Happy Diwali friends. Time to celebrate and make merry. So having refreshed myself with a fun weekend full of food and friends, it's time to be back with the Part 3. And this time it indeed is Sports.
Does that look good? No way. Helen Pidd, the writer of the Guardian's article is right in quoting us as habitual under-achievers. We certainly seem to be more than satisfied with mediocrity. Why else would we be happy with these stats. And though we are mighty proud of what we have achieved in Cricket all these years, we can't limit our glory to just that one sport.
I was left wondering what other sports have India produced world champions in except Cricket and Hockey. I mean we definitely do have the talent in other sports as well, since the likes of Vishwanathan Anand, Saina Nehwal, Geet Sethi, Pankaj Advani, Leander Paes, Mahesh Bhupathi, Abhinav Bindra, Mary Kom etc grabs our attention every now and then. So, we definitely do have champion sports-persons in many sporting disciplines. But the problem is that we do not have very many of them in each of these disciplines. It's true that some sportspersons are just born to excel in their field of sports. I mean you will always have a Maradona and a Messi, a Bradman and a Tendulkar or a Federer, Sampras and a Navratilova but that's only a very few. Champions are not born champions, they are made out of sweat, hardwork and most importantly ambition. There are tremendous athletes in our country but there still isn't the same zeal and enthusiasm that cricket has achieved and thus the drive to excel in their respective sporting disciplines are not very high. This is because of the money that a cricketer earns these days. If we can bring even a quarter of that income for say a Chess, Badminton, Football, Hockey, Tennis, Athletics, Boxing or Wrestling then the attraction for young talented sports persons to get into and excel in these sports would increase. For most non-cricketing athletes coming from lesser financial backgrounds, sports is just a medium to get a secured employment with their state government or with the central government.
Digging deep into this, it's more evident that we have an bigger issue and that is with the culture of sports in this country. It is not a professional option to be a sportsperson in our nation. A young teenager excelling in a sport is often ridiculed by his/her folks and is discouraged to continue with it since that not only lessens their opportunities to shine in academics but also brings an extra financial burden on the family to sustain it. The answers to these issues does take me back to my previous posts on Economy and Infrastructure. And more simply in a country with 32.7% of the population living below the poverty line and 39% without access to primary education, how can one expect that the numbers in the vast population will directly multiply our sporting proficiency.
But then the bigger question is, do we need to wait for India's economy to grow and the literacy rate to increase for us to make our mark in sports at the world stage? Any sensible person's answer to that question is, No. But what else then? Well, the answer in my belief rests in our success in Cricket. That to me is the best case to study for all sports administrations not only in India but also globally.
To begin with, we had people trying out the lucrative league concept in India and seen them fail miserably. The I-League for football though is still relatively popular though not even remotely near to its cricketing counterpart. We also had the Professional Hockey League or the PHL, which too failed to bring the glory days of Indian hockey back. So, we all know that just starting a league is not the solution. And that is more because a league is successful only when it can pull in crowds consistently.
The Indian Premier League (IPL) came into being quite late in the day for Indian Cricket. When it was started in 2008, Cricket was already a religion in tn the country and the success in the inaugural T20 Word Cup was cashed in by the cricket administrators. The master stroke however was to identify a variation of the game that could not only appeal to the masses but would also be feasible to brand. T20 was the perfect recipe for success. Similarly, other sports need to tweak their formats and create a popular version of the same to create awareness and bring in the masses. Once the crowd is there, you will have everyone from the sponsors to the media and then would be the best time to make hay. But, it would need some brainstorming and considerable effort to make the sun shine on these sports.
Part 3 - Sports
India is a sports loving country. No one can take that away from us. We love Cricket and mmmm...well...ok that's it then. We love cricket and only cricket, period. A country of 1.2 billion loves cricket and there is no harm in being a cricket crazy nation. It hasn't done us any harm in loving that sport. Until recently, we were the only country to have won all the International Cricket Council (ICC) hosted tournaments. The West Indies joined us in the same league by winning the World T20 earlier this year. We are behind Australia in terms of winning the ODI World Cup and at par with the West Indies with 2 victories. In 2010-2011, we were briefly the world's top ranked Test team. And to top it all, the world's best batsman and a legend of the sport who pretty much holds all the records that a cricket batsman can hold was born on our soil and has played for the tricolor for the past 23 years. The indomitable, Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar. So, we cannot complain. Cricket has given this country all it could and all it deserves. There are many areas where we can improve but let's not get drawn into a cricket discussion here since though in India Cricket = Sports but in the world scenario, cricket is not even a Olympic sport.
So where are we in Sports, as the world knows it i.e. Well, lets begin with recent memory and an article written on The Guardian's website here in the UK raged me enough to do so. India finished a paltry 55th on the medals tally in the recently concluded Summer Olympics here in London and this was it's best ever performance with 6 medals - 2 silvers and 4 bronzes. How have we done previously then? In all the 26 summer games before the one in London, India has so far manged to win a paltry 20 medals - 9 Golds (8 of which were for Hockey) 4 Silvers and 7 Bronzes. Now, in terms of our population where are we compared to China, United States and Brazil.
| Overall Medals | London 2012 | |
| China* | 473 | 88 |
| United States | 2400 | 104 |
| Brazil | 108 | 22 |
| India | 26 | 6 |
* China only participated regularly from the 1984 Los Angles Games onwards
Does that look good? No way. Helen Pidd, the writer of the Guardian's article is right in quoting us as habitual under-achievers. We certainly seem to be more than satisfied with mediocrity. Why else would we be happy with these stats. And though we are mighty proud of what we have achieved in Cricket all these years, we can't limit our glory to just that one sport.
I was left wondering what other sports have India produced world champions in except Cricket and Hockey. I mean we definitely do have the talent in other sports as well, since the likes of Vishwanathan Anand, Saina Nehwal, Geet Sethi, Pankaj Advani, Leander Paes, Mahesh Bhupathi, Abhinav Bindra, Mary Kom etc grabs our attention every now and then. So, we definitely do have champion sports-persons in many sporting disciplines. But the problem is that we do not have very many of them in each of these disciplines. It's true that some sportspersons are just born to excel in their field of sports. I mean you will always have a Maradona and a Messi, a Bradman and a Tendulkar or a Federer, Sampras and a Navratilova but that's only a very few. Champions are not born champions, they are made out of sweat, hardwork and most importantly ambition. There are tremendous athletes in our country but there still isn't the same zeal and enthusiasm that cricket has achieved and thus the drive to excel in their respective sporting disciplines are not very high. This is because of the money that a cricketer earns these days. If we can bring even a quarter of that income for say a Chess, Badminton, Football, Hockey, Tennis, Athletics, Boxing or Wrestling then the attraction for young talented sports persons to get into and excel in these sports would increase. For most non-cricketing athletes coming from lesser financial backgrounds, sports is just a medium to get a secured employment with their state government or with the central government.
Digging deep into this, it's more evident that we have an bigger issue and that is with the culture of sports in this country. It is not a professional option to be a sportsperson in our nation. A young teenager excelling in a sport is often ridiculed by his/her folks and is discouraged to continue with it since that not only lessens their opportunities to shine in academics but also brings an extra financial burden on the family to sustain it. The answers to these issues does take me back to my previous posts on Economy and Infrastructure. And more simply in a country with 32.7% of the population living below the poverty line and 39% without access to primary education, how can one expect that the numbers in the vast population will directly multiply our sporting proficiency.
But then the bigger question is, do we need to wait for India's economy to grow and the literacy rate to increase for us to make our mark in sports at the world stage? Any sensible person's answer to that question is, No. But what else then? Well, the answer in my belief rests in our success in Cricket. That to me is the best case to study for all sports administrations not only in India but also globally.
To begin with, we had people trying out the lucrative league concept in India and seen them fail miserably. The I-League for football though is still relatively popular though not even remotely near to its cricketing counterpart. We also had the Professional Hockey League or the PHL, which too failed to bring the glory days of Indian hockey back. So, we all know that just starting a league is not the solution. And that is more because a league is successful only when it can pull in crowds consistently.
The Indian Premier League (IPL) came into being quite late in the day for Indian Cricket. When it was started in 2008, Cricket was already a religion in tn the country and the success in the inaugural T20 Word Cup was cashed in by the cricket administrators. The master stroke however was to identify a variation of the game that could not only appeal to the masses but would also be feasible to brand. T20 was the perfect recipe for success. Similarly, other sports need to tweak their formats and create a popular version of the same to create awareness and bring in the masses. Once the crowd is there, you will have everyone from the sponsors to the media and then would be the best time to make hay. But, it would need some brainstorming and considerable effort to make the sun shine on these sports.
The government can pour in whatever amount they are into building the sports infrastructure but they won't or rather can't pay us the citizen to watch and like them. Also, in my view the India lost its biggest opportunity to make thew world take note of us when the Commonwealth games in Delhi 2010 was a shoddy affair. And I'm not getting into the corruption issue since that is a completely different topic altogether. The point I am trying to get to is the role of us, the spectators, the viewers and the lovers of sports in promoting it. For starters, India's population is 124 million and if even half of the population pays Rs. 1 each every month then we will have a sum of 744 million rupees. Now that staggering amount can run a country leave alone funding sports in India. But that sounds impractical doesn't it? Let me take the example of the UK, where I reside now and show to you why this is not and its just our perception that's stopping us from involving in this effort. The UK councils or municipalities as we know them in India collects on an average 800 million pounds per year in Council tax out of which 2% is spent in maintenance of the parks and sports facilities in the council which are free of cost to the inhabitants. Now, if we can on a macro level i.e. on a municipality or local council level collect just a rupee every month, can we not sustain these infrastructures locally? We would need good and honest governance and though corruption might spread its evil wings, I for one am hopeful with the RTI act in place for us to keep a check on this.
So the whole point is around us as sports loving citizens to create and maintain the sporting infrastructure in our country and create a professional environment for sports to have a future in this country. A flash in the pan achievement is not what our sports persons deserve and they deserve to become the legends that they can be only and only by excelling continually in their field of sports.
Sumit, I too have been thinking of this recently.
ReplyDelete(1) Have a look at my question at Quora http://www.quora.com/Sports-in-India/What-is-the-salary-earned-by-M-S-Dhoni-captain-of-the-Indian-cricket-team-And-what-is-the-combined-salary-of-the-entire-Indian-football-soccer-team
Maybe you can find out the stats :)
(2) College football teams in USA get more money than all other sports teams combined. But I believe the football money is used in other developmental activities (lacking references right now). Also US state lotteries are used to fund education in the states. So why should the money of cricket remain with some honchos only? They should be forcefully made to contribute some money to other activities.
(3) Finally, I think India is over-obsessed with cricket!
Hi Kriti,
ReplyDeleteThanks again for your comment. For your answers though:
1) Dhoni v Indian Soccer team - According to Forbes, M S Dhoni earned US$ 26.5 million in 2011 (Ref: http://www.espncricinfo.com/india/content/story/569116.html) whereas based on an 2011 Economic times article discussing the salaries of the players contracted by the All India Football Federation (AIFF), the combined salary of Indian National Soccer team can be calculated to US$ 1.1 million. I guess, this fact now screams out the point you made.
2) The problem with the governance of cricket in India has unfortunately nothing to do with the government, since the BCCI is a private Non-Profit entity accredited by the ICC. And only the ICC has the authority to curb the wrong-doings therein. But, since India is cricket's biggest market and all the corporate sponsors are raking in the moolah by riding the speed boat called cricket, there isn't a thing that one can expect to change in even the furthest future.
3) And finally, I do agree but then it's no fault of the nation to love a sport but it's unfair discriminate against others. To reason that, I for one as a sports lover would only demand consistent champions in other sports to encourage me to divert my attention.