The world today sees India as one of the most promising nations. Be it business and economy, science, space research and what not. India is excelling in all these fields, and gives even the developed countries a run for their money. But when it comes to sports, India has not much to boast about, except may be cricket. What has really gone wrong with Indian sports that it is in such a low profile in the world sports today??
India has always been underperforming in major sports events like Olympics. It has always been at the bottom of the medals tally. Do we lack talent? Do we lack the attitude? The answer is a big NO! India has loads of talent and can produce world-class sports persons. The only thing that goes wrong in India is that these talents are not nurtured.
The unfortunate thing about Indian sports is that, many times, the budding talent is suppressed. At home or in school, a child showing a keen interest in sports is always shooed away from it. A child is more encouraged in study-related activities. Nothing wrong in that, but he should not be discouraged if he is showing a keen interest in sports. Instead, parents and teachers should teach the child the importance of education, and guide him on how to have a balance between education and sports. The talent should be nurtured at young ages, so that they grow up to become world-class sports persons.
In fact, the parents and teachers are not to be blamed. Sport is not seen as a career option here. That’s because there’s not much money in it. And that’s an unfortunate fact. Today, many of the famous sports personalities of the past have to struggle with life. And we do not have full-fledged sportsmen, unlike other countries. Most of the sportsmen, except the cricketers have to work for their living.
Let us try to analyze some of the causes of the sorry state of India sports and their solutions:
1.) Dominance of cricket:
Excessive popularity of cricket is hampering the prosperity of other sports. Today, we see TV channels dragging each other to court to acquire the rights of cricketing events. But other major events like the NFL (National Football League), is neglected. The major TV channels should come forward and telecast these events. A good quality telecast will help in increasing the viewers and in turn the popularity. It was good to see the way PHL (Premiere Hockey League) was highly publicized by ESPN-Star. Such high quality telecasts should be extended to other domestic sports events too.
2.) Lack of Infrastructure and economic support.
Another reason for the downfall of sports is the lack of infrastructure. If sports have to be seen as a career option, then there should be professionalism in the ruling bodies. The grounds have to be improved. There should be a professional league in a sport like football. The sportspersons should be given financial support. The promising talents should be given world-class training. Effort should be made to give our sportspersons as much international exposure as possible.
3.) Lack of Professionalism.
The ruling bodies of respective sports should keep away from politics. Instead an experienced sportsperson of the past should lead it. There should not be differences within the bodies. We have seen this happen in Football and Hockey. Not much needs to be spoken of the differences between Subhash Bhowmick and the AIFF, and the famous episode of the clashes between Dhanraj Pillai and the Hokey Federation. These kinds of differences will fetch no good for the sport. The concerned authorities should pull up their socks. Contract system has been introduced in cricket. Other sports should follow suit. Merely changing coaches will not help. Efforts should also be made to evaluate coaches, physicians, and other designations related with the sport. Feedbacks should be taken from both players and the coaches, and the suggestions must be implemented. This will avoid the shameful incidents like the doping cases in the Olympics and Commonwealth Games, where the athletes had no idea what they were given. This shows that there is little transparency within the associations.
Today, India dreams of hosting Olympics. Rather, our goal should be to stand tall in the world sport arena. India has won the bid for the 2010 commonwealth games, on the basis that it has offered to provide a financial support of a millions of dollars to all participating countries. One can infer from this that money is not the problem in our country. Why not use it in the right direction to create good infrastructure and nurture good talent? Does it make sense to spend such a big amount of money on facilitating other countries, when our own country is lagging behind in world sports? In what way is hosting big sporting events like this, going to help the future of Indian sports…? It’s high time that India continues to remain a sleeping giant in the sports arena.
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