Is India Still A One Sport Nation?

World says that India loves cricket only.....It's true!!!!

  Let's get to its roots........ 

Olympics 2008 -> 3

CWG 2010 -> 101

Asian Games 2010 -> 64

These are the best figures in terms of medal wins that India has ever won in its sporting history of these tournaments. So, what has led to such a spike in India’s medal tally? Is India’s love for athletic games increasing? Is India no more only a cricketing nation? I would recommend you to not go with these numbers. In the past 2 years, Indian athletes may have performed at their best, but simply saying our best is not really the best. Even when compared to smaller nations like Japan and Korea, we are so much lagging them that it would be wrong to even compare our self with them.  

MAKE A LONG JUMP INDIA!!! 

Even after its best performance, we cannot say that our love for athletics is increasing. Because increase in popularity is coupled with increase in bench strength in games, which ultimately leads to more competition and thus better players. However, in our case it was not so. The medals were won only by a selected few who have already proved there mettle and rarely has there been any new surprise. Infact, I would say that India’s performance has nothing to do with our passion for sports(non-cricketing). I would dedicate India’s success to a few individuals and the government of India’s(GOI) support. 

GoI has woken up to the task of promoting sports and has increased spending on providing better sporting facilities and coaches. However, with the budget constraints these have been provided only to the well established players and athletes and not to budding ones. This reduces the interest among children who aspire to be a sportsperson.

So is only GOI is responsible for the pathetic condition of non-cricketing sports in our country? That would be wrong to say.  Cricket became popular after 1983 world cup win of India over famed West Indian team. However, there’s no such interesting and challenging win by India in any other sport. I could bet that if somehow India wins a FIFA cup, the game’s popularity will leap forge and would make football a rage in our country. But, is that going to happen? Could India do in football, what it once does in cricket in 1983? As of now, that seems to be difficult.

But I would like to add that one time win is not all. It has to be augmented with consistently good performance in order to make a sport popular and there can’t be a better example than hockey to prove that. Once popular, the Indian national game hockey has now reduced to shambles. Consistent losses and no major tournament wins have dented its fan base and peoples love for the game tumbled. After all, we need to accept that love can’t be blind forever, it has to produce results and if favourable ones don’t come, love can’t last for too long.

So, I would conclude that it’s the responsibility of all the stakeholders to popularize a game and not just of governments to do that. Also promoting sports would help in reducing health problems especially because India has become world capital of diabetes. But, that would be distant reason for popularising sports and would require political foresightedness.

And as of now…..Yes India is a single sport nation!!!!