Kevin Garnett, the long-suffering anchor of the never-quite-there Minnesota Timberwolves, has been pumping up India’s basketball prospects while on an Asian publicity tour. (Thanks, tipster Kumar!) Garnett said he felt a lot of enthusiasm for the sport in India, and suggested the country might emerge into the world game in the same way that China has started to do behind Yao Ming.

Of course, until some Indian school or club produces a 7-foot freak of nature with half decent ball handling skills, this scenario will lack a crucial component for take-off. Better perhaps to take the grassroots approach, as another major American sports organization, Major League Baseball, is doing. In November, after the US season is over, MLB’s Envoy Program will send a team of coaches to conduct a month of baseball clinics in five Indian cities: Delhi, Bombay, Chennai, Calcutta, and Imphal.

Uh… Imphal?

I know you don’t need me to tell you where Imphal is! It’s the capital of Manipur, of course, a largely “tribal” state in India’s far northeast. Seems like baseball has been thriving in Manipur for several decades, ever since (it is thought) American troops deployed there introduced it during World War II.

“Thriving” is a relative term, of course, since there isn’t a single dedicated baseball diamond in the state. However there are 26 organized men’s baseball clubs, 4 women’s teams, and a governing association; they play a regular season, improvising diamonds on fields borrowed from other sports.

A New York and Imphal venture called First Pitch is working on promoting Manipur baseball and raising funds to build a dedicated baseball stadium and equip the teams. A local club has already donated land. The project’s American chair, Muriel Peters, and Manipuri executive director, Somi Roy, both come from the film world. Director Mirra Bank is filming a documentary. A five-minute promo by a Manipuri director set to a translation of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” is here.

Perhaps a part of this venture’s appeal in the philanthropic world is that it’s just that little bit hokey. But who knows? Perhaps a generation from now, Manipuri players will be commonplace in the American game. That’s why they call it Field of Dreams… Continue reading →

A couple of hours from now, 22 handsome men of various shapes and hues will peel off their sweat-drenched jerseys and exchange them, amid hugs and kisses and mussing of hair, before a crowd of tens of thousands and a television audience of billions. And just like that, the World Cup will be over.

As the sporting winner emerges from the final pairing of France and Italy, so shall the competitionÂ’s winning narrative, the storyline of storylines that best succeeds in taking events on the field and giving them interpretive power to tell us something about the world we live in.

It is interesting that we are having discussions right now at the Mutiny about nationalism, jingoism, patriotism, anti-nationalism, and matters of that sort, at the same time that the worldÂ’s quadriennial celebration of national identities wraps up. The World Cup is a curious beast, it is a time when national loyalties are expressed, loudly and even virulently, yet in a choreographed manner and by universally recognized rules of engagement and fair play, for a limited duration and all at the same time.

ItÂ’s as much a celebration of the porousness of national barriers as it is of their continued relevance. ItÂ’s an event that inherently applauds globalization – the demographic flows, the internationalization of the business of sports, the diffusion of popular culture, the technological advances that permit billions of people to watch the same high-quality image feeds, the ease of travel that permits delegations of supporters to travel from the far corners of the planet. And itÂ’s also an opportunity to wrap oneself in oneÂ’s flag – or that of another country to which one feels loyalty, or kinship, or just a whimsical fancy. Continue reading →

Freshly back from Germany where he attended several first-round matches, reader “Farouk Engineer” shares this photograph of an Australia fan encountered amidst the swirling hordes of international merrymakers currently roaming the land of Goethe and Bratkartoffeln.

In just a few hours from this writing, we’ll know whether the sister’s impossible dream of seeing the Socceroos hoist the World Cup lives another day. Australia takes on heavily-favored Italy at 1700 CET. But the result is no foregone conclusion. Australia have earned admirers for their fluent, enthusiastic football. Made up mostly of journeymen who play for not-quite-marquee European sides (Middlesbrough, Alaves, Dresden…) Australia are a sort of deluxe version of the US team that held Italy to an ill-tempered 1-1 draw. Their coach, flying Dutchman Guus Hiddink, was the artisan of the 2002 South Korea side that rampaged through a series of upsets of highly rated Mediterranean sides including Portugal, Spain, and, yes, Italy. Meanwhile, Italy will play without their veteran defensive anchor Alessandro Nesta. I still like gli Azzurri to take this one, but if Australia can drag it into extra time, a famous upset could be in the making.

In other news, yesterday’s Netherlands-Portugal slugfest had to be one of the uglier matches ever, with Russian referee Valentin Ivanov losing control of proceedings early and reduced to gallivanting about the field brandishing yellow and red cards. Sixteen of the former and four of the latter amounted to a disgrace of a game in which the referee’s card-happiness provoked the players into great petulance, and vice versa.

Amid all this Holland lost 1-0 and they had it coming to them. The Dutch are much-loved in the football world, but much of it is based on past glory (the 1970s “Total Football” side anchored by the great Johann Cruyff), more recent elegant but underachieving sides, and good public relations. At the same time, Holland has some of the roughest hooligans (the pitched battles between Ajax and Feyenoord ultras are legendary) and vulgar, inebriated supporters. “Farouk” reports running into squadrons of middle-aged Dutch men in Germany dressed in nothing but clogs and orange women’s bikinis with their private parts casually dangling out. Lovely!

Continue reading →