Sport has its share of oddity. Sit back and enjoy!

There was this instance where an ex-division college basketball player would not run. As per her understanding, ‘running tilts one’s uterus’. Surely, it would tilt back if she stood on her head. Sport is serious and then, it is seriously bizarre. Sport provides ample entertainment – and no, I don’t mean only within the confines of the sporting arena. There’s plenty of creativity at press conferences, in media reports, stories emerging from dressing rooms and otherwise. Across all sports, oft explanations and reasons are provided for bunking training sessions and poor performances at events. Some of these are ordinary like lack of winning attitude, physical fitness or team spirit, poor officiating, weather conditions, sub-standard equipment, illness and ill preparation for events. However, some really take the cake adding to the sport entertainment quotient. So, as it goes, one of my colleagues, a state-level badminton player didn’t show up for the 6 am training session. When the coach asked him why, he promptly replied that the quota of sweets that he stocked in his hostel room was over. One may wonder what sense this made. On elaboration, it was learnt that the only motivation he had to wake up early was those sweets. Evidently, eating the sweets was more enticing than sweating the morning away. It is sometimes easy to pin a loss on the existing conditions in the playing arena. At the Athens Olympics, a Finnish javelin thrower stated that the big stadium surprised her and she could not direct the javelin right. Fortunately for the spectators, it wasn’t that misdirected. Another instance was when Mervyn King blamed his loss to Raymond Barneveld in the 2003 World Darts Championship to the airconditioning. This didn’t turn out to be a very cool excuse as the AC had been switched off for the entire match. Ronnie O’Sullivan, three-time world champion nicknamed ‘The Rocket’ due to his rapid playing style, rocketed up the ladder of excuses when he blamed his loss in the final of the 1997 Masters, after leading 8-4, on a female streaker who interrupted the match. It was a curious case of loss of concentration you see – after all he was dumbstruck by a mean streak. [caption id=“attachment_44877” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“A mural depicting the famous “Hand of God” goal by former Argentinian soccer star Diego Maradona. Sergio Moraes/Reuters”]  [/caption] Zambian tennis player Lighton Ndefwayi’s didn’t take his loss to arch-rival Musumba Bwayla in a local tournament very well. He reacted with an array of excuses saying, “Bwayla is a stupid man and a hopeless player. He has a huge nose and is cross-eyed. Girls hate him. He beat me because my jockstrap was too tight and because when he serves he farts, and that made me lose my concentration, for which I am famous throughout Zambia.” Guess the extirpation was inspiration enough for such a candid outpouring. Tight clothes obviously restrict movement and this was precisely the reason cited by the Sri Lankans after their defeat to Pakistan in the 2001 ICC Champions Trophy final. Apparently, extensions had to be added to their trousers and the shirts looked like tight-fitting women’s blouses. It’s a wonder how the William sisters haven’t used this ‘valid’ excuse till date. On the opening day of the 1974 baseball season, Chicago Cubs baseball star declared that he couldn’t play – after all, his eyelid was stuck open and he couldn’t blink as he had slept funny. What a sticky excuse! Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Vinny Testaverde threw 35 interceptions in the 1988 NFL season. Well, what could he do? He claimed that he suffered from colour blindness and hence, the several misdirected passes. Apparently, he couldn’t tell his teammates from the opposition. Following the revelations, a Tampa Bay radio station hired a billboard for a game, painted it blue and ran with the message: “Vinny thinks this is orange.” Soccer has its fair share of odd reasons. Whether it was a goalkeeper’s television reporter girlfriend that distracted him by standing behind the goalpost to a Serbian footballer penalised for handling the ball due to the new Jabulani ball that was lighter and flew further hitting his hand, or the Argentinian team allowing South Korea to score by committing a blunder due to the deafening sound of the vuvuzelas. However, some reasons are odder than odd. A Rotterdam goalie once blamed a howler on the blinding glare created by his centre-half’s bald head. Algerian goalkeeper Faouzi Chaochi let in a careless goal during their match versus Slovenia. Explanation provided – the ball increased its velocity on its second bounce and kicked up because of the fibre woven into the grass. Gosh! Had to be a science major! Croak Croak…what a hoax! Noisy frogs caused the Ukraine team lose to Spain in the opening game of the 2006 World Cup. No, it wasn’t the talent of the Spaniards Fernando Torres and David Villa that did them in. In fact, it was the croaking of frogs outside the team hotel that kept them awake the night before the match. So, obviously they weren’t at their best during the match – they croaked! The manager of Manchester United, Alex Ferguson, became infamous by the excuse he provided for his side going down 1-3 to Southampton in 1996. Supposedly, the grey kit that the team wore caused the uninspiring performance as the players couldn’t pick each other out. Must have been all the grey grass! Such are sport’s grey areas! In North Korea, sports games are considered as ‘ideological struggles’ and losing means betraying the regime for which the team is seriously reprimanded. Hence, it is no wonder when it comes to North Koreans one must be prepared for the unimaginable. On one occasion to defend a loss, the North Korean coach Kim Jong Hun alleged that South Korea had poisoned his players while another time he said that he was getting coaching advice from Kim Jong II, the North Korean Democratic leader, through an invisible cellphone that he himself had invented. But the best of this creative pack of excuses by the country’s coaching administration came during the Women’s World Cup soccer after their team lost 2-0 to the US. According to the coach, the team lost because they were “struck by lightning” – not during the tournament, mind you, but several days earlier. He said there were unexpected changes in the players’ physical condition and they weren’t feeling very well. The king of all excuses was the one a la Shaggy ishtyle – ‘It wasn’t me’. In the 1986 World Cup quarterfinal against England, Argentinian icon Deigo Maradona punched a ball into the goal. The referee missed this clear infraction of the rules. During the press conference after the match, Maradona said it wasn’t him who committed the offence, but it was the ‘Hand of God’. And with that, he cemented himself at the centre of one of the greatest controversies in sport. So, go on and have a laugh – but remember someday it could happen to you.