India moving up in the world of sports

[amr090]

some good, interesting points made by bsharma. as pkb said the 'glory days' of indian sports, and by glory days i mean when we were at least close to the asian level and in some cases world class level, ended pretty much in the 70's. Now we struggle to even be at asian levels.

besides when i say that we are nowhere near the best does not mean once can use the argument "theres other countries worse than us in sports". what use of it for us to take solace in the fact that we are better than Ethiopia, Somalia, or Rwanda. The fact is when you compare India to countries on par with India or higher in terms of economy and education, India is pretty darn close to last in the majority if not virtually all types of sport.

on the bright side tho i am happy to say things are changing i think, no matter how slow it may be.

[Kumar]

I would probably say that we are at the same level (from 1950s ) , while other countries just buzzed past us..

[amr090]

haha thats another way of looking at things as well.

[BSharma]

amr090 wrote:

....The fact is when you compare India to countries on par with India or higher in terms of economy and education, India is pretty darn close to last in the majority if not virtually all types of sport.

Achievements in sports by a country is somewhat dependent on level of economy and education but more so by the sports culture of a country, and the attitude towards sports by the public, sports officials and industries/government that sponsor sports.

The Krishnans, the Amritrajs, Milkha Singh, Sri Ram Singh, Karni Singh, Leander Paes, Mahesh Bhupathi, Anju George, Anand, etc are not the product of some systemic sports industry in India but because they and their family chose to take a different path from the usual road taken by most Indians.

[Sandeep]

I exactly didn't know where to post this, I thought this thread is approriate one. I didn't want to start a thread for this. Indian government has given away cash money of Rs.39 millions to 257 athletes. Sania is included in tennis. Once again sheer nonsense to give sania prize money at this point. Nice to see Jeevan also in under tennis section. Here is the article about it.

http://www.webindia123.com/news/showdet ... cat=Sports

[gbelday]

Why one game at a time?
http://akd.rediffiland.com//scripts/xan ... 1151949068

I don't think we are good at even one sport at a time. I don't like the reference to Sania's dip in form too, it's just her second year on tour!!

[BSharma]

It is true that sports in India should be better than what it is, but I feel sad that some Indians can write about the state of sports in India without checking the facts.

For example, the writer that Gautam has mentioned in the previous post wrote:

Do we even have teams for volleyball and basketball? And do they have a rank in the world?

The writer could have gone through the Volleyball thread at Sports-India and would have learned that Indian volleyball is not all that bad. Indian junior male team ranks #10 in the world, the senior men's team is ranked 25th (Germany is ranked 32 and England is at 61st spot), Indian junior girl's team is #36, and Indian senior women's team is #86 (more so because the team has hardly played much against International teams).

Indian Volleyball Thread at Sports-India

[jayakris]

Thanks for that, Bhushan. I also had found that blog quite amateurish, and wanted to complain, but did not know what to complain about!

The author also made another mistake that LP's was the first non-hocky medal we got, summarily forgetting Khashaba Jhadev's 1952 bronze.

Basically he really did not have a point in that whole blog. Just the usual Indian whining, without solutions or insights. People like that make me mad.

Jay

[gbelday]

Yeah, I found it pretty amateurish too. I knew it didn't make a whole lot of sense when I was reading it - probably shouldn't have posted in the first place. I don't think the author did any research, must have just woken up one day and wrote that stuff up. I am glad Doc posted a reference to it in the Volleyball secions, we can atleast pick up some discussion there.

[prasen9]

I guess a general improvement of Indian sports is expected.  Ever since the liberalization and general improvement of the economy, I suppose Indian sportsmen have better facilities and perhaps more time to afford the luxury of children going into sports.  Also with television coverage, more kids see world-class sportsmen and aspire to be like them.  There is certainly better fitness awareness now.  From this greater group of middle-class people, by randomness and due to better infrastructure, I expect better sportsmen/women to arrive.  I look forward to a multi-medal Olympic performance in the near future.
Hoping for multiple players in the top 100 tennis rankings in the not-too-distant future (10 years).

-pm

[akmohanty]

I hope what you are saying turns out to be true. however, inspite of the increase in exposure & better standards of living, i do not see a change in attitude of parents - most of them still want their children to only pursue academic careers irrespective of whether they have the inclination for it or not.  Also, as far as i know, the reward & recognition for players other than in cricket (and perhaps to some extent tennis) has not improved. 

[srini]

A general improvement?May be Yes..but not in commensurate with the economic development india made in the past decade.Indian psyche, when it comes to games and sports has hardly made any progress..Most players have this JUST FOR THE SAKE OF IT attitude and play and practice more to retain their sports quota government sector jobs or anticipating reservation in education or jobs.When it comes to coaches , School kids baseball or football coach in USA would be more professional and take their job more seriously than any National coach in India.Coming to sports fecilities the central government thinks its enough to have all the fecilties in Delhi and any International sports events will be held ONLY in Delhi.What about rest of india?comeon...who ever wants to play can come and practice in Delhi right  Unless government expands fecilities and conducts international mega sports events in atleast sports literate states like Kerala the north east states,i would expect the number of multi medal performance in olympics that Prasen mentioned would be 2 medals.And lets not be surprised if the Indian sports ministry considers this a 200% improvement in the performance having gotten only 1 medal in the last edition.

[arjun2761]

Agree with most of everything in the post above.  That is why world class individuals (Khade, Sanam, top badminton players etc.) should look to train and compete abroad as soon and as much as possible.  Many of us good have predicted that the training under a pot-bellied coach provided by AITA would not have accomplished anything for Sanam, Jeevan, and Vivek.

Likewise, our better national teams such as cricket, hockey, volleyball etc. should also have "world class" coaches from abroad.  In addition, the elite individual players should try to play in professional leagues obroad as well.

On a secondary note, how do we start developing better coaches in India?  Clearly, the Chinese, Koreans, etc. have accomplished that in many sports and I wonder what it is about their training methods we can copy?  While the train abroad philosophy might get us from 1 to 4-5 medals, we will need to develop better internal coaching and training  systems to become a sports power.

[PKBasu]

Sports will be the last area of activity in India to see any real improvement, sadly. Not only is sports poorly managed by the ministry (and we currently have one of the most wrong-headed Sports ministers imaginable), but each of the associations specialises in ruining whatever chances India might have to develop world-class teams and individual sportsmen. So it's really up to those individuals (and their families) who are able to circumvent the awful (dis)abling environment.

[arjun2761]

Little doubt that we have one of the worst bureaucracies in the world (including Africa) -- so to expect much from the "ministry" would be futile.  Hopefully, the private involvement with atleast our elite talents will start to bear fruit as the economy grows and the private sector resources devoted to develop sports grows as well.  The Mittal trust and Tata academies are hopefully the beginning of many more such resources.