Re: Will India win a medal this Olympics ?

["Manish Gupta" <ml_gupta@hotmail.com>]

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>Why? Why is this nation with a 100 crore population unable to find even a
>single medal winner? Is it due to a dearth of talent in India ? Are we so
>bad? Or do we believe that only work is worship ?
>Or are we simply uninterested? And why do a majority of sports persons
>leave
>the field after they have got a  job?
>

Here are some of my observations about sports in India, and this time I feel
the Govt. is not fully responsible for this:

1) In India any sport is considered to be pure amateuer thing as opposed to
professional in US or in Europe, can anybody in India even have an
opportunity to become professional player (except for the Cricketers, and
too only on a national level)?

2) There is no money in sports for players, the reason for this is we do not
have any "Sporting Industry" to name for (like NFL, NBA etc in US) where
local clubs of different cities compete with each other, and generate lots
of public interest, which in turn funds these kind of events.

Let's take example of US and how sports are conducted over here (there
abosolutely no involvement of Govt.):

1) For each sport (say baseball) there are multiple leagues (Major/minor
etc) (you'll say we also have them in India)
2) Teams in these leagues are fielded by local clubs (you'll say we do the
same in India too.)
3) However the similarity ends there, players of these clubs are full time
employee of these clubs, and they are paid pretty well (even for the minor
league clubs like Birmingham "Barrons" playing against Columbia "capitals").
4) There league matches are so well orchestrated, it gives a full 2 to 4
hour entertainment to spectators (who are funding these events), moreover it
also opens a whole new avenue of affordable family entertainment (just think
how many avenues we have in India for family entertainment apart from
movies).
5) Clubs also gets money from selling TV rights for these local sporting
events, advetisement etc. (I leave that upto your imaginations).
6) So the players playing for these clubs have full time job doing that and
they also shift jobs during change of seasons.
7) Now coming back to India, how many sports club/leagues we have which
meets above mentioned critiria (Mohan Bagan, East Bengal in football)
(Cricket Club of India in Cricket), and I think that's it. Cricket is the
most popular (and probably the professional) sport in the country, however
look at the domestic level cricket, the way they are oragnized, its bad...
8) There are some corporate bodies like Tata's and some big public sector
companies which hires players on there playing merits, however after they
are working there, they are supposed to do their regular jobs, moreover the
spirit is of doing Charity rather than have serious sports.
9) Almost every decent sized city in India has there own stadium mostly
owned by local Govt. and they are used for every thing except sport (atleast
that is the case in Nagpur and Nanded in Maharahtra), be it political rally
or whatever...
10) Now whatever I've described above can't be done by the Govt. it has to
be done by entrepreneurs (and in current scenario I don't think Govt. would
be hurdle in that) to carve an industry out of sports.

Won't that be great to have a field hockey league match between Nagpur
"Snakes" and Hyderabad "Perls" being watched by more than 30,000 spectators
and also beamed live on TV, I really dream of that day ....

What do you guys think....

Manish
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