Shera the Tiger: No medals for India's Commonwealth Games mascot

Participants in the sensational and ongoing Commonwealth Games (CWG) media roast have trained their guns solely and perhaps rightfully on the sad visage of CWG Organizing Committee Chairman Suresh Kalmadi. But in the dreadful final days leading up to the games, we have overlooked another mascot of our failure.

Shera the Tiger has cleverly camouflaged himself within the wild disclosures of financial turpitude, falling bridges, hygienic horror shows and political crap shoots.

While there may indeed be some difference between Western and Indian hygiene standards, I believe that we have a level playing field when it comes to mascot selection, and in the spirit of the games I think we should put our capabilities to the test against the best the world has to offer.

Lest you accuse me of Delhi-bashing, I'm going to leave Sachin Tendulkar (Mumbai's mascot du jour) off the table and proceed by contrasting Shera with the recent and no less controversial emergence of another set of sporting mascots -- Wenlock and Mandeville [W+M], designed two years in advance for the London 2012 Olympics.

Introducing the world’s first ever 'International Mascot Games'

Event 1: Team selection

Competitors in this sport have the choice of going with familiar and accessible or alien and surprising. New Delhi has chosen the former, London the latter.

India: Various brands, from cereal manufacturers to paramilitary groups and political parties have co-opted the tiger as a symbol to suggest strength, agility, virility, nobility, poise and might.

As in the case of Shera, an anthropomorphic tiger, the addition of an indolent smile helps assuage any carnivorous concerns. And, as it is our national animal, this one's an obvious choice for the CWG.

United Kingdom: Wenlock and Mandeville are, quite literally, alien. As such, they represent the organizer's desire to present a unique spectacle. Their strangeness has upset many an old-fashioned Brit.

Copycats: Shera's younger brother Jigrr, Tony from Frosties and Hodori by Seoul.

"What is it about these Games which seems to drive the organisers into the embrace of this kind of patronizing, cretinous infantilism? Why can’t we have something that makes us sing with pride, instead of these appalling computerised Smurfs for the iPhone generation?" design critic Stephen Bayley asks The Telegraph.

But kids, who are arguably their true audience, seem to respond well to the weird-as-cool message.

Result: W+M's attention-grabbing creepiness scores where Shera's cliched visage bores. Not only has the tiger mascot been recycled from our own Pune 2008 Commonwealth Youth Games (permitting design agencies to be paid double for coming up with the identical concepts of Jigrr and Shera), but the animal has also been used as an Olympic symbol before.

Shera's handlers should be aware that when it was (for Seoul in 1988) Hodori, the Amicable Tiger received a very chilly welcome with a lawsuit summons from Kellogg, the parents of Tony the Frosties Tiger.