Are Indians Born Losers?

Sandeep · Post by **Sandeep** » Tue Mar 22, 2005 9:51 pm

Guidance is key for becoming a sports player. That is why in my earler post I emphasized on importance of having workshops where we can educate parents.

In education you see that a lot of that from both parents and teachers, In sports I don't know why it is lacking. Right from you 10th class parents start telling, get abouve 95% marks and you will be in a very good school for XI and XII. Then they say focus on maths, biology has no future

, you should get admission in so and so engg college and then they say do well in GRE, GATE, CAT and join in IIm's and so on and it continues hat way. In sports that is lacking. How many parents you see teling their ward tht you are 12yrs old perform well in Adidas tourney and you will get so and so points. Next level will be ITF and so on. Not many parents do that. You need to show the child how rosy future would be if you succeed in that particular tourney and so on. In education we often do that.

There are lot of parents who want their son to be a sachin or their daughter to be sania, but due to their lack of sports knowledge they leave it to the child and coach to decide his/her future. Yes they do encourage their wards in tourneys but they lack that insight into what next?. This way they are not guiding their child properly to become a world champion. But it is different in education.

Ofcourse if you are at ITF and national level there is considerable participation of parents, but what about at district levels and state levels.

sramu · Post by **sramu** » Wed Mar 23, 2005 5:33 am

Based on my experience, the sports minded parents like me (and my wife too) do encourage children to give prefrence to sports compared to academics. But academics is definitely a safety net for middle class parents and hence cannot be totally neglected. Also, finance is a single most constraint. You need to spend one hell of a lot of money and time for your kid to excel in sports. You need to spend a lot of money to get the best coaching (travelling coach) and to participate in international tournaments. Not many are as lucky as Sania to have sponsorship at the right age. You need to have a fallback option if the kid cannot reach the top.

In advanced countries and even in east European countries the talented kids are taken care by the system and the parents need not worry about the finance or alternative safety option.

Unless the sports bodies or corporates take care of the finance aspect, the Indian parents will have no options but to let thier wards play sports to the extent their finances permit and also study.

neh215 · Post by **neh215** » Wed Mar 23, 2005 6:46 am

Only a couple of weeks back, one of the schools I am currently working with started a fully equipped dance floor with complete disco lights and a DJ! The students visit this ‘disco’ during any free class and just let their hair down for a while, and then they are completely refreshed and ready to go back to studying. Children come from all different backgrounds, and none of their parents had any issues with this new introduction. A couple of them *accidentally* discovered the talent their child had - to dance!

The point is that parents don’t mind the ‘system’ taking care of their child, it is simpler because there is no additional responsibility on them, no extra efforts they need to put in for identifying the talent/ aptitude among the children or furthur looking out for some club and enquiring or enrolling their wards. For working parents living in Mumbai, it is very difficult to juggle and manage all of it. Having said that I don’t mean they should be completely aloof from their duties as encouraging parents. But for them keeping a check ‘once a while’ is more manageable then keeping a constant vigil on every activity the child is participating in, everyday.

The conclusion is that it would be better if the system brings in some kind of a program to ‘identify the talent’ - ideal age is 4 to 7/8 years. I worked on this as a part of my masters program/ research work and have also proposed a plan to some schools with the help of the physical trainers working there.

On the whole I would say the awareness is there, and it is growing. More than workshops to educate parents, the workshops need to be for those parents whose children HAVE an aptitude for sports and how they can effectively channelize it. The focus is shifting from pure academics to ‘well-rounded development’ but the fact is that it will take time and constant efforts by people working towards this kind of education.

And sramu has made a very critical point. Finance is another dimension.

PKBasu · Post by **PKBasu** » Wed Mar 23, 2005 9:36 am

sramu, if you don't mind us asking, are you Rohan's dad? It does appear, from some of your posts, that you are the parent of one of the Indian tennis players, and I am just surmising from your icon that it is RB. Of course, you have every right to remain silent...!

sramu · Post by **sramu** » Wed Mar 23, 2005 10:49 am

PKBasu
No not Rohan's. But I am a great fan of Rohan not only for his tennis but also for his off court behaviour. But you are right that I am a tennis player's dad. Currently I don't want to reveal who it is.

BSharma · Post by **BSharma** » Wed Mar 23, 2005 6:25 pm

It is nice to know that we have a parent of a tennis player participating in this discussion. The discussion becomes more meaningful when we have people from different backgrounds joining in it.

Once again I would like to clarify two different issues that I wrote earlier:

1. Should children in India participate in some level of sports activity and not be totally focused on academics?

2. Should parents allow children in India who are talented enough to become possible future sports stars to focus more on sports than academics?

Neha (not Uberoi

) has told us a great example of a dance club started by a school in Mumbai and how it has served a dual purpose of relieving stress and finding new talents in the school children. Some level of sports participation or dance club can help the school children to interact socially with their peers outside the school environment, and also provide some physical exercise. A sound mind and body go together.

sramu brings forth a practical point about finance. This is where the Indian sports program must come into the picture and help the parents out.

Tennis appears to be quite different from many other sports. Tennis requires a part-time "personal" coach and a lot of domestic and international travelling from an earlier age, and this may not be the case in sports like soccer, field hockey, basketball, volleyball, athletics, etc. Most countries including USA do not pay for personal coaching/travelling unless the junior is one of the top tennis players in the country. The same is true about gymnastics and figure skating in USA where parents in USA spend thousands of dollars every year to get their children receive coaching from the top coaches. However, travelling in gymnastics and figure skating is less than in tennis.

Finance is a definite problem for Indian parents whose children are into tennis but I believe that it is less of a problem if the children are into hockey, soccer, athletics, etc.

PKBasu · Post by **PKBasu** » Thu Mar 24, 2005 2:03 am

Parental involvement is absolutely essential in tennis, as we have seen in numerous cases around the world (Hewitt, Chang, Graf, Capriati, Pierce, etc.) and most emphatically in the case of all our successful players -- Krishnan (TK Ramanathan for the original Krish, both grandfather and father for Ramesh), Amritraj (the famous mother Maggie who produced three world class tennis playing sons; Vijay and Anand for PA and Stephen), Paes (Vece fully involved), Bhupathi (CGK, and mom in earlier years), Mirza (both parents), Rastogi (father especially), Mankad (mother Nirupama). One of the constraints on a player's growth is often the extent to which his/her parents can stay involved -- especially in travelling with the young player in the early years. I won't cite cases, but a cursory look (especially on the women's side) will show you which players have suffered more from this constraint.

Given this, it is terrific to have a tennis-parent like sramu involved in our forum. We also have the parents of Sania, Karan, Vijay Kannan as occasional visitors -- and we have occasionally had Krishna Bhupathi in our chatroom, apart from Sania herself on a couple of occasions (I will always cherish the online chats I had with her before she became famous...

).

FirstIndiaFan · Post by **FirstIndiaFan** » Thu Mar 24, 2005 2:57 am

Guys,
Great dicsussion! I think now we have put ourselves in the shoes of potential tennis parents and undersatnd the tough decisions they must face! Not an easy choice, is it?

Yet..the choice has to be made! Some talent must be recognized early enough that they must be allowed to focus on tennis, completely. I do not think it is possible to pursue meaningful education and high level of global tennis at the same time! If the talent is identified early then there is time to go back and resume education in case things don't work out in tennis.

Still curious about the number of college graduates in the top 100 tennis palyers in the world. No takers? What's your guess? Is it 0? 10 or 90?

Zero Means 'Love' For This India Fan # 1

BSharma · Post by **BSharma** » Thu Mar 24, 2005 3:45 am

Without spending a lot of time to check the education level of the top 100 tennis players (male or female), I can state with some certainty that it is zero (isn't tennis all about zero or "love"?

).

The lack of college education for the top 100 tennis players is because of the way junior and pro-tennis are structured. Full-time college education and the path to reach the top 100 in tennis do not go together. If a player does not spend the entire year on the tour, he or she is not going to make the top 100. If a player waits till he oe she graduates from college at 22 years of age (in USA) before embarking full-time on the Tour then he or she will miss the boat.

This scenario is however, is not true for many other sports. Most US pro golfers are college graduates, for example.

Post by **Dhruv** » Thu Mar 24, 2005 8:16 am

Actually my guess would be something like 10-20. Lots of people in Western Europe and America choose not to go to University unlike India where almost everyone does so. That will bias figures somewhat as well.

And hey Bill Gates never graduated either so what does that tell you. Maybe we should all have dropped out.

PKBasu · Post by **PKBasu** » Thu Mar 24, 2005 8:42 am

Michael Stich, famously, was a college graduate -- and he always complained of not having anything to talk about with the semi-literate Boris Becker...
Mahesh is a college graduate, and perhaps it isn't a coincidence that Globosport is doing a lot better than Paes en Sport (LP dropped out of high school, and consequently had a serious shot at a singles career, unlike MB -- although LP was clearly also more talented tennis-wise at 16-18).
There are a fair sprinkling of college grads among the top-100. And I'm sure Prakash and Harsh will complete their respective Economics degrees (AFTER they finish their pro tennis careers). I know someone who was a class-mate of Prakash's at USC, and he tells me PA was a decent student and a great guy. Harsh went to UMinn, which is around the #10-ranked undergrad program in Economics in the US (at least it was when I was in Grad School...!).

FirstIndiaFan · Post by **FirstIndiaFan** » Sat Mar 26, 2005 1:49 pm

Yes...Stich was one, and even more famously it was Patrick Mcnroe who graduated. So count them on your fingers (of only one hand

)

I just wanted to highlight the dilemma of education vs. tennis that parents face. Golf is a totally different story. Tennis careers are on the wane at 30. You are known as 'Grand Ol Gent or Lady of the Grand Slams' by the time you are 30. In golf at that age, you are still warming up! Besides, golf is not played on hardcourts and Caddies carry yoour junk, so you can pamper yourself and last in to the senior league, and keep making your millions even there! US college system is excellent for tennis, as good as it is for any other sport, however it is Tennis that odes not allow pursuit of education.

So giving up on the education would be one of the toughest barriers to break for an Indian parent of a Tennis prodigy.

Child Of Parents Who Opted For Education...India Fan #1

BSharma · Post by **BSharma** » Sat Mar 26, 2005 10:46 pm

I think that most of us will agree that earning a college degree by 22 years of age and a pro-tennis ranking of top 100 are hard task to do. Indian parents have a difficult time to remove college education from the equation. Tennis is one of the few sports where Indian parents will be torn with the idea of letting their children give up education prematurely. But this thread is about all sports and not tennis alone. In most other sports a college education and world class performance can co-exist.

Sandeep · Post by **Sandeep** » Sun Mar 27, 2005 4:05 am

First Indian fan, I don't know if you mean only men otherwise did you forget 'super sania' or you didn't include her deliberately because she is still in first year of undergraduation. But she is doing it and she is in top 100. Sania is in her first year, mass communication in st.Mary's collegr, Hyderabad.

And what about VA, Ramesh krish, Ramanathan Krish? Didn't they graduate??

BSharma · Post by **BSharma** » Sun Mar 27, 2005 6:04 am

And what about VA, Ramesh krish, Ramanathan Krish? Didn't they graduate??

Many Indian tennis fans would think that Ramanathan Krishnan must not have gone to college because he won the Junior Wimbledon and then went on to play at many tournaments all over the world. I had remembered reading about Ramanathan and his college education when I used to watch him play every year for a few years when I was in school.

I was able to find proof about his college degree. Here is part of the quote from the newspaper article (The Hindu) but read the full article because it is a great one.

"An event etched on Krishnan's mind relates to the Centenary of the Madras University in 1957. It so happened that there was no trophy triumph for Madras in any discipline. The only chance lay in tennis. Rev. Fr. Murphy, University Senate member from Loyola College, and Dr. A. L. Mudaliar, Vice-Chancellor, instructed Krishnan to play in the semi-final and final in New Delhi. Krishnan was hesitant, as he was preparing for the final year examinations less than a month away.

Understanding Krishnan's predicament, Rev. Fr. Murphy said, "Don't worry, Madras University won't fail you," a sentiment even the Vice-Chancellor acknowledged. During the Centenary Celebrations, Krishnan was honoured with a special gold medal." Thanks S. THYAGARAJAN .

To me, Ramanathan Krishnan is the best tennis player that India has produced so far.

A sportsman nonpareil