Die Macht » But it was not the local hero who

Bangladesh made its Olympics debut as a nation in 1984. It remains one of 73 countries to never have won a medal of any hue. For that history to change, most Bangladesh sports fans are looking to golfer Siddikur Rahman, fittingly born in the same year that his nation took its bow in Los Angeles.Rahman is also the first Bangladeshi who has qualified directly for the quadrennial event, making the cut for the top 60 golfers in the Olympic rankings in July.Rahman is looking forward to make the most of this opportunity, which he calls the greatest possible thing to have happened in his career.Eta te aami kemni bhaabe inspire hoyechi, eta aami aapna ke bojhatey paarbo na (I cannot explain to you how much inspiration I have taken from this), says Rahman. The lift that the media and the fans back home have given me as well as the pride that I have been feeling since is just phenomenal. Erokom ishara aami kokhono paayini (I have never got this kind of a response before).Qualifying for the Olympics would have been far from Rahmans mind when his association with the sport began as a forecaddie -- or a ballboy, as they are called in Bangladesh -- often employed in golf clubs to walk ahead of the golfers and spot the balls when they land.I used to work at the Kurmitola Golf Club, since I lived within two kilometres of the course, and thats where my interest in the game developed, recalls Rahman of those early days as an eager teenager. My friends used to play, and I would sometimes join them for fun. I never had any equipment or clubs of my own.The turning point came in 1999 when a 15-year-old Rahman was invited by his employers to participate in a selection trial for the national team. Playing with equipment and clothing loaned out by the club he worked for on a daily basis, Rahman says he staved off competition from 150 others to earn a place in the national team.You must realise that golf is a very new sport for Bangladesh, he says when talking of his first eight years as an amateur, a time that included an appearance in the individual event in the 2006 Asian Games in Doha. Though there have been professional golfers before me, nobody has competed on the Asian Tour or won professionally abroad before me. But the best part of this qualification has been the appreciation that I have got.Rahman is the winner of the Brunei Open 2010 and Indian Open 2013, both Asian Tour events which had several familiar names on the major circuit. Two of those names were tied-second and a shot behind him when he won the Indian Open in New Delhi three years ago. I am looking forward to meeting both Anirban Lahiri and SSP Chawrasia, says Rahman. Anirban and I turned pro in the same year. Anirban and I won our [foursomes] match in the EurAsia Cup [in 2014]. Its great fun meeting these guys because we speak the same languages. I have picked up a fair amount of Hindi and they speak Bangla well too.Rahman would do well to heed the advice of Asif Hossain Khan, who went into the 2004 Athens Olympics as the reigning Commonwealth Games champion in the mens 10m air rifle, but finished 35th after failing to qualify for the final. The step up from the Asian Games and the Commonwealth Games up to the Olympics is a massive one, says Khan. You can get overexcited sometimes, and there is always pressure. When I won gold at the Commonwealth Games I was really happy, but you realise that your responsibilities go up too. I would just tell Siddikur and the other debutants not to try too many things and carry the honour of the country.Another connection between Khan and Rahman is that they were both the flagbearers for their modest contingents at the opening ceremony -- Rahman had four wildcard compatriots for company as opposed to Khans three.Khan remembers meeting Abhinav Bindra among other sportspersons and cherishes how all sportspersons he met treated him with respect. Rahman too has his sights set on the stars he admires and wants to meet. I would want to meet Roger Federer, Michael Phelps and the Williams sisters, he says. If I meet them, I would love to have a chat and maybe take a selfie with them.His focus has always been on the game, as one would expect from someone who has kept up his habit of spending eight hours every day in practice since landing in Rio de Janeiro on August 3.Golf is a very strange game, says Rahman. Your time can come on any given day. 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Some will be faithfully recorded and never mentioned again; others, the dismissal of Ben Stokes, for example, will be reviewed and scrutinised for, perhaps, five minutes.I wouldnt care if it was another sport but cricket takes up so much of the day. With these words the partner of even a club player explains why things arent working. Yet for many of its supporters the length of a first-class cricket match is the essence of its attraction. They like the slow accretion of events and the way time imposes its demands. They enjoy their T20 matches - this isnt an either/or dilemma - but they appreciate a format in which a cricketers endurance and mental strength are examined and in which batting for ten hours receives its due reward. It is, for them, truly a ball-by-ball game in which progress can be close to invisible.And so they enjoyed Roots 618-minute innings and his Jesuitical quest for absolution after his transgressions at Lords. Successful Test batsmen are defined by their ability to go on. For them, a century is a junction not a terminus. So it is with Root and it was curious how his watchfulness in facing the Pakistan bowlers in that first session was matched by that of most spectators as they, in their turn, watched the way he began again.For most people on earth, the idea of being watched as they work is inimical; for sportsmen it is essential. And the symbiosis between the crowd and cricketers repays its own close attention. We watch the watchers watching the watched. The applause that greeted Chris Woakess first fours - a cut, a cover-drive, a square-drive - were almost celebratory, as if the good times had begun to roll and another drink was, indeed, the order of the day.Root, though, continued to wear a hair-shirt and we were 16 overs into the morrning before he found the boundary courtesy of an edge and Younis Khans dropped catch at slip.dddddddddddd He scored 44 runs in that first, exploratory session and only after tea did he bat as if truly liberated. By then, of course, there were beer snakes and fancy dress; some spectators may have watched the cricket a little less closely than they had in the morning. Stokes and Jonny Bairstow played trampling innings on tired fielders, hoping that weight of runs would earn early wickets. There was less intensity but more fiesta; summer in full, good-humoured riot.Then the declaration and a re-cranking of tension. A new guttural as James Anderson ran in from the Pavilion End. Earlier in the day Andersons team-mates, suddenly spectators themselves, had watched from one of the pavilion balconies. But it was not the local hero who made the breakthroughs. That honour fell in large measure to Woakes, whose three wickets were greeted with fresh roars as spectators scraped their plate in the last hour of the day.6.25 on Saturday and the air is a little fresher, the clouds higher. Stokes runs in from the Statham End and bowls to Shan Masood. The ball is on the off stump and the batsman plays it defensively and safely. There is a slightly subdued gasp from the crowd as if the air had been released from a huge balloon. Then ringing applause for the England players as they return to their dressing-room.For Woakes this has been another fine day; his shares on crickets stock-market have risen. He has masqueraded as a nightwatchman and reinforced his position as a potent strike bowler at a time when England are not short of them. As the crowd disperses, many are talking about how his bowling has helped make their day memorable.Within fifteen minutes Old Trafford is almost deserted and a few minutes later Pakistans players, rucksacks on their backs, are returning to their coach, trooping over the outfield like blue-uniformed trekkers.And so it ends, this gentle, fierce ticking down of 540 pieces of action, the shape of it all collaborative, confrontational, intense. If you rush, youll never get anywhere, said the man on the gate this morning. ' ' '