Is cricket eating our heritage???

As the Glasgow 2014 Common Wealth Games start up, there is hardly any fervour seen in India related to world’s second biggest all in one sports gala after the Olympics. Notwithstanding having various exceptional players, expected to bag medals in these CWG, a large proportion of the populations seems to be hardly aware of the fact that any such even is being organized in the world and that India is taking part in it and this clearly reveals the true condition of sports as well as that of sports players in India.

India has been a country of cricketers. Hardly has there been any game other than cricket which is played in all the parts of the nation with enthusiasm and zeal. Cricket has reached to such a depth in Indian sports that today Indians have forgotten their national game, which is in fact hockey not cricket. Great games like football and tennis, remain confined to only some states West Bengal, Goa and Kerala while significant sports like hockey hardly hold on to any significance in the real India and that’s the main reason why we continue to show up a very bad tally of medals in Olympics. Till now a nation of 2.137 billion has been able to grab only 26 medals which are not far more than the tally of 22 medals of the American swimmer Michael Phelps. With this all the sports in the nation continue to bear the brunt of the apathy of the whole nation. Sports like football, hockey etc. continue to suffer and lot and sports players much than the sports themselves and that’s the reason why today parents don’t want to make their children sports players thus overall producing a generation which is either good in Cricket or at nothing else thus marking the doom of all the other sports in the nation.

Today Indian sports continue to be at their nadir. Today the Indian hockey which accounts for 11 medals out of the 26 Olympic medals continues to experience its worst period in the history of the game. Today the players of our national sports are even such a financial state that they can’t even afford to buy hockey kits for themselves while on the other hand, cricket players continue to ear crores from IPLs, T20s, ODIs etc.

 The condition of athletic in India also continues to be pitiable. This great nation doesn’t even have more than ten to twenty athletes who have made any significance at the international level. In sports like swimming and diving, India continues to be a failure while in sports like sprinting etc. Indian athletes are not even able to qualify to participate at the Olympic levels while on the other hand small nations like Kenya and Jamaica continue to produce world class record holders.

If we talk about tennis then there has been no player which has been able to win the Wimbledon cup in singles. No player except Leander Paes has been able to grab up a medal at the Olympics. Today India continues to perform a poor show in grand slams, having no great player currently who can make his presence felt at the international level tennis competitions.

Lets now move on to the world’s greatest sports i.e football. It would not be a wrong act to proclaim India as an underperformer in the football world. Indian national football team has a ranking of 151 in the FIFA list which is even lower than that of nations like Sri Lanka and Afghanistan. Despite of having a pool of wonderful players in the states of West Bengal, Kerala and Goa, the nation has not been able to completely exploit its talent to the hilt because of reluctance by the authorities to take the game forward.

Today the condition of sports in India is so much disgusting that even one medal at Olympics comes as an unexpected serendipitous gift for the nation. We continue to be counted among the worst performers at the international gala but we continue to forget it all up and engage ourselves into the matches of cricket. Today so many exceptional players are there, but just because of no scope of different games in India, these players have to do pitiable works day and night in order to make both ends meet. This ultimately demoralizes other budding sports talent who want to play games other than cricket thus forming a cloud of despair over other games.

Today we need to revise our spots strategy and need to incentivize other sports too in order to entice the new talents to come up rather than remaining hidden doing unworthy works or the future of Indian sports will be lost forever.

JAI HIND, JAI BHARAT

JAI MA BHARTI