Sports Injury

Sports are something most of us must have been played during some part of our life. In India, sport is an active part in our life mostly during the school days. With age, most of us take our self out of it and actively involve in building ones career (sports as a career is still not very lucrative in India).

I have also been into active sports during my school days. And with sports comes injury. According to some statistics, more then half of injury in children can be related to sports. As I grew up, I took myself almost out of regular sports, and in some case, completely out of it.

So why am I writing this now? Well I am back into some sports very recently. Having an active team in office makes life quite easier. We involve our self in some kind of sports in office. Cricket being the most popular sports in India; it’s a clear winner with us too. We do play soccer sometimes. I injured myself during a friendly soccer match in office. The injury kept me limping for almost couple of weeks. I wisely realized how some sports are more prone to injury then others.

Chances of injury are of course higher in sports that have direct or full contact of the players. High-speed sports also rate high on injury. I then started wondering, if there are any sports that will probably have near-zero chances of injury. Well, hmm… what comes to my mind now is Chess. The only way you can injure yourself in chess is: if you blow up your brain, fall asleep and drop from the chair, hold the pawn for 1 hour in the air before you decide where to place it. Jokes apart, most of the sports do come with some risk associated with injuring our self.

It is always advisable to go for a warm up for avoiding injuries like spraining muscles. Playing physically demanding sports without proper training and physical fitness will result in muscle damage. Most of the other sports require wearing of protective gears (martial ones, American football etc.). Knowing your limits does help.

Professional sports person do go for sports injury insurance. Healthcare coverage and loss of revenue without participation is a big overhead and insurance can bring lot more peace to mind.

As a regular guy like me, all you need to care is do play something even when you are busy with your office or business. You need not be regular, but do play sometimes. And of course keep yourself aware of the risk of injury associated with any sports you play. So PLAY and HAVE FUN… STAY SAFE.

Spain rules Europe

Spain defeated Germany 1-0 in the EURO 2008 final to lift the trophy after a drought of 44 years. Well I am a happy man, as they were my favorites from the lot. I saw their first match against Russia (which they won 4-1) and became an instant fan. They were so confident and their passing were just awesome. They repeated their magic game again against Russia in the semi-finals. Well towards the end of the semi-final game, they were just been casual, and having fun. That was their skill level.

I was expecting Spain to perform good in the finals, but Germany's performance was disappointing though. I expected it to be a closer fight than what it turned out to be. If Spain had not missed the chances they created, we could have seen the real score (may be 3-0, 3-1).

So all the other non European teams, watch out for them in the world cup 2010. They have a young team which will be completely available until then, fully prepared for the World Show.

India in FIFA world cup

With the EURO 2008 fever at complete high, we were discussing in office about India's chances of ever making it to the FIFA world cup? Well looking at the current situation, it looks impossible to me.

But most of us might not know that India did qualified for the FIFA world cup in 1950.

From wikipedia:

"India qualified by default for the 1950 FIFA World Cup as a result of the withdrawal of all of their scheduled opponents. However, they did not take up their place in the competition because FIFA demanded all players at the World Cup finals should wear football boots. A number of the Indian players refused to abide by this rule and the team was forced to withdraw. The team has never since come close to qualifying for the World Cup.

India also finished 4th in the football tournament at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, and won the 1962 Asian Games Gold medal, and reached the semi-finals in the next two Asian Games tournaments in what became known as the golden era of Indian football."