SPORTS AND LIFE
The Random Musings of an Unknown Indian Sports Fan
Taking stock of Indian sports after a historical performance at the Tokyo Olympics
India’s best ever Olympics just got over. My head is full of random thoughts and emotions and I am just putting them down here.
We all know the history of Indian sports and our Olympic performances. I will tell you a little bit about myself. I am an obsessive sports fan. Sports is the only subject I know well. Like, if I had to play Mastermind to save my life, I will take a sporting topic. I have closely followed all our sporting lows and the occasional highs since 1986. And researched everything that came before that. So you can well imagine all the pain that I have experienced. But these Olympics have alleviated a lot of the pain and I have so much to say. I am also hoping the jokes about India and its billion people and zero medals can stop now.
This headline is my homage to Sujit Mukherjee who wrote the excellent cricket book — The Autobiography of An Unknown Cricketer.
I am likely to get carried away. Please don’t be too critical of me. Lets go.
A Major Inflection Point for Indian Sport
Indian sport has had some major inflection points. Some of the more recent ones which come to mind are the Cricket World Cup win in 1983, the bronze medal which Leander Paes won in the 1996 Atalanta Olympics and Abhinav Bindra’s triumph in Beijing. The Test Series win in Australia earlier this year might also join that list.
Tokyo 2021 is most certainly joining that list. In fact, it could provide more than one inflection point. It could be a turning point for Indian Hockey ( more on that later). Neeraj Chopra’s gold medal ( and all the superstardom that’s coming) could herald a new era in Indian sports. It could do for Athletics what Vishwanathan Anand’s exploits did for Indian Chess and Bindra’s gold did for Indian Shooting.
There are other candidates also. Aditi Ashok could inspire a whole new generation of Indian female golfers and the success of Mirabai Chanu and Lovlina Boroghain could unlock the massive sporting potential of women from the North-East. Time will tell what we make of this momentum. But I am excited about the possibilities.
Better Fans and a Sports Tax
When I checked my LinkedIn feed after Neeraj Chopra’s win, the first 20 posts were all about the gold medal. Everyone was trying to outdo the others by sharing some unique information about Neeraj or his hometown or the sport of Javelin. It’s great that the whole country is celebrating India’s success but you can’t help but get the feeling that many of these are fair weather fans. A whole bunch of organisations including both governments and corporates are trying to take some credit for these medals.
I have a request for everyone who’s cheering and posting on social media — become better sports fans. Follow the sport and the sportspersons regularly. Even when they aren’t bringing glory to the nation.
More importantly contribute. We are a resource starved nation. We need more contributions from individuals and corporates. So put your money where your mouth is. There are the likes of OGQ who will take your money and put it to good use. Trust me. I have done the same. Think of it as a Sporting Success Tax. Most of us posting on LinkedIn and Twitter are not even going to encourage our kids to seriously pursue sports. Lets atleast cheer our athletes on a regular basis and contribute financially. We are used to aping the West. In America, alumni contribute generously to help their alma maters excel on the sports field. Let’s copy them.
Not Beating Ourselves Anymore
Indian Sport has a long history of glorious near misses and succumbing at crucial moments. From Milkha Singh slowing down to conserve his energy and missing out on a medal by a whisker to the mens hockey team conceding a late goal against Poland in Sydney 2000 to miss the semis. If something can go wrong, it usually does when it comes to Indian sport. These Olympics also started like that. The archers and shooters faltered in all possible ways.
But then the tide changed. Again and again, we seized the moment. There was every chance that the hockey teams would fail to hold on against Germany and Australia. Not this time. Ravi Dahiya and Bajrang Punia engineered miraculous escapes. Aditi Ashok missed out on a medal but she didn’t beat herself. She didn’t collapse after the early bogies in the last round. She fought back. Instead of feeling the heat, the likes of Harmanpreet Kaur raised their game on the biggest stage. And then there was Neeraj Chopra. When the opening came with Vetter’s failure, he delivered a magnificent performance.
We had our disappointments. We added to our list of 4th place finishes. But we didn’t beat ourselves.
We Forgot about Cricket for a Change
Every sport in India is a poor cousin of cricket. But for once, they had all the attention. There was a gripping test match going on in England but everyone was focussed on the Olympics. Including myself and I just love test cricket.
No offence to cricket. We want to beat England also. But it was heartening to see cricket take a backseat in this country for a change.
Redefining our Physical Capabilities
There are certain things that we just assume we Indians can’t do. Things which require extreme physical or athletic abilities. We can never produce a Waqar Younis, a Goran Ivanesevic, a world class footballer or a top class sprinter. We don’t have the physiology. Twitch muscles and all that. We have accepted it. Lets therefore focus on sports which don’t have such demanding physical requirements.
While the Javelin throw isn’t quite up there with the likes of sprinting, its still been considered beyond us. Neeraj Chopra just smashed that mental barrier. Kind of like another young man from the same region. It took a Kapil Dev to prove to us that we would also bowl fast.
I have hope now. That we can produce these specimens now.
The Middle Class Mindset
Will the Indian middle class start looking at sports as a career option after these Olympics ? No. Not anytime soon. They will still want them to be engineers, doctors and product manager in Unicorns. So how will we produce champions ? The same we produced now.
This is not a debate on society and class. So please spare me the lecture. The reality is that we know where our sporting champions come from. There are specific regions and certain classes of society which contribute disproportionately. Are there enough of them. Is there a large enough talent pool? Yes, absolutely. So don’t bother changing the middle class mindset. Let them focus on becoming better sports fans and earning enough money to pay the sporting success tax.
I hope the contributing groups get a big boost to participate in sports with greater desire. Lets just hope the government and the corporate world creates more facilities and incentives for them.
The Emergence of a System
Leander Paes was not the product of a system. Abhinav Bindra’s rich father created a whole new infrastructure for his son. Most of the early success stories are of individuals who made it on their own. The medals were not expected. They kind of happened by chance. This reflected clearly in the medal count. This seems to be changing. The evidence lies in the numbers.
Consider the no of sports in which we won medals — 6. Consider the no of other sports in which we seriously competed for a medal — Archery, Shooting, Golf. Consider the sports in which we we had more than one person contending seriously — Wrestling, Athletics, Boxing, Hockey, Archery, Shooting, Badminton. Consider the sports in which we have won medals at multiple Olympics — Badminton, Wrestling, Shooting, Weightlifting, Boxing.
All of this clearly indicates the emergence of some kind of system. Its slow but its steady. There is still a lot of work to be done. But we are getting some things right. There are good coaches. We are better prepared mentally. There is evidence of sports science. We are converting potential into medals. Things will only get better. I have lots to look forward to as a fan.
The Return of Hockey
Cricket dominates the national sporting consciousness but hockey still remains close to the heart for many fans like me. There is so much history. And also so much hurt. So the medal for the men and the 4th place finish for the ladies are both super duper special. Fans of my age finally have a hockey moment to cherish and fondly remember for the rest of our lives.
And yet it’s not just about the results. It’s also about how we got there . Sharda Ugra has written a brilliant piece about how the women prepared for the Olympics. Their defensive discipline and game management against Australia reminded me of the Italian football team. Indian teams are not supposed to play with such poise and control.
The men overcame all the things that have plagued us in the past. We would have inevitably conceded in the dying moments against Great Britain or Germany. We regularly scored from penalty corners and took our goal scoring chances. There was no selfish individual play. No off the field drama. We didn’t get lucky. We beat Germany and Australia at the Olympics. It was as unlikely as the Indian cricket team beating the mighty Windies in 1983.
When we failed to qualify for Beijing, I thought it was the end. We have a future to look forward to now.
The Opportunity in Wrestling
There is something about wrestling. We have now won a wrestling at 4 consecutive Olympics. We have 6 different medal winners. Plus many others who have come very close. Men and women. We are also winning medals at the world championships and in all age groups events.
Its not a fluke. If you read about Jamaican Athletics or Kenyan Long Distance Running, you will notice some similarities. No dearth of incredible role models. A good domestic system in place – former wrestlers who are now coaches, an infrastructure of akhadas to learn the sport and lots of domestic dangals( with good prize money ) which allow even a decent regional wrestler to make a good living. The sport has many well developed nurseries across the hinterland. Together they keep churning out talent. The Chhatrasal Akhada is a great finishing school for talented wrestlers. The sport is deeply embedded into the social culture and history of this country.
If we had to take one sport and take a big bet on it, it has to be wrestling. The medal potential is proven. There is enough spectator interest for it to make commercial sense for corporates. Winning 5–6 medals in one Olympics can be a reality. Thanks to Tokyo, we can dream about such things.
