Indians, its time to think beyond Cricket
By Binu Paul, SiliconIndia   |   Saturday, 23 October 2010, 15:18 IST   |    46 Comments
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Indians, its time to think beyond Cricket
Bangalore: Cricket is more than a religion in India. And it seems like there is no scope for anything else. Despite being the second largest population in the world, India could never make its presence felt in international sports events other than cricket. Even after 60 years of Independence, most of country's sports bodies are riddled with corruption, provincialism, discrimination and unprofessionalism. Field Marshall KM Cariappa, in his foreword to the Anthony de Mello's book 'Portrait of Indian Sport' published in 1959, said "India now looks forward to the possibility of holding the 1964 Olympic Games, and perhaps also the Commonwealth Games in 1966." As rightly pointed out by Suresh Menon in his article 'Huff, Puff, Fall' on tehelka.com, we've got the Games 44 years after Cariappa thought we would, but our sport is where it was. It shows the poor state of sports organizations in India. The country still has not moved from the 1950s yet. Hosting Olympic Games is far away from our dreams at present. In order to revive the sport arena of our country, professionalism should be placed first on priority. Politics, religion, caste, class or language should not be the yardstick of measurement for selecting the organizers or the athletes. The government should bring in professionals to head these bodies. The politician-bureaucrat nexus should wither away. Priya Ranjan Dasmunsi served as the President of the All India Football Federation for almost 20 years and we all know the state of football in India today. Indian Amateur Boxing Federation, Table Tennis Federation of India, Archery Association of India, Indian Olympic Association etc are all run by different political leaders. After the Commonwealth Games, Indians have increasingly expressed their aversion to this practice. Organizational professionalism alone will not save the Indian sports, but a professional sports culture should be inculcated among the athletes. The 100 meters record of 10.3 seconds attained by an Indian in 2005 had been achieved by a Canadian in 1930 (75 years ago). The best of Indian performance at present are old records for the western world, some of them even 70-80 years old. The narrow minded approach to sports should vanish and mass participation in sports should be created. Indians, at large, should understand that Cricket is not the only sports in the world. Indian sportspersons should think beyond the peanuts offered by the government as reward. A government job, a lifetime train pass, free telephone calls or a plot of land should not be the lifetime goal for an athlete, instead the quest to reach the heights of performance to beat the best in the world should be the driving force. The sport foundation should take initiative to monitor the kids from their childhood so that the unique tastes' of every kid can be identified in the bud. It will also help in directing the children in the proper way ahead. The government has a key role to play here. The scientific approaches should be incorporated while nurturing our future athletes. Government should pour in money to develop proper infrastructure and to adapt the up-to-date training methods, which only can assure us medals in future Olympics. We should get ourselves out of the odd training tactics and traditional outdated methods. The government agencies should make sure that the money allocated for sports should reach the athletes, which often doesn't happen. The media should leave behind its bias of glorifying cricket and marginalizing other sports events. It should give due importance to the stars like Abhinav Bindra, Gagan Narang, Saina Nehwal and others, which will encourage the future generations to follow the path of these real stars. It is high time that we should focus on the basic forms of sport - athletics, gymnastics and swimming - the building blocks of all sport. Organizers should direct their focus on winning medals rather than participating in many events. Efforts should be taken to keep the spirit alive in individual events such as chess, shooting, tennis, boxing, billiards etc where Indian players are exceptionally well at. The Sports Authority of India should take a lead in promoting the various sports events so that the lost glory returns to many of our games that they had before.

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