Why Indian sport needs a kick start

India - 1.2 billion people, 1 individual Olympic gold medal, 1 individual Olympic silver medal, 3 individual Olympic bronze medals

United States of America - 300 million people, countless Olympic medals - of all kinds at that...

What a stark difference! The difference is so stark that India doesn't even bother competing with the United States or China on the Olympic medals tally! Indeed, India is not by any means regarded a Global Sporting Power as it is regarded a Global Economic Power.

While it's worthwhile to talk Olympics since London 2012 is just 7 weeks away, I choose to compare the sporting accolades of two countries by drawing a comparison between their Olympic statistics simply because the Olympic games are the most comprehensive instrument with which to measure the sporting potential of two nations.

However, some Indians counter my argument by citing the example of cricket. India is a true champion at the sport of cricket and the statistics prove it: 3 World Cups and a 2-year reign at the top of the World rankings. We can boast of stars like Sachin Tendulkar, Virender Sehwag, Kapil Dev and Mohinder Amarnath - men who have been rightfully coronated as All Time Legends of the game. In fact, cricket is such a big phenomenon in India that many accuse it of 'stealing the limelight' from other sports, thereby not giving other sports their due place in society. Virender Sehwag gets 10 lakh rupees from a state cricket association for breaking the world record for the highest individual ODI score in world history while the national soccer team gets a small fraction of the sum for winning their maiden Nehru Cup! But then, I ask, can we truly reduce the spirit of sport and the love for the game down to mere materialistic gains? Did Virender Sehwag score 219 runs for money? Did Saina Nehwal win the Commonwealth Gold for a few rupees? 

So why does India performly extraordinary well (atleast most of the time) at the game of cricket while hardly holding onto the limelight in other sports? Are we characteristically and genetically constructed only to excel in the game of cricket?

Let's look back into history to trace India's extraordinary rise in the cricketing world. As a colony of the British, Indians learnt the game of cricket from their political rulers. Being a game of sophisticated sporting gear, cricket was available only to the rich and wealthy - the likes of CK Nayudu, Nari Contractor and Farookh Engineer to name a few. Cricket was hardly known to the vast majority of Indians who were largely poor and uneducated. Post-independence, in 1983 however, a wonderful thing happened. A small group of young men, led by Kapil Dev, snatched the Prudential World Cup from Clive Lloyd's legendary West Indies unit. The whole country was wonderstruck! Here we had a group of unknown youngsters, from the poorest of Indian families, winning the country glory and making it proud. Cricket became a superhit in India! Inspired by the highly spirited performance, many wanted to emulate what Kapil's Devils had just done. And hence was the advent of cricket into the Indian society. The foundation had been laid and Kapil's successors did well enough to keep the passion going for a long time - a passion that grew many fold and continues even to this day.

Hockey, as a sport, also had its era of glory and triumph. Dhanraj Pillay and his band of daredevils were once the Invincibles of the hockey world. However, with Pillay and Viren Rasquinha, the aura disappeared and hasn't returned even to this day. Would hockey continued to be India's game of glory if Pillay and Rasquinha had been succeeded by worthy flagbearers? Perhaps, but that would be a question too hypothetical to answer with surety.

However, the contrasting examples of cricket and hockey show that for a sport to survive and thrive continually in the Indian society, success must be constant. The Tendulkars, Dravids, Gangulys and Laxmans ensured that the foundation built by Kapil Dev, Sunil Gavaskar and Mohinder Amarnath didn't go in vain. Perhaps hockey lacked a Sachin Tendulkar and a Rahul Dravid, which resulted in a slippery slide that couldn't be arrested. The success that cricket brought to India eventually brought money to Indian cricket - a resource that only helped build the popularity of the sport in India and a resource that Indian hockey unfortunately lacks.

Man with the Golden Gun: Abhinav Bindra

Having delved into the topic of team sport, let's now switch over to individual sports. Shooting takes the cake in this department. Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore wreaked havoc in 2004 by winning Silver in the Athens Olympics and 4 years later, Abhinav Bindra kept the juggernaut going with a Gold in Beijing. A number of awards at the intermediate World Championships only kept the game alive and shooting remains India's greatest hope in any international multi-disciplinary sporting events even to this day. Badminton has fired in fits and starts for India, with Prakash Padukone and Pullela Gopichand in yesteryears and Saina Nehwal and Jwala Gutta today. Badminton is a perfect example of how the euphoria surrounding a particular individual sport can't be maintained at the optimum level by fielding just one or two successful players who disappear into retirement and don't have anybody to carry their legacy forward. For the moment, if badminton must live on India, Saina Nehwal needs someone to carry it on in the future.

Tennis and swimming have been rather disappointing, notwithstanding the likes of Leander Paes and Virdhawal Khade. India has never had a long-standing, comprehensive singles player who can challenge the likes of Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, nor have we been able to yet produce a successful swimmer who can give the records of Michael Phelps and Mark Spitz a run for their money. Frankly, with all due respect, Paes and Khade can't be classified as legends of the game.

Athletics, perhaps, has never been India's forte, barring a few including PT Usha and Anju Bobby George. However, hope is now being rekindled here with PT Usha's band of women working wonders in the recent past. PT Usha's athletics academy in Kerala is a story of fantasy for Indian sport. With inspiration and dedication, Usha has been nurturing young talent in the state and pushing them beyond barriers in every manner possible.

Having seen a brief account of the various sports in the country and how they fare on the international stage, let's now get down to analyzing them. Quite clearly, India's success in any sport is nowhere in competition to the success of stalwarts like the USA, China or Australia. If only India can emulate the success it's had in cricket elsewhere as well! But how?

Some say India lacks elementary sporting infrastructure to nurture young talent in most sports. But there's a flip side to that too. Virender Sehwag was a milkman before he came to the Indian team. He certainly had no access to world-class infrastructure as a kid! Praveen Kumar had to be content with playing in his sandy neighbourhood playground as a kid. He didn't go to the MRF Pace Academy! Mahendra Singh Dhoni was nothing but a ticket collector before he broke into the Indian cricket team. Nobody coached him as a kid! So how did they make it? The answer's quite obvious - pure passion, inspiration and unbreakable dedication to one's childhood dream. 

There is no doubt that there are a number of Indian kids out there who are equally dedicated to football and tennis as well! So why don't they go on to achieve historical landmarks? 

Some believe that sports other than cricket aren't 'broadcasted' enough in order to arouse public interest in it and hence capture the imagination of young athletes, inspiring them to achieve glory and make history. Indians, by nature now, have a mental orientation towards cricket, and cricket alone, in the field of sport. Millions across the country take to the sport, watch the sport, and idolize the sportsmen. The same is hardly ever done in any other sport! But then again, cricket is what it is today only because Kapil Dev did what he did! Maybe other sports need the same super-achievement to get them going! Maybe, India needs to produce a Roger Federer to inspire the other budding tennis players in the country! Maybe India needs to qualify for the FIFA World Cup, atleast once, to do the same for football in the country!

But administration (or the lack of it) might also be making the difference between cricket and non-cricket in India. The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has been pouring in millions of dollars into the game, bringing in the IPL, constructing the National Cricket Academy and richly rewarding any and every achievement made in the game. Many blame the BCCI for not allowing other sports to develop. But then again, the BCCI is in 'Control for Cricket', and cricket alone, in India. The Sports Authority of India (SAI) is largely responsible for the 'non-cricket' part of the country and to tell the truth, it is in complete shambles. So what's the difference between the BCCI and the SAI? Well, one's private, and the other is run by the Government. As in most other fields of Indian life and living, privatization does a far more efficient job than Governmental administration. So must the SAI be privatized as well? Going by the BCCI's success story, it certainly might be a gamble worth trying! Privatization of SAI might bring in better administration, more funds, state-of-the-art infrastructure, greater marketing of the sport, and hence, higher dividends on the international stage. Hypothetical, but highly possible!

Administration having been taken care of, there would be a different, more complex issue at hand. Adam Gilchrist, the legendary Australian wicketkeeper-batsman, at a press conference in Bangalore recently said, "As a young athlete, it's really hard to choose between sport and education in today's professionally competitive world. I think we need to work out our sporting structure in such a way that it allows academically-oriented athletes to pursue their studies without compromising upon their love for the sport." Gilchrist spoke about working out the "training schedule" of budding athletes in such a way that they would not just get the time to play and train for international competitions, but also to pursue their education at all times. For the first time, an athlete (one no less in stature than Adam Gilchrist) had spoken out on Indian sport's age-old problem - the battle between sport and academics. Thousands and thousands of young cricketers, footballers, tennis players and hockey stars eventually step out of the game in order to complete their education. By the time they complete their higher education and graduate studies, they have been out of touch with the game for such an awfully long period of time that they are no longer competitive enough to achieve their childhood dream of representing their country and achieving glory.

Gilchrist described the problem and its solutions in very simplistic and optimistic language. But is the problem itself so simplistic? Is Indian sport really capable of drawing itself beyond borders, overhauling barriers and coming out successful? Will we ever have a world-number one tennis player representing India in the singles final of Wimbledon? Will we ever see India win the FIFA World Cup? Will we ever look at the Olympic medals tally and admire the word 'India' at the top of the tree? Will India ever become a Global Sporting Power? Perhaps. But there's more hope there than certainty at the moment. But as Gilchrist said, challenges can always be overcome!