Yogeshwar Dutt of India celebrates after beating Ri Jong Myong of North Korea for bronze during men's 60-kg freestyle wrestling competition at the 2012 Summer Olympics, on Saturday
Let us not be afraid to face the truth. We are a one-sport nation, writes Nirmal Shekar
As a professional sportswriter, I am sick of hearing the
question over and over and over again. I find it almost nauseating. If
there are tens of millions posing the question, then, over the four
decades that I have spent in the profession, there have been tens of
hundreds of answers, from serious commentators and sports critics down
to lay persons.
Why does a nation of over 1.2 billion
people end up with just a few pieces of bronze and silver every four
years in the most celebrated event in sport?
Psychologists
often talk of something called paralysis through analysis in life. When
you think too much about something and ratchet up your anxiety levels,
the performance is bound to dip. When it comes to this clichéd question,
this very much seems to be true.
Confused
While, some might believe they have the right answers/solutions, we have
been left in such a confused state that there is no single ‘right’
prescription for the malaise.
But if you chose to
leave aside all serious analysis as to why Indian track and field
athletes, swimmers, gymnasts, hockey players and other Olympic
participants fail to live up to our — and sometimes their own —
expectations and came around to zeroing in on a rather reductionist, and
surely controversial, viewpoint, the answer might be simple.
For,
this question raises its ugly head for only about two weeks every four
years. The rest of the time — for three full years and eleven and a half
months — we are obsessed with, worship and shamelessly pay obeisance to
a sport played with any degree of seriousness by eight-and-a-half
nations.
Let us, then, accept the truth. We are a one-sport nation. And even a toddler would tell you what that sport is.
So,
let us forget the London Games. In a few weeks, the Indian cricket team
will be playing in the Twenty20 World Cup in Sri Lanka where the
conditions will suit Mahendra Singh Dhoni and his boys to the hilt.
Another wild parade
Let’s
look forward to another wild parade through the streets of Mumbai with
the boys peacocking from an open-top bus. Let’s unabashedly hail their
heroics, throw fresh flowers and encomiums at them even as my fellow
professionals try to pull out every adjective in their vocabulary to
celebrate the great achievement.
Meanwhile, Mary Kom
would probably be running from pillar to post to find a cooking gas
cylinder in Manipur, Yogeshwar Dutt would be walking to the nearest tea
stall in his hometown, unmolested, his stellar achievement long
forgotten.
The peerless Viswanathan Anand’s fifth
world chess title would be a distant memory and he would be preparing
for yet another tournament that nobody cares about even as Jeev Milka
Singh tees off somewhere that nobody has heard of. Birdie and
eagles…well, we haven’t been to a bird sanctuary in a while; should make
it a point to visit one.
That’s who we are. That is
what we are. That is India. Say all you want about how mediocre Indian
sportspersons — cricket is advisedly left out of the description of
sport because it is no longer a sport and hasn’t been in quite a while
as it is on a par with things religious — are but we simply do no care
for them for the most part.
We let them down
And
when the Olympics come around, we are saddened, angry and aghast that
we are not able to revel in reflected glory. We are ashamed that
countries with one millionth of our population pick up gold medals.
These guys have done us in, we say. We believed so much in them and they
have let us down.
But the truth is, it is we who let
them down. For, we don’t care about them for three years and
eleven-and-a-half months. We don’t care about their impecunious
circumstances, their heroic struggles, their fight against-the-odds and
battles with cynical, self-serving sports administrators heading often
corrupt sports bodies.
Instead, we spend sleepless
nights over whether Chennai Super Kings would make it to the final of
the IPL or whether a mediocre also-ran cricketer really did take
recreational drugs at some rave party in Mumbai; or whether Yuvraj Singh
is dating the latest Miss India or some other starlet whose only claim
to fame is that she was seen with a cricketing superstar on a night out.
My
dear readers, let us get real. We have failed the Koms and the
Yogeshwars and the rest as much as we seem to believe that many Indian
athletes have failed us. They don’t owe us as much as we owe them.
We
need to follow their careers, cheer them from grassroots up, care about
how they are treated by the administrators, worry about how they are
ignored by the big corporate giants who would readily part with $10m for
a 15-second TV ad campaign featuring a Sachin Tendulkar or a Gautam
Gambhir. But we don’t.
We simply don’t give a damn most of the time and then bemoan their lack of success at the Olympics once every four years.
Believe
me, it is not easy being an Indian and trying to achieve world-class
feats in most sports, barring cricket, with its superb infrastructure
public and corporate support and unmatched financial clout.
This
is not to belittle what the Gavaskars, Kapils and the Tendulkars have
achieved. But, tell me this: why is nobody canvassing for a seat in the
upper house for Anand, why isn’t anyone talking about a Bharat Ratna for
the genius of the 64-square game?
The world chess
champion is an Indian — chess, my friend, chess, where the grey matter
matters more than in any other game — and that should make us prouder
than any other achievement by any Indian sportsman or team.
But
forget it. By the way, when is India’s first match in the Twenty20
World Cup in Sri Lanka? I bet Harbhajan will be back with a bang. What a
fighter the man is!
Nothing reflects our unity in diversity — and is a greater tribute to it — than our national obsession with cricket.
Sorry
Mary, we forgot about your gas cylinder and the constant problems with
power failures in your little house. But that is who we are.