When it comes to defending the side against what looks like an insurmountable attack, goalkeepers of international calibre like Jose Chilavert and Peter Schmeichel just fade into the woodwork when compared to us folk. We have been known to leap to the left, careen wildly to the right, and even ride a column of air in a mighty Superman-like leap to save the ball from striking the goalposts of personal honour.

Take Farooq Abdullah. He's one of the most suave chief ministers this country has ever had, who can wear a sherwani with elan and play a neat round of golf. But Abdullah has a problem. Every time he is out on the course, or entertaining friends to a lavish wazwan, militants spoil the fun by coming down from the mountains and gunning down a few more of his people.

The ensuingtragic scenes would faze a lesser mortal, but Abdullah has unsuspected reserves of resilience. He may not be able to prevent the attack, but he does the next best thing he ``strongly condemns it as yet another barbaric act of Pakistan-sponsored militants''. He then displays his invincible will to prevent such tragedies by calling for ``additional forces to tackle militancy''. He further observes that the incident at Wandhama, or Prankote, or Doda indicates the ``frustration of the militants''.

Having made these telling observations, he will promptly get back to his interrupted golf game hoping fervently, no doubt, that the militants will continue to remain frustrated and demoralised. Until the next time, that is, when he will be called upon to display once again his undoubted skills of governance, or rather self-defence.

Then take that peculiar breed of people known as party spokespersons. These days every self-respecting political party has to have these professional goalkeepers, trained to defend theindefensible, to promote the indefensible or do a quick spot of whitewashing of the indefensible. My all-time favourite from among them is the redoubtable Venkaiah Naidu, BJP's one-man talkshop, who can on a good day guard his piece of turf against the footwork of a Ronaldo. Ever since Pramod Mahajan, erstwhile voice box of the Prime Minister, was retired prematurely, Naidu has been allowed to loom large on our TV screens. More so in these days when his party is celebrating its 100 days of survival on Jayalalitha's life-support system.

So what does he do? He assumes the posture of an amateur pugilist, waves his hands around, breaks into rapidfire diatribe and takes occasional bites of the airspace in front of him. He also has this disarming, even charming, habit of referring to the BJP as himself. ``All these opposition parties have ganged up to attack me,'' he pronounces, in a manner first perfected by Louis XV when he declaimed ``l'etat, c'est moi''.

Naidu has through long acquaintance with the mediarealised that offence is the best form of defence. His true worth surfaces when an uncomfortable question about his government's non-performance pops up. Without so much as a pause to draw a breath, he raises his time-tested battle cry: 45 years of Congress misrule. ``Blame them, not me,'' he hollers.

But I would still say that the best goalkeeper of them all is the man who presides over our collective fiscal destiny. Like the rupee, poor Yashwant Sinha, has been battered by market forces. Every weak rally that his stock may have made has been followed by a sharp dip through the floor. On every occasion that he has tried to have the bulls eating out of his hand, the bears have got him. So here is a man who has ridden rollercoasters, been gored by bulls, danced with bears, been sent on a full spin cycle by the Sensex, but who still finds it in himself to tell us with a 100-watt smile to be happy, don't worry.

``No need to panic,'' he pronounces on the day the rupee lost a lot of weight. ``Don't be moodyover Moody's now,'' he chuckles on the day the country's credit rating is downgraded by two notches. ``The fundamentals of the economy are sound,'' he states with conviction, as the Sensex records arctic temperatures.

I mean, how long can one solitary individual battle the American sanctions, Asian 'flu, hawala operators and a nation in a perpetual state of depression, without self-destructing? I vote Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha, Goalie of the Year.