Peeking eyes: to end cricket mischief! New Delhi: Against the backdrop of allegations of spot-fixing during IPL matches, Union Minister Ajay Maken today said the BCCI – the national governing body for cricket in India – should come under the ambit of the RTI Act. “BCCI should agree to come under RTI. Any organisation entrusted with job of selecting a National Team can not call itself a Private Body!,” Maken, who till recently held the Sports portfolio, twitted. His Twitter account clarifies that the Union minister’s tweets are personal. Maken, who holds Housing... 

  Sreesanth: in trouble now! Mumbai: Rajasthan Royals players S Sreesanth, Ankit Chavan and Ajit Chandilia, have been arrested by the Delhi Police on charges of spot-fixing in the IPL. Delhi police have arrested seven bookies and are looking out for more. Bookies from Maharashtra have also been arrested on charges of spot-fixing. TV reports further added that the players were even involved in spot fixing in Rajasthan Royals’ match on Wednesday with Mumbai Indians at the Wankhede Stadium. Evidence has been found by Delhi police from tapping phones of several cricketers and bookies and... 

  By Ratnakar Tripathy What happens: when the balance breaks? I  always looked at corruption as looting by the rich. The reason may be my class and caste. I am middle-middle class. I am Brahmin. None of it helps while getting a simple job done at a government counter or even a private company counter [on the same day in late 1990s in Delhi I was asked for ‘commission’ by a government TV channel and a private TV channel executive for the airing of a documentary serial]. It seems I must go to the decrepit shed nearby and deposit some cash after which a phone call would get made, and my... 

  Kites in Patna: the poster! Patna: at times, life can seem too serious, even unacceptably so. A bit like a friend or a relative who always brings up ‘problems’ every time you see her! Which is why, the kite festival in Patna yesterday was hugely welcome. The fact is whatever the state of the river Ganga in Patna, it does provide the city dwellers with a playground that is hugely and well, scandalously underutilized. Having come to inaugurate a ‘frivolous’ occasion yesterday, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar struck a serious note when he said d he felt like crying seeing the sorry... 

  Yuvi: saluting a brave spirit! Pune: it is a measure of the outrage and anger felt by the entire nation at the repeated incidents of brutal rapes in India. It is perhaps for the first time that the country decided with one mind that the attitude of men towards women needs to be changed. It was also the first time that there is little ambiguity in the condemnations coming from all over – women cannot be blamed for ‘inviting rape’ and the perpetrator must squarely take the onus and be punished for it.  Going with the prevalent outrage and concern, Yuvraj Singh decided to dedicate his... 

    Dhyan Chand: the glorious days of Indian Hockey! New Delhi:  India’s obsession with cricket has been moving at a rapid rate from wide-eyed fascination to disgust in the eyes of many. The national idiosyncrasy now seems like a pathological monomania to many who back away from the endless and forever ongoing national conversation on cricket. Forget about the players or the performers as they seem to matter the least, except as the newly emerging heroes from the newly emerging towns, Kasbahs and villages of India. It is the spectator who is the king in a ‘karaoke-ized’ world of... 

by Sidhartha Vaidyanathan O, bowled again ? Discussing Sachin Tendulkar has never been easy. He lends himself to arguments. Most of these arguments are like giant fractals – each made up of smaller, similar sounding mini-arguments. To debate Tendulkar is to be caught in a whirlpool and bombarded with streams of thought from tangential directions. So I have tried to rip the present Tendulkar debate (about his poor series against New Zealand and calls for retirement) threadbare. I have singled out each part of the argument and presented my view. As always, you are welcome to disagree and extend... 

    The anger game! Chennai: first, the North-easterners as target, then the Biharis in Maharshtra and now the Sri Lankan boys in Tamilandu! Suddenly, parochialism of a wide variety seems to be sweeping the country. Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa recently ordered the suspension of the officer of the Jawaharlal Nehru Indoor Stadium here for allowing Sri Lankan football players to play a friendly match with a Customs Department team last week. Ms. Jayalalithaa also directed that the players be sent home. In a statement, the Chief Minister said she issued orders for sending back... 

Omung Kumar Mumbai: Mumbai is home to the best and the worst culturally. There are the forever leaky poison taps called the Shivsena, MNS et al. and there is Bollywood that despite all its crassness offers the nation a wider embrace in so far as possible [commercially]. According to several reports, Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s next production will be a film based on the life of Olympic medal winner, boxer MC Mary Kom. Art director Omung Kumar who worked with Bhansali on Black and Saawariya will direct the film. Omung approached Bhansali with a detailed script based on the life of the boxer after... 

by Sidhartha Vaidyanathan V V S Laxman: V for victory! The history of soccer is a sad voyage from beauty to duty. When the sport became an industry, the beauty that blossoms from the joy of play got torn out by its very roots. In this fin-de-siècle world, professional soccer condemns all that is useless, and useless means not profitable. Nobody earns a thing from that crazy feeling that for a moment turns a man into a child playing with a balloon, like a cat with a ball of yarn; a ballet dancer who romps with a ball as light as a balloon or a ball of yarn, playing without even knowing he’s playing,...