The Little Giants

Sachin Tendulkar is India's greatest sportsman. A living legend who has broken all batting records and at the age of 36 is still going strong. At 5'5", he is a small man and an anomaly in the sporting world where mutant giants are more commonly found now than ever before. The list of small men who have gone on to do great things in the sporting arena is a very small one. The lack of stature has to be compensated by a freakish talent and a scheming mind. Today a small person can all but forget about a career in sport.

Individual sports have become the domain of the big and strong. Only a team sport like soccer and basketball allow for a small person to contribute by playing a specific supporting role. Ussain Bolt and Juan Martin Del Potro are just the start of a new generation of sportsmen that are bigger than any we have seen before. Old thinking used to be that the big guys will never be able to move as well as the smaller guys but modern training methods and nutrition is resulting in big fellas who can move like cats!

Where does that leave the Indians and the Chinese? The average height of the Indian male is 5'4". How are we expected to compete in a world of giants? Maybe we need to be smart about which sports we choose to play. The reason why Indians have had success in cricket is because it is predominantly a skill-based game. Its also the reason why we produce many great batsmen and spin bowlers but not enough fast bowlers because that's when being big and strong is a prerequisite.

Soccer is one game where we might have a chance. Skill and speed on the soccer pitch can go some ways to compensate the lack of height. It would still be a huge challenge. Imagine trying to stop a rampaging Didier Drogba; all 6'2" of him! Baseball is another game where you would think that being big would not be too much of an advantage. But this is far from true: Fast pitching requires big strong bodies and so does hitting home runs off those pitches. I looked up the Yankees roster for height information and was shocked to find that Derek Jeter, who does not look too big on TV, is 6'3"!

And so I live out my sporting dreams vicariously by watching the real "giants". Nothing gives me more pleasure than watching SRT coming down the track and hitting Glenn Mcgrath (all 6'5" of him) back over his head for a six. Or watching Maradona hustle and hoodwink his way through a wall of massive defenders! It is the ultimate triumph of will over circumstance, of guile over brute force, a real-life David-v-Goliath: how can you not cheer for that?


Human height averages around the world
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_height