Dhyan Chand Singh was an Indian Hockey player, and considered to be the all-time greatest player the game of Hockey has ever seen the world over. He has probably been the only Indian player ever in any sport which skills so high that generated a number of myths about his abilities as a Hockey player.He was born on the 29th of August 1905 at Prayag (Allahabad), Uttar Pradesh to a Rajput family. His father served the Indian Army as a Subedar, and played the game of Hockey. Initially known as Dhyan Singh, he had 2 brothers named Mool Singh and Roop Singh, the latter one too being an accomplished Hockey player. Dhyan could not resume his studies after 6th standard as his family used to move from one place to another, before finally settling down permanently at Jhansi.
INTRODUCTION TO HOCKEY
In his younger days, Dhyan was not much interested into sports although he liked wrestling a lot. He started playing Hockey with his friends who used to themselves make Hockey sticks from tree branches and balls from ragged clothes. At the age of 14 years he visited a Hockey match with his father, where one team was down by 2 goals. He insisted his father to play from the losing side, and when an Army Officer let him do so, Dhyan scored 4 goals for the team. Impressed by his skills, the Officer offered him to join the army and at the age of 16 years Dhyan was inducted into the Punjab Regiment as a Sepoy in the year 1922. Subedar-Major Bhole Tiwari of Brahmin Regiment became Dhyan’s mentor inside the Army and taught him the basics of the game. Pankaj Gupta was the first Coach of Dhyan Singh who predicted that one day he would shine like the Moon, called Chand in Hindi. Hence, Dhyan Singh came to be known as Dhyan Chand after that.
LEGENDARY DAYS
There are many incidents that describe the grandeur of Dhyan Chand’s amazing skills as a wonderful Hockey player. In one of them, he scored 3 goals in the last 4 minutes of a match wherein his team was losing by 2 goals, and got his team the victory in the match. This was the Final match of the Punjab Infantry Tournament in Jhelum. After this match, Dhyan Chand was named the “Hockey Wizard”.
Dhyan Chand delivered brilliant performance in the first Inter-Provincial (National) Hockey tournament that was organized in the year 1925. Five teams, viz. United Provices (UP), Punjab, Bengal, Rajputana and Central Provinces participated in the tournament. On the basis of his performance in the tournament, he was selected for the International Hockey team of India.
INTERNATIONAL CAREER
In the year 1926 Dhyan Chand was selected for the Indian Hockey team going to visit New Zealand at a tour. During the tour, the Indian team scored 20 goals in a match played at Dannkerke, and Dhyan Chand alone had scored 10 of them. India played 21 matches on the tour, out of which it won 18, lost 1 and drew 2 matches. The team scored a total number of 192 goals and Dhyan Chand alone had scored over 100 of them. After his return to India, he was promoted to the post of Lance Nayak in the Army. At the London Folkston Festival in 1927, he scored 36 goals out of India’s total 72 goals, in 10 matches played at the event.
He played for the Indian Hockey team in the Amsterdam Olympic Games 1928, and scored 2 out of the 3 goals in the final match against Netherlands, getting India the Gold Medal by a 3-0 win. In the Los Angeles Olympics 1932, the Indian team led by Lal Shah Bukhari again won the Gold Medal. In the tournament, the Indian Hockey team defeated the USA Hockey team by 23-1, which remained a world record until it was broken in the year 2003. Out of these 23 goals, 8 were scored alone by Dhyan Chand. In the event, Dhyan Chand scored 12 goals for India in 2 matches. In the Berlin Olympics 1932, Indian had successfully treaded their path to the finals crushing Hungary by 4-0, USA by 7-0 and Japan 9-0 without conceding a single goal in the tournament. The team defeated France in the Semi-Finals by 10 goals, and was going to combat Germany in the Finals. In the Final match, the Indian squad could score only 1 goal till the interval. Dhyan Chand removed his shoes in the interval and played the match barefooted onwards. The Indian team won the match and the Gold medal by 8-1.
Adolf Hitler, the German dictator supposedly offered Dhyan Chand a higher post in the German Army than the one he was holding in the Indian Army, but he politely denied the offer.
He kept playing till the age of 42 years, and retired from the game in the year 1948. Dhyan Chand met Don Bradman, the Cricket Maestro at Adelaide in the year 1935. After watching him play Hockey, Bradman commented “He scores goals like runs in Cricket.”
The last days of Dhyan Chand were not very happy, as he was short of money and was badly ignored by the nation. He developed liver cancer, and was sent to a general ward at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi. He died on the 3rd of December 1979.
For his extra-ordinary services to the nation, the Government of India celebrates Dhyan Chand’s birthday (29 of August) as National Sports Day. The Indian Postal Service issued a postage stamp in his memory, and the Dhyan Chand National Stadium at New Delhi has been named after him. He was honored by the Padma Bhushan award by the Government of India in the year 1956.
The FIFA World Cup, often simply the World Cup, is an international association football competition contested by the senior men's national teams of the members of Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), the sport's global governing body. The championship has been awarded every four years since the inaugural tournament in 1930, except in 1942 and 1946 when it was not held because of the Second World War.
The current format of the tournament involves 32 teams competing for the title at venues within the host nations over a period of about a month – this phase is often called the World Cup Finals. A qualification phase, which currently takes place over the preceding three years, is used to determine which teams qualify for the tournament together with the host nations.
The 19 World Cup tournaments have been won by eight different national teams. Brazil have won five times, and they are the only team to have played in every tournament. The other World Cup winners are Italy, with four titles, Germany, with three titles, Argentina and inaugural winners Uruguay, with two titles each and England, France, and Spain with one title each.
The World Cup is the world's most widely viewed sporting event; an estimated 715.1 million people watched the final match of the 2006 FIFA World Cup held in Germany.
After FIFA was founded in 1904, it tried to arrange an international football tournament between nations outside the Olympic framework in Switzerland in 1906. These were very early days for international football, and the official history of FIFA describes the competition as having been a failure.
At the 1908 Summer Olympics in London, football became an official competition. Planned by The Football Association , England's football governing body, the event was for amateur players only and was regarded suspiciously as a show rather than a competition. Great Britain won the gold medals. They repeated the feat in 1912 in Stockholm, where the tournament was organised by the Swedish Football Association.
WORLD CUPS BEFORE WORLD WAR 2
The issues facing the early World Cup tournaments were the difficulties of intercontinental travel, and war. Few South American teams were willing to travel to Europe for the 1934 and 1938 tournaments, with Brazil the only South American team to compete in both. The 1942 and 1946 competitions which Germany and Brazil sought to host were cancelled due to World War 2.
The 1950 World Cup, held in Brazil, was the first to include British participants. British teams withdrew from FIFA in 1920, partly out of unwillingness to play against the countries they had been at war with, and partly as a protest against foreign influence on football, but rejoined in 1946 following FIFA's invitation. The tournament also saw the return of 1930 champions Uruguay, who had boycotted the previous two World Cups. Uruguay won the tournament again after defeating the host nation Brazil.
The tournament was expanded to 24 teams in 1982 ,and then to 32 in 1998 allowing more teams from Africa, Asia and North America to take part. In recent years, teams from these regions have enjoyed more success, and those who have reached the quarter-finals include: Mexico quarter-finalists in 1986, Cameroon quarter-finalists in 1990, USA quarter-finalists in 2002, and Ghana as quarter-finalists in 2010. As usual, European and South American teams continue to dominate.
Two hundred teams entered the 2002 FIFA World Cup qualification rounds; 198 nations attempted to qualify for the 2006 FIFA World Cup, while a record 204 countries entered qualification for the 2010 FIFA World Cup..
The next three World Cups will be hosted by Brazil in 2014, Russia in 2018, and Qatar in 2022.
FIFA WORLD CUP TROPHY:-
This new trophy is not awarded to the winning nation permanently. World Cup winners retain the trophy until the next tournament and are awarded a gold-plated replica rather than the solid gold original.
At the present, all members Of the top three teams receive medals with an insignia of the World Cup Trophy: winners (gold), runner-ups (silver) and third-place (bronze). In the 2002 edition, fourth-place medals were awarded to hosts South Korea. Prior to the 1978 tournament, medals were only awarded to the eleven players on the pitch at the end of the final and the third-place match. In November 2007, FIFA announced that all members of World Cup-winning squads between 1930 and 1974 were to be retroactively awarded winners medals.
LEANDER PAES AND MAHESH BHUPATHI
(THE INDIAN
EXPRESS)
Leander Adrian Paes born ON 17 June 1973 is an Indian professional tennis player who currently features in the doubles events in the ATP tour and the Davis Cup tournament. Having won 6 Doubles and 6 Mixed Doubles Tennis Grand Slam titles and finishing runners up in numerous other Grand Slam finals, he is considered to be one of the greatest and most respected contemporary doubles and mixed doubles players in the world. He is among the most successful professional Indian tennis players and is also the former captain of the Indian Davis Cup team. He is the recipient of India's highest sporting honour, the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna award in 1996–1997, the Arjuna Award in 1990, and the Padma Shri award in 2001 for his outstanding contribution to tennis in India.
Leander was born in Kolkata formerly known as Calcutta, India. He was born to Vece Paes and Jennifer Paes and was raised in Kolkata, India. He was educated at La Martiniere Calcutta, Madras Christian College Hr Sec School, Chennai and the St. Xavier's College of the University of Calcutta. His parents were both sports persons. His father Vece Paes was a midfielder in the bronze medal winning Indian field hockey team at the 1972 Munich Olympics. His mother captained the Indian basketball team in the 1980 Asian basketball championship. Paes enrolled with the Britannia Amritraj Tennis Academy in Madras in 1985 where he was coached by Dave O'Meara. The academy played a key role in his early development. Leander shot into international fame when he won the 1990 Wimbledon Junior title and rose to No. 1 in the junior world-rankings. Paes is the great grandson of the Bengali poet Michael Madhusudan Dutt. Previously having dated Bollywood actress Mahima Chaudhary, he is now married to Rhea Pillai and has a daughter
Aiyana Paes. The doubles team of Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi grew stronger in 1998 reaching the Semi-Finals of 3 grand slams, the Australian Open, the French Open and the US Open. In the same year Paes had two of his biggest singles results in the ATP tour. The first one came by winning an ATP singles title at Newport and the second was beating Pete Sampras 6–3, 6–4 at the New Haven ATP tournament. In the year 1999, the duo reached the finals of all the 4 grand slams winning the Wimbledon and the French Open, thus becoming the first Indian pair to win a doubles event at a Grand slam event. Paes also teamed up with Lisa Raymond to win the Mixed doubles event at Wimbledon. The year also marked his ascent to the No. 1 ranking in the doubles. The following year Paes partnered with Sebastien Lareau for the Australian Open and Jan Siemerink for the French losing in the first round on both occasions. Paes teamed up again with Mahesh Bhupathi for the US Open but lost in the first round again. The duo had a disappointing second round exit to Australian duo of Todd Woodbridge and Mark Woodforde at the Sydney Olympics, despite high hopes. Paes was given the honour of carrying the Indian Flag at the opening ceremony of the Sydney Olympics. In spite of a winning the French Open in 2001, the team of Bhupathi and Paes had 1st round exits in the other 3 grand slams. Paes was awarded the Padmashri by the Government of India in 2001.The duo of Paes and Bhupathi won the gold medal at the 2002 Asian Games in Busan. In 2002 Leander paired up with Michael Hill for a number of tournaments with moderate success.
In 2007, Bhupathi and Czech Radek stepanek reached the 2007 Australian Open men's doubles event's quarterfinals. He teamed with Stepanek at the 2007 French Open to make the doubles semifinals, defeating dual-year defending champions Jonas Bjorkman and Max Mirnyi in the quarterfinals. The team lost to the eventual champions Mark Knowles and Daniel Nestor. After Wimbledon Bhupathi teamed along with Pavel Vizner to win the 2007 Canada Masters defeating the top-ranked doubles team Bob and Mike Bryan en route. After this victory, he won a tournament in New Haven with Nenad Zimonjic. At the 2007 US Open, he and Zimonjic paired in doubles. After the US Open, the team that beat Bhupathi and stepanek in the French Open semifinals, Mark Knowles and Daniel Nestor, split. Bhupathi was to become the new partner of Mark Knowles while ZimonjiC will partner Nestor, but back surgery means he is now expected to be out until the end of the year. In 2009, Bhupathi and doubles partner Sania Mirza won the mixed doubles title at the Australian Open, beating Nathalie Dechy and Andy Ram 6–3, 6–1 in the final in Melbourne. The ace Indian pair thus made up for the disappointment of last year's final when they were beaten by Tiantian Sun and Nenad Zimonjic. With this win, Bhupathi's count in mixed doubles Grand Slam titles swells to seven.
Bhupathi broke up his partnership with Knowles and began playing once again with Max Mirnyi, whom he played with to win the 2002 US Open. In 2011, Bhupathi reunited with former playing partner Leander Paes for the 2011 Australian Open. The team of Bhupathi and Paes reached the final, but lost 3–6, 4–6 to Bob and Mike Bryan.
