Covid-19 the unintentional Game-Changer

After the havoc wreaked by Covid-19 on the world as a whole and on the sport of racing too, we’re starting to adjust to the new normal. While Japan and Hong Kong once again showed how far ahead of the world they are, in the sense that they hardly lost a fixture to the pandemic and their handles continued to soar at stratospheric levels. Europe and USA have also been able to continue racing behind closed doors since June in the former’s case and without a break Stateside. Meanwhile in what could be the most backward racing jurisdiction in the world; India there’s a glimmer of hope that we could start racing sometime in October.

Sometimes the shit has to hit the fan for things to happen and it just might be that COVID-19 has inadvertently forced our sport into the 21st Century. India is one of the few racing nations where the concept of conducting racing is still about packing in the audience into the racecourse, something that isn’t going to work in the age of Social distancing. The advent of the internet and the smartphone has pretty much gone unnoticed by the people who run racing. The only beneficiary of this has been the illegal bookmakers who sit and take online betting at Zero Tax from their customers’ mobile phones. While our beleaguered clubs try and run their meagre and fast declining Totes under a back breaking 28% Tax deduction. Anyway that is an argument for another time.

The “Brahmastra” that has been handed to Indian racing is permission to Four Clubs so far to conduct online betting on their totes. Now the next problem we face is whether we have anyone in the sport who has the training to use the weapon.

Bangalore, Mysore, Calcutta and Hyderabad have been granted in principle approval to conduct Online betting. One hopes the Governments of Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu too follow suit. It’s imperative that we grab this opportunity with both hands and move forward. For the first time ever racing has an opportunity to look outward rather than inward to expand our audience. So far the signs look ominous as every Club as is their wont and innate ability to always miss the forest for the trees look as if they’re each planning to go it alone. The buzzword among the aged mandarins who run the sport being their own, “APP.” What they don’t quite understand is that for this to succeed as the weapon that it’s designed to be, everything must be based on a single national totalisator pool. Or else going it alone is going to give us Pea Shooters instead of something powerful.

Further to this all of us have to change. Going online means that your audience has to be delivered a well packaged product with a lot more information and quality presentation. In between races, shots of pigeons sitting and shitting on an asbestos roof isn’t going to cut it. Professionals and owners whether they like it or not are going to have to start talking to the intended audience and involving them in the entire process of what is a multi layered and cerebral sport. We have to reach an audience and excite them into getting involved.

In the absence of any racing here in India one has had to whet one’s racing appetite with mainly English racing. It’s always fascinating and informative to listen to people like John Gosden, Frankie Dettori, Oisin Murphy and the like, further you need people like Nick Luck, Matt Chapman, Francesca Cumani and Brough Scott to ask the right questions. Similarly you need race-callers like Simon Holt and Richard Hoiles to describe races as expertly as they do. You also need journalists who have an actual understanding of the many facets of the sport so that we get some proper information out there, our current mediocre lot spend more time trolling and pushing their own opinions and agendas rather than make a little bit of an effort to make their writing interesting. We still go on with our ancient production setups at each club using obsolete technology when our smartphones have better cameras in them. It’s about time the Turf Authorities sat down and conducted a technology audit. I’m dead certain that our production work can by done a lot cheaper and in High Definition. This has to be done alongside online betting or else we’ll just look like a low end product not worth watching since the pictures are so grainy. The look and feel of the entire experience has to be rich.

In the old days one needed TV and a presence in Print Dailies for the world to know you existed. This is something that has changed drastically in the last decade or so. The advent of platforms like YouTube have meant that you can show your product to a worldwide audience without needing to be on Television. Similarly Social Media platforms like Instagram and Twitter have changed the dynamic of getting your message out there effectively. Now the problem that exists is that our people who promote the sport have scant knowledge of how all this works or the ability to differentiate between a hash-tag and a hash-brown. Unfortunately the majority of their Social media exposure is flowery Good Morning messages, poor jokes and screenshots of my tweets.

Unfortunately the raw fact is that despite not having any racing for nigh on Six Months, I greatly doubt any of the Clubs even the ones with online betting permission have done anything to prepare themselves for the way ahead. The quasi-governmental structure of the administration that runs racing in India and its ancient make-up keeps the sport in penury. A friend of mine joked the other day that in these COVID-19 affected times, when older people above the age of 60 are advised to sit at home, one doubts if we’d be able to make a quorum of Stewards on a race-day.

We have a great opportunity, our fingers are crossed that we don’t squander this too.

Quotas: India’s way of enforcing Socialism in Racing

During the 20th Century Karl Marx, The Soviet Union and the Left promoted the utopian doctrine of Socialism which ran its course in many parts of the world. While it did indelible harm to the racing and breeding industry in so much that it curbed the natural growth of the sport which was funded by betting. Gambling is a perceived vice in socialist thought but yet an essential part of the human state is the urge to gamble. Times changed, the Soviet Union crumbled and India began its march towards full blown capitalism and right wing thought. Along the way in racing a socialist mindset evolved which promoted a thought process by which to curb excellence, the system of, “Quotas.” Its very easy to justify this system unfortunately when it comes down to sport there is no place for it. Yet racing chooses to embrace it. The evolution of the quota system took a while and as such become detrimental to Indian racing.

The first sign of this becoming a part of the racing industry was during the days that India’s premier trainer Rashid Byramji dominated Indian racing. He was based out of Western India and his domination of his contemporaries was such that it was RRB first and the rest simply making up the numbers and fighting for the minor placings. Every owner of consequence at the time was either training with him or after getting a whupping from one of his horses, wanted to train with him. The fallout of Rashid Byramji’s success was that his domination was found to be effecting the overall competitive nature of the sport. As a result the Committee of RWITC first mooted the proposal of limiting the number of horses that he could train. Mr. Byramji, never the sort to take things lying down, in protest moved lock, stock and barrel to Bangalore which was otherwise his summertime base. Bangalore’s gain was RWITC’s loss as RRB was better placed in Bangalore to raid Hyderabad, Madras and his old home Mumbai at will, something that can be seen in his record number of classics won, it also helped to establish Bangalore as a full fledged racing centre, not just where you spent your summers because India’s best trainer with the best horses was based there. RWITC on the other hand has never had and from what is on display nowadays will never have a trainer of his calibre based in their centre. Mr. Byramji for a long period of time was refused a license by RWITC as a result many of his assistants from that period all find their names on the Indian Derby Roll of Honour as RRB dominated his country’s home Derby.

Fast forward to the 21st Century and as Indian Racing continued to stay stagnant or regressed in my opinion as the administration of Indian Racing never kept up with our burgeoning racing and breeding industry. Madras Race Club was first shut down and then destroyed by the greed of one man as a helpless and emasculated industry remained silent onlookers. The result was that the Indian breeding industry for the first time reached a point where supply outstripped demand and we were overproducing. One of the solutions albeit a short term one was that Mysore was launched as a racing centre in its own right to absorb Bangalore’s overflow. This did indeed work for a while but soon Mysore was overcrowded too. Hyderabad Race Club on the other hand, had money, space and owned their own land and they chose to restrict the open nature of racing. They imposed quotas on how many 2 year olds can be brought into their facility. This system was originally created to safeguard their local owners and trainers who notwithstanding the occasional exception were performing at a lower level than their counterparts in Bangalore and Bombay. As if to compound an already bad idea they decided to hand these quotas to owners rather than trainers. The result of this policy was that owners who could genuinely buy good horses had to limit themselves, while many who could ill afford to buy a horse suddenly found themselves in a position of power, since they had the golden ticket a, “quota.”

Hyderabad is possibly the worst centre when it comes to payment defaults because the horse must come into HRC with a sale or lease form whether a breeder has been paid or not. Yet, year in and year out these defaulting owners get quotas to bring horses into HRC. There are people who genuinely want to buy more horses in Hyderabad and can afford to do so but perennially they find themselves running out of quotas. Similarly a couple of people who have quotas have decided to become breeders since the junk they produce is their own junk and they have the brahmastra: a, “quota.” Year in and year out quotas are handed out to these blokes without looking to see how their previous allottees did. Yet towards the end of the annual sham sale that we conduct in Pune you find the bottom feeders of Hyderabad racing come around looking for horses on contingency. Helpless breeders are left with little option but to get rid of horses in this way as there is a glimmer of hope that you’ll get a return or else there is a good chance that your horse will not even find a stable at any track as you are unable to, “arrange” a quota. The general performance level at Hyderabad has improved considerably as trainers like Vittal Deshmukh, Shehzad Abbas and Laxman Singh have upped the quality of their stock and now the local horses more often than not hold their own against all comers, in fact last week’s 1000 Guineas saw local horses occupy the first two slots, once again performance based quotas to trainers would go a very long way in improving the quality of horses at Malakpet immensly. Currently there is a very distinct divide whereby the better quality stock will hold their own on a national level but there are an equal number of horses that can only be classified as junk and those that are rated below 25 at Hyderabad are very possibly the worst horses racing in India.

Bangalore Turf Club is the one racecourse which turns over more in betting handle than the rest of Indian racing combined. Unfortunately due to a lack of space and rampant benami ownership the quality of their racing product has been on a very steeply declining curve. A poorly written racing programme as well as draconian winning penalties have encouraged the concept of bringing horses down in handicap by giving them runs, to strike for an annual or seasonal gamble. Not only has the quota system encouraged the setting up of benami owners but here we have benami trainers too and there are a minimum of 300 horses that are controlled by these stables as well as dubious elements. Its an open secret as to who actually trains horses with certain licensees. The saving grace for Bangalore has been the fact that day in and day out the public turns up and splashes the cash at the tote counters. The better trainers are restricted as none of them have extension counters while at the lower end of the spectrum this practice is rampant and worst of all an open secret. Cancelling licenses is the only way to sort things out as rather than handing out quotas through a system which makes no sense at all, the club ought to ask trainers how many they would like to train along with the names of the potential horses as well as the owners’ name and then hand out quotas through a merit based system.

Its about time that the clubs looked upon handing out extra quotas to the top trainers at their centres. By that I mean the trainers with the best strike rate, highest per capita earnings per horse, the highest earners of stake money should all be handed extra quotas for excellence. Similarly the reward for winning graded races ought to entitle trainers to an extra quota for say every 3 Group 3s won, another extra quota for every 2 Group 2 wins an extra quota and one extra quota for every Group 1 race they win. Not only will it spur trainers to improve their tallies it will also encourage them to attempt to win big races, something sorely lacking nowadays. Similarly poorly performing professionals should be the ones losing their quotas. Trainers are the ambassadors of the sport, better pros will attract better owners to get involved with the sport. The quota system and the extension counter system is so rampant now that often the RWITC Twitter handle ends up sending congratulatory messages to the de facto trainer rather than the trainer on record. So why must we have this charade?

As of now a huge problem is the arbitrary nature by which these quotas are allotted to various trainers. Trainers at the top of the ladder are treated the same as trainers of inferior quality simply because the latter are perceived to be big trainers since they train a large number of horses. Since when was this a sport about quantity? Its supposed to be all about quality and the best must face each other and may the better one win. Nowhere is this chasm more evident than in Hyderabad where this concept of quotas has mutated into something thats about everything but excellence. A cursory look at the statistics will give you a clear idea as to how many trainers there and similarly a segment of owners too ought to find a different game with which to involve themselves. Similarly There is a trainer in Bangalore whose monthly commission earnings over the past 19 seasons are less than what a daily wage labourer would earn per month in Punjab. Rather than weed out incompetent professionals clubs keep on handing these people quotas. When there is a situation where there is a shortage of space at their racetracks the Turf Authorities should be culling trainers who aren’t performing at a basic level just as breeders are forced to cull inferior mares and stallions. I understand that no system is perfect and must evolve over a period of time, many of my ideas might be right or wrong but I’m sure they’ll be a step in the right direction. The current system has unfortunately turned into a Frankenstein and the monster is eating up the upper end of the sport and digesting it and throwing out a waste product at the bottom end which is growing bigger and bigger but benefits nobody; not owners, trainers, jockeys, breeders or even the clubs. Its about time we awoke as a racing nation to the fact that this is a sport that is based on excellence not a quota system which restricts it.

Bangalore Summer Season! How did we F@%k Up something as good as this?

The general consensus among racing people this year has been that the just concluded Bangalore Summer Season has been the worst in history, as a regular over the last thirty years, I definitely think so. A myriad of reasons have caused India’s only national season to fall to the depths that it has. Every single thing that makes racing good has been compromised on and as a result standards plummeted to what has never been witnessed before. One hardly saw races for horses rated 80 and above, in old terms, Class One. No 60-85 races which were always interesting, instead we got this new 60 and above class, which simply just wasn’t as much fun. Depleted quality in Maiden Special Weight races was another thing that was apparent, in the old days some really top horses emerged in these races like Elusive Pimpernel, Adler, Berlioz, Noble Prince, Classical Act and Continual, I doubt we saw any horses of that level emerge this season.

The one person who it seems has reached the end of his tether is the handicapper, the committee has given him way too much power, he frames a majority of the racing policies, he frames the prospectus and he decides which race to divide and which race to void and which race to ballot out horses from. He has reached a point where he has left the sport in shambles and should own moral responsibility for the crap we witnessed in the name of racing and hand in his papers.

First thing that is way out of wack is how the prospectus is framed, the handicapper has helped the BTC have no need for a round circuit track, we may as well have a 6 furlong half track as he sees it fit only to card sprints. Since there is a paucity of space, BTC may as well build stables on the balance 800 metres. On the penultimate week, we had no fewer than six 1200 Metre races in a seven race card. The handicapper has created a system of mediocrity all around and since our biggest races such as the Derbies and the Invitation Cup are run at distances beyond 2000 Metres, its very understandable that the local contingent was able to pick up only four graded races over the entire season. Only one of these races was at a Mile and a Half and the win in that was testament more to the talents of Isn’t She Special’s trainer, S Padmanabhan than any help from the system (in fact due to a lack of opportunity, this same filly was perceived to be a non stayer until she won the Indian Oaks). The Champion horse of the season Amazing Grace owned by Vijay Mallya was lucky to find herself in the Liquor Baron’s Western India operation under Pesi Shroff rather than in Bangalore, where I doubt she’d have reached the heights that she has. Amazing Grace made her debut over 10 Furlongs in Bombay which she duly won, after this she was stepped up into the mile and a half Oaks and Indian Derby where she performed well enough but not enough to win, after picking up another long distance race in Bombay she headed to Bangalore where she won a mile race, then a graded race Hat Trick via the Chief Justice Cup (9 furlongs), Maharaja’s Cup (11Furlongs) and topped it out in a 3 runner St. Leger (14 Furlongs), expectedly 2 of the 3 runners were from outstation. Now if this filly had been with Jaggy or Suleiman they would have compulsorily had to start her career likely over a maximum of 7 Furlongs and would have had only one chance to run over a trip until the end of Bangalore Summer Season in her three year old career that too in the Summer Derby, Shroff has only had to cut her back to a mile for her first run this Summer season. This is why stayers rarely reach the heights in Bangalore.

The boring and mundane short distance racing one sees is due to The handicapper’s myopic vision which he put into force many years ago, unfortunately nobody questioned it and as a result things have now reached a point where we simply go through the motions, akin to seeing only 100 metre races in Atheletics, one division for the top end another for women, another for runners who are over 30, another for runners over 50 another for runners with missing toes and achilles tendons, another for runners over 60 who have had a hip replacement and another for fat guys etc. etc. you get the point. Bangalore racing rarely even stretches to a mile as a result we are now producing inferior jockeys who have never ridden over a trip, trainers who have lost the ability to train for stamina as well and horses who are bred to run longer distances being forced to sprint instead. Mo Farah wouldn’t stand a chance in a 100 or even 400 metre race, would he? Similarly a filly liked Winged Foot who won the Bangalore Oaks of 2014 when rated 38 needs to run a full mile and a half to really show her true colours. Yet here we are forced to run sons of Ascot Gold Cup winners over a 6 or 7 furlong trip and then wonder why they run so poorly.

Races must have 8 runners is the rule followed in Bangalore and when there are 16 or more acceptors then races are divided. Even the division system is flawed, rather than equated divisions, where there is an even split of runners, here the better runners go to the higher division while the lower division gets the inferior horses. Another backward thought process that is put into practice is that if a class 2 and class 5 race are dividing but as a result there is a card in excess of 8 or 9 races then the shittier race is divided and the better race goes to balloting. Normal intelligent human beings would have it the other way around but here its never about competence its as they say in India, “Like That only.”

Next comes his handicapping where he has created a system whereby one is encouraged to be a non trier since after winning as he slams you with penalties that are so draconian that it often causes horses to retire, its happened with two mares I owned years ago called South Sea and Hoorpari. Its as if he overcompensates for earlier errors when he rates horses. Both these fillies won by too much, as a result they got slammed penalties so heavy that they simply stopped being competitive so we just retired them rather than keep running for the sake of it to find a fair handicap mark again. The idea of handicapping is to equate every horse’s chances in a race so that people are encouraged to bet on a spread of horses in a race rather than have a one sided betting affair. Unfortunately when one sees the racecard its rather obvious which horse will win as every trainer in Bangalore has figured out Mr. Handicapper’s style and race their horses as such. If you try your horse every single time you have a snowball’s chance in hell of succeeding. Take the case of Cape Ferrat he is a genuine horse who has got rogered by the handicapper so badly that it took him more than 700 days between races to win when he won on the penultimate week of racing. On the flip-side see a horse called Brownie who was rated 41, has been run without being tried and won a race by dropping 21 points in a six month period. The champion trainer of the Summer Amit Caddy has the handicapper figured out to a T and he has reaped the rewards. Full marks to the young man who has mastered the system of Bangalore’s handicapper and its system of racing, he has performed admirably within the system created at BTC. A majority of his winners made the handicapper look really bad as horses won sub 45 rated races for age group horses in a common canter, with the jockey looking around at the bend if anything was coming from behind, nothing ever was most of the time. Further the trainer’s winners got some insanely huge penalties which his runners further defied, he was that far ahead of the Handicapper. The handicapper’s failure as a racing person has been glaring, he has forgotten that this a sport and yes a business too but first and foremost a SPORT!

Riding instructions are pretty straightforward, good jump, try and get to the rails hold up till 300 out and go for it. We ooh and aah when we see Richard Hughes hold up a horse and produce it at just the right time to win Group ones, here our boys do not have the luxury of holding up as in a sprint you have to be up there or you are accused of stopping your horse. Training is a form of art and the top purveyors of this art like Rashid Byramji, Sir Henry Cecil, Sir Michael Stoute, Aidan O Brien, Vincent O Brien, Woody Stephens, Bobby Frankel, Andre Fabre, Francois Boutin, Ettiene Pollet and Charlie Whittingham are not known because they trained top horses at Six and Seven Furlongs they are known for their records in classics and the shortest classic is run over a mile and the longest over a mile and three quarters. When you train for longer trips you must work your horses over long clippy canters, balance it with the proper pace work usually a mile gallop. This must be balanced with the right amount of feed and the right amount of exertion so that a horse runs at its peak on Derby Day!

The St Leger had 3 runners, the reason being that there is no proper programme that leads up to the St Leger, further to that is the draconian system the handicapper follows, if a 40 rated horse beats a 100 rated runner and places in the first three, he actually puts that horse up to the level of the beaten runner and as a result the horse ends up way out of scale. This pretty much chases away genuine contenders who are sitting lower in the scale due to the lack of long distance opportunities. How do we fix this? Its actually pretty simple, there should be ample opportunity at every trip all the way from Five and a Half Furlongs all the way up to a mile and a half. Rather than skew the system in favour of shorter trips, there needs to be a proper programme for Sprinters, Milers, Middle Distance runners and Stayers. We need to card at least one 10 Furlong plus race on every race day, boost the prize money of these races and see that they are gone through irrespective of whether there are seven runners or more in these races. In fact if only one runner accepts, go through the formalities of a walkover if need be. Once the owners and trainers see that prize money is going a begging you’ll find them get a lot more adventurous and running over longer trips.

Another huge factor in this entire problem is the quota system, something that was put into force first by Hyderabad Race Club in order to save their local trainers and owners from fair outstation competition. This was something that was done at the cost of SPORT. Racing when you have these restrictions suffers, as a lack of competition breeds laziness and as it is in many fields you improve when you compete with the best. You don’t learn how to play pace bowling by facing Vinay Kumar or Manoj Prabhakar you learn by facing, Andy Roberts, Dennis Lillee, Jeff Thompson and Dale Steyn. Competition in sport must always be unfettered and be about the best beating the best. As a result of the quota system many more competent trainers have their numbers restricted while less competent trainers are treated on an equal footing due to what must be perceived to be a, “Fair System.” This is sport mate and nothing in sport should ever be equated, the best must thrive and the bad must perish. Do we treat Sachin Tendulkar and any other batsman the same way, the answer is a big fat NO. A system needs to come about where the top end of the sport must be nurtured and one must create conditions where the mediocre must pull up their socks or else they must be forced to quit. Treating a trainer who has a strike rate of 6% the same as a trainer who fires at 22% winners to runners is plain wrong. There must be norms in place where the guy who isn’t performing must be warned that his performance must improve and if it doesn’t he must be de-licensed like in Hong Kong. Similarly the BTC must understand that they are running a business and certain trainers’ horses attract a hell of a lot more betting than others, as a result of which BTC earns a commission of 4% of every Rupee bet. In return BTC provides these trainers with valuable real estate in the shape of stables for their horses. Now isn’t it normal for you to give a higher commission to the man who earns you more money than another colleague, similarly you have to create a system and atmosphere where the trainer who is earning you less money is made to suffer to a point where he either earns you more money or he quits. Racing isn’t a Socialist Democracy its supposed to be a Capitalist Meritocracy, perform or perish.

The level of stiping is abysmal, as a result trainers and jockeys are stopping horses at will without ever being hauled up by the stipes. The entire team needs to be sent during the hiatus from racing to work in Hong Kong, America or Europe and taught what their job is. On the last weekend I saw a jockey whom I rarely use and now never will, give a stone cold run to a Filly of mine in a seven furlong maiden set. I could make it out but the stipes, I can guarantee you will not even question the ride. This is how it went down; my horse didn’t have a great chance of winning on paper, the trainer asked for the jockey to take a good jump and sit up as close to the pace as possible and do his best from there, instead the jockey takes a tug on jumping out and rode as if he was stoned the whole way and covered a few in the stretch. Honestly I thought that the race was made up on the winner as even the other jockeys including the Runner Up were very half assed in their attempt to win. Instead of the leaders if one was to look at the last five horses in every race, you’ll see exactly how every single one is ridden in other words its how a run is given. Similarly there is another perceived to be top jockey who rather than attempt to win is busier in interfering with fancied runners instead. I’ve noticed two cases which were blatant and if one were to sit down and watch every race run I’m sure a man with coke bottle glasses would find another dozen such cases unfortunately the stipes pick up NOTHING! The Result of incompetent officials is more fixing in racing.

The Committee of Bangalore Turf Club should understand that the bureaucracy of the club is making them look bad. Similar to how red tapism and bad bureaucratic babudom makes the world perceive that their politicians are useless. The committee and stewards find themselves unfairly blamed and they should understand that they have the power to crack the whip on the salaried employees of the club who aren’t competent at their jobs. The whole system needs an overhaul with a very different attitude, structure and a fresher and more modern system. We need to balance racing out over every distance and have races over varying trips in every class of racing. Similarly we need to have more conditions races for our better class runners. The bottom quality races should be claiming races as the sword of having their hooked horse claimed will prevent further malpractice which is rampant as off now. The handicapper is completely at sea and most trainers know how much he is going to drop them and when he is going to drop them, this is a massive problem and is causing the sport to suffer. Age group racing needs to be discontinued in the entire country as this is a remnant of the 70s which has now run amuck. Age group racing was encouraged because there was a shortage of horses to fill up cards all over the country as the breeding industry wasn’t breeding enough youngstock to populate the various clubs’ stables. Today there is a glut and a very heavy level of overproduction.

Currently Bangalore racing is all about horses aged 4 and over who carry a sub 40 rating. To put it in perspective the champion trainer won 19 races, his best victory was in an open company 40-65 set, his 19 winners had an average rating of 30.8 further to this he claimed an allowance of about 3.8 rating points through creative use of apprentice jockeys which means his average winner effectively ran off’ve a rating of 27. Racing and sport is supposed to be about excellence, isn’t it? The 2014 Bangalore Summer Season was far from it, it was gritty grimy gambling and not at all about sport.

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly!

When I started writing this blog, the intention was to put down on record my thoughts on a sport that is also my business and a way of life for me. The response has been overwhelming so far and one hopes that I am able to convince some of the powers that be in Indian racing of the many ills that plague our sport. At the same time most of the time I come across as what we boarding school kids call a,”Sheddy.” Well I am far from that and In this blog I intend to mention a few things that our sport can say are world class.

Lets start with the Indian Stud Book; here was an institution that was very poorly run until Major Srinivas Nargolkar walked up to the plate as the registrar. Major as we fondly call him brought about a radical change in an institution that was as poorly run as the rest of the sport. I doubt many people know this but our Stud Book is a model that most countries in the world come to see when they want to find out how things are done. Major, computerised most of the data that the Stud Book kept. He started maintaining proper statistics, organised in such a way that the Stud Book took over a lot of stuff that breeders were being made to do such as the responsibility of doing their own write-ups for the annual sale. I remember one year in the 80s when Major Pradeep Mehra and my father, Sonny Brar messed up their deadlines and both of their sales entries were rejected and we conducted a separate sale at Delhi Race Club, so if you wanted to buy a Grey Gaston one hoofed it to Delhi and incidentally out of this sale came the year’s champion filly, Chaitanya Ratham (TV Sunday-Urvashi by Everyday II) not only did she wipe out all the Southern classics in her year but went on to produce an Indian Derby winner in Astronomic.

Major would come around to every stud farm at least once a year with lots of test tubes to collect blood samples for Blood Typing of our yearlings. Proper rules were set, proper deadlines were made and the breeding industry followed. He humanised the Stud Book and personally knew every single breeder. Whereas the previous registrars would talk down to most breeders, Major was like a good housemaster in boarding school, fair yet firm. Our Stud Book kept up with every single innovation that the world came up with and he was very instrumental in helping set up our DNA testing lab in Pune. One rarely hears of anybody ever felicitating him for the service that he provided, after he retired and after two registrars who weren’t in the same mould as him, later the reins have been handed over to Satish Iyer who worked very closely with Major.

A person I find to be in a similar mould to his Guru, Satish is a person with his roots in computers and he was responsible for undertaking the computerisation of the Indian Stud Book. Since he has taken over, the Stud Book has been brought up to scratch keeping in mind more modern systems of computing as earlier the Stud Book ran on DOS programming. A great idea has been the adding of a CD ROM in the sleeve of every Stud Book publication so that one can access data in pdf format. The latest innovation was the launch of a website which provides data on every Indian thoroughbred and the site is updated on a weekly basis. One understands that Gautam Lala played a large role in conceptualising this and at an annual subscription of a Thousand bucks you get proper information on every mare, stallion and foal in India, its not just the best value in Indian racing but I’d dare say its the biggest bargain in the world’s breeding industry. A recent innovation has been a breeders’ portal for the registration of foals as well as maintaining accounts. Recently Satish gave a very well received presentation on the Indian breeding industry at a session at the 2014 Asian Racing Conference in Hong Kong, the session was chaired by Dr. Cyrus Poonawalla. Our Stud Book is one of the industry’s only world class institutions and thank god we have it or else maybe we too would head the way of Pakistan which has lost its status as a country that produces thoroughbreds. The staff at the Stud Book are what one could call helpful facilitators and the entire team are very well marshalled and know their jobs. That is indeed testament to the man at the helm, keep up the good work.

Keeping in the positive mode one must mention the new Monsoon track that has been laid in Pune. I remember in the old days Pune racing would often get cancelled when the ghats were over-run with torrential rainfall. At that time part of the racing surface was converted into a Monsoon track while another part of it was still the old black cotton soil based surface. The old monsoon track it seems had run its course and a refurbishment was required. Recently RWITC has converted the entire surface into a track that holds up well under wet conditions but at the same time plays fair in bright sunshine too. As if on cue it poured during the opening week of the Pune races and the track as well as timings held up extremely well one hopes the entire exercise is a massive success and the surface plays fair and is safe for the horses that race on it. Apparently the Bangalore track is set for a refurbishment at the end of the Summer Season, this is urgently required and one hopes it all goes off well.

Now lets get to the bad and ugly of Indian racing and unfortunately nothing typifies it better than the soon to be concluded Bangalore Summer Season. As outstation horses return to their home bases, BTC is struggling to fill their cards and races have been going void, this week Thursday’s card has an abysmal lot of 6 races. I couldn’t but help notice two horses in Friday’s first race which are racing off a mark of ZERO! Yes Sifar, Nought, Nil. What has gone wrong with racing at BTC? This club handles more betting on their tote than the rest of India’s tracks combined, yet its been sliding like a freight train going downhill. This is my home centre and I have seen the heydays of the Bangalore Summer Season. The days when Rashid Byramji would become champion trainer after giving his pursuer a lead of six maybe eight into the last week of racing. The days when Vasant Shinde would say, “Baba Sollid” and then get beat by Pesi Shroff, Aslam Kader, Warren Singh and Karan Singh. The quality of trainers was top notch and the jockeys were a different class to the riders of this era. I will never forget Vasant’s ride on Nine Carat in the Bangalore Derby when the filly stumbled out of the gates; in one smooth motion the man had the filly on her feet and moving as if nothing happened when moments before her nose was on the turf. Similarly Pesi Shroff’s ride on Brave Dancer in the Maharaja’s Cup where he stole a march on Divine Light at the top of the straight and held her off in an epic battle to the wire versus Vasant. This was Elusive Pimpernel, Adler and In The Spotlight’s home centre. India’s best trainer S. Padmanabhan is based out of Bangalore. Yet their big races have been plundered by raiders from Bombay and even Hyderabad. Things are so bad that even the best Three year old in Karnataka; Fink is based 3 hours down the road away in Mysore! As it stands the best 3 year old in Bangalore is Bold Majesty with a Fourth in the Derby and a poor runner up effort in the mile million on Sunday.

Bangalore was homestead to Rashid Byramji who was head and shoulders above the competition. The best would come from Bombay, Haskell David brought his A Team from Calcutta and a whole lot of horses arrived from Madras and Hyderabad too. This was our national season, our Saratoga. What happened? This year The entire season has been a train wreck! I hope those in-charge take my comments and suggestions in the right spirit. My intention is to be constructively critical for the betterment of sport and nothing else. I will go into details regarding all this in my next blog so that I don’t get too verbose as many of my readers have said so. Just a synopsis of what I intend to discuss as regards Bangalore, the Prospectus, the human element, an ill conceived Quota System and the lack of opportunities for superior stock and inversely too much opportunity for the lowest third of the stock in training. Similarly a Socialist attitude for a Capitalist sport has led to a destruction of merit and excellence isn’t rewarded while incompetence isn’t punished.

Nothing To Be Ashamed Of Except Saturday’s BTC Card!!!

The recent travails of racing as a sport and breeding as a business have led me to a conclusion, of how we fall into a complete blind spot as regards the Government. Racing has failed and failed miserably at that to keep up with the times. The sport has been unable to cash in on its incumbent advantage as the only legal form of gambling on mainland India. I have spoken often about the so called, “Club” system and its numerous failings to administer a 21st Century sport.

The Racing and Breeding industry provides an estimated 3.3 Million direct man days of employment in India and most of that number is rural jobs. I haven’t taken into consideration all the indirect jobs that are created such as in the hospitality sector and many others. Yet we are unable to shake off the stigma of being considered a vice and being looked upon as a rich man’s indulgence. This attitude is far from the truth since I doubt there is a sport in the world that requires as much labour whether its a white collar executive all the way down to the guy who has to shovel horse-shit. As an example take my farm which is located in rural India in a village in Punjab, if I was farming rice and wheat, which incidentally is far more profitable under the current scenario we find ourselves in as an industry, I would need no more than 30 people to work on my farm since a lot of modern farming, especially in Punjab is done with machines but since I breed horses I require many times that number. Added to this are the intangibles that one never thinks about, the pursuit of breeding horses is a green industry. Utilisation of insecticides and weed killers is minimal as horses would be harmed by their use. The pressure on water resources is far less than if one was farming the land for crops. A paddock needs watering once a month vis a vis crops which need a weekly or at least a fortnightly watering. So here we are, a green environmentally friendly industry that hires a large number of people to work and gives extra revenue to the Government, sounds like a fail safe doesn’t it? We should get respect but we find ourselves on the oblique opposite side of respect, we’re looked down upon. We are neither treated as a sport, an industry or an agricultural activity. We are the orphan of Indian Policy making.

So here is an environmentally friendly industry that runs right through the core of society be it Mr Tycoon who buys a horse or Mr Syce who looks after a horse or Mr. Farrier who is a skilled worker or Mr. Trainer whose job is akin to that of a sports coach or Mr. Jockey who if good is as talented as any cricket player and yet has the toughest profession in sports as a whole as he must control his weight as well as retain his strength to control a 500 KG horse. To top all this we give the government oodles of cash from betting taxes for the privilege of running our sport and get fiddle all in return from them only more hurdles and hoops to pass through. We need to hold our heads high and be proud of what we do; breeding, training and riding is an art-form which is very nuanced and extremely difficult to master. See the regard greats like Lester Piggot, Sir Henry Cecil or Federico Tesio are held in, in their homelands they are revered as gods and books are written about their achievements, sadly its not the case in India. Whereas in most other countries around the world racing and breeding is seen as a major economic driver, in India we have been way off the mark when it comes to making a good case for ourselves in the eyes of the government or the public.

Racing has been deemed to be a sport by a landmark Supreme Court judgement in 1996. In other words we ought to be treated on par with other sports and should be getting grants like other sports such as Kabbadi and Kho-Kho get from the Sports Ministry, what do we get? Once again the answer is Nada! Instead we get our state government in Maharashtra tax the tote 27% and then wonder why everybody bets on the phone with illegal bookies instead of the Tote. Unfortunately we once again fall in a policy blind-spot while babudom orders us to bend-over even more.

Anyway enough of all that and lets return to The worst Bangalore Summer Season in history. After some good racing over Derby weekend despite a deluge of rain we return to reality. Saturday’s card is a repeat of the shitfest that we witnessed on the Saturday before Derby week. Though on the positive side it was great to see the track hold up really well despite some solid rain over the entire Derby week which turned into sheets on Derby Sunday. The going albeit soft was safe and every race on the card was gone through, well done BTC at least something deserves praise; the current management of the racing surface.

Going racing at BTC is akin to going to see a Formula One race but being treated to racing Maruti 800s instead and to add to that analogy Maruti 800s that are for good measure 5 Years old and over. Age group racing was encouraged when there was a shortage of horses for racing in the 70s, it was a way to encourage owners to keep their older and less competitive stock and card races for them to earn their cornbill and the quid pro quo was that they ensured that numbers in an era of horse shortage remained healthy enough to card a proper racecard on a weekly basis. In the same era BTC, RWITC and HRC ran breeding operations to populate their stables and clubs subsidised horse ownership. Now we have a glut of horses, so why continue with the boring spectacle of age group racing. RCTC has pretty much done away with it, its about time BTC smelt the Coffee and did so too. Carding races for lower class aged horses is causing racing to fall into a rut as since owning a 25 rated 6 year old is so lucrative, why attempt to buy a nice juvenile instead when no proper races are being written for them. The quota system that was instituted a few years ago now is bearing fruit, unfortunately the fruit is about as tasty as Snow White’s Apple. While genuine buyers are denied quotas or rather restricted, many trainers who do not have the clientele and as such funds to buy young-stock were given quotas which they have been obliged to fill since they were allotted. The result has been that they have brought in inferior stock which was available cheap and in most cases stock on contingency without any care about quality. In other words horses that shouldn’t be in racing have found their way into the BTC racing system and are going to be around for many more years to for the lack of a better word pollute the sport as a bad jockey or trainer would and these nags have taken a stable that could have been occupied by a superior horse. Currently racing is so far down the abyss that a race featuring the stray dogs of BTC would be more watchable than what is being churned out in the name of racing.

BTC has been plagued recently with a a lack of direction, deteriorating standards of racing, the complete lack of any policing of the sport to ensure fairplay, no consistency in decisions taken and a general apathetic attitude towards everything whether its a cup of tea or a Derby winning racehorse. In the the real world (read everywhere but BTC) the man at the helm would have been sacked eons ago for pure non performance but here there is nobody at the helm, so nobody to hold accountable; no professional CEO who is empowered to take decisions, expand business or generally manage affairs as a company with a ₹1600 Crore turnover should. The stiping levels have fallen to depths of depravity previously never seen. The department is today only competent to count how many times a horse is whipped. Jockeys give runs today with an impunity that I have never seen before in my life, its so bad that the handicapper doesn’t even change the rating of more than half of a weekend’s runners, in other words he feels that these horses are not running on merit. Recently Wayne Wood has been hired to hopefully improve the sorry state of affairs, one hopes he has had a dispassionate look at the sorry state of affairs and the competence level of those around him. I’m pretty sure that he is aware of the surgery required in the department and he should be empowered to take a cleaver to it if he so desires and make sure that racing officials know their jobs properly, currently pushing pens is the only place where there is excellence!

Quotas, Mediocrity,Pattern Races and Other Musings

Indian racing has ceased to be national in nature and maybe its time that names carried a parenthesis with the centre name in it to signify where a horse is based. Racing Against Aged Junk [MYS], Age Group Sprint Champ [BLR], Quota King [HYD], etc. would give us a far better idea about a horse’s ability. Since racing was and hopefully still is about who is the fastest horse one fails to understand the system created by Hyderabad Race Club, the dreaded, “Quota System.” The reasoning behind this was that it would protect the local owners against better horses from other centres. At the same time the system would be used to allot their limited stable space for the fresh inflow of 2 year olds into HRC by giving quotas to owners. Over a period of time the system has become a way for the powers that be to flex their muscles and has become very arbitrary in nature. Added to this is the fact that these quotas are alloted to owners, rather than trainers and then there is a cap on the number of horses a trainer can bring into his stable as well. As a result of this benami ownership flourishes and it limits the growth of genuine owners who want to buy horses, since quota holding owners hold onto their slot for dear life, resulting in them buying or taking on contingency cheap horses of a lower standard. What this has managed to achieve is a false bearing on what the true merit of a horse is, since a large chunk of very mediocre horses find their way into the system, racing is supposed to be about straightforward unfettered competition where the fastest and best win, whenever or wherever there is straightforward competition, over a period of time everything including the system will find its own level. Protectionism is a very retrograde system which leads to negative results whereas competition brings about positive results a recent example of this is Calcutta.

When Calcutta boosted its prize money levels, many outstation trainers decided to take “B” licenses over there and set up shop with decent sized strings. Pesi Shroff, Imtiaz Sait, Darius Byramji and Arti Doctor all took horses to race at Hastings. Arti Doctor realised that she would be better suited to shift to Calcutta on a permanent basis, a move that in hindsight was a very good decision as she is regularly among the winners there. They all brought horses from other centres, ie Bombay and Bangalore. To start with things looked great for these outstation trainers and they won often but soon the local trainers figured this out and stepped out to replenish their stock with better quality horses from Bombay and Bangalore too. The local trainers got far more conscientious regarding the quality of babies that they were buying as well and soon the local boys started to regularly beat the out of towners. The result has been that Byramji, Shroff and Sait have shut shop and gone back to concentrate on their parent centres. Rather than protect mediocrity all that the authorities need to do is to make sure that what comes into their centres is stock that is superior to what is currently based over there rather than take pity on their own. Clubs need to license better professionals and to make sure there is enough stake money being paid out in order for professionals to earn a good living. Meritocracy has died in Indian racing and slowly but surely the sport is descending into being all about punting and less about quality competition as stake money vis a vis costs is not keeping pace. The quota system is detrimental for growth too as younger trainers who are starting their careers get a smaller quota, vis a vis established license holders who may or may not be competent. Its about time that clubs started to de-license non performers to make room for younger talent. There are trainers who haven’t won races for 5 years, who still get to keep their license. Non performers in any field get weeded out but in racing getting a license is akin to holding a government job, its held in perpetuity. There are trainers whose monthly commission earnings over the past 9 years are less than a syces wage, how are they making ends meet? These are questions that all clubs need to address and ask trainers. Hong Kong for one kicks out trainers if they aren’t cutting it, the main reason being space restrictions, we have a similar problem, we too need to take Hong Kong’s lead.

There was a time in the 60s, 70s and 80s when racing was a moving carnival, starting with Ooty in Spring/Summer, followed by Bangalore in the Summer then during the Monsoon; everybody split towards, Pune, Mysore, Hyderabad and Calcutta (for their lower end stock), in the winter racing took place in Calcutta, Bombay and Madras. With the demise of proper racing in Madras; Bangalore and Hyderabad became full on winter destinations. Unfortunately when the sport grew there was no attempt to increase the number of tracks, as a result of a glut slowly space became an issue and racing became more and more localised and Indian racing lost its national character and became regional in nature. The only survivor has been the Bangalore Summer season which is India’s only national season. This too is not by design but more due to the fact that from May to July until the Monsoon hits the only place in Indian racing with temperate weather is the garden city. There was an attempt in the 80s led by Suresh Mahindra, RM Reddy, General Kumaramangalam, Mr Shivlal Daga, my father Sonny Brar and a few others to revive racing in Lucknow, they raced under rules for a few days but had to pack up due to a lack of capital. Its a different India now and with capital available more freely a proper attempt to expand racing would be very viable, considering its the only legal form of gambling on mainland India and our clubs have thoroughly wasted their incumbent advantage due to the lack of foresight, petty politics and general apathy. Our clubs are islands unto themselves and are run as little fiefdoms with little or no cooperation amongst themselves. The time is ripe for a national body to run the sport, akin to Japan Racing Association, France Galop, The Jockey Club and the like. The need of the hour is to give racing a corporate structure and have a national consensus on things like marketing the sport. We also need to lobby state governments as well as the central government regarding the good done by the racing and breeding industries. We provide in excess of 20,000 permanent jobs many of them rural, we provide revenue from betting taxes and also provide green spaces in congested cities. Breeding horses is an activity directly related to agriculture and animal husbandry but while the rest of theses fields get sops galore we fall in a blind spot. India has changed, unfortunately our sport has not. We are attempting to start racing in Punjab, so far talks have been very positive and we have our fingers crossed that soon we are able to give India its first tote only racing setup. The idea is to have a racetrack that is run along corporate lines and not by a club. Bookmakers have become the bane of racing wherever they are found in the world. Here in India we still allow them to take licenses and operate at our clubs by paying stall fees. They damage the integrity of the sport and cheat on revenue but we still allow them to exist. Here in our upside down system we are allowing them to be competition for our gambling rupee by licensing them ourselves! Imagine having a virtual monopoly on a product but allowing a parasite to not just feed off’ve us but to bleed us dry. Would this be allowed in a run for profit business? I think you all know that the answer is a vehement no.

An average horse racing in Hyderabad as a rule of thumb will earn a lot more than an average horse racing in Western India or at Bangalore, since racing is restricted only to horses based in that centre. In a catalogue style pedigree write up Hyderabad based horse always looks good, take my horse Cape Ferrat as an example, here is a horse that has run at the top of class one for the past three years of his career, his earnings are somewhere in the region of approximately 25 Lakhs, despite wins in Western India, Bangalore and place finishes in added money races in Hyderabad. On the flip side lets look at a Hyderabad horse called Young Soldier a horse that topped out at a rating of 102 in Hyderabad, this horse has cleared 48 Lakhs in Stake money earnings. All earnings have been accumulated in the Hyderabad structure. Run the two against each other and at level weights Cape Ferrat will beat Young Soldier, 10 times out of 10 but when one looks at the Catalogue who looks better? Unfortunately Indian Racing has made its own set of rules as we go along, most of them detrimental for the Indian breed and as a result racing as a whole.

Lets take a look at our pattern system, first of all in most racing jurisdictions there is supposed to be a pyramid structure, with Listed races at the bottom, followed by Grade 3, 2 and 1 all decreasing in number as we go higher up the scale with Grade 1s being the dearest as they are supposed to signify the pinnacle of our sport. The pattern system was created so that a yardstick could be provided for our cataloguing standards. The name of a pattern race winner gets to appear in a sales catalogue in bold font with capital letters, while the name of a second or third place finisher appears in bold font but in lower case characters. The idea being that we can objectively read the pedigree page of a horse with better horses having more black type on their page. The pattern race committee is supposed to upgrade and downgrade races every year depending on the quality of the races run. Unfortunately this is not being done in India in an efficient manner, certain norms must be followed, take the example of Hyderabad once again. The Darley Arabian Stakes, Byerly Turk, Godolphin Barb, Alcock Arabian Stakes and Golconda Juvenile Million have always carried graded status yet the quality of these races have been sub par for time immemorial. As a result these races are going to throw up 15 black type horses who aren’t quite up to the mark, therefore compromising the cataloguing standards. HRC doesn’t allow final entries, neither does the Poonawalla Breeders Million, yet the Deccan and Golconda Derby as well as the PBM get to be Grade 1 races. Did you know that Set Alight never ran the PBM because she wasn’t entered. Similarly entries for the Hyderabad Classics close at the end of November when 90% of the intended runners in those races are still unraced, entries are done more on hope rather than on known ability, now think about it are these necessarily being won by Group 1 horses? In my opinion for a race to be within the pattern, there must be a proper system of final entries so that these races truly reflect the very best rather than the best of what is entered. In India the various clubs decide which of their races should carry the graded monicker, this is wrong as it is against the tenets of why the system was created, the running of the pattern system needs to devolve upon the breeders rather than the racing administrators, since it was created for them and their stud values not for the clubs. Currently we have no Listed races in India and the grading of other events too is very haphazard.

Further to this we have another huge problem in that we have a critical shortage of races for our above average stock. Most conditions races fall in the domain of juveniles, as a result we are in a quirky situation where there are too many nondescript Million races carded for 2 and 3 year olds. Racing fans come to the races to back high quality racehorses whose form is well known, as a result of which our big race days attract more action at the betting windows. There is a far better connect among punters for high class older horses like Atlantus, Sprint Star, Dandified, Onassis, Optimus Prime etc. we need to card better quality terms or conditions races for these types of horses who give off their best on a more consistent level. Currently there are very few opportunities given for our 4 year old and over horses that perform well and find themselves unable to run races carded for horses 80 and above. If you win a maidens race a horse has to either step up into the top level races or get driven into the handicap system where manipulation is possible to a great extent, in fact its the norm rather than an exception. Opportunities in Bangalore for horses of the ilk of Rock With U, Chulbul Pandey, Cape Ferrat, Esteban are few and far between, the only option they have is to run at the very top against horses like Speed Six who are just that slight notch above them and most of the time will beat them. We need more terms races and more races over a trip, unfortunately Bangalore racing is all about sprinting as a result of which Winged Foot wins their Oaks off a rating of 43 and Applejack the Stayers’ Trial off a rating of 79. Both horses are very ordinary over 6 and 7 furlongs but put them over a mile and a half and they are top class. Its akin to asking Mo Farrah to run only in the 100, 200 and 400 metres at the Olympics! Since such few races are carded at a mile and a quarter and above, jockeys are forgetting the art of riding over a trip. Take the example of Arshad Alam, a bright young talent among the Bangalore jockey colony, when he rode Keturah in the Bangalore Oaks it was the first time he was riding a mile and a half race in his career. Consider the fact that he has ridden 40 winners in his career to go through his allowance claim without ever riding a long distance race, since our Derby is still run over 2400 metres shouldn’t our jockeys have had experience over that distance? Trainers are forgetting the art of training over a trip, even mile races are going void as trainers are chary about their ability to train over anything above 7 Furlongs. Stallions like Tejano, Brave Act, Ikhtyar, Carnival Dancer, Sedgefield and a host of others are better suited to race over longer trips. While in Hyderabad, RWITC and Calcutta there are opportunities to race your horses in Staying races, in Bangalore there is the odd race more often than not, over 9 furlongs. We should encourage longer races as the propensity for malpractice also reduces, think about it one bump in a sprint and its hard to recover, whereas in a longer race there is ample time to recover from any such mishaps. Further to this longer races are far more nuanced and cerebral from both a handicapping point of view, tactics as well as training it needs to be encouraged for the betterment of the sport, its the difference between test and one day cricket, ask Dravid or Sachin whats the pinnacle of their sport it will always be Test cricket.

So its on to Hyderabad for the Invitation weekend now, where we get the opportunity to see our best Stayers, Sprinters and Milers square off against each other at weight for age terms. The piece de resistance off course is the Invitation Cup where Our 4 year old crop will take on the best older horses over a mile and a half. HRC has carded a nice lot of Millions around the big races for the handicap variety but as is their wont they snuck in a clause which is against the rules of Invitation weekend where horses rated below 46 will not be permitted to race in these handicap events, I guess the reasoning behind this would be a fear of getting exposed against horses from Bangalore where the quality of stock is considered to be superior and a 45 rated horse from Bangalore would be about 5kg superior on the scale vis a vis a similarly rated Hyderabad horse. So its Chalta Hai for Indian racing as the carousel stops in Hyderabad for our annual get together. Boring dinners, meaningless meetings and a little nostalgia for times gone by. Invitation day at Hyderabad was the last day of racing I attended with my late father before he got seriously ill, we miss him greatly and maybe we get a proper racecourse going in Punjab to honour his memory. A good friend of mine said in the 19th century Calcutta was the centre of the Indian racing world, in the 20th Century it was Bombay maybe in the 21st Century it will be Punjab but then again a wise man once said, “Its a long way to Tipperary!”