Indian cricket is always great. Given we are at the start of another world cup tournament, we expect the excitement to peak in the coming weeks. Social media, office water coolers, public transport, parks and any other gathering will have cricket discussions. Will India reach the semi-finals? What about the finals? Can we win?
It’s all great. But while cricket shines brightest, there seems to be another amazing trend emerging as well. That is, the rise of Indian excitement in other sports, particularly those which Indians historically have cared little about. This has happened mainly because of recent Indian achievements in these sports. Suddenly, a medal win for India in the Olympics or Asian Games brings a surge of interest and attention towards that sport. After all, were we ever interested in Javelin throw before Neeraj Chopra won that Olympic Gold?
There is a whole new list of sports where Indians are achieving like never before. Shooting, wrestling, weight lifting, badminton and athletics have all had new Indian stars in the last decade or so. In the current Asian games in progress, Indians have won medals in Equestrian, Roller Skating, Rowing, Squash, Golf, Sailing and Wushu (martial arts). Can you believe this? Indians becoming champions in all these sports other than cricket? Sure, Asian Games aren’t the Olympics, but they are a steppingstone. The trend suggests India will win medals in these sports even at global level competitions in the coming years. Asian Games medals also involve real intense competition, with plenty of developed and far wealthier nations taking part in the competition (Japan, Korea, China for instance). These aren’t small achievements. They are as hard to achieve as winning the ICC Cricket World Cup, if not harder.
Cricket in India today is backed by an organization like the BCCI, which is literally worth billions in its net worth (around $2.25bn, according to reports). To put it in perspective, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and West Indies and New Zealand cricket boards have net worth of around $80mn, $50mn, $40mn, $30mn and $20mn respectively. BCCI’s net worth more than that of all the other cricket boards around the world put together (Even England and Australia, the next richest boards after India, are less than a sixth of BCCI’s net worth). When we say we are playing international cricket – are we even fighting worthy opponents? Is the World Cup really a level playing field, truly global participation world cup? Not really. Around a dozen countries play cricket to some serious level. A dozen isn’t the world. Also, we have a cricket board that is often a fifty-to-hundred fold richer than some of the others. Is it still as much fun to defeat other teams when you put all this in perspective? There was a time when it was fun for us brown guys to defeat the white guys at latter own game. It still is fun, but those days of defeating the lagaan collectors are long gone. This is not to take away from the hard work of the Indian cricket players, who give their life, blood and sweat for the game. This is more about us, the Indian sports fans, to understand how much attention we need to give to each sport and see what other awesome things are happening in Indian sport apart from cricket. Because accomplishments in these other sports – those are raw, hardcore merit achievements. The competition is intense at the Olympics and the Asian games. India often is at a disadvantage in terms of resources, as many of these sports do not have the budgets they need to compete at world level. The lack of level playing field is in this case, against us, unlike Indian cricket which it has a huge resource advantage against the competition. And yet, our new budding stars have shined. Hats off to them, and to the huge efforts of private organizations, government bodies, coaches and staff that have worked relentlessly to make this magic happen.
It is however, time now for we, the Indian sporting fans, to do our bit. We should post about these other sports and their athletes on our social media feeds. We must read up or watch interviews of these other players, and discuss them in our office breaks with other colleagues. We need to attend non-cricket sporting events or watch them on TV whenever we can. We can give these new sports some real attention and love. That in turn will translate to more advertiser and sponsorship money for non-cricket sports, which in turn will further improve performance. This positive loop is only possible if we, the Indian sports viewers, divide our love and attention to other games as well.
Sporting victories are more than just moments of national pride. In a way, they inspire us. When we see an Indian with a humble background achieve something on global stage, it gives us hope. That we too can do it. A handful of medals we win can inspire a billion plus people. India’s time in other sports has come, it’s time we give it a further push by giving them some genuine love and attention.