Gollum Posted August 12, 2015 Posted August 12, 2015 Sania is only the second tennis player after Leander Paes to be named for the top award. Paes had been bestowed the honour way back in 1996 after his bronze medal in the Atlanta Olympics. :hatsoff: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/sports/tennis/top-stories/Sania-Mirza-to-be-conferred-Rajiv-Gandhi-Khel-Ratna/articleshow/48436281.cms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajiv_Gandhi_Khel_Ratna Looking at past winners, very surprising to see that Dravid, VVS, Sehwag, Kumble, Dada, Bhupathi, Humpy, UV, Zaheer, Harikrishna, Dipika etc haven't been given this award :whack:. MSD on the list :hysterical::hysterical: Good going Sania, the way media/Indian public/GOI have fallen in love with her antics she may win the Bharat Ratna too very soon. Who knows in her mind she is chasing Margaret Court's 24 majors.:giggle:
Texan Posted August 12, 2015 Posted August 12, 2015 Since this award is generally given to active players or teams that have significant achievements in the given year and have not previously been bestowed with this award, Sania Mirza probably has the most achievements in the given year. However, winning doubles titles in tennis is nowhere even close to what it used to be about 30 years ago and more. Top players no longer play doubles and many tennis veterans have suggested that doubles should be excluded from Grand Slams. The fact that she doesn't play any singles despite being fairly young is a big compromise. I personally feel that if there is no truly deserving candidate, the award should not be bestowed on anyone.
Desi Cartman Posted August 12, 2015 Posted August 12, 2015 Hang on! Why is it called Rajiv Gandhi award? Wtf has he done to be associated with it?
BeautifulGame Posted August 12, 2015 Posted August 12, 2015 Since this award is generally given to active players or teams that have significant achievements in the given year and have not previously been bestowed with this award, Sania Mirza probably has the most achievements in the given year. However, winning doubles titles in tennis is nowhere even close to what it used to be about 30 years ago and more. Top players no longer play doubles and many tennis veterans have suggested that doubles should be excluded from Grand Slams. The fact that she doesn't play any singles despite being fairly young is a big compromise. I personally feel that if there is no truly deserving candidate, the award should not be bestowed on anyone. Sania has also gold in Asian games so deserves her medal regardless other success
Gollum Posted August 12, 2015 Author Posted August 12, 2015 From the top of my head Harikrishna(highest rank of world number 16, won 3 tourneys in a much more competitive sport than doubles tennis), Dipika(Canada Open singles champion beating all top seeds), Sindhu(2nd bronze in the World Championship, something even which Saina hasn't come close to achieving in her career even once !!!) all performed much better than the doubles specialist this year. Pretty sure there will be many more such high achievers in other sports. Being a drama queen and a media darling shouldn't equate to being given such awards. How the **** did MSD get this thing and not RD,Dada,VVS,Viru,Jumbo etc?
Temujin Khaghan Posted August 12, 2015 Posted August 12, 2015 no one knows/cares about doubles lol.. martina hingis' name brought some news space for '15 doubles in the international media. thats about it.
BeautifulGame Posted August 12, 2015 Posted August 12, 2015 MSD captained India to 2 World cup wins How many world cups did Dravid Ganguly and Kumble and VVS win let alone captain and win
Gollum Posted August 12, 2015 Author Posted August 12, 2015 MSD captained India to 2 World cup wins How many world cups did Dravid Ganguly and Kumble and VVS win let alone captain and win MSD won this award in 2007/8 by which time he had only won a T20 WC and had a very short career(3 years). BTW his contribution in that campaign was zilch. You cannot be serious while comparing this guy with our legends who surpassed him in the real deal, test cricket. And 3 out of these 4 also had tremendous ODI careers.
BeautifulGame Posted August 12, 2015 Posted August 12, 2015 MSD won this award in 2007/8 by which time he had only won a T20 WC and had a very short career(3 years). BTW his contribution in that campaign was zilch. You cannot be serious while comparing this guy with our legends who surpassed him in the real deal, test cricket. And 3 out of these 4 also had tremendous ODI careers. Test cricket isnt the real deal in India .World cup is the real deal in India and Dhoni won India the world cup after 24 years .
Texan Posted August 12, 2015 Posted August 12, 2015 Sania has also gold in Asian games so deserves her medal regardless other success Again in doubles. I am not saying that she didn't achieve much. She definitely has a lot of accomplishments over the last year. However, my argument is tennis doubles is just not competitive enough today. She should have continued with her singles career. Even reaching the quarter-final of a Grand Slam in singles is a much much bigger achievement than winning the doubles title.
Texan Posted August 12, 2015 Posted August 12, 2015 MSD won this award in 2007/8 by which time he had only won a T20 WC and had a very short career(3 years). BTW his contribution in that campaign was zilch. You cannot be serious while comparing this guy with our legends who surpassed him in the real deal, test cricket. And 3 out of these 4 also had tremendous ODI careers. MSD helped the team win the first ever T20 WC that year. It was also after a gap of 24 years that we won a WC in cricket. I don't think we should dispute that.
Gollum Posted August 12, 2015 Author Posted August 12, 2015 Sad to see the state of Indian sports when someone as mediocre as Sania gets our top sporting award.
BeautifulGame Posted August 12, 2015 Posted August 12, 2015 Again in doubles. I am not saying that she didn't achieve much. She definitely has a lot of accomplishments over the last year. However' date=' my argument is tennis doubles is just not competitive enough today. She should have continued with her singles career. Even reaching the quarter-final of a Grand Slam in singles is a much much bigger achievement than winning the doubles title.[/quote'] Competitiveness in sports should matter .Achievement is what consideration should be IMO. She won India the gold medal in Asian Games thay itself a massive achievement Otherwise Cricket is one of the least competitive sport in the world .And none of our cricketers should ever be eligible for any award or achievement not even Sachin honestly
Raghav_12 Posted August 12, 2015 Posted August 12, 2015 I don't think she deserves it even with most generous criteria. A player who was relegated from top tier to compete in second rung should not be receiving highest sporting award of the country. I would rather give it to Ishant Sharma than Saniz Mirza.
Texan Posted August 12, 2015 Posted August 12, 2015 Competitiveness in sports should matter .Achievement is what consideration should be IMO. She won India the gold medal in Asian Games thay itself a massive achievement Otherwise Cricket is one of the least competitive sport in the world .And none of our cricketers should ever be eligible for any award or achievement not even Sachin honestly Disagree. Cricket is a competitive game. It is played by many countries around the World and the Test playing nations come from different continents (Asia, Europe, Africa, S America, Australia). You are confusing between games that require supreme fitness like athletics v/s a game like cricket that requires mostly skill, but a little bit of fitness as well. Competitiveness in a sport does not mean it must always require supreme fitness.
Gollum Posted August 12, 2015 Author Posted August 12, 2015 Its pretty clear her religion is the issue for u rather than her talent . So its pointless really LOL at religion. I don't care about her religion, I clearly mentioned Dipika as a worthy contender and you know what, she too is a minority. I would have had no qualms had she been given the award if she had done something good in singles. Paes got it for the Atlanta Olympics bronze, not for some doubles achievements. If doubles were the criteria Bhupathi deserved it ahead of Sania for he has won 5 times as many majors as her, he too is a minority FFS, don't be so narrow minded. In Asian Games we always sweep the tennis medals(esp doubles), so nothing big about that. And for that matter Indian won 11 golds and 57 medals in Incheon, some won multiple medals.
Gollum Posted August 12, 2015 Author Posted August 12, 2015 Competitiveness in sports should matter .Achievement is what consideration should be IMO. She won India the gold medal in Asian Games thay itself a massive achievement Otherwise Cricket is one of the least competitive sport in the world .And none of our cricketers should ever be eligible for any award or achievement not even Sachin honestly Tennis is an elite game, you need lots of $$$$ to be admitted to tennis clinics. It may be more global than cricket but only the super rich can afford it. It is mostly an upper class white man's game while cricket breaches the class barrier. Sachin had to compete with millions of other kids to get into the XI. Globally more people play cricket than tennis but they aren't as well spread out as tennis, that I agree.
BeautifulGame Posted August 12, 2015 Posted August 12, 2015 LOL at religion. I don't care about her religion' date=' I clearly mentioned Dipika as a worthy contender and you know what, she too is a minority. I would have had no qualms had she been given the award if she had done something good in singles. Paes got it for the Atlanta Olympics bronze, not for some doubles achievements. If doubles were the criteria Bhupathi deserved it ahead of Sania for he has won 5 times as many majors as her, he too is a minority FFS, don't be so narrow minded. In Asian Games we always sweep the tennis medals(esp doubles), so nothing big about that. And for that matter Indian won 11 golds and 57 medals in Incheon, some won multiple medals.[/quote'] Bhupathi deserves it and should be given .He is one of the leading Athletes India has produced .But that doesn't discredit Sania's achievement or that she deserves it.She has won 7-8 medals in Asian games in her career and one of the leading athletes we have produced . We are sweeping sweeping these Tennis medals because of the likes of Sania Paes and Bhupathi .We hardly won anything in Asian games in women's tennis so that's pointless And yes we have repeated medal winners in Asian or CW games they deserve the award than the likes of Rohit Sharma
Shivaji bhonsle Posted August 12, 2015 Posted August 12, 2015 Will we ever see an Indian winning the singles?
Raghav_12 Posted August 12, 2015 Posted August 12, 2015 Will we ever see an Indian winning the singles? :(( We have gone down big time in singles. Earlier Ramanathan Krishnan and Vijay Amritraj used to be among the top players who would reach Rd 16 or QF of grand slams. Few would know that in 1984 whole year John Mcenroe lost just three matches (arguably greatest year for a player ever) and one of those was to Vijay Amritraj. Later we atleast had presence in top 100 with likes of Ramesh Krishnan and earlier version of Paes. But now all we have few pretenders playing doubles claiming to play top tier tennis :((
Recommended Posts