Sports India

The Board of Control for Cricket in India has recommended the name of Indian captain Rahul Dravid for the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna Award, the country’s highest sporting honour, for the year 2005-06.

The BCCI has also put forward the names of paceman Irfan Pathan and left-hand batsman Yuvraj Singh for the Arjuna award for the same year, the secretary, Mr Niranjan Shah said today.

The Khel Ratna was started in 1991 and Sachin Tendulkar is the only cricketer so far to have received the honour (1997-98).

Dravid, who took over captaincy from Sourav Ganguly last year, is currently regarded as one of the finest batsmen and has been in the top three in the ICC Test batting rankings for quite some time.

Pathan has emerged as India’s pace spearhead and had a creditable performance in the period under review while Yuvraj has also been one of the consistent performers for the Indian team, particularly in the shorter version of the game.

The President confers the awards at a glittering function at Rashtrapati Bhawan on August 29 every year. The award carries a scroll of honour and a purse of Rs five lakh.

Chess GrandMaster Vishwanathan Anand was the first recipient of the prestigious award. Geet Sethi, Karnam Malleswari, Dhanraj Pillay, Pullela Gopichand, Anju Bobby George and Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore are among the top sportspersons who have received the honour.

World Chess Champion Veselin Topalov of Bulgaria missed to win the finals of Ciudad de Leon rapid chess tournament retreating to Vishwanathan Anand of India.

The Bulgarian chess master, who is on top of FIDE ranking, ended the game 1,5:2,5 on Sunday.

The 19th (XIX) Ciudad de Leon chess tournament took place at the Junta de Castilla y Leon building in Leon, Spain. It lasted from June 9th to 11th 2006 and included four players: Veselin Topalov (Bulgaria), Viswanathan Anand (India), Francisco Vallejo (Spain) and Lazaro Bruzon (Cuba).

It was the last warm-up competition for Topalov before the games for the World Chess Title against Vladimir Kramnik this September.

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World chess champion Vesselin Topalov won the M-Tel Masters tournament, which took place in Sofia.

In the final 10th round Topalov defeated Etienne Bacrot from Franace in 42 moves, BGNES Sport agency reported.

Through the victory Topalov ranked first with 6.5 points. The other two games of the final round ended in draws.

Gata Kamsky from the US ranked second with just 0.5 points less than Topalov.

Kamsky was in the lead until the final round. Two days ago, he lost from Topalov, going down in the tournament ranking.

Topalov started the tournament indecisively and could not win a game until the end of the first four rounds. Good final games improved his standing and later granted him victory in the tournament.

Indian competitor Vishwanathan Anand ranked third with 5.5 points, despite his victory ambitions, BGNES reported.

Whom do you root for? A sports personality or a person from tinsel town. A rather debatable subject. To feel the pulse of those who support either of them and at a time when cricketers’ popularity rivals that of cine stars. The Mylapore Club, as part of its centenary year celebrations, conducted a Pattimandram at Narada Gana Sabha in Chennai yesterday.

The theme of the debate was ‘ Whom do people support - Sportspersons or Cine Stars’. The team which spoke for sportspersons had K Srikkanth and L Sivaramakrishnan, cricketers, and Nirmal Shekhar, a scribe.

The strange fact was that the club couldn’t find any sportsperson other than cricketers to represent the team. But in a country which rates Indian cricket team’s victory over Bangladesh higher than a Olympic silver medal performance by Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore, the club cannot be blamed for its act.

Though the club has been conducting various sports events apart from cricket, when it comes to seeking public attention they have played safe, by bringing in cricketers.

The show was full of enthusiasm with drama artiste Y Gee Mahendran, who spoke for the cine stars, making humorous remarks on cricketers which enthralled the audience. L Sivaramakrishanan pointed out that Brylcreem advertisement was first modeled by Farooq Engineer, former wicketkeeper, and added that he was preferred over other cine stars even in those days. Baski said Amitabh, even at this age was able to attract fans which many cricketers couldn’t. Srikkanth mentioned that there are no possibilities of retakes in cricket as in cinema and that makes the game tougher. Mahendran countered it well with an answer ‘ There are no such retakes in stage dramas’.

Mohan V Raman said women, who form a major part of the TV audience, prefer serials to cricket matches. Nirmal Shekar argued that Sachin Tendulkar could sell a product throughout India whereas a Tamil film star cannot.

A R S, the judge for the Pattimandram concluded the debate on expected lines, stating that both cine stars and sportspersons are equally popular.

The function also drew a good number of audience despite the fact that it was a Sunday morning.

A lucky dip was also held and C K Nagesh, veteran actor, gave away the prizes.

From the entertainment point of view, the show was a perfect treat for all those present. But realistically let us take more initiatives in developing or in other words promoting sports apart from cricket.

Sania Mirza, Narain Karthikeyan and Vishwananthan Anand were the few lucky ones on whom the panelists showed some interest apart from cricketers. The fact that none of the panelists cared to talk about hockey, our national sport was highly- disappointing.

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