Introducing 'Grandstand'

In his 1963 book, Beyond a Boundary, Cyril Lionel Robert James asked, “What do they know of cricket who only cricket know?” (which was, in turn, a homage to Kipling's "And what should they know of England who only England know?"). Though we in India have heard of CLR James primarily as a cricket writer—a superlative one—he was much more: sportsman, activist, historian, journalist, socialist theorist, essayist, playwright, fiction writer.

Like James, we believe that being focussed on only one dimension isn't a good thing. Our newsroom sees a great number of interests colliding, and one often-used gambit to get our editor's attention is to start a story pitch with "What business can learn from ____."

One widely-shared interest is sports. And with us, it's not been something we've confined to the non-business part of the magazine: we've often told strong business stories about what sport can teach us. For example, on Viswanathan Anand,  the Rajasthan Royals, and the coach who is revitalising India's hockey team. And that's just the cover stories.

Now, we're launching this new blog, which will cover and comment on significant developments in the world of sport. The focus will be on the business end of it, naturally, but it won't just be about P&L sheets or acquisitions. We will seek to take what lessons we can, to use sports as a lens for understanding our lives, and, being fan-boys and -girls at heart, we might write the occasional paean to our icons. Joining our staff on this blog will be guest contributor and veteran sports writer, V Krishnaswamy who, most recently, blogged Vishy Anand's world title defence in Moscow for us, and contributed significantly to the Olympic curtain-raiser in our current issue. Starting very soon, Krishnaswamy will be Our Man In London: he's heading off to his sixth Olympics, and will be sending us updates fresh and hot.

As with all that we do, we hope you like what we see, and we look forward to your comments and suggestions. Keep them coming!

The thoughts and opinions shared here are of the author.