Individualistic

15th August 2008 --- Harika Dronavalli and Abhijeet Gupta won the World Junior Girls Chess Championship and World Junior Boy's Championship respectively. India thus entered the record books as the first country ever to win both the titles in the same year.Not even the erstwhile Soviet Union, a major superpower of chess, managed to achieve this double even at the height of its chess glory.

Though this news was lost amidst the Olympic medal news, its significance is outstanding.Apart from cricket, our team game results are pathetic.Cricket is a game played by only 10 top countries -though Bangladesh and Zimbabwe can hardly be called that anymore. Yet, where the individual Indian has to fight amongst huge global competition, the results are different. Bindra, Jeetender, Sushil are all individual sportspersons--as was Rathore, Usha, Paes etc.

This shows that individual calibre, talent and perseverance are available ---it is the combination , the coaching and the nurturing that is absent.A pure systems failure, due to lack of foresight, corruption and the backing of the wrong persons. has led to the failure in combination sports.

Are we as a nation jealous of each other, unhappy to share and combine? Are we a country of individuals and not in a real sense a collective whole? Till we combine well, individual acts will occur sporadically, but we can never hope to achieve the standards being set by China and Korea and Japan and....