The larger picture
THE LARGER PICTURE: When you look at sports in India, a larger picture emerges. In the last Asian Games in Jakarta, our men's hockey team was in prime form. In the semifinals we met Malaysia and we froze. The lower ranked Malaysians beat us and the gold medal slipped. In the commonwealth games, our hockey team had played some good hockey, both in the games, and the preceding FIH ProLeague. We had had the measure of the likes of the Belgians. The hockey fans hoped, but not only did we lose in the finals to Australia, we were trounced 0-7. The players of the quality of Harmanpreet Singh & Manpreet Singh just did not turn up. In the Asian Games, just a few months back, our badminton team was up against China. It was a historic gold medal team match. Lakshya Sen won. Satwik-Chirag won. Kidambi Srikanth was leading 1-0. One more game & a historic gold medal in team event of badminton would be ours. But Srikanth froze, lost the match & the Chine...