Why women should be paid more

The current thinking is that the men and women who play the game should be paid the same amount of prize money. The women say it's time the inequality in levels of prize money paid out to men and women must go. They say the differential is a throwback to the bad old days. They say it reeks of the time when Billie Jean King (Miss) beat the then MCP of tennis Bobby Riggs in a battle of the sexes. But forget all that. Why were women paid less? Was it because the effort involved for women to play was less? Not really. Because, proportionately speaking, the burden of tennis on the human body is just as damaging for men and women. Women have less strength and so less takes more out of them. Men are physically stronger and so they can exert more. Does that mean men should be paid more? I think the question is best answered if one looks at which is more popular: Men's tennis or women's tennis. If women's tennis makes more money, then the women should be paid more. Sport today, more than ever, is driven by economics and sponsorship. What the actors get paid is a function of how much the game they're playing is making. So, should the women be paid as much as the men? If you ask me, I prefer watching women's tennis and, in my book, that's a good enough reason for them to be paid, not just as much, but more.

Quoterie # 20

"It really surprises me - you are so consistent and I'm not" Sachin Tendulkar, on his 33rd birthday, thanks mediapersons for their unwavering love and affection. Such candour, such disarming innocence and yet he wonders why we so love him. (Sniff.)

No comment

From Spin Punch by Dilip Doshi: The Indian team, he says, had a "one-track obsession" with money that he found `quite disgusting'. The BCCI, meanwhile, was "a government within a government, almost totally not accountable to anyone". Doshi was, in his own account, a man apart. He reports that he declined the opportunity to write a newspaper column because it would `bring out into the open what were essentially confidences'; he thought throughout his career that advertising and endorsements were "totally out of hand". He even recalls a team meeting before the first one-day international in India where the conversation was entirely devoted to sponsorship, prize money, logo royalties and match fees: "Cricket was discussed only as an afterthought".

Quoterie # 18

"Frankly, I don't think they can demand for us to kick the ball out because there was no free-kick and the action goes on until the ball goes out" Arsene Wenger after Arsenal scored from a throw-in that should have been returned to Sheffield United in the 2003 FA Cup semi-final. Which is very different, you see.

Quoterie # 17

"It is whether you think something is fair or unfair. You expect to get the ball back there. If that's the way they want to behave, then that is their responsibility, but I don't agree with that. I don't agree with it and if football goes that way it becomes very petty" Arsene Wenger vents his spleen after Spurs scored while Gilberto Silva and Emmanuel Eboue were untangling themselves after a collision during the north London derby on Saturday.

Lagi bet # 3

India will lose to the Windies in the ODIs and win the test series. Go ahead, place your bets. Just make sure you do while the match fixing committee is looking the other way, which is most of the time.

Quoterie # 14

"There's only one possibility (to continue as coach). You have to be world champion. I have never seen a coach fail to win the World Cup and stay on here in Brazil." Coach Carlos Alberto Parreira putting more pressure on himself before the 2006 world cup. As if being coach of the Brazillian soccer team isn't pressure enough.

Ranking does not matter!

Then why have rankings? How can rankings not matter? If rankings do not matter, why play professionally? If rankings do not matter, don't tell me we excel for the sake of excellence. Actually, excellence, probably, does not matter. Only ranking does. Thanks to rankings, there is an attempt to work towards excellence. Without rankings, there would be no incentive to excel. Therefore Mr. Dhoni, rankings do matter. They better matter. Because when something doesn't matter, it's that much easier to not see it going to your head.

Not again

Another Tim Henman Wimbledon is coming, if you can bear it - another "C'mon Tim" fortnight in which the strawberries and cream will turn into the custard pies of disappointment and jokes well before the end. Kevin Mitchell in conversation with the man.

Quoterie # 13

"This is ridiculous!" A dizzy Gillespie's says it like it is when asked for reaction after he scored a double hundred.

Quoterie # 11

"We looked up at the dressing room stairs and there was Kyle Mills. He was coming in to be a new-ball watchman, or something like that." Dale Steyn's take on New Zealand's tactic to promote Kyle Mills to No 3 in the last innings of the first Test at Centurion. Mills lasted all of two balls.

Lawrence's Booth

A bad ghost-writer is like a bad umpire or a bad wicket-keeper: you only notice him when he starts to drop a few clangers. (Hell, theSpin has been getting away with it for years - bawling a few drunken thoughts down the phone from the local boozer on a Monday evening and hoping one of its many PAs manages to turn them overnight into coherent English.) Which is why one of the many joys of touring India was the daily dose in the local papers of Graham Gooch. Or, to be more accurate, "Graham Gooch". No day was complete with "Goochie's" latest take on the one-day series, or the predicament of Virender Sehwag and Mohammad Kaif, or even life and the known universe itself. The Spin has emerged a wiser cricket email."

I understand England doesn't want to be conservative or orthodox and wants to unravel the mysteries of one-day cricket with aggression and flair," wrote "Gooch" after England lost the first one-day game atDelhi, immediately causing two generations of Essex cricketers to wonder what their man had been on and whether they could have some please. "England were blown away like a ramshackle hut in a gale," he added, conjuring up images of one of his more effusive team-talks on a wet Wednesday at Chelmsford. Presumably "Gooch" was a little miffed after England went 4-0 down at Cochin? " It is tough to avoid being repetitive," he opined, "for England yet again walked the same filthy path and met the same wretched fate."

As the Spin imagined Gooch reclining on a chaise-longue, with cigarillo in one hand, brandy in the other, and nubile maidens massaging his feet, he went on to capture the Sehwag problem in a nutshell. Most of us had imagined Sehwag had simply been struggling to locate his off-stump. But "Gooch" had spotted something more troubling. "His initial bravado has given way to scepticism," he explained. "Sehwag in repose at the crease has resembled a cat ready to pounce on anything which comes his way. A cobra in coil, a panther on haunches, a falcon in that strategic patrolling of the sky." So that was it! Had Sehwag remembered all the animal impressions he used to do while the bowler was running in, he would have taken England to the cleaners! Sometimes, you really do need to be an ex-pro to notice these things.

And that's the final word with much love and vituperation from our dear dear friend Lawrence Booth of The Guardian.

Quoterie # 10

"Thank you for flying with Virgin. I gather some of you enjoyed the trip more than others" - But who could the pilot of flight number VS135 from Mumbai to Heathrow have been referring to?

The Spin

A couple of predictions for you: England to beat Sri Lanka 2-0 in the Tests and 4-1 in the one-day series; and to draw one-Test all with Pakistan, before losing 3-2 in the one-dayers. Don't all rush to the bookies at once.

Quoterie # 9

"Cricket has become very fond of the fashionable word 'stakeholder'. I occasionally get communications from official bodies addressed to me that way. One might swank about this, but I suspect my stakeholding is analogous to that of a woman with one share turning up at the Marks & Spencer AGM to moan about the knickers being frumpy." Matthew Engel writing in the new Wisden Cricketers' Almanack

Quoterie # 8

"By giving Ramesh Powar consecutive games, India have found that here's a guy who has a heart as big as his waist, and loves to play in a tense situation." Former Indian captain Sunil Gavaskar puts things in perspective

Mr. Gavaskar and his crap

What can you say about a man who wasn't exactly known to be generous or charitable or understanding or anything he's so righteously expecting the players of this day and age to be? The less said about this 'clarion call' for patriotism the better. The game is, even, more professional now than it ever was. And Mr. Sunny Gavaskar, the ruthless professional should be the first to know. Such double standards and double talk, really just gets to us. Still, I shall charitably, kindly and patriotically allow you to draw your own conclusions. Over to the Master.

I'm Greg

They all sat around waiting for the powers-that-be to decide their fate. And then, one of them spoke. He said "I'm Greg." And then, another one got up and said "I'm Greg." And then, another one got up and said "I'm Greg." One by one, all the good men in the room got up and said "I'm Greg." And then, they said it together "We're the new Team India. We're under, around and firmly behind our leader, the one and only Coach Extraordinnaire and Emeritus rolled into one, Greg Sir Chappell. Heil Hitler. (And there will be positively no whistling in the room.) In the face of such team spirit and an inspiringly brave front, the Ganguly-Dalmiya front stood no chance of breaking the chakravhyu Dadaji finds himself in.

More bluster from the Master

He's honed the art of pre-match talk to a fine, fine game. From the man who worked with the Master of match-fixing or, maybe, from the man who mastered the art of match-fixing comes this piece of pre-match drivel being passed off as tactical talk. It's just anoher tamasha yaar. So let's all try and have some fun, can we? Let's not bore the people who've come for an entertainment show with serious talk about how deeply scarred the losers of this 'desert jamboree' might be. The fact is, two matches in the middle of summer in a cricketing outpost like Abu Dhabi do not matter, will not matter and will end up being little more than nothing a few weeks after they've been done and over with. Remember those matches played in...doesn't matter where. Do we remember? No, we don't. so, please, please Mr. Woolmer, we know you're having a great time with all this pre-match talk. Thank you for doing your bit of 'promotion'.

Tit byte

A word of advice if you're planning to watch football in Italy: buy a TV. Not just because Italian highlights shows are fronted by buxom sirens who make Gary Lineker and Mark Lawrenson look like smug civil servants coining it in for tickling each other's egos and peddling puns that only wastards and bankers find amusing. But also because actually going to a game could result in you being beaten up, set on fire, hurled from the top tier of a bloody big stadium or turned inside out and pushed like a human rolling pin over tracts of broken glass. Because many Italian football followers are, like illiterate Nigel Kennedy fans, into violence