Left field
The Reuters global sports blog
from India Insight:
Going global in India’s chaotic way
India is globalising, but not the way much of the world wants.
That rather contradictory thought nagged at me one morning during the chaotic Commonwealth Games here in New Delhi.
On the road to the media venue's gate, I trudged past a squatter's family living in a tarpaulin. The mother was helping her son pee on my left. Rubbish, the smelly, sickly kind, lay to my right. My shoes sunk in mud from an unfinished pavement.
Hardly the stuff of a showcase international event meant to rival China. But after four years in India, the scene appeared normal. So was news during the Games that stocks had hit a near three-year high and that the Economist had predicted India's economy would soon outpace China.
For the umpteenth time, a centuries-old history bubbled under the surface of this emerging global power, a pressure cooker of India's own eccentricities and ills that seem to avoid blowing up, despite straining at the seams.
from India Insight:
Privatise the Commonwealth Games?
There are two reports today that say everything about the fiasco of the Commonwealth Games. On the one hand, while Delhi government cleaners are apparently refusing to clean the toilets at the Games village because they were so "nauseating", the Games organisers are calling in the help of some luxury private hotels, including the Taj and Oberoi, to help with hygiene.
There you have it. After nearly four years in India, most of the positive headlines I have read have come from the can-do attitude of Indian business or the energy of non-government grassroots organisations. The negative has mostly come from rafts of stories of the Indian state - the skimming of billions of dollars, the failure of basic health and education services.
from India Insight:
Mind your pees & queues for the Delhi Games
With just six months to go before India hosts the Commonwealth Games, some are already wondering whether New Delhi is loo-ready for the sporting extravaganza.
The capital is preparing to host more than 100,000 foreign visitors for the October Games, seen as an opportunity to show off the city as a major global destination.
Sport on sub-continent threatened after attack on Sri Lanka cricketers
Scenes of bloodshed on the streets of Lahore after gunmen attacked the Sri Lankan team bus instantly ended any hopes Pakistan might have held of coaxing the cricketing world back to its grounds.
Repercussions from Tuesday’s incident that left six players wounded and five policemen dead may also be felt through the entire region for years to come (read our main report here and click here for reaction).
