CRUNCH - All things crunched.

IN YOUTH WE HOPE & IN AGE WE EXPECT  across the multiple sporting events and initiatives unfolding across the world these days, there is one consistent thread. the world is getting ready to welcome a new set of champions. At the Australian open, in the winter olympics, in the U23 AFC, or the under 19 world cup of cricket a new bunch of athletes are taking centre-stage. A new crop of countries are producing the latest champions. A whole new sports culture is emerging from kids coming from mixed families. What is surprising is ... the reputation these kids come with.  The future is interesting because it looks different from the present. Countries often invest in future sports initiatives to avoid the mistakes of the past. investments are made, foreign coaches are sought, facilities are improved and diets are changed only to place an athlete on a podium.  Today development and training has followers. Even before these athletes start achieving, they develop huge f...

An u-23 football has bought more cheer to a nation than its biggest cultural festival. how can a game of football compare with a festival so deeply ingrained in culture. moments of victory in sport have god like characteristics and can quickly turn into an emotional upheaval. it transcends the player and the sport itself and begins to connect with primal & existential  motivations. the success of the sportsman becomes an achievement of a nation. the shared symbols of identity become remarkably stronger as an uniting force. something similar has happened in the last few days. the outpour of happiness has been unprecedented and the expression of happiness has been heart-warming. the simplicity of the expression of happiness is the most surprising element. it has shown, how the real world is still larger than the virtual world and when people come out in numbers they share a bigger cheer. the visuals of this victory are astounding rather than the victory itself.    ...

reviving sports a lot of internet and publishing ink has been spilt and spent on reviving sports for a new generation of audience. viewership and ticket sales for high profile events are dwindling and revenues and bleeding. will the offside rule save field hockey or the 21 point format save badminton. some experiments like the 20-20 format in cricket has worked but futsal has not been as widely popular as the creators imagined. just like the reinvention of comic heroes for a film audience, the revival of the sport depends on the new target it is trying to cater to. so if an association of polo is trying to save the sport, it must follow the narrative of a film and not the classical narrative of the sport. there is merit in understanding how darren aronofsky used artistic perfection as metaphor to create interest for a subject like ballet. perhaps sport people need to understand the pursuit story to appreciate the performance story. a larger context of content creation is prob...

The board room, borrows liberally from the playground. sport and battles have been the favorite guidebook for strategists because it facilitates a breakdown of the complexities into tangible options. but the reverse of this situation may not be true. strategy has not returned the favor to sport. the lack of real strategist in sport is an interesting omission, largely because sport finds it hard to create generals. in sport, the general is the coach.  but often coaches represent wisdom and technique not necessarily guile & trickery. often tactic is misunderstood for strategy.  A famous example is illustrated below by the brand 'beats'. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWithLP0VlQ strategy is probably the weakest in team sports like football or cricket because it deals with a collective bunch of skills than individual mastery. maybe it is time to break team sports into individual sport and have them execute specific strategies to make sport more interesting. https://w...