Inci Preview!

SlamDunk was first added to Inci 6 years ago. What was once a small time tournament has now become one of the biggest college level tournaments in the state. A total of 20 guys teams and 10 girls team meet in this exhibition of professional basketball every year to produce some great matches. And boy, do we have some awesome teams coming this year to contest for the prestigious title and cash prize.

The guys tournament has always witnessed some of the closest, some of the most fast paced, some of the most tactically played out games you can see. The best teams from Bangalore, a certain team from Kerala and local teams along with us round up the participant pool for the tournament. This is what we have been waiting for the entire year and here is a preview of what you can expect from the basketball court during Inci.

Let's have a look at the teams. In no particular order, a jist of some of the favourties.

· Jain - Defending Champions, surely this year too a frontrunner for the title.

Star Players : Kaushal, John, Puneeth

Strengths : Scoring machine with tremendous experience in tournaments.

· Ramaiah - Always strong contenders in any tournament, known for their game intensity, they are always a force to be reckoned with.

Star Players : Abhishek, Chandy

Strengths : Intensity. They have a chant that goes 1-2-3 Team and that is the essence they play with.

· Nehru - The second most popular team among the NITK Crowd after the home team, who give us the match of the tournament year after year.

Star Players : Rahul, Mahesh

Strengths : Tremendously fast paced game with incredible ball movement.

· NITK - Home team. Home Ring. Great shooters. Makes for an almost perfect recipe.

Star Players : Alok, Ewin

Strengths : As mentioned earlier home team and crowd support coupled with the fact that shooting is very accurate especially on own ring.

· RNSIT - A very beautiful team to watch, on their day can beat any of the other strong teams.

Star Players : Krupesh, Pradeep

Strength : Excellent team game and a pleasure to watch.

· Josephs - They have the most superior record in Bangalore tournaments this year and will be looking to add to that.

Star Players : Markesh, Sood, Chimpu

Strength : Superb team game, Superb accuracy, Superb speed, arguibly the best team when put on court.

· MVIT – A team that has grown over the years and have a reputation to be very motivated during important games.

Star Players : Abhishek
Strength : The above mentioned player can at times single handedly turn around games and lift up the entire team’s spirits in no time.

Potential Surprise Packages : PESIT, NIT Trichy, BMS, Surana, Dayanand Sagar, MVJCE, NITTE, PA College, Aloysius, RV, NHCE, BMS, Father Muller and NITK-B

With added attractions like the Dunk Contest, a record high of 10 girls teams, and a debutant planned for this year – A three point shootout, SlamDunk promises to truly live up to Inci’s punchline – BEYOND EXPRESSION.

Gods at play.

Tennis : A game that is played with rackets and a light elastic ball by two players or pairs of players on a level court divided by a low net.

God : A being believed to have more than natural attributes, The supreme or ultimate reality.

Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal : Gods of Tennis.

That brings us to the question that is unanswerable to a few people, but fairly easily answerable to most others one way or another. Which one of them is better? Statistics say Rafa owns Federer based on head to head. Tournament records say Federer is close to being the greatest ever. Of late, especially after the Aussie open finals, it was pretty evident that maybe it is time for people to admit that Nadal is well and truly the king. On the other hand, Federer is playing some of the most patchy tennis of his life. On some days and off the other, Unforced errors like never before in his career. People say he is in bad form. But as Murray pointed out- He has reached 3 grand slam finals in a row and won one of them, and you say he is in bad form? Such is the high standards he has set. These two men have given us some of the greatest tennis matches we have ever seen. Surely there is more to come this year. Will Federer win his first one at Roland Garos? Or Will Nadal beat the king of grass on grass? Who's going to have the final say in the US Open? These questions will be answered in a few months. The other question is the tricky one. My answer- Nadal may beat Federer, but he can never be Federer.

Endurance Running

It was the usual Friday evening when we had collected on court for practise. After a tiring 2 hour work out, with exercises with and without the ball, someone thought aloud, asking what it is that we would be doing the next morning in our first proper morning practise session. First proper in the sense that it was the first holiday that we would wake up in the morning, and do something productive. Immediately, almost as if it came naturally, the think tank of our team suggested an idea. We would aptly name it Endurance running. Now, for an average sportsman what we do may not be termed as endurance running, but then again we are students who play, not players who study like the ones who are regular favourites at tournaments. That said, for an average student in our college, what we do is of quite some magnitude. Endurance running, if we were professionals would have probably been a run that lasted say 10 rounds around the football field. That would be 10*700 metres = 7 kilometres. But as always we do things with a twist, a twist that makes getting tired so much fun, you don't stop even if its completely exhausting. What the aforementioned think tank suggested was a really nice break up of running. First a warm up for 4 rounds, not the usual rounds around the field but again with a twist. The twist being everyone runs in a straight line and at every turn, the last guy in the line overtakes the first guy. This can be really hard, but also is fun. I suck at it, but then that's a different story altogether. Right, so that was warm-up. Then there is the best part. To put it simply it was five 100 metre sprints. Then four 200 metre sprints. Three 300 metre strides. Two 400 metre strides and a final round the pitch 700 metre jog again. Doing the math, it comes up to 6.5 kilometres of running, subtract a little for laziness and cutting of the track, also some inconsistencies. 6 kilometres of running could never be made this interesting. As we finished, we were barely able to walk and carry our arses back to the block. Thankfully as some sort of reprieve, Captain Camel Calcutta and the aforementioned think tank decided to treat us breakfast. Benefits of hard work you could say. That rounded up a week that was never short of anything - morning practises, evening games, 2 people quitting the team and eventually coming back realising that the pros of staying in would always outweigh the cons if you stayed out. Oh, did I forget to mention, I love this game, and this team.