Happy 10th Birthday to Sports-India.com

[prasen9]

Thank you very much Jaydeep too. Apart from PKB and Jay, your persistence in posting the news helps the forum a lot.

Interestingly (to me), Bhusan and I had joined on Jan 2, 2003 and PKB and Amr had joined the next day on Jan 3, 2003. Yes, I used to be on Jay's mailing list and we had conversations via email. Then came Jay's daily notes page that I read everyday the first thing in the morning. I was a bit lazy after Jay announced the board and maybe in Kolkata with bad internet access. Before this board came, I used to post at rec.sport forums. There was a rec.sport.cricket forum, etc. After this one came, I have not gone there in years. Wishing the forum a prosperous next decade. But one thing I mourn. We need a few more young hot bloods who will have some good old arguments and fights on this forum. It is becoming very mellow and polite [ ]

[Prashant]

I was also active on rec.sport.tennis & rec.sport.cricket and similarly quit once I started paying attention to this forum. Of course, those lacked the focus on India.

I think we have young blood here, but they are all polite & well-brought up young blood, or at least pretending to be

[kujo]

“Welcome to Sports-India.com! Home of 3000 friendly folks and a few old soreheads.” That has been the slogan for Sports-India.com forum for as long as I can remember, and I’m so old I can’t remember how long that has been! The slogan has worked well for this small community. They even have a yearly “Old Sorehead Days” and no one from this forum has to ask which thread holds that event.

Thank goodness for the few old soreheads. What a dull world this would be if we where all in agreement about everything and we never had anybody that got their feathers ruffled to stir things up a bit. But I must say, they keep the soreheads in Sports-India.com in check because I am yet to meet one.

cheers
-kujo


ps: total members 3117
pps: apologies to Stanton...

[prasen9]

Ok, now you are really messing with us ... parts and pieces of a sleeping giant ...

[punarayan]

I still log into tenninindia.org and it brings me to this sports-india.com forum. In the past, I've posted an annual thanks to this forum, for providing a one-stop for news and opinions on all things about indian sports. So, again a heartfelt thanks to all the posters here who make this a daily visit for me - an old tennis nut. The main articulators, here - Jay, PKBasu, Jaydeep and the caustic Prasan9 are all enjoyable, but Doc is an everlasting presence. My wife always chides me for looking through this site, but I always respond by saying that it's full of brainiacs! I've met a few of the members, - Gautam, Ashish, Criketics and missed a chance of looking up Jay when I was in the Irving area a few years back. Thanks to the only forum, I ever visit for tennis news. Indians and tennis is a special combination that thrills me and this forum facilitates my slight mania! Congratulations on a great and successful endeavor.

[Sandeep]

Happy Birthday Sports-India. My association with this forum began in 2003 and ever since loved this forum. I was a mad fan of Sania and couple of google searches about her results brought me to this forum. And ever since no looking back! I joined this forum as an engineering student and now I have been working for 6 years, all my priorities kept changing in these nine years except for the forum. But I must admit that I am not contributing to the forum as much as I used to 3 to 4 years back. On the forums 10th birthday I take an oath that I will be more regular and try to be the hot blood that Prasen is looking for .

From the forum I have met Jay and Verma in person. May be we should plan a sport event where we can all meet together!

One thing I want to see in the forum is more and more people from India joining it. For some reason majority of forum members live outside India. Among major contributors I can only think of Jaydeep and Sameer to be from India, sorry if I have missed someone. Also I would like to see the sports player of the year award to be revived. It has been a long time since we did that. No sports website follows the sports in entirety as we do, so it will be nice if we can award a player every year (at least in the forum).

And finally thanks to Jay, our in house economist PKB (probably the biggest sports buff I have ever come across), Jaydeep and Sameer for making this forum what it is today. Many members have come and gone, but it is quite remarkable the kind of work you guys are doing day in and day out over the last 10 years (Sameer and Jaydeep of course joined later).

[prasen9]

Kudos Sandeep. I look forward to more spirited arguments with you and others Suresh and Bujilover are from Chennai and post regularly. Thanks to them. I think the bias is because NRIs did not have sources for Indian sports news at one place and the online newspapers were quite scanty in their coverage a decade ago. And, once you come to the forum, its social aspects causes some to stick. Indians, on the other hand, have a plethora of news from TV and newspapers and thus do not come looking to the internet for sports news. Maybe now there are ample news aggregators, etc. and so NRIs do not have that much of a need for this forum as the only source for all sports news. And, the internet is more pervasive in India such that people are going online to find their news instead of TV and newspapers. Hence the new members are more from India. And there are much more Indians in India than abroad anyway. This is only my conjecture. Maybe some of our younger members from India can share why they come to the forum?

[suresh]

I have had the pleasure of seeing Sandeep grow from the fresh graduate to the mature person that he is today. Gurvinder/gvhvg/Ashish is another person who joined this forum as a young kid (high-school?) and now is too busy to post regularly. I have enjoyed seeing his passion about Indian sports in spite of growing up outside India. Several young people keep joining this forum and help keeping it alive. The real backbone of this forum are its old fogies (Jay/PKB to name a couple -- Prasen you don't qualify yet) who have kept the quality of discussion and never letting thing degenerate into a noisy forum.

I used to follow Jay's posts on tennis but did not join this forum after it was started. That was largely because I did not join internet fora of any kind (still largely true till today). So I used to anonymously follow Sports-India for a while before joining it.

I thank all the members of this forum for keeping it the way it is.

Suresh

[prasen9]

I know, I know Suresh, I am not the real backbone. But, thanks for rubbing it in. I rarely post "news". I contribute to the quibbling section of the forum. Every forum needs it Narada ...

We used to have ajay, Kumar, amr, Puneet who have been consumed by busy-ness. Among the old-timers, Arjun joined a couple of years later and is going strong. And, kujo's sharp brain+tongue combination is as sharp as ever. Samarth joined about the same time as PKB, Bhusan, gvhv, amr, and me. Then came Gautam (Belday). sks joined a couple of years later.

Among the newbies, the real foggy one is Saniapower. I still see double. And the middle-aged Atithee ...

[Atithee]

Hey, there, watch out now, Narada! I have been in the forum from Day 1, I think. The forum format changed at least a couple times. Remember, I used to post as guest? I've followed Jay's notes from about 1996. Of course, I have been there from Day 1 even though I am not as prolific a postman.

But, this forum is worse than any drug, alcohol, or narcotic ever invented, for me.

[prasen9]

Ah, sorry. I am foggy. I forgot that you were guest before some login problems. Or guest was abolished or something like that. Actually, I take it back. I am issuing a non-denial denial. All I said that you were middle-aged. U refuting dat ... middle-aged man?

[suresh]

LOL! What happened to that guest account where Atithee was the tiger we identified by his pugmarks. And then we had others who tried multiple identities.

[gbelday]

Happy 10th anniversary to all of you! Like many of you here, I used to read Jay's tennis notes and subsequently joined the forum. The start date on my profile shows Jan 2005 but I honestly don't recall where I wasted those two years after the forum was started (probably still reading Jay's notes). I remember covering some of Niru and LP/MB (and later Sania's matches) at the US Open.

I also had the privilege of meeting some of our forumites in person. Narayan, PKB, Ashish, Dushyant, Kothai, spoke on the phone with Bhushan and amr etc. Hoping to meet Prasen soon (exchanged FB emails but never got to meet). I also had the privilege of hosting Harsh and Poojashree at my place on one of their visits to NY. Met Sanaa recently for coffee when she was visiting NY (she called all of you an awesome bunch ). Also spoke to Mrs Bhambri on the phone once. Thanks to all of you. Sports India is an integral part of my life

[ankit1407]

Congratulation to everyone for making the forum a success...I joined it only like a year back while searching for boxing olympic qualifiers results, I dont know how I landed here but before that I was always under the impression something of this sort did not exists, not for Indian sports anyways....

My location keeps on changing but one thing which has been a constant for this past year or more is the addiction I have developed for this forum...obviously like everything else have had some unpleasant moments here as well but positives by far outweigh the negatives...

[Saniapower]

Happy 10th anniversary. Part of life, definitely. Thanks everybody.