The Hindu : Sport : No way to treat legends!

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Feb 26, 2005

Sport

Sport

No way to treat legends!

By K. P. Mohan

SHABBY TREATMENT: Sprint queen P.T. Usha's name has been wrongly spelt on the Union Sports Ministry's website.

NEW DELHI, FEB. 25. What's in a name? Plenty, especially when you are referring to a legend. That, too, on an official website.

And when a goof-up happens twice within the space of a week, you wonder how anyone could be so ignorant as to write the first name of India's greatest sportswoman wrongly.

Yes, we are talking about P. T. Usha here.

Make a visit to the Union Sports Ministry's `sportal', the website launched by the Youth Affairs and Sports Minister, Sunil Dutt, last November, www.sportal.nic.in. Click `Legends', right in the middle, at the top, scroll down and reach `P', then look for the country's best known woman athlete.

It is there. But wait, it sounds strange, `Payyoli Thevaraparampil Usha'.

You always thought it was `Pilavullakandi Thekkeparambil'. And you were right. It happened to be a mouthful, especially to those uninitiated to a Malayalee name. The rather complicated `expansion' of `P. T.' was sprung by the media following Usha's epoch-making entry into the final of the 400m hurdles at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. Of course, people knew of it earlier, too. But then, not many bothered about expanding those initials. P. T. Usha was the best way to write her name. Even now it is.

Through the years, post-Los Angeles, people have spelt `Pilavullakandi' with an additional `l' or an extra `k', perhaps `thekkeparambil' with a superfluous `a' or an extra `p' or something similar, but never put `Payyoli' as her family name. `Payyoli Express' was a media creation, a nickname to signify her speed, referring to her father's hometown near Kozhikode. (She was born in Koothali, a township nearby. Incidentally, Express trains never stopped at Payyoli. Even now, they don't!.)

But `Thevaraparampil'? Where did they get that? It doesn't make any sense.

A week earlier, one had spotted `Pilavullakanoi Thekkaparambil' on the same site and promptly dashed off an e-mail to the ministry, saying how scandalous it looked to have the country's best known sportswoman spelt like that. It was a `typo' all right, the ending with `kanoi' instead of `kandi' (gate) and yet when people made such pains to create a `legends' page and took the trouble of writing a name so elaborately, instead of a simple `P. T. Usha', a correction was called for.

Little did one realise at that time that a bigger howler would be the end result.

There are other mistakes as well on the site, but more glaring are the omissions from the `legends' list. There is no K. D. Jadhav, the first Indian individual medal winner at the Olympics, and no Henry Rebello, the triple jumper who became the first athlete from Independent India to make an Olympics final. No mention of Hari Chand and Shivnath Singh, two of the best distance runners India has had.

There is no Lala Amarnath, Vijay Merchant or Gundappa Viswanath either. P. K. Banerjee, Sailen Manna and Peter Thangaraj are there, but no Mewalal, Chuni Goswami, Arun Ghosh, Syed Nayeemuddin, Jarnail Singh or Inder Singh, to name some of the footballing legends who do not get mention.

Among those sportspersons who are still active, discus thrower Neelam J. Singh has been included, but not long jumper Anju B. George, the country's only medal winner in a World championships. Tennis player Leander Paes, shooter Jaspal Rana and footballer Bhaichung Bhutia are there, but not shooter Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore, the only Indian ever to win an individual silver at the Olympics. Many great hockey players, both male and female, had been left out. In the coming years, Narain Karthikeyan and Sania Mirza should be joining the Sportal `legends'.

When you move from the `legends' section to the sportspersons' database, you are in for further amusement if not shock. Rajyavardhan Rathore is listed under weightlifting! There is nothing about him there barring his date of birth and, strangely, the mention of Madhya Pradesh as his home State instead of Rajasthan. It simply says `no information exists' under `Medals/Awards'.

Rathore need not despair; a majority of the sportspersons listed have practically nothing against their names. The web host could easily have put a line over there: "this section is under construction."

On the plus side, the site looks neat, is cool on the eyes, loads easily, is easy to browse and has some useful links and information including that on doping and prohibited substances.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Sport