Sportsman's spirit in today's sports..

An interesting day lies ahead in Mohali.. Can Pakistan hold on for a long time with their tail? Will the Indians cruise home and go to Calcutta with a 1-0 advantage? Well, we'll find out tomorrow.. As they say, cricket is a funny game.. And anything's possible!

From cricket to chess, Garry Kasparov has apparently announced his retirement after the recently concluded Linares Super Grandmasters chess tournament. This probably marks the end of another era in World chess. Now it is upto our very own Vishwanathan Anand to claim the top spot in the world of chess. He's probably the most successful Indian in any sport today.

Moving on to soccer, it was a very satisfying pre-quarterfinal round for me in the Champions league. In practically every match, it was the underdogs who made it through. Who would have imagined a quarterfinal line-up without Real Madrid, Man U, Arsenal and Barcelona at the beginning of the season! The latter stages of the championship might see more defensive qualities coming to the fore with teams like Milan, Juve, Bayern coming through. Chelsea is probably one of the favourites now while Lyon would be the team to watch out for.

There's been a lot written and discussed about Sachin not walking yesterday when he was clearly out bat and pad to Kaneria. The fact is that not many(in fact hardly any) batsmen walk nowadays. A lot has been written about sportsmanship and media rarely misses out on an opportunity to praise any sportsman showing the "True Sporting Spirit". Here's a very interesting article on this by Rohit Brijnath. He brings out a very pertinent point about a lot of discourtesy shown openly nowadays. It is very commonly found in the soccer field as well, a very good example would be the last match between Real and Juve where Ronaldo and Tacchinardi were sent off for an unnecessary tussle. Things are seeming to go from bad to worse with every passing day. And there seems to be no escaping it with individuals/teams resorting to anything in the name of competition.