This is a guest post by Sarah

The Paralympic Games 2008 ended today. This is easily the most prestigious event in amateur DisAbility sport, but you wouldn’t know it unless you think it. Mainstream media* coverage and publicity were both extremely limited, and the time difference between China and the UK just isn’t a good enough excuse for me.

The Games started on the 6th of September this year. Hopes were high that the event would lead China to improve disabled access, as well as mainstream attitudes to disability. As usual, however, questions were raised about whether this positive development would actually last after the Games were over. It’s too early to answer this question yet, but I, for one, sincerely hope that this will last.

Andy Gilmour has written a good piece, after I asked him, about the whole question of whether Britain has been ‘buying medals’ just because it has good sporting facilities. He rightly lays into the Tax Payers Alliance sort of stupid thinking, which I’m very pleased about.

More TPA stupidity here today about public sector pay.

There’s a thought provoking piece in The Times today about how striking gold at the Olympics maybe far more representative of how much money you spend rather your country’s athletic talent:

It is striking that Britain’s medal success generally comes in sports that are not merely expensive but that are also so unpopular that athletes cannot earn enough from prize-money and endorsements to support themselves. Success in these sports - such as rowing, sailing and track cycling - can essentially be bought by siphoning off money from the public purse and handing it to the athletes who are then able to train like professionals.

Indeed, it is a cause for self-congratulation rather than discomfiture in the sporting community that the improved success of British athletes in recent years has been achieved by outspending many of our rivals. That is not to take anything away from the athletes, who are hard-working and talented. It is merely to say that success in sport - like in the agricultural market - is easier when it receives huge state subsidies.
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How does the Government get away with this raid on the public purse? By claiming that Olympic success inspires grassroots participation, which, in turn, has a benign long-term impact on the public finances. It is an argument with everything on its side except evidence. The reality is that elite success has no sustained impact on participation, and, even if it did, the fiscal effects would be ambiguous.

Well that’s one way to spend tax payers money. I expect a massive campaign from the Tax Payers’ Alliance (with full rightwing blogger backing) any day now…

Two incidents, both despicable:

In a photo that was taken in a pre-Olympics advertisement for a courier company that sponsors the Spanish federation, Pau Gasol and friends, winners of the 2006 FIBA World Championship and a strong medal favorite, posed with their index fingers pulling back the skin by the corner of their eyes.
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“It seemed to us to be something appropriate and that it would always be interpreted as an affectionate gesture,” José Calderon, the point guard who plays professionally in the N.B.A. for Toronto, wrote on an Internet site. “I want to express that we have great respect for the Orient and its people.”
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In a far worse demonstration of contempt, an Iranian swimmer called in sick to his swimming heat to avoid getting into the pool with an Israeli. That was a truly revolting development — a flagrant foul that went unpunished.

The Indian Premier League has invited cheerleaders from overseas to add a bit of US-style razzmatazz (read: flesh) to the matches. Two British girls were turned away just before going on stage during a match at Mohali. They were told the crowd don’t want to see black people, only beautiful white girls. The company responsible denies racism and says they will investigate when a formal complaint is made. The two girls did eventually get to perform. [Link]

With the saga of Liverpool midfielder Javier Mascherano’s sending off for repeated verbal abuse showing no signs of abating, it seems to me that we need to devise a dictionary for those unfamiliar with the language of this frankly baffling league, as people struggle to understand why hurling abuse at the referee on a number of occasions could warrant a yellow card. Submissions are welcome. The guide so far:

1 He is just a passionate player.

Phrase used when a manager is explaining why a player has been sent off for a bad tackle or for verbally abusing the referee.

2 He’s gone down too easily there. Shameful.

What commentators say when a foreign player dives.

3 He’s done well to win a penalty for his team.

What commentators say when an English player dives.

The Indo-Australian cricket row rumbles on. Harbhajan (Indian) allegedly called Andrew (black, Australian) a monkey. Ricky (captain, Australia), went and told on Harbhajan. Result? Pure hilarity. Indians take to the street burning effergies, NDTV carries the story incessantly, while the Indian Cricket board (BCCI) gets in a strop over the idea that an Indian could be called racist, and threatens to go home.

A feature in this week’s TIME reminded me of a sporting derby that runs deeper than Arsenal vs Spurs, Rangers vs Celtic or Everton vs Liverpool. My grandfather’s brother-in-law used to own East Bengal Football Club but the rest of my family have always been die-hard Mohun Bagan fans, so this is a rivalry I have been raised with.

Mohun Bagan Athletic is in fact Asia’s oldest sporting club and famously were the barefoot real-life Lagaan story in 1911. The club was founded on the 15th of August (later to become an auspicious day) 1889 and from the off was imbued with nationalistic fervour. The sole purpose of the disciplined outfit seemed to be to beat the British at their own game. Twenty two years after their formation, Mohun Bagan lifted the Indian Football Association (IFA) Shield, beating the East Yorkshire Regiment, previously undisputed kings of the Indian League.

The date this feat was accomplished, July 29th, is now ‘Mohun Bagan Day’ in the club calendar and 100 years later Rajiv Gandhi named Mohun Bagan as India’s national club. A postage stamp was brought out to commemorate the united patriotism that resulted from the Indian win over the English club.

India beat Pakistan in the World Cup final. It was a brilliant match, and both sides should be proud of themselves.

Elated or miserable?

Seeing as it’s Friday, here’s something to cheer you up / make you depressed depending on who you support: Yuvraj Singh’s 6 sixes against England this week.
As they say on the interweb… England got pwned!

Yes, I proudly fail the Tebbit test. Heh.

I cannot imagine what was going through the thick brains of the Football Association FIFA management when they decided to ban women footballers from wearing the hijab. As the old saying goes: when God was handing out brains, did they miss out?

It is not only discriminatory, with no useful consequence whatsoever than make it more difficult for Muslim women to join the sport, but I bet it will be reversed soon enough when they come to their senses. Why? Because I bet the Indians (once they wake up from their slumber over the impact of this decision) will soon enough point out that it also discriminates against Sikh men from wearing the turban on the pitch. As Osama Saeed points out, the key passage states:

A player must not use equipment or wear anything that is dangerous to himself or another player (including any kind of jewellery).

How the hell is a hijab dangerous to others? This is typical of orientalist thinking - that world football should only be preserved for those following western cultural norms. If the woman (or the man) is in normal uniform, wearing the hijab or turban should have little impact on play. Dimwits.
[Update: Apologies, I blamed the FA instead of FIFA]

Kiran Matharu, England’s youngest successful golfer, who happens to be female and Asian, has signed a six-figure deal (I’m assuming sponsorship), Urmee Khan finds in an interview for the Guardian. It’s enough to almost make me regret giving up golf when I was young.

In the world of professional golf, Kiran Matharu is an outsider thrice over: young, female and Asian. Late last year she qualified for the Ladies’ European Tour and will be its youngest player when she plays her first match at the beginning of February. She has won the English Ladies’ Amateur Championship, and the Faldo Junior Series, twice; and represented Great Britain and Ireland in the Curtis Cup. At 17, she is the same age as the international golfing superstar, Michelle Wie, but is already being touted as a better player.

C’mon Urmee, you could have told us more about this deal?

While we’re on the subject, the Sunday Times last weekend had a long article about the lack of Asian players in football. Worth reading for research and background etc.

ENGLAND spin bowler Monty Panesar was racially abused by an Australian cricket fan in a warm-up match ahead of the eagerly anticipated Ashes series, according to a report.

The bearded Sikh was called a “stupid Indian” during a tour match against New South Wales at the Sydney Cricket Ground on Sunday, according to The Daily Telegraph newspaper.

The incident comes after Australian cricket authorities warned fans that “idiots” would not be tolerated at the grounds in the wake of racial abuse hurled at South African players during a tour earlier this year. [The Australian]

via Dave Hill. It’s not like this doesn’t happen regularly.

1) On Friday 10th November the Memorial Gates Commemorative Committee is holding its fourth annual wreath laying ceremony on Constitution Hill. Led by Baroness Shreela Flather, it pays tribute to the huge contribution made by the five million men and women from the Indian subcontinent, Africa and the Caribbean who volunteered to serve with the British Armed Forces during the First and Second World Wars.

2) Saw a little piece today on 17 year old Kiran Matharu becoming the UK’s youngest female golf player with a scratch handicap. She made the news recently too in Dubai, is profiled here and even has her own website already. (As a sidenote my dad had always wanted me to become a professional golf player but I could never see myself doing that).

This, from the first One Day International between England and Pakistan, abandoned due to rain. Just as well really because England were looking to get thrashed.

More pictures from here.

How utterly bizarre and hilarious:

Darrell Hair, the umpire at the centre of the ball-tampering controversy, offered to resign from the International Cricket Council’s elite umpiring panel if he was paid $500,000.

Hair was the umpire who accused Pakistan of ball-tampering at The Oval last Sunday. He and his fellow umpire Billy Doctrove first penalised Pakistan five runs for ball-tampering and then judged they had forfeited the match by failing to halt a sit-in protest when play was due to resume.

Inzi may have behaved like a school kid but I still don’t see the need for a disciplinary hearing. [hat tip: Sahil]

Pakistan spoils their cricket stars like over-protective mothers. However, when emotions run so high, there is time to infuse some sense, in particular when they can endanger political sensibility.

However, it was sad to see Pakistani cricket players acting like a bunch of school boys upset with a strict teacher.

Pakistan may be licking their wounds after losing the Test series to England yesterday, but the real winners will be two rising stars, Monty Panesar and Sajid Mahmood, who may form the cornerstone of England’s bowling attack if they develop their game nicely.

The Guardian said today: “By any standard this was a memorable day for the future of multiculturalism in modern Britain.” But this does not explain the extent of what is going on here.

If examples need be provided that the police and our friendly Islamists are doing an idiotic dance together, then this is it.

A match involving the Israeli cricket team in Glasgow has been abandoned amid fears of demonstrations over Israel’s campaign in Lebanon. Organisers, the European Cricket Council, said it was cancelled because of public safety issues.
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Osama Saeed, of the Muslim Association of Britain, said of the decision to drop the match: “This is fabulous news, though we would wish that the decision had been taken earlier by the organisers on the grounds of principle rather than practicality.” [BBC News]

Needless to say Osama Saeed is an idiot. Would he be saying the same thing if Iran were excluded from the World Cup for their human rights abuses? Or if Pakistan were barred from playing with England or India for their own government excesses? No. I suspect he would be crying Islamophobia like he always does over everything. He also doesn’t understand another point.

Our idiotic police should have let them legitimately demonstrate while the match went ahead. But they stopped for the simple reason because they believe in their own racist way: “These wogs are just going to cause trouble and start a riot because that’s what they do at every opportunity. Let’s just stop the match for everyone’s sake.” Hence the use of “public safety” terminology. Of course he doesn’t realise this but that is another matter.

Keep religion out of sports. Is that too difficult to understand Osama? If you’re going to have standards then apply them consistently or else you look like a fool.

Update: It looks like the weekend matches still went ahead. Despite promises of “mass-protests”, 70 people turned up and behaved peacefully. That’s how it should have been.

Monty Panesar seems to be all over the place now. ‘The Montster’ has not only garnered vast amounts of space in the sports press, with practically every broadsheet devoting inches to him this week, but he is to grace the cover of Esquire magazine.

Of course Monty’s storming eight wicket match haul against Pakistan last weekend is a huge element in the sudden interest, but his cult following has been growing since he first debuted against India in March. From the very off, I can recall England fans enthusiastically cheering his frequent fielding gaffes instead of lambasting him.

It would be stating the patently obvious when I say never has one incident in football been the subject of so much hilarity. Even my mother has been speculating on what happened and she didn’t even care for who Zidane was two weeks ago. The world has gone mad.

Anyway, in order to celebrate the glorious head-butt (kids, I do not condone violence), I’ve culled together some animations from around the web and from emails.

We’re out. Little in life seems to change. But for now I present to you a different angle to the World Cup, which I originally decided not to post, until today. (The picture above is explained below.)
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This post was prompted by two things. Discussion about the World Cup with our Indian American contemporaries at Sepia Mutiny confused me somewhat. Most did not support America and many seemed rather anti-English. I thought better of posting anything then, but I received a text this evening, just as Rio Ferdinand wept.

My girlfriend is in Chennai, India, for a friend’s wedding. She told me that people were delighted and jumping for joy that England had crashed out and that no one in India supports England.

A while back Sunny posted on the treatment Joseph Harker recieved on his concern over St George’s flags in London. Interestingly there’s a somewhat similar post at The New Republic’s World Cup Blog by Jesse Zwick, an American Jew, over his initial response to landing in Germany in the midst of a nationalistic fervour not seen since the Nazi’s.

On Thursday last week, when India beat England to win the one-day international series 4-0, I could not help but let out a small cheer. What would Norman Tebbit think now, I asked myself immediately after, as I do almost every year.

On a regular basis, this turns up as a light-hearted debate on the BBC Asian Network, onto which I was recently invited as a panelist, along with Nasser Hussain’s dad….

The World Cup’s coming, excited excited! Ah football - the sport of cultured, educated and refined gentlemen and their lady friends. Right?

A shockingly-mistyped story from Rome reveals that neo-Nazis in Europe want to make the World Cup a battleground between themselves and Muslims. They plan to attack fans from all Muslim countries participating. A member of AS Roma’s hooligan faction claimed:

“We are united. For the first time we are talking and planning together, with the English, the Germans, the Dutch, the Spanish, everyone with the same objective. At the World Cup there will be a massacre.”