prasen wrote:I actually went to their website and saw that they had stubs on Jitender and Vijender but with no content as yet. So, perhaps those two are being considered for funding. It seems that MCT does indeed fund sportsmen but after they have shown themselves to be world-class not before. Whatever they do to help, helps. So thanks to them.
Yes, they had Jitendar also in their list in some way. I believe they had shown the willingness (at least this time) to do various levels of support for various players. Sort of like picking and choosing as needed to give some push and prod and keep them all happy to some extent - perhaps even to some guys who were not properly under larger contracts.
It is also because it is in their interest - make no mistakes on that. I don't say that as a dig at them ether. I prefer it that way; it
should be in their interest. After all, MTC is basically a player promotion/agents firm, just that they started with a solid bank balance to get going and have been given allowed by the investor to not be overly concerned about profit-making, but to perhaps only make sure that they do things with a proper business footing too! .. That is the only way Mittals would do it.
I am glad that they are like that. Pure sports charity does not work well, pure entitlement (from government) does not work well, and pure business (sports agents) also does not work well in India at this time. MTC is some sort of a happy medium that balances things, in my view. So are, to some extent, the Sethi-Padukone GoldQuest, Bhupathi-Apollo etc too, if I am not mistaken.
I really like this development in Indian sports over the last couple of years. It is somewhat unique to India, and was in a way a natural extension of there being tremendous potential on the business side, and tremendous untapped enthusiasm in Indian people/businessmen to support our sports due to the pure embarrassment everybody feels about our performance in the world, along with the kind of demonstrated governmental inefficiency that is unprecedented in sports history in making use of the opportunities presented by a fast-growing economy.
If I am reading the tea-leaves right, the next decade or so would see this paradigm playing a big role in India's sports development.
May be I am reading too much, but what the heck!
Jay