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Indian Archery

Here is a positive story amidst all the gloom ...... the sport of archery seems to be in good hands in India and the preparation for the forthcoming Olympics is going on in right earnest and there hopes of some medals from this team.....

RSK



Archery Olympic Camp concludes at Paljor Stadium

GANGTOK, 06 June: The 20-day Archery Olympic Camp for the Indian Olympic Archery Team held for the first time in Sikkim concluded here at Paljor Stadium today. Both men’s and women’s teams and even coaches expressed that the camp at Gangtok proved beneficial in preparation of their upcoming competitions.
It may be mentioned here that due to unfavourable weather conditions in Kolkata, the Archery Association of India [AAI] shifted the Archery camp to Paljor Stadium this time.
On the last day of the camp, Sikkim Archery Association president, PHE Minister, TT Bhutia accompanied by general secretary, Dr KB Gurung and other executive members of SAA, expressed their best wishes on behalf of the SAA and the people of Sikkim to the Indian team members and coaches. On the occasion, the president also handed over Site Allotment Order provided by the State government to Arjuna Awardee, Tarundeep Rai, at Lumsey in Tadong “in recognition of his outstanding performance in sports [Archery]”.
The SAA president mentioned that it was a proud moment for Sikkim to host the Olympic camp in the state and it was also a big achievement for the SAA. He further wished the archers luck for the Olympics and World Cup.
Speaking to media persons, Tarundeep expressed his gratitude to the government for the encouragement and support. He mentioned that the camp at Gangtok helped them a lot to practice for around 8 hours in a day which was not possible in Kolkata. He expressed his hope and expectation to qualify for the London Olympics with a better performance in the 3rd Stage of the Archery World Cup Tournament at Ogden in USA. Tarundeep thanked the SAA for supporting the coaching camp.
Likewise, Indian archer, Deepika Kumari, who is on the fifth position in world rankings at present, expressed that the camp at Gangtok would help them to a large extent in the Olympics as the weather conditions in London is similar to that of Gangtok’s. She expressed that Indian women’s team was in good form and would hopefully bag medals for the country in the London Olympics.
Chief Coach, Limba Ram Ahari, also stated that the pleasant weather conditions of Gangtok made long practice sessions possible and further added that such climate would also help archers to store energy and peace of mind.
The Chief Coach also expressed his deep gratitude towards the Sikkim Archery Association for their continuous support and cooperation.
The archers are undergoing training under chief coach, Mr Ahari assisted by coach, Ravi Shankar and coach, Purnima Mahato. The team was also accompanied by physiotherapist, Jaideep Das Choudhuri and masseur Anup Das.
The women’s team comprises of Deepika Kumari, L Bombyala Devi and Chekrovolu Swuro, who have already qualified for the upcoming London Olympics 2012 in the individual and team events. While, the men’s team has Sikkim’s own Tarundeep Rai, Jayanta Talukdar and Rahul Banerjee, among them only Jayanta Talukdar has qualified for the London Olympic 2012 in the individual category so far. Now, Tarundeep and Rahul have their last chance to qualify for the Olympics in the 3rd Stage of the Archery World Cup Tournament scheduled to be held at Ogden in USA from 17 to 24 June.

Website : http://indianarchery.info/index.htm

Spin Bowling .....

( By Akash Chopra)  

When Chris Gayle hit Rahul Sharma for five consecutive sixes in an IPL match in April, I found myself wondering not about Gayle's brute strength or his ability to hit sixes at will but the spinner's response to the onslaught. Would he slow it down, bowl a googly or try a big spinner?

Sharma changed his lines and lengths, but didn't significantly change his pace or variations. If anything, he bowled a bit quicker. Since he is believed to have modelled his action on the great Anil Kumble, it's worth deliberating how Kumble would have responded to such a situation. My educated guess tells me Kumble may have bowled a couple of googlies, taken the pace off another two, or tried a flipper, bowling it faster and pitching it short of a good length, so it skidded off the surface and forced Gayle to pull. All this may or may not have changed the outcome but the use of spinner's most potent weapon, deception, would definitely have made a contest of it.

Since Sharma is still cutting his teeth at international cricket, it's unfair to compare him to a man who has taken 600 Test wickets. But I like to believe that Kumble got to that milestone because of his desire to try something new each time, and not that he experimented only because he had a pile of wickets to support him. After all, records don't make men great; great men make records.

Let's take a look at how other spinners who have a realistic chance of playing for India in the next few years have responded in similar situations.

In the IPL, every time a left-hand batsman went after his bowling, Pragyan Ojha responded with yorkers aimed at the batsman's toes. Some missed their mark by a few inches, some were deposited into the stands by the likes of Gayle, and others went wide down the leg side.

Even Harbhajan Singh, despite his considerable experience, was guilty of bowling flat or fast yorkers under pressure.

Would Muttiah Muralitharan and Daniel Vettori have responded differently? Having watched them play in the IPL for the last five years, it's fair to say that both have enough tricks in the bag to not have to resort to bowling flat in these situations. Murali rarely bowls a yorker, for his strength lies in extracting spin off the surface and disguising his doosra. Vettori slows it down, keeps the ball hanging in the air for a fraction longer and changes his line to counter the onslaught.

R Ashwin is perhaps the only Indian fingerspinner willing to flight the ball, but unfortunately he too seems to be falling into the trap of bowling only doosras and carrom balls. He has compromised on a spinner's biggest strength, the ability to turn the ball, and his performance in Test cricket is getting affected by it.

	Few try to get drift in the air or put enough revolutions on the ball to extract spin and bounce off the surface. Most spinners are just slow bowlers who break the monotony of seam bowling

Not surprisingly, legspinners Piyush Chawla and Amit Mishra refrained from bowling yorkers, because leggies struggle to find the blockhole at will. Mishra bowled variations in the latter part of the tournament, but Chawla wasn't too inclined to turn the ball away from the right-handers.

While it's a given that the best fast bowlers in the IPL will be overseas players, it's a worry if the best spinners are not Indian. But it's not just the IPL; there are no good spinners on India's domestic circuit either. Few try to get drift in the air or put enough revolutions on the ball to extract spin and bounce off the surface. Most spinners are just slow bowlers who break the monotony of seam bowling.

As young batsmen we were told to spend quality time honing our skills to defend against the turning ball. It was imperative to transfer the weight at just the right time, keep the bottom hand loose always, and play close to the body. To succeed in first-class cricket you had to have a solid defence and the ability to hit the turning ball along the ground.

We practised these by playing with a tennis ball from a short distance. Even then, hours of training weren't enough every time, because spinners like Bharati Vij, Venkatapathy Raju, Sunil Joshi, Kanwaljit Singh and others would use the SG Test ball to their advantage and extract both drift and spin. They would rarely bowl flat and fast, because even a batsman's fiercest assault could be countered by deception.

Turning the ball a bit more than expected to get bat-pad dismissals, beating the batsman in the drift and forcing him to edge it to slip, or exploiting poor weight transfer by getting the batsman caught at short cover or midwicket were regular modes of dismissals. As a batsman, it was imperative to look for the shiny side even when facing spinners, for that helped you read the direction of the drift and the arm balls.

Today, even talking about all this makes me feel nostalgic because I can't name a single spinner in the domestic circuit who uses these skills. I also don't see batsmen spending hours to get their forward defence watertight against spin. The only thing a modern batsman does is place the bat in front of the front pad to avoid lbw decisions. Most spinners, not looking to extract any turn, try to bowl wicket to wicket, expecting to get leg-before decisions in case the batsman misses the line. Fielders at short leg and silly point are of ornamental value, except on rank turners. This is a sorry state of affairs for a country that boasted many fine spinners.

The deterioration in the quality of spin started about a decade ago, but the IPL has aggravated it. Anyone willing to practise the traditional craft of spin bowling is routinely overlooked by the IPL talent scouts. The temptation of making it into an IPL team is so huge that compromising flight and spin for accuracy and flatter trajectories seems a small price to pay.

While there were many young left-arm spinners on show this IPL season, not one of them bowled with a high-arm action or looked suitable for the longer version of the game. The moment you bowl with a round-arm action and lower your arm, you cease to get bounce off the surface. It also doesn't allow you to put enough revolutions on the ball to get spin off the surface, which is why such bowlers rely heavily on dusty pitches to spin the ball.

It is a lovely sight to watch batsmen struggling to dig out accurate yorkers, but only if the practitioner operating 22 yards away is a fast bowler, not a spinner.

Former India opener Aakash Chopra is the author of Out of the Blue, an account of Rajasthan's 2010-11 Ranji Trophy victory. His website is here and his Twitter feed here

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The One Fact about Mediclaim That Your Agent Will Never Tell You

It seems that the mindset of insurance consumer is subtly changing lately. People are much more aware of the earlier innocuous details in their health insurance policies. Maybe it's becausehealth care costs have gone up, and since the number of claims hasn't reduced, people are feeling a harder pinch now if insurance companies don't reimburse claims to the full extent.  The bottom line is that increased awareness is the need of the hour, and this article aims to help that cause. While there are many things you need to be aware of regarding health insurance, there's one thing that you absolutely must know about your Mediclaim policy and we'll get right to it.  The Impact of Room Rent The first and seemingly most harmless sub-limit (as they are called) in your health insurance policy is that of room rent. These days there are policies that don't have any sub-limits, in which case this doesn't apply, but most of us are still with our old policies that we have faithfully renewed every year, and so this clause very much applies to us.  Room rent is typically restricted to 1% of the Sum Assured in most cases and in some cases it is restricted to 2% of the Sum Assured. So if your policy is for Rs. 5 lakhs, allowing 1% room rent per day, your allowable room rent expense is Rs. 5,000. If you occupy a hospital room that costs more than Rs. 5,000 per day, the rest has to be paid from your own pocket because the policy will not allow it as an admissible cost to be reimbursed. This might seem like nothing. A lot of people think that this just means a few extra thousand rupees to be paid out of pocket, depending on the number of days stay in the hospital.  But that's not where it ends at all.  This clause has the single largest impact on your claim and all its other sub-limits. Let's see how it works. Suppose Mr. X, who has a Rs. 3 lakh Mediclaim policy, has to undergo a surgery which requires him to stay in hospital for 5 days.  All expenses incurred in a hospital will be more expensive if you choose a more expensive room. This is how hospitals work. For the same sort of treatment, a general ward patient will pay much less than a deluxe room patient. Everything from glucose to doctor visits are more expensive for a private room than for a twin shared room.  So if Mr. X chooses the most economical room option i.e. the general ward, all his expenses will be commensurately lower than if he were to choose say a deluxe room, even though he'd be getting the same surgery done.  If he were to choose the general ward, room rent is Rs. 2,000 per day, for example.  With the low room rent, all his other costs (for the same treatments) are also correspondingly low, and so his total hospital stay costs him Rs. 100,000 plus Rs. 2,000 per day for 5 days i.e. Rs. 1,10,000.  If he chooses a twin sharing room, having room rent of Rs. 4,000 per day, his expenses come to Rs. 20,000 for room rent for 5 days, and Rs. 2,00,000 for other expenses, bringing his total stay cost to Rs. 2,20,000.  For a deluxe private room, room rent is Rs. 6,000 per day, i.e. Rs. 30,000 for 5 days, and other costs are Rs. 3,00,000, bringing his total cost to Rs. 3,30,000.  Mr. X has a Rs. 3 lakh Mediclaim policy and he chooses the twin sharing room. His total stay cost comes to Rs. 2,20,000. What amount of claim do you think is going to be reimbursed by the company?  If you said Rs. 2,20,000, since this is within the sum assured of Rs. 3 lakhs, you would be wrong.  The room rent for the twin sharing room was Rs. 4,000 per day. This is higher than the 1% of Sum Assured sub limit imposed on room rent. So his claim for this amount is inadmissible. Accordingly, all other expenses (which are always dependent on room rent) become inadmissible to some extent as well.  The next lowest room available was for Rs. 2,000 i.e. the general ward.  Had he stayed here, his expenses would come to Rs. 1,10,000 totally. This is what the insurance company will pay, because the Rs. 2,000 room rent is the next lowest room rent that is within admissible limits based on the 1% room rent clause.  Do you see how it impacts him?  Admissible room rent was Rs. 3,000 (1% of SA).  Actual room rent was Rs. 4,000.  That's a difference of Rs. 1,000 per day, which for a 5 day stay would come to Rs. 5,000. Mr. X believes that he will simply pay Rs. 5,000 out of his own pocket. But instead of Rs. 5,000, he has to pay every correspondingly higher hospital expenses out of his own pocket as well.  Instead of simply incurring a Rs. 5,000 out of pocket expense, he incurs an out of pocket expense of Rs. 1,10,000.  There are policies available today that do away with sub-limits. There are also policies that do not impose a strict 1% clause, but do determine claim admissible on the basis of type or category of room, thus allowing the room rent to vary based on what different hospitals will charge for the same category.  Either way, you do not want to be stuck with a policy that limits you to 1% of your Sum Assured as room rent, as this is a very restrictive clause and can lead to a heavy out of pocket expense for you in the years to come. If you can, switch your policy to a better insurance company that does not restrict you in this way, and as always be sure to read the policy wordings very carefully before opting for a new policy.  Also remember, insurance planning, which also includes critical illness policies and personal accident policies, is part of your overall financial planning. Regardless of how ideal your insurance policy might be, it is still necessary tohave a contingency fund set aside for emergencies, both medical and otherwise.

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