Dada, Race and Records!

India lost its first match under new coach Greg Chappell in the triangular cricket series in Sri Lanka against the home team. But the real bad news was Saurav's ban has been reduced and he could play the games following the match against the West Indies, which by the way, India managed to win.

It was saddening to watch a weakened West Indies team without many of the main players including Lara, Sarwan, Gayle who stayed away due to personal sponsorship issue. India did struggle, as always, but Captain Dravid once again came to the rescue and saved the blushes for India. With Saurav back in the team for the next match, I am sure India will get back to what it is best at doing - losing!

It was another Indian though who stole the headlines from Dravid. Yes! Narain Karthikeyan finished a respectable 12th ahead of his team-mate and a Minardi car. Kimi Raikkonen won the race, with his bad luck not only coming to an end but was transferred to Alonso who finished outside the points scoring positions. I could actually see a faint smile from Kimi when he stepped onto the podium! The Schumacher brothers finished 2nd and 3rd, the elder one just managing to finish ahead of the younger one. Good to see Ferrari on the podium again.

The latest buzz is that Barichello would move to Bar-Honda next season with Jenson Button moving to BMW-Williams. Sauber's Felippe Massa is a strong candidate to fill the vacant position at Ferrari. That means if Narain performs well in the remaining races and impresses Peter Sauber, he may just get a chance to race with Sauber! The Sauber team has been the launching pad for many talented racers who then moved on to bigger teams, Kimi being one among them.

One more thing that's a common happening is the tumbling of world records in many sports. Really, breaking world records is getting as common as Mourinho blasting the FA or Ganguly flopping in cricket matches.

Russia's Isinbayeva broke her own world record in women's pole vault for the 16th and 17th time and is fast closing in on pole vault legend Sergei Bubka's record of 30+ world record breaks. Talk about breaking a world record's record!

In the world swimming championships at the US, almost all world records were broken in different categories. Piersol, Hackett are among the record breakers whom I know of. Another Olympic champion Michael Phelps, as always, bagged a bag of medals, mostly gold i guess.

Well, as an Indian it hurts a lot to see just a lone Indian grab a medal at the Olympics when small countries like Ethiopia gets a few. Hmmm...some things never quite change - be it, India struggling to get an Olympic medal or Dada struggling to make runs!