23 January,2018 09:54 AM IST | Mumbai | Team mid-day
Elite women's gold medal winner Amane Gobena of Ethiopia Anson Thomas at Marine Drive on Sunday
Swachch Bharat with a difference
Most events of the Tata Mumbai Marathon were wrapped up post-noon, but former Customs hockey goalkeeper Anson Thomas' marathon fight against human trafficking continued well after. Thomas met up with the elite winners of the marathon - Ethiopians Solomon Deksisa and Amane Gobena - the men's and women's champions, respectively - to spread his anti-human trafficking message through a unique Swachch Bharat campaign.
"We need to make not just Bharat but also the world 'swachch' from human trafficking and child slavery," said Thomas (45), who quit his job seven years ago to tackle the battle of human trafficking. He uses prominent sports to spread the word through his non-profit initiative, Sports Mission. In the past, Thomas has roped in leading sportspersons like Sachin Tendulkar, Steve Waugh and Ian Bishop to spread the message.
Will 'The Meenakshi' enter the record books?
On January 16, Mid-day featured a 44-year-old runner from Hyderabad, Jayanthi Sampathkumar, who was going to attempt to run the full marathon (42 km) in Mumbai on January 21 dressed in a sari. At the time, she admitted she will be wearing a six-yard pochampally cotton sari.
Jayanthi Sampathkumar at the finishing line. Pic/Shadab Khan
She had completed the Hyderabad marathon earlier dressed in a sari in four hours 57 minutes and 44 seconds, and entered the Guinness Book of World Records, which had set a time limit for the feat, of finishing the marathon in under five hours. This diarist learnt that Jayanthi broke the record clocking 4:45:30s. She was dressed in a sari, draped in a trouser-style called the 'Meenakshi'.
The athlete will be waiting for the timing certificate from Procam, after which she will submit the data to the Guinness Book of World Records officials who could take a couple of weeks to a few months to ratify it. That notwithstanding, Sampathkumar should be soaking her legs in hot water and salt and resting today, after a rocking sari-clad run.
Rahane fans can chill for now
Virat Kohli's horses for courses policy came into more focus when statisticians pointed out that India's cricket captain has never played the same XI in the 34 Tests he has led in. This, of course, came about when he decided to drop Ajinkya Rahane for the first Test against South Africa at Cape Town and the second one at Centurion.
Ajinkya Rahane
So, who among the current crop has Kohli not dropped? If you say Ravichandran Ashwin, it's not the right answer because the master offie was dropped for Kohli's maiden Test as captain in Adelaide 2014. The solid Cheteshwar Pujara? Wrong again. The right answer is wicketkeeper Wriddhiman Saha.
Although he has missed five Tests in the Kohli regime through injury, he has never been dropped. Rahane's fans will find solace in the fact that the Mumbai batsman has faced Kohli's axe only for the first time in Tests. And it does seem it will be the last! Over to Johannesburg for Wednesday's final Test.
Pic/Satej Shinde
Southern Invasion
Malayalam superstar Mohanlal was snapped up during a shoot for his upcoming project in Film City yesterday.
Lisa Ray, the poet-writer
Canadian-Indian actress Lisa Ray is ready to step into a new role. No, this isn't set in front of the arc lights but far away from it, in the quiet of her writing desk, perhaps. When she was diagnosed with a rare type of blood cancer in 2009, the shocking revelation made headlines. She chose her blog, The Yellow Diaries, to share her challenges while overcoming it.
Ray has been dabbling with poetry, and now it's been featured in the January edition of the The Punch Magazine. She is busy penning her memoirs too, and it will be named after her blog. Commissioned by a leading Delhi publisher, it will release this year. Here's to more literary pursuits, Lisa.
Twinkle, Twinkle Parisian star
The best selling author may have missed out on winning at a big-ticket books awards event held in the city last week but Twinkle Khanna wowed hearts and minds with her speech on menstrual hygiene and taboos faced by Indian women at Oxford Union in the UK.
En route home, she made a pit stop in Paris, where she headed to Shakespeare and Company, which according to her, was the best bookshop in the world. Khanna took to social media to share a few frames from the visit only to make bibliophiles like us go green with envy.
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