By Anil Raturi
Academic education and professional training ostensibly groom us to be able to live a “good” life. It tries to make us useful for society. However, all this is only a means to an end. The end is to be able to live a healthy and fulfilling life!
At the end of the day, to have a life experience that is imbued with feelings of pleasure –“Anand”!
One of the greatest pleasures of human life is to get an opportunity to play sports!
The Indian Olympic hockey supremacy was first breached when India lost to Pakistan in the finals of the Rome Olympics in 1960.
Sports loving Indians will fondly remember the few great moments of Indian Sports such as – the Australian Cricket Team’s India tour of 1969 under Bill Lawry and Vishwanath’s debut century at Kanpur! Sunil Gavaskar’s remarkable debut series in West Indies in 1971 when he scored 774 runs! The fluctuating short wave radio signals of the commentary from overseas of the Oval 1971 cricket match against England where Chandrashekhar demolished Ray Illingworth’s team by taking 6-36! It was Wadekar’s team, which had achieved a first by winning abroad, that too in consecutive series in the West Indies and England!
They will also perhaps remember the heart- breaking Indian defeat at the hands of Argentina in the first Hockey World Cup at Barcelona in 1971. A championship which ultimately Pakistan won! Indians have experienced so many disappointing sports performances by its sportspersons, that, as a defence mechanism, many of them seem to have numbed themselves into inculcating a sense of hopeless indifference!
Pondering about the reasons for India’s continued failures at Sports, it seems that in India, primarily, there are two types of people.
The first type is the majority, which is underfed and malnourished. It is at its wits end about how to eke out the next meal! For it, not only is there no opportunity but also the romance of sports is a far cry luxury!
The second type is that of the “haves”. It is well fed to the extent of becoming obese! Whether in business or in jobs, it remains obsessed with material wealth and luxury. Even their academic pursuit is only a means to earn more money.
The schools and colleges do not foster any sporting culture. Rather, getting more marks is their only culture!
Perhaps, as a people, the urban Indian middle-class walks the least in comparison to other countries. The European urban inhabitants (even East Asians) routinely walk miles a day just going to their jobs or shopping! The urban Indian loathes walking! The warped culture leaves no space for the pedestrians in most of urban India!
Eating fried food and sweets with no culture of working out, the middle class of India, over generations has become enervated and weak! Physically, it is perhaps one of the weakest ethnic groups in the world!
In real sports, like athletics, swimming, boxing, football, etc., where apart from scientific training, one requires a basic threshold of physical strength, Indians are inadequate, to say the least!
Neeraj Chopras or individual champion wrestlers are freak flashes in the pan. They are cases of exceptional individuals who succeeded against all odds of the prevailing contra culture!
Ironically, Indians’ IQ is relatively better than their physical prowess. Hence, we see them excel in those games that require more skill than strength– chess, billiards, badminton, shooting, etc!
They were world champions in hockey in the old skill dominated format of the game. The moment Europeans changed it to a power game, India regressed!
In Cricket, Indian men of small physical stature- Vishwanath, Gavaskar, and Tendulkar, based on skill, made a name for themselves!
Till very late, we had no pace bowlers! It requires strength. Our skilful spinners were famous. They used to start bowling after just a few overs of medium pace!
A country enslaved for long periods of time has a collective memory that is too familiar with loss and defeat. It’s experiences of victory are few and far between. It is famished with a scarcity of heroes who can beat the world!
The problem is compounded by the plethora of sports officials who only look for personal sinecures rather than furtherance of genuine sports.
In such a mess, against all odds, India won the cricket World Cup in 1983! Kapil’s men caught the imagination of a people whose memories were only that of discomfiture!
Cricket is only played by a limited number of countries and hence is not truly a world sport. Yet winning at Lords, the land of their white conquerors, was a vicarious victory over years of defeat in real battle and war!
Sports in a civilised way sublimates the primordial human instinct for violence and competition!
Since a nation famished for heroes has had cricketing heroes one after the other, corporate sponsorship, knowing what interests the people, is pouring its money into cricket match advertising!
It shuts out space for grooming any other sports or sportsmen.
It will require a herculean effort to lift India out of this morass of self-inflicted defeatism!
Perhaps India needs many more individual Neeraj Chopras to fuel and inspire the imagination of its youth if it wants Olympic glory!
(Anil Raturi is a retired IPS officer)
