personal best. This category comprises athletes of a short stature.
🥈 Silver medallists
8. Manish Narwal: The 22-year-old scored 234.9 in the final of the men’s 10 metre-air pistol shooting SH1 category on August 30 to secure a silver medal. At the 2020 games he became the first male Indian shooter to win gold at the Paralympics with his win in the mixed 50 metres SH1 event.
9. Nishad Kumar: On Sunday (September 1), 24-year-old Kumar came second in the men’s high jump event of the ‘T47’ category.
According to the Olympics website, the T47 category applies to “athletes with a unilateral upper limb impairment resulting in some loss of function at the shoulder, elbow and wrist”.
10. Yogesh Kathuniya: With a 42.22 metre-throw at the games’ men’s ‘F56’ discus throw event, the 27-year-old para-athlete from Haryana won a silver medal. His category is where athletes compete in a wheelchair or a throwing chair.
11. Thulasimathi Murugesan: The 22-year-old top-seeded badminton player won silver at the women’s singles ‘SU5’ event on Monday, having lost 17-21 and 10-21 to China’s Yang Qiu Xia. Athletes in her category have upper-limb impairments.
12. Suhas Yathiraj: Qualifying for the final match in the badminton men’s singles ‘SL4’ category, Yathiraj was bested 9-21 and 13-21 by France’s Lucas Mazur on Monday, earning him a silver medal. His category is for athletes that demonstrate “lower limb impairment and minor balance problems walking or running”.
13. Sharad Kumar: Clearing a height of 1.88 metres, 32-year-old Kumar came second in the men’s high jump event of the ‘T63’ class on Tuesday. The category, as well as Kumar’s category of ‘T42’, applies to track athletes with lower limb impairments.
14. Sarjerao Sachin Khilari: Breaking the Asian record with his 16.32 metre throw, 34-year-old Khilari won silver in the men’s shot put event of the ‘F46’ category on Wednesday. This category is for athletes with arm impairments.
15. Ajeet Singh: Throwing his javelin 65.62 metres far, 31-year-old Singh clinched silver at the men’s javelin throw event of the F46 category on Tuesday.
16. Pranav Soorma: Competing in the same club throw event as gold medallist Dharambir, 29-year-old Soorma came second with 34.59 metre throw.
🥉 Bronze medallists
17. Mona Agarwal: 36-year-old Agarwal won bronze at the same category Lekhara won gold in: the women’s 10 metre-air rifle standing SH1 event, making her part of one of India’s double-podium results at this year’s games.
18, 19. Preethi Pal (×2): Pal, 23, won bronze at two events of the ‘T35’ category: the women’s 100-metre dash as well as the 200-metre one, clocking at 14.21 seconds and 30.01 seconds respectively. She was the first Indian para-athlete to win a track medal at the Paralympics. Her category applies to track athletes with co-ordination impairments.
20. Rubina Francis: The 25-year-old scored 211.1 in the women’s 10 metre air pistol SH1 event on August 30.
21. Manisha Ramadass: Competing in the SU5 women’s badminton singles, 19-year-old Ramadass lost 12-21 and 8-21 to Denmark’s Cathrine Rosengren on Monday, earning her a bronze medal. She shared the podium with silver medallist and fellow Indian Murugesan.
When Ramadass won her medal she was the first Indian woman to win a medal at the Paralympics’ badminton events, the Olympics’ website said.
22. Sheetal Devi and Rakesh Kumar: India’s youngest Paralympian at 17 years old, Devi, who was also the only armless female archer at this year’s games, won bronze at the mixed compound open archery with Kumar upon defeating Italians Eleonora Sarti and Matteo Bonacina 156-155 on Monday. Devi uses her legs to shoot arrows.
23. Nithya Sivan: 19-year-old Sivan won bronze at the ‘SH6’ category women’s singles badminton event on Monday. She was bested 14-21 and 6-21 by Indonesia’s Rina Marlina. Her category applies to “short stature and standing athletes”, according to the Olympics’ website.
24. Mariyappan Thangavelu: Just behind fellow Indian Sharad Kumar at 1.85 metres, he won bronze at the men’s high jump event of the T63 class. Thangavelu has the distinction of being the first Indian para-athlete to win medals at three consecutive Paralympic Games.
25. Sundar Singh Gurjar: At 64.96 metres, 28-year-old Gurjar’s javelin throw earned him bronze at the men’s javelin throw event of the F46 category. He shared the podium with silver medallist Ajeet Singh.
26. Deepthi Jeevanji: Clocking 55.82 seconds in the women’s 400 metre event for ‘T20’ class athletes on Tuesday, Jeevanji, 20, won bronze. She became the first intellectually impaired Indian athlete to win a Paralympic medal.
27. Kapil Parmar: He won India’s first Paralympic judo medal on Thursday upon beating Brazilian Elielton de Oliveira 10-0 in the men’s 60 kg J1 bronze medal match. His class is for athletes affected by complete blindness.
28. Hokato Hotozhe Sema: Hailing from Dimapur in Nagaland, 40-year-old Hotozhe Sema earned a bronze medal at the men’s F57-class shot put event, registering a 14.65-metre throw. This class is for athletes affected in either leg and who play while seated in events.
29. Simran: At the T12 women’s 200 metre dash event on Saturday, 24-year-old Simran crossed the finishing line in 24.75 seconds. Since athletes in her category are visually impaired, Simran ran with her guide Abhay Singh.
After joining the Congress, Phogat, who was one of the faces of the wrestlers’ protest, said that her fight against former WFI chief and BJP MP Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh will continue.
New Delhi: The Congress has fielded wrestler Vinesh Phogat from the Julana constituency for the upcoming Haryana assembly elections, hours after she joined the grand old party along with fellow wrestler Bajrang Punia in New Delhi on Friday (September 6).
The party released its first list of candidates for the Haryana elections and named 31 candidates, including former Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda from the Garhi Sampla-Kiloi seat.
While Phogat has been given an assembly ticket, the party also named Punia as the working chairman of the All India Kisan Congress on Friday.
Earlier on Friday, Phogat and Punia ended weeks of speculation surrounding their political plunge and met Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge before formally joining the party in the presence of Congress general secretary and MP K.C. Venugopal, Haryana in-charge Deepak Babaria and state unit chief Uday Bhan.
Bhan has also been named in the first list and will contest from the Hodal assembly constituency.
‘Only in bad times…’
Phogat was one of the faces of the wrestlers’ protest against former Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) chief and BJP MP Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, who is accused of sexually harassing multiple wrestlers. After joining the Congress, Phogat said that her fight against the former BJP MP will continue despite her taking the political plunge.
“I thank the Congress very much because it is only in bad times do we realise who is your own. When we were being dragged on the road, all of you were with us except the BJP. You were able to understand our pain and tears. I am proud that I am associated with an ideology that stands against the injustice done to women and is ready to fight for their rights from the streets to the parliament,” she said.
“I want to tell the people, the pain that we have tolerated, we stand with all women who are feeling helpless. If I wanted to, I could have quit wrestling at Jantar Mantar. The BJP IT cell was also trying to establish that we were finished. They said I did not want to go to the nationals, but I did. I went to the Olympics but God wanted something else. I know when you do hard work, maybe you don’t get rewarded in that direction but in another direction.”
Phogat said that she will continue to stand with Indian women and would not let any athlete face what she and other wrestlers faced during their protest against Singh.
“I am happy to start a new beginning. I don’t want any other athlete to face what we have faced. Those parties in power may not be with them. But their brothers and sisters are there with them and they know what happens in sports and how athletes are not able to speak up,” she said.
‘I will stand with you’
“We will not be scared and won’t step back. Our fight is not over, the case is underway in court. We will not just be talking about desh seva (service to the country) but we will do it as well. I want to tell my sisters that if no one stands with you, I will stand with you and the Congress party too will stand with you.”
Phogat was disqualified from the Paris Olympics after she was found to be above the required weight for her 50 kg wrestling category match.
Her disqualification also reached parliament, as opposition parties demanded a discussion in the House, and protested particularly after Union sports minister Mansukh Mandaviya in his statement in the Lok Sabha devoted only about two and a half minutes of his six-minute speech to the events that transpired before Phogat was disqualified and the steps being taken to address the issue, and spent the remaining approximately four minutes detailing the financial assistance given to the grappler by the Indian government for her training.
When Phogat returned from the Olympics, Congress MP Deepender Hooda met Phogat at the airport and was present during her roadshow, fuelling speculation that she would be joining the Congress ahead of the assembly elections in Haryana.
On September 3, with the Congress Election Committee (CEC)’s deliberations underway over the distribution of tickets, Haryana-in-charge Deepak Babaria had told reporters that a decision on whether Phogat will be fielded will be taken soon.
The two wrestlers joined the party a day after both Phogat and Punia met leader of opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi. Earlier, on August 31, Phogat met farmers at the Shambhu border, who have been protesting and demanding a legal guarantee for minimum support prices, and urged the government to listen to their demands.
With wrestlers’ inductions, Congress looking to make gains among Jats
Congress general secretary and Lok Sabha MP K.C. Venugopal, who was also present at the press conference where Punia and Phogat joined the party formally, said that while questions will now be raised about a “conspiracy” behind the wrestlers’ protest, other athletes had also joined various parties earlier.
“Leaders come through movements and these two are examples of that. These two leaders came through the biggest movement in this country. Now some are criticising that this is a Congress conspiracy. There are so many athletes in different parties, so many Olympians are there in different parties. Is that also a conspiracy? These big stalwarts of Indian sports history know which party they can trust. And therefore they chose [the Congress] as their party,” he said.
During a smartphone distribution drive yesterday, Brij Bhushan said that when women wrestlers levelled the accusations against him last year, he “had then said that this [was] a conspiracy of the Congress”.
“Senior Congress leaders from Haryana Deepender Singh Hooda and Bhupinder Singh Hooda are hatching a conspiracy against me. Whatever I had said on day one, I still stand by it. And today, the same thing is being said by the entire country,” PTI quoted him as saying.
Punia said that the wrestlers had paid the price for speaking up against injustice but will continue to raise their voice.
“We are paying for raising our voices for India’s daughters. Only the BJP stood with those who wronged women. Everyone else stood with us. The kind of hard work we have done during our fight for Indian women, the farmers’ agitation and Agniveers, we will continue our fight on the ground,” he said.
With the induction of the two wrestlers into the Congress, the party is looking to make gains among the Jat community, to which both Phogat and Punia belong; while also looking to corner the BJP over its inaction against Brij Bhushan; and cash in on the anti-BJP sentiment in the community with the ongoing farmers’ protests and the discontentment against the Agniveer scheme.
The party is also looking to consolidate its gains from the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, where it won five of ten parliamentary seats in Haryana. The BJP, which had won all ten in 2019, was down to half its tally in 2024.
Over the years, under a repressive government, we have let mediocrity take over by weakening institutions. Mediocrity could trickle down, prosper at home, occupy vantage positions and rot governance but cannot stand up to international competition. This is what has happened to sports as well.
It would have been an embarrassingly humiliating Olympic drought for India at Paris but for young Manu Bhaker, barely out of her teens, shooting two bronze medals and missing another by a whisker! She is certainly gold material unless spoiled by flattery from charlatans and fawning by the media. Hope her ever-supportive parents would not allow that to happen!
While so, I am more of a sports watchman than a sportsman. So, I sat glued to the ‘idiot box’ from Day 1 till the end of the Paris Olympic Games. No wonder like all ‘patriotic Indians’, I was also furious at India’s pathetic performance coming at No: 71, which is near the bottom while being top-most in the world in population. I was incensed at the comparative performance analysis floating in the media, particularly these types since I have been hearing from several circles that under the ‘Vishwaguru’ we have already conquered the world in GDP and diplomacy!
I briefly lapped up the version of the ‘de jure’ President of the Indian Olympic Association (IOA) P.T. Usha that it is the athletes who are responsible for this pathetic show because it is their job to manage their own affairs and win medals for the country. Isn’t Vinesh Poghat the epitome of such mismanagement? Who asked her to protest against the sexual predators of the Wrestling Federation of India, get dragged on the streets by the Delhi Police, gain weight in the process and get herself disqualified from the gold medal contest?
But, fortunately, the ‘de facto’ President of IOA and International Olympic Committee (IOC) member Nita Ambani had a different take. To her winning Olympic medals is a team work and India would do so in double digits in the Paris Games by giving their best performance. She backed it up by setting up an ‘India House’ at La Villette, and announcing that the day India hosts the Olympics is “not far”. In this she was only backing up Prime Minister Narendra Modi who in October last year had proclaimed India’s bold intent to bid for the 2036 Olympics, pledging to spare no effort to fulfil the dream of 1.4 billion people in the country.
Full of patriotic fervour, Nita Ambani had added: “India has arrived. It is time that the flame that was first lit in Athens must light the sky in our ancient land Bharat. The day is not far when India will host the Olympic Games. Let this be our collective resolve at the opening of the India House.” And she made it a point to be visible on the Olympic Screen much more than all the medal-winning athletes put together! One thought that she was winning ‘gold’ by the hour!
If only money could buy Olympic medals Nita Ambani would have been proven true many times over, because as soon as Manu Bhaker struck bronze, Mansukh Mandaviya, Union minister of youth affairs and sports, claimed that it was because of the government spending Rs 2 crore on the young lady that she won the Olympic medal. He gave the entire credit to Prime Minister Modi’s Khelo India programme and the money spent on her rather than to the inherent talent and grit of the girl.
Impressed by the Union minister’s ‘business’ acumen, I made a quick ‘back of the envelope’ calculation. If only Madam Nita Ambani had spent a fraction of the Rs 5,000 crore she did on the wedding and countless pre-weddings of her son, India would have hauled up more golds than the USA and China put together proving the doubting Thomases that we are the real Vishwaguru! But it was not to be because for the Ambanis ‘shaking of legs’ by the celebrities is more precious than Olympic medals!
Be that as it may, these musings led me to the Olympic Motto which till the Tokyo Olympics of 2020 was ‘Citius, Altius, Fortius’ meaning “Faster, Higher, Stronger.” Since then ‘Communiter’ (together) has been added highlighting the need for solidarity during difficult times such as the COVID-19 pandemic. The motto now reads “Citius, Altius, Fortius–Communiter” in Latin and “Faster, Higher, Stronger – Together” in English.
Only by abiding by this motto will our Olympians be able to beat the best in the world and win medals for the country – Gold, Silver and Bronze – and not by indulging in bravados and money-mongering. And the Olympic community is nothing but a microcosm of the larger community which is “India that is Bharat.” And what has this larger community been in nearly a decade?
In what we have become ‘Faster’? – in scandals, scams and frauds including electoral, examination and financial! In what we have gone ‘Higher’? – in unemployment, poverty and inequity! In what we have become ‘Stronger’? – in communalism, corruption and crony-capitalism! As far as ‘Togetherness’ is concerned we have gone in a totally opposite direction of divisiveness and polarisation.
This takes me to the concept of governance and its near-total collapse in almost all spheres. In 2014, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government came to power with two battlecries: “Minimum Government, Maximum Governance” and ‘Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas.” In a democracy as distinct from an autocracy, governance should be ‘society-centered.’ It would include the government, which is its dominant part, but transcend it by taking in the private sector and civil society. All three are critical for sustaining human, economic and social development.
Governments represented by the ruling establishments in the centre and the states create a conducive political, administrative, legal and living environment. The business sector represented by trade, commerce, agriculture and industry promotes enterprise and generates jobs and income. Civil society represented by the voluntary sector facilitates interaction by mobilising groups to participate in economic, social and political activities. It also resolves conflicts. Because each has weaknesses and strengths, governance is brought about through constructive interaction among all three. In short, while governments in India have been reduced to politico-bureaucratic proprietorships, governance is a joint venture. This is a huge difference.
Being a joint venture (JV), governance should adhere to certain functional norms and principles such as the involvement of stakeholders in the decision-making process; transparency and accountability at all governmental and societal levels; citizen’s participation in the process of social and public welfare, economic growth and development; a balanced relationship between all bodies of government and civil society; social auditing of government programs and policies; mandatory establishment of ombudsman institutions and their fearless functioning; civil supremacy over the armed forces and an efficient and non-discriminatory judicial system. Most important of all there should be enough space for the civil society represented by the voluntary sector to freely express its views and opinions on the ‘development’ agenda of the governments without fear or favour.
According to the World Bank: “Civil society…refers to a wide array of organizations: community groups, non-governmental organizations [NGOs], labour unions, indigenous groups, charitable organizations, faith-based organizations, professional associations, and foundations.” The term became popular in political and economic discussions in the 1980s, when it started to be identified with non-state movements that were defying authoritarian regimes. When mobilised, civil society – sometimes called the “third sector” (after government and commerce) – has the power to influence the actions of elected policy-makers and businesses.
Scope of civil society activities includes: holding institutions to account and promoting transparency; raising awareness of societal issues; delivering services to meet education, health, food and security needs; promoting arts, sports and culture; assisting disaster management, preparedness and emergency response; bringing expert knowledge and experience to shape policy and strategy; giving power to the marginalized; and encouraging citizen engagement in matters of government and governance. And every sportsperson and athlete comes from the civil society and not the government.
It is this civil society that India’s national security advisor calls “new frontiers of war, that can be subverted, suborned, divided, manipulated to hurt the interests of a nation… And therefore should be hounded, hunted and shut down.” This has been the policy of the Indian state ever since 2014 which is being meticulously followed and implemented.
In the event civil society and its various voluntary organisations stand completely decimated, drained and incapable of nurturing and promoting excellence in any field allowing the mediocre to take over. And as everyone knows mediocrity could trickle down, prosper at home, occupy vantage positions, rot governance but cannot stand up to international competition. This is what has happened to sports also and hence the Olympic drought.
L’affaire Vinesh Phogat is a standing example. But there is a silver lining. India might not have won gold medals in Paris and faced drought. But this Olympics has thrown up two ‘Diamonds’ from the hinterland of Haryana – Vinesh Phogat and Manu Bhaker. In preserving and promoting the purity and strength of them and their ilk lies the future of India’s Olympic hopes!
M.G. Devasahayam is the founder-president of the Chandigarh Lawn Tennis Association and is a former president of the Chandigarh Olympic Association.
