Friends, I havent' posted a blog for a while - so here goes......! The cricket season has begun and true to form, with just six months to go for the World Cup, India does not have a settled team yet. Hopefully, we will see our big guns returning to form during the Champions trophy.

It has been quite a dismal year for India on the Sports front so far - the Indian team's performance in the World Cup hockey was disastrous to say the least, Sania Mirza has not had a good year except the brilliant win over Martina Hingis a few days ago; Leander Paes has been chugging along belying his age. Mahesh Bhupathi has had an indiffirent year. Our shooters have done well in patches and we heard some good news about the swimmer Arjun Muralidharan - though I do not know how his performance stacks up against Asian benchmarks.

This brings up a question.....is performance on the sporting arena linked to overall economic development? It certainly matters in individual sports as there is more money, more people/companies willing to sponsor sportspersons. In team sports too, with more economic activity, there are more companies willing to sponsor teams, so there is more money to hire better coaches, improve the technology etc. So why arent' we seeing any dramatic improvements in performance in Soccer, Hockey etc.? Is the sad truth that we are just not a sporting nation? At least not yet - maybe!