On Aug 26, at 12.47 on the Sunday afternoon, Udit Bhatia, anold student of St. Stephen's College, became the first man on the planet tolink Unmukt Chand, the under-19 cricket World Cup winning captain, and hisshabby treatment by their alma mater.
"U-19 Captain and Stephanian Unmukt Chand leads Indiato World Cup victory. This is the same boy who had to go to court to sit forhis University exams because of strange attendance rules," an indignantBhatia, now a student of University College London, three years senior to theWorld Cup hero, fumed on Laal Sitara, our alumni Facebook group of 3,000members.
As the news leaked, Naukri.com entrepreneur Sanjeev Bikhchandani,Shell corporate affairs director Deepak Mukarji, and I, the three Laal Sitaraadmins sensed this isn't good news. True to expectation, the week had theentire cricketing planet hurling their couches on St. Stephen's. If only youngBhatia could monetize the content his two sentences gave the networks!
The storm on a champion batsman being hurled beamers onminimum attendance has now abated. Dinesh Singh, the genial University of Delhi(DU) vice-chancellor, has laid the red carpet for the cricketing hero to gracethe next year of the BA Programme. It is also accepted that Valsan Thampu, St.Stephen's principal, wasn't such a kill joy after all.
That eureka! moment came while we were rummaging fordebating points for Arnab Goswami's "News Hour" on Times Now, andSagarika Ghose's "Face the Nation" on CNN. That's when, courtesy afile loaned to us by the St. Stephen's lawyer, Chand's hand-written applicationseeking special exemption, and Thampu's emphatic noting to Singh that thecricketer "manifestly deserved" his "strong recommendation"appeared from the ether!
Twitterati and the anchormen have now moved on. Every ounceof lemon on Chand's life, even the comic his father Bharat Chand Thakur boughtfor him in Grade V, has been squeezed. Our Laal Sitara friends are quiet,exhausted after an unprecedented 446 comments, no longer spewing"guilty," but why Thampu's confidential noting to the V-C wasn'tsplashed in the public. In his magnanimity, Thakur called to thank for whattranspired on a back-channel hotline. The pacifists are no longer slimy wimpsand courtiers.
What's hardly of concern anymore is that 15 othersportspersons from St. Stephen's are in the same court as Unmukt, pleadingsimilar exemption from attendance, their fates hanging in balance, permissionof taking the annual exam having come only because of the judge, not Singh orThampu. They didn't win the World Cup, after all!
 Such is the national mood that the V-C mightaccept this idea without a murmur. Result? Future Unmukts won't have to dancefrom desk to desk. But those who never return to a playfield once they'vewangled sports admission will bunk classes fearlessly. Singh's own perestroikaentailing monthly attendance records from all colleges will die like a dodo.
A cricket-crazy nation is interested only until Unmukt ispromoted, who cares if his results lie sealed under court orders! But how longbefore recruiters ask why they should take a DU degree seriously if the childattended just 30 percent of her classes?
Other questions: Why are at least Delhi's colleges notcentralizing their sports admissions? Why do they admit 2-3 good sportsmen witha bunch of backdoor types sneaking in under entitlements? Where is modern-dayonline support for those who now need to play 300 days a year to stand a chanceagainst world-class sportsmen being nurtured in British universities, not tomention the Chinese sports assembly line?
Is there nothing we can learn from US varsities who attractworld champions, fund them, have paying spectators turning up to watch them,and ensure that these folks get educated, without two ministers forcing newattendance rules?
