A puny track-record

Muscularity or physical skill is not valued by the state or by society. How then can Indian sports make a mark?

Vikram Bedi Delhi

A bronze age is underway in Indian sport, heavily contaminated though it remains by years of destitution, of grandeur lost (hockey) and of opportunities foregone (athletics, football, cricket). Still, these are decidedly better times. Relatively speaking, we seem to be graduating beyond episodic excellence, attributable only to exceptional individuals (Milkha Singh, Ramanathan Krishnan, among others) to consistent improvements across many disciplines.

Indian cricket is finally showing its mettle abroad, is more athletic, better balanced, more intelligent. Cricket’s startlingly universal appeal is paying off, albeit not enough to satisfy fans’ infinite greed. “Pay off” is apt: the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) is now unimaginably wealthy and is putting its resources to better use.

Even Indian hockey, too slow to adapt to the new astro-turf-based, coaching-intensive game, is recovering lost ground (currently ranked sixth, twice as good as its 1998 ranking). Some commercial money and cable television coverage are finally coming its way. The Indian Hockey Federation (IHF) and its notorious president are no longer ignored by the public – there is scrutiny, debate and criticism, including from within. The commercial lift-off of cricket is pressuring the IHF grandee. There is a new generation of fitter, tougher players. The gradual (but experienced as steep) decline that began even before the accidental gold in the boycott-riddled 1980 Moscow games is finally being reversed.

At the Athens Olympics, the Indian showing was markedly improved. Major Rathore got all the acclaim, but others  – shooters, boxers, wrestlers, women weightlifters, archers and even the hockey team – put in better showings. And there is Anju George, carrying forward the tradition since PT Usha of female Malayali athletes exposing the injustice and waste of our gender-biased sports culture.

Golf is thriving. There are Jeev Singh, Arjun Atwal and others, but also excellent upcoming young golfers aplenty, despite a tiny talent pool, revealing what can be achieved with even small improvements in funds, infrastructure and administration. The football scene remains dismal, men’s tennis is declining but Indian badminton is better organised, and has greater depth.

At this upbeat point, a harsh reminder of the larger truth: even impoverished island-nations like Jamaica and Cuba have international achievements that expose our sporting puniness. Dare I mention China’s exorbitant and ever-increasing sporting glories? That I termed the recent improvements, very minor relative to other countries, a sporting bronze age was a comment on India’s dismal past record, including in cricket.

Despite the recent upturn, India’s sporting health remains poor, which is precisely why Indians indulge in self-flagellation after every failed Olympics campaign. Not for nothing is apparently infantile sport freighted with moral, metaphorical meanings the world over: having internalised colonial stereotypes, we cannot but feel disturbed about what our nothingness at modern, hyper-competitive sport says about us.