For the love of sports...

Peeps!

I agree with all that's mentioned in the previous post about the team'ism, if i may call it.
There are two perspectives to looking at this whole setup (yeah, one of those boring starters)

1. Equal Opportunity : (Broader picture)

“All of us do not have equal talent, but all of us should have an equal opportunity to develop our talents.” - John F Kennedy.

From a holistic view, this whole setup appears fair and absolutely just. Every person gets to play in a team that has a few "good" (experienced?) players and thereby step their own level a bit higher. If people were let to choose their own team, these guys, though filled with a lot of enthu, would not be picked by the better ones, for obvious reasons. This would have got these guys squashed out of the first game and never would have given them an opportunity to feel what its like to be in a highly competitive game (which by the way, I've heard, is awesome :-) ). Also, these aren't any league games playing for big bucks or knockout tournaments that decide your future. Just as Amit Chandna had already mentioned, its about getting to know each other across floors, across buildings. So yeah, its a peaceful world. We all go, take part, win/lose, go back home, sleep, wake up next day and move on.

2. Passion : (Deeper picture)

"An athlete is a normal person with the gift of an undying passion to be the best and achieve greatness." - Some genius.

The opening line of the TCS Sports month invitation letter read: "June is knocking on the door and the sportsperson in us is craving to get out in the sun and compete". For some, this might seem like a typical marketing line. For the rest, it is absolutely true and those are the words straight from the heart. Its been a ridiculously long 7 month winter wait. There aren't many winter sports that can be done on a regular day-to-day basis. And worse, we aren't very used to those games as well. So, this month means a helluva lot to those passionate sportspersons who crave for such events ever since they passed out of college and got themselves stuck in the very "beautiful" world of computers. These guys wouldn't start and stop thinking about these events during the month of June. Its a long wait until end of May and anxiety for the next year's event starts from Day 1 in July !

However, all this zeal might be crumbled down to tiny particles when they see themselves crashing out of the competition right after the first game. Let's face it, most of these are team events. A single guy can't do enough miracles. Remember LeBron James. Yes, there are a few who are glad they took part in a sports event. But this isn't a charity exhibition event that's organized to entertain some poor kids in Darfur. This is a competition man. You get there, sweat it out and pour that passion all over the field. Remember, you have to wait another long year for a similar event. And with the forever uncertain world of IT Consultancy, you don't even know if you'll be in Chicago with a million fellow desis or be the first indian to land in Alaska, next year same time ! (With TCS, you can never say, we really might have clients up there, but still, you got the point!)


Its a tough decision to choose between the both, considering the nature of this event. So, having said all that, how do we bring this ideal world of combining the two perspectives together, to reality? For one, I think, squeezing all the events into 3 or 4 weeks isn't the best of ideas. I frankly don't see any significant reasoning behind this except that we can't call it "..sports month". Who cares? In my honest opinion, it should scale to atleast 2 months minimum. I agree this might not have any direct connection to what we were talking about all along, but there is a remote one. When you have a longer duration, we tend to have leagues. Leagues help people get to know their teammates and plan a game much better. For most of us, its a direct transition from sweat pants to sports jerseys on the day of the competition. By the time a person warms up and gets back to previous year's form, he's already out of the competition.
(The old adage: "Form is temporary, class is permanent" won't work out as a defending argument against this , 'cos this is a knockout contest and u've got to be in the form from Day1) This way, even new entrants into these games will get a chance to learn a bit and exhibit certain quality, thereby, making this an all the more successful event. So, there you have your sports passion, team dynamics, getting to know fellow TCSers and also continuous fitness regime during the fewer months of summer that we poor people have. Well, let's take care of this next year.

For now ..... LET'S HUSTLE ! BRING IT ON !!!!!

D

"Sports remain a great metaphor for life's more difficult lessons. It was through athletics that many of us first came to understand that fear can be tamed; that on a team the whole is more than the sum of its parts; and that the ability to be heroic lies, to a surprising degree, within."