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IOA, sports ministry serve a double fault

For all Suresh Kalmadi's professed commitment to Indian sport, for all his professed concern about India's sportsmen and women, for all his diatribes against cricket, the extent of the Indian Olympic Association's, and the Indian government's, concern about sport in the country seems obvious from the treatment meted out to its tennis stars.

Between the two, the IOA and the government have, last we heard, managed to reduce Shruti Dhawan and Rushmi Chakravarthy to tears, while clearing only Manisha Malhotra's name for the tennis event at the Bangkok Asiad.

Interestingly, the government has even rejected a proposal that the two, Dhawan and Chakravarthy, would bear their own expenses at the Asiad. The AITA had earlier expressed its willingness to foot the bills for the two promising young girls.

Manisha Malhotra will play an important role in India's medal aspirations, as she will pair Nirupama Vaidyanathan, the country's best hope in the women's event, in the doubles.

However, to do well in the team events, it is important to have at least two good doubles combos going, and that is what India will be missing, thanks to this short-sighted action on the part of the IOA and the ministry.

It seems a pity that the ministry of sport, for all its hi-falutin talk about developing sport in the country, has behaved so callously towards the rising stars. Their outright rejection of the two young players is certainly not calculated to enhance the morale of the players concerned, or indeed to give a boost to tennis in India, in general.

Ironically, the IOA had submitted a list of 235 players of which only 9 were rejected -- and two of those rejects are from women's tennis.

"Sub par", is the explanation given for the axing. It raises some questions -- what exactly are the standards the IOA has set for clearing women's tennis players? To reject a player, they have to give a reason, a factual one, they need to be able to say, this is the rating we are looking at, and since you are not there yet, we can't clear you. Simply labelling a player sub-par is demoralising in the extreme.

Leander Paes pulling out of the event, meanwhile, does tend to push our medal hopes back a fair bit, since he was seen as a cert to bring home the men's gold medal in the event. The team event is hard to predict, involving as it does country-vs-country ties spread over three matches apiece.

Even the story behind Paes' withdrawal is fraught with confusion. Rather strangely, the authorities seem to be talking not to the player, but to the media -- thus, Jaideep Mukherjee is quoted in a newspaper as saying that if Paes doesn't make it to the camp in Calcutta by a certain date (December 5), it will be "assumed" that he wont make the trip.

Where lay the need for this ultimatum in the papers, given that Paes has hardly made any secret of his health problems and his state of recovery? In any event, it argues shoddy man management for the coach of the tennis team to send out ultimatums to players through the media columns, when the right approach obviously was to call the concerned player up and find out the situation, once for all.

Dr Vece Paes, meanwhile, is on record as saying that the star will have to take a medical test on Monday for assessing his fitness, and if he is cleared at that time, he will have no problem making the trip.

Paes for his part must be feeling lower than low. For four years now, he has been talking about the last Asiad, and his loss to Yong Il Yoon that cost him and the country a medal. Just when he seemed set to erase the blot on his record, comes this injury to his heel -- one serious enough to have him grabbing at crutches as he tries to walk.

The doctors had advised him to take a six week break, and that has left Leander despondent. "I don't think I have had a 6-week break from tennis since I was 12 years old," the disappointed star is quoted as saying.

That leaves the Indian challenge, in Bangkok, in the hands of Mahesh Bhupathi in the men's section, and Nirupama in the women's.

Mahesh himself will be a rather tired man, having played non stop for the past few weeks, culminating with the Asia Cup triumph last week. And after the Asiad, 'Hesh' still has two weeks of challengers to play, before he rejoins friend and doubles partner Leander for the Doha tournament in January.