6. Prejudice of Cricket over other Sports

Cricket is a game that has dominated the country for the last 20 years. At any point if sports are mentioned in and about India, it usually is cricket. Ever since the Indian cricket team won the world cup in 1983, it has become the centre of attention in the sports world, side-lining many sports, including the national sport of the country, hockey.Ever since then most of the government funds have been utilised to make our countries cricket team one of the best in the world. Even the private companies started to invest in cricket, using the fame of the cricketers to advertise their products. This catapulted the cricketers to a new level of fame, alongside movie stars and singers. Even though this has helped make the Indian cricket team as one of the best, it has cast a long shadow over other sports. Many sports like football, hockey, badminton, swimming, athletics etc. have been neglected. This has led to the youth ignoring these sports altogether. This also leads to lack of equipment and grounds to practice on. If even a small part of what goes to cricket goes to some of the other sports it really helps.

Cricket also siphons a lot of money and publicity through IPL(Indian Premiere League) where players are bought at a ridiculous amount’s and plenty sponsorship deals and publicity deals are struck. Also this league has become a game for the rich to play orfor fights to be ignited between people of different states. Since cricket is almost considered a religion all across India it is a hard to be exposed to any other sport.

Here are some of the sports that could have become a major sport in India if it was given the same amount of attention as cricket:-

1.   Football-These are one of the sports that could have really taken flight with the amount of talent among the youngsters but failed as the government did not spend enough money on the sport to even give the players normal jerseys or give them the pitch and equipment required to play at par with the other international teams. Also most students wouldn’t even consider it as a job as most of the football players in the state end up doing an odd end government job or taking up part time jobs to support their career. This is not a job what any children would want take up. The government has also let us down by not letting us have the opportunity to make a mark in the world of football. We can take the example of the 1950’s world cup where FIFA asked India to play and even offered to cover a big part of the expenses but the authorities refused saying that the players are not used to playing barefoot.
2. Hockey-Once considered one of the best sports in India, hockey has fallen a long way . Hockey players are not being given their worth even after winning world championships. For example India`s triumph at the inaugural Asian Champions Trophy.The peanuts offered to the team, a paltry sum of Rs 25,000 to each member of the winning squad was met with apt criticism and dejection. Even though, the government tried to save its face by increasing the amount and coming out with a list of its benevolence dished out for hockey and other sports in the country, the damage was already done.In fact, the ailment is a combination of different elements- maladministration, internal politics, lack of funds and the foremost; missing infrastructure.
3. Olympic Sports (Athletics, shooting etc.)-In terms of population size and medals won, there is no worse Olympic performer than India. It seems strange that a country of more than 1.2 billion people can only collect an average of less than one medal per Games. Beijing 2008 was India’s most successful Olympics to date; it finished with one Gold and two Bronze medals. That is over 383 million people per medal, the highest ratio of all competing nations at Beijing.Poor infrastructure and governance are playing their own role in this. Lack of facilities at grass root level is another problem. If an athlete belongs to a village then there is no way to practice and move forward. Poor transportation and many such hurdles break the enthusiasm of players. Experts believe that lack of social mobility and poor infrastructure are also the reasons for India’s poor performance in Olympics.Government should provide funds to train budding sportspersons. There should not be any discrimination, reservation and biased opinion while selecting the sportsperson for Olympics or other such events. Every sport in India must be encouraged like Cricket so that players can play with full enthusiasm.

I conclude this assignment by saying that even though in the recent years there have been improvements in terms of recognition of sports other than cricket, but there is still a long way to go. We can take examples from countries like Australia or China and give equal importance to different sports so that one day India can be a country that is known for multiple sports, not just one.