An Olympic-size sin

<div class="section1"><div class="Normal">The Olympic Flame''s controversial passage through the Capital last week reminded me of Noel Coward''s memorable lines from a song in his musical <span style="" font-style:="" italic="">Sail Away</span>:<br /><br /><span style="" font-style:="" italic="">Please do not think that I criticise or cavil,</span><br /><span style="" font-style:="" italic="">At a genuine urge to roam,</span><br /><span style="" font-style:="" italic="">But why oh why do the wrong people travel,</span><br /><span style="" font-style:="" italic="">When the right people stay back home?</span><br /><br />Yeah, don''t get me wrong. I have no issue with film stars - or the celeb-quotient - being used to promote the Olympics. After all, the Olympics do need promotion in a nation obsessed by one sport, and sponsors and their brand ambassadors have a big role to play. <br /><br />But it could have been done with greater sensitivity, with due regard for athletes who have done so much for the country, without making them also-rans (pun intended), without a complete surrender to commercial interests. Why could the other celebs not run alongside the athletes carrying the torch?<br /><br />A delayed invitation to P T Usha - India''s best-known athlete - from participating in the run was a crime, plain and simple. Not inviting Prakash Padukone, who has won the All England and World badminton championships and is arguably India''s best sportsperson ever, was sin, no less.<br /><br />Those in charge have tried to explain away these lapses with unadulterated hogwash. If Aamir Khan, Vivek Oberoi, Aishwarya Rai, Bipasha Basu, et al could be notified (and in time) about the run, the failure to include eminent sportspersons reveals not only administrative mishaps, but more pertinently a miserable mindset which that cannot see Usha, Padukone and their like as celebs and ''beautiful people'' too.<br /><br />And we wonder why we remain a mediocre sports nation.<br /><br />Frank Keating, among my favourite cricket writers with his superb imagery and sublime prose, highlights the blessed current age of brilliant batsmanship in a recent column on for the Spectator.<br /><br />"Cricket neurotically frets about its present," writes Keating. "But we live in batsmanship''s golden age: the Indian Tendulkar, textbook perfect, and his confrere Laxman, courteous assassin; the hale and manly short-shrift no-quarter Aussies Hayden and Ponting; the lugubrious, ursine, timeless Pakistani Inzamam. The audacious, exotic, yet almost Buddha-like Lara is most entrancing of all."<br /><br />No quarrel with choice of players and, you will agree, wonderfully pithy descriptions of each. But there is one notable omission: Rahul Dravid. <br /><br />His warm, school-teacher''s demeanour hides his Atlas-like grit and rarely reveals his technical supremacy, but his records are in the public domain, and in this age of VCDs, DVDs and what have you, so is visual evidence of his pedigree.<br /><br />I urge you Frank to have a look.</div> </div>