Why can't India produce a really big superstar?

Rishav · Post by **Rishav** » Wed Apr 16, 2003 1:00 pm

hi guys,
I want to ask u- Why can't India produce a really big superstar like lleyton hewitt or andy roddick or even someone in the top 50? I know that we have done that in the past, but why not now?( with due respect to leander paes)

amr090 · Post by **amr090** » Sun Apr 20, 2003 4:49 am

First of all,

If you leave out the sport of cricket, India hasnt produced a superstar in anything. Let's not kid ourselves we haven't ever produced a Jimmy Connors, a Pele, or a Michael Jordan in anything. My question is, is it that we just lack genetically, we lack the proper infrastructure, or the fact that indians in general arent encouraged to pursue athletic talents. I think it may be a combination of all 3. I still look forward tot he day when we can produce a Sampras or a Jordan....surely in a country of 1 billion there must be a few.

gvhvhg · Post by **gvhvhg** » Sun Apr 20, 2003 1:58 pm

I think its all 3

but in regards to this Rishav 'with (due respect to leander paes)'

As good as lp is/was...he was never top50 which is what you are implying

[quote][/quote]

prasen9 · Post by **prasen9** » Sun Apr 20, 2003 6:53 pm

Yes, the accomplishments of the cricket team has been much greater than those of our hockey teams of yesteryears.

-Prasenjit

PKBasu · Post by **PKBasu** » Sun Apr 20, 2003 11:09 pm

We have produced our share of superstars in various sports:

Badminton: Prakash Padukone and Pullela Gopichand (Prakash in his time was at least the equivalent of, say, Stefan Edberg in his chosen sport)

Billiards: Jones, Ferreira, Sethi (each a multiple world champion)

Chess: Vishwanathan Anand (once world champion, among the world's top 3 for the past half-decade; perhaps the equivalent of Connors in his sport?)

Cricket: Vijay Merchant (the second highest first-class average of all time), Sunil Gavaskar (all-time record for test centuries by any cricketer), Kapil Dev (one-time record holder for most test wickets; captain of the World Cup winning team in 1983), Sachin Tendulkar (all-time record for ODI centuries; second highest number of test centuries), Sourav Ganguly (second highest number of ODI centuries by any cricketer; captain of World Cup runner-up team).

Hockey: Dhyan Chand (easily the superstar of the 1928-36 period in his sport), Roop Singh, Leslie Claudius, Ajitpal Singh, and numerous others in the 1940s and 1950s who were the greatest in their time. To recap, India won the 1928, 1932, 1936, 1948, 1952, 1956, 1964 and 1980 Olympic gold medals, and the 1975 World Cup. These remain peerless achievements (I know of few other sports in which one team was unchallenged for 28 years, as India was from 1928 to 1956).

Tennis: Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi (world's #1 doubles pair in 1999, when they were the first pair in thirty years to make all four Grand Slam finals; also 2001 French Open doubles champions, for a total of three Slams together; MB has a fourth: 2002 US Open; each has two mixed doubles Slam titles; LP a singles bronze medallist in 1996 Olympics). These are superstar performances, no matter what anyone tries to say. Leander Paes is also a contemporary superstar in the Davis Cup; the US media may not agree, but the world is slightly larger than the US...Davis Cup matters to the rest of the world.

Prasenjit K. Basu

amr090 · Post by **amr090** » Wed Apr 23, 2003 5:26 am

With all do respect PK I think you are reaching when you talk about India having superstars....I mean come on claiming we have/had superstars in CHESS and BILLIARDS? While both require skill they are really not 'sports'.
Also having a superstar in badminton doesnt't really establish greatness or respect for your country. If i told any of my college friends India has an awesome badminton players I'd get beaten up.

Also to claim Leander Paes is a superstar is a bit absurd. While he is one of India's greatest no doubt and a great doubles performer., to gain international respect you must excel in singles. Unfortunately, no one of recent fame in Inhdia has doen that. To reall gain athletic respect internationally, India must produce stars in mainstream sports such as soccer, baskethall,tennis, athletics, swimming etc. Not sports such as chess badminton or billiards.

prasen9 · Post by **prasen9** » Wed Apr 23, 2003 5:48 am

Depends upon where you go/went to college of course. At least for about
1/3 rd of the world's population badminton is a huge sport.

I suppose here that PKB forgot the tennis heroics of Amritraj and the
Krishnans etc. But yes, they were not world #1's.

-Prasenjit

Rishav · Post by **Rishav** » Wed Apr 23, 2003 6:44 am

hi guys,
I think that India has produced a lot of superstars in sports other than Cricket. Don't forget these-Milkha Singh and P.T. Usha. I would not call them world class 'superstars' but they were pretty good. If u mean to say that India has produced superstars only in Cricket, then probably Pakistan would be a better sporting nation than us because they have been consistently better than us in it. Also, I would like to say that Badminton and Chess are equally as popular as Cricket and Cricket is played mainly in 10 nations at the most and so it is not a world class sport as yet.

PKBasu · Post by **PKBasu** » Wed Apr 23, 2003 7:17 am

The US is the contemporary superpower, but it has less than 5% of the world's people -- however much your college perspective might cloud things, the US isn't the world. Basketball is less of a world sport than badminton is: China, India and Indonesia after all comprise about half the world's population, and the fact that they (plus Denmark, Sweden, Britain, Malaysia, Korea, Thailand, etc) play it as a primary sport makes it a big world sport.
There is no gainsaying the fact that India's sporting achievements are relatively meagre given the size of the country and its population. But that's not to say there have been no superstars or sporting heroes. The point I made about Leander Paes is that he is a doubles superstar (along with MB in 1999) and a contemporary Davis Cup superstar. When I lived in the US (for 8 years) I also was led to believe that Davis Cup was utterly unimportant. But go to Brazil, India, Panama, Chile, Argentina, France, Australia, Sweden -- any country other than the US which plays tennis seriously -- and you will immediately recognise the searing importance of the Davis Cup. In that arena, Leander Paes has perhaps the best record of all players active today.

BSharma · Post by **BSharma** » Thu Apr 24, 2003 12:24 am

amr090 wrote:

My question is, is it that we just lack genetically, we lack the proper infrastructure, or the fact that indians in general arent encouraged to pursue athletic talents. I think it may be a combination of all 3.

Although I agree with the above comments in general, I want to add a few other factors.

Point 1. Lack of proper infrastructure - No doubt about it. China developed the infrastructure first and then went after their talented players to make full use of the facilities, etc. The Indian politicians and government officials always keep thinking about the chicken or the egg issue - which comes first - and often nothing gets done.

Point 2. Indians are not encouraged to pursue athletic talents. We have seen what happens when the Indians are encouraged to do so, e.g., Ramesh Krishnan, Leander, Milkha Singh and more recently Sania, etc. How many Indians were left behind because they were told to give up their sporting endeavor for the sake of studies?

Point 3. "Genetics". I do have an issue with it. We say genetics because Indians mostly do not have the powerful muscular build but then Indians have not done well in sports where "muscles" do not play a big role. Middle distance and long distance races do not require big muscles and neither do badminton, golf, shooting, archery, etc. Then there are sports where body weight becomes an equilizer, e.g., weight lifting, boxing, wrestling, etc. How many world champions has India produced in these events? We have a few women weight lifters who are of world standard but that is all.

Other points that we should consider are "motivation, desire to work hard, and setting high goals". Indian players often are satisfied with their performance once they reach a certain level and stop working harder to reach the next level.

Post by **jayakris** » Thu Apr 24, 2003 1:12 pm

My thought for a long time has simply been George Carville's immortal line during Clinton's first election win over Papa Bush -- "It's the Economy, Stupid!"

Most of the problems of Indian sports can be traced straight to the completely shackled industry in India for decades (Thank you Chacha, thank you Indira, Thank you Jayaprakash Narayan). It's only about 12 years since our economy opened up and it's only been about 5 years since our industry has started having any sort of noticeable sponsorship in sports (may be a couple of years more since money started flowing into cricket).

Give it a few more years (more like a decade) and you will see what Industry sponsorship does in Indian sports.

There is really no point in harping on "lack of vision" in sports by our politicians. They are like that in pretty much all democracies. No point in talking about what China does or Romania did in sports. Communist/dictatorial countries have normally have had the ability to pump in money into sports for "national pride" reasons that they did not have to justify to anybody. India (nor for that matter any democracy) could not do that.

A further problem in India was also that our economy did not allow any significant foreign industry activity in India. The democracies in many countries even in Asia allowed foreign industry which has brought in some money to sports sponsorship.

Indian industry has been opening up significantly. Despite all the complaints we have about cricket sponsorship being about 85% or whatever of all money into sports, there has been a big increase in sponsorship for events and players over the lst 3-4 years. Just give it a bit more time.

Forget the government (and quite a lot of the politicians in many federations like AIFF also). They are not the ones to improve sports. They have never done that in any democratic country. Sportsmen will improve themselves, when money comes in. That will happen in India too.

Check back in 10 and 20 years and you will be surprised at how Indians suddenly will appear to have done a lot of "visionary stuff" in sports. Some politicians will take credit, as in the case of cricket (you know whom I am talking about), but basically those will be people who could not stand in the way of the momentum rather than those who were catalysts! it is bound to happen.

Just my opinion!

Jay

BSharma · Post by **BSharma** » Thu Apr 24, 2003 10:20 pm

Dear Anonymous1,

Your examples of Vijay Singh (Golf) and the badminton players winning the All-England Championship are proofs that hard work is more important than genetics. Vijay Singh is the hardest working golfer in the world. After his round of golf in a tournament he goes out and hits balls till it is too dark to play while the other golfers are back in the club house. Both Prakash and Gopi dedicated themselves to long, systematic and hard practices and the results paid off.

My point is that we Indians make excuses of our "genes" for not doing well in sports. Yet other players have proven that hard work, proper nutrition, good coaching, etc can overcome "lack of proper genes".

Dear Jayakris,

I wish money alone can solve India's sports problems. Money can help but unless the Indian athletes dedicate themselves, set goals and find ways to achieve them nothing will happen. Shooters, archers, wrestlers, swimmers, etc in USA do not make much money competing in their respective sports yet they win gold medals in Olympics and World Championships. Cricket is making our cricketers super rich yet India is not ranked in the top four, and besides a couple of Indian cricketers none of them would make the Australian cricket team. Are the present cricketers in India better than the ones we produced in the 70's or 80's when money was not as big?

I talk about Indian government officials and politicians because they are the roadblocks to improving the infrastructure of sports in India. They will not let the private industry build the proper facilities, or will not give incentives to them to do so. In a democratic country sports has to be cultivated by private industries but the government has to encourage it. The future of sports in India cannot be as bad as it is presently, and I hope our athletes will take advantage of the sponsorship to become world class athletes.

PKBasu · Post by **PKBasu** » Fri Apr 25, 2003 1:31 pm

I thoroughly disagree with Bhushan Sharma's comments, especially the slanderous view that Indian athletes don't try hard enough. Leander, Anand, Gopichand, Mahesh, Tendulkar, Nitin Mongia (OK Dinghy world champion this year), Geet Sethi, Dhanraj Pillai -- each became a world champion in his chosen sport after throwing every ounce of hard work into the effort. That we now have such a large number of active sportsmen who have reached the top of their sport is a reflection of one of the side-effects of economic reform.
The way it works is quite simple. We did have a lot of sporting achievements in the 1950s and 1960s (and in cricket in the early 1970s). The rupee was then over-valued, so imports were cheap (including imports of sports equipment and travel overseas). So, for instance, we made the 1956 Olympic semifinal in football (soccer), only losing a close match to Yugoslavia, 3-2, and also won all those hockey gold medals.
But had we persisted with an overvalued rupee, we would basically be a country exporting tea, spices, etc. (and that too with luck, if the currencies of Kenya, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, etc. did not depreciate relative to the rupee).
In the 1980s and 1990s the rupee gradually depreciated to a level at which a variety of Indian goods and services became internationally exportable, but the initial impact was to also make imports (including of top quality sports equipment) expensive and unaffordable. With the spread of prosperity -- made partly possible by a tripling of India's exports of goods and services over the last ten years -- all imports are now affordable, and we have a diversity of world-class talent sprouting in sports as diverse as shooting, golf and sailing (expensive sports), as well as traditional arenas such as tennis, hockey, badminton, billiards and cricket. The magnificent achievements of our juniors (especially the girls) in tennis is something that we in the club know particularly well, but this is being repeated in other sports such as shooting, hockey and (yes) cricket. B Sharma's claim that only one or two Indian cricketers would make the Aussie team is absurd: Tendulkar (Hayden), Dravid (Lehman), Harbhajan (Hogg), Zaheer (an aging/aching McGrath), Ganguly (Ponting) and Yuvraj (Symonds) are better than (or the equal of) their Aussie counterparts, and each of the Indians is younger than the Aussie concerned. Our juniors won the hockey world cup a couple of years ago, and won the last but one junior cricket world cup too. Indian sports' future looks quite brilliant to me.

BSharma · Post by **BSharma** » Fri Apr 25, 2003 2:39 pm

Dear PKBasu,

I thoroughly disagree with Bhushan Sharma's comments, especially the slanderous view that Indian athletes don't try hard enough. Leander, Anand, Gopichand, Mahesh, Tendulkar, Nitin Mongia (OK Dinghy world champion this year), Geet Sethi, Dhanraj Pillai -- each became a world champion in his chosen sport after throwing every ounce of hard work into the effort.

I am not sure if you read my note clearly or I did not make my point clearly. Here is what I wrote:

Your examples of Vijay Singh (Golf) and the badminton players winning the All-England Championship are proofs that hard work is more important than genetics. Vijay Singh is the hardest working golfer in the world. After his round of golf in a tournament he goes out and hits balls till it is too dark to play while the other golfers are back in the club house. Both Prakash and Gopi dedicated themselves to long, systematic and hard practices and the results paid off.

Did I say that hard work has not paid off for Indian athletes or all Indian athletes are not hard working? Leander, Mahesh and other examples you have given are proof of what you and I are saying. But there are a number of Indian athletes who have stopped working hard after becoming national or state champions because they did not want to make the extra effort to reach the next level.

In the 1956 Olympics only 5 or 6 teams played in football and India came 4th. You wrote: We did have a lot of sporting achievements in the 1950s and 1960s

Can you name the sporting achievements in the 1950s and 1960s where we were world champions besides hockey? Milkha Singh was a world class athlete but not a world #1. Maharaja Karni Singh won the silver medal in World Shooting Championship in 1962 (I think the year is right). We won a bronze medal in wrestling. Beyond that between 1950 to 1970 - a 20 year span where else we were among the top 3 in the world?

I would disagree with you that Zaheer would make the Australian team right now. Similarly Harbhajan Singh would not make the Australian team unless the match is played on Indian tailored pitch. Yuvraj has the potential but he would still not make the Australian team right now.

As I said in my previous note the future of Indian sports is brighter than what it is but we still have a long ways to go before we can be considered top class.

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