From the Commonwealth Games office comes a stomach-rumbling piece of news. The Delhi 2010 Organising Committee (OC) today clarified that, "it would not serve cow meat to anyone during the Commonwealth Games."

All Delhi can do now is to close its eyes and hope that this announcement does not lead to more annoyed withdrawals. Not merely from athletes, but entire nations.

After this, how could India imagine that the Commonwealth community will have no beef with them?

We won't be surprised if these Games unleash a new global slogan: No steak, no sport.

The CWG organisers can only throw up their knives and forks in helplessness. Their, err ... goose has been cooked on this issue for a while now.

In January, the leading opposition BJP party demanded that beef be banned from the CWG menu for the sake of India's "cultural values and age-old traditions."

Delhi's city corporation under BJP control said their workers would go on strike and picket against hotels and venues serving the forbidden food.

In May an activist then raised the question - will beef be served at the Games? - asking for a simple ‘yes' or ‘no' in reply. It took two months for the committee to come up with a 66-word reply, which included ‘nutritious meals' ‘cultural and dietary requirements and the need for variety.' ‘Yes' and ‘no' were reported missing.

No wonder there was the emphatic cry today: ‘no cow meat' for the Commonwealth.

The Tenderloin Trade Union need not lose heart. There is a slim chance that the OC chairman Suresh Kalmadi, MP, might be using semantics as disguise. Cow meat is what the world thinks of as its beef but in India, the beef served in the rare, daring Delhi restaurant is buffalo meat.

Let me explain. The term ‘holy cow' may well be used sneeringly in the West, but here in India, to a majority of its people, the cow is well, actually holy.

It is not part of ancient Hindu scriptures but in an old agricultural society, it was considered a creature that gives of plenty and so needed to be treasured. Most temples are not centered around cows nor is its worship part of daily ritual in Hindu homes. Yet, its veneration continues, its presence on the food chain remains a taboo and its slaughter is banned in some states.

Which is why the beef about beef. The buffalo, by the way, is merely the easily-replaced consort. The only way the bovine leanings of some Indian cuisine could be fulfilled then, was by leaving the cow alone.

Indian sport and meat - of all kinds - have had a long and tempestuous relationship. For a while, India was secretly embarrassed by fielding vegetarians at sport. All that rice, all that daal. Surely fast bowlers and boxers could not be vegetarian. What happened to their protein intake? And with it, their killer instinct? Testosterone? No wonder we didn't win any Olympic medals. Or bowl fast. That used to be the popular reasoning not so long ago. That and of course that other intangible, kismet.

These days Indian athletes take no chances. If in the 1990s, Javagal Srinath wrestled with his palate to start eating his first piece of chicken, the new century has no hesitation. Formula 1 driver Karun Chandhok listened to the garrulous Brazilian Bruno Senna talk non-stop about nutrition and decided to give the animal kingdom a try. Now he says, he can, "buy, clean, cut and cook" his meat, though still feels a bit queasy about sea food. The cook in his Chennai home is still recovering from the shock but his family are completely relaxed.

India's No.1 athlete today is Saina Nehwal, ranked No. 2 in women's badminton. After her climb into the top 20, she was told by her coach Pullela Goipchand, that if she wanted to beat the Chinese she would have to work on her endurance, build her strength and think about eating everything. It was so that she could handle menus during events in the far East or Scandinavia without blinking. The day after this talking-to, when Gopichand sat down to a meal with Nehwal, she switched. Nehwal's new non-vegetarianism was treated just like she would a slight alteration in her weight-training schedule. She would do it.

This tough-as-boots competitor will be at the Commonwealth Games and not even beef will frighten her. She, for one, has only one holy cow: winning.