Sport Folio

What book are you reading?
• I’ve just finished reading the autobiography of George Best. It’s the story of a genius and quite an inspiring read.

A sportsperson you’d pay to watch?
• Undoubtedly Thierry Henry. He is such a joy to watch. He’s a complete striker, fast and strong and is dreaded by the rival defence.

Your most embarrassing moment?
• IIt’s so embarrassing that I really can’t talk about it in public. All I can say is that it happened during my teenage days and something I’d like to forget.

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Your pet superstition?
• If I’ve done well in a match, I wear the same pair of boots for the next match and tie my left bootlaces first. That’s a practice I’ve been following for long.

If you weren’t a football player you’d like to be …
• I really don’t think I would have been anything else but a footballer. Football is all I know and even after I quit, I would like to be associated with it.

Let the phony battles end. Twenty20 and
Somerset won’t matter in an international match. The first real indicative of how far
England have progressed of late
(Live on ESPN, Sunday, June 19, 3:30 pm)

India had a clutch of TT stars back in the 1980s and Venugopal Chandrasekhar was right up there with the best. He won back-to-back national titles between 1981-83 and made it to Commonwealth Games semifinals in 1982. An attacking player, Chandrasekhar was a favourite of both the crowd and his peers on the circuit. He also posed the only serious challenge to Kamlesh Mehta in that period, and beat him in the 1982 national final. He won the Arjuna Award in 1984. That same year, it all went horribly wrong. A routine operation on his right knee was allegedly botched up; it ended his career and left him in a wheelchair almost paralysed and blind. He still needs help with some basic functions but has recovered sufficiently to set up a TT academy in Chennai — though he can’t travel with his wards.