Sunil Chhetri takes one for the team to establish a sporting culture in the country
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Remember Bhaag Milkha Bhaag? The Farhan Akhtar starrer that swept all Hindi cinema awards in 2013. The movie celebrated the life and journey of one of the most unfortunate, yet venerated, sportspersons of the country and garnered massive accolades at the box office all over the world.
I was one of the millions who was completely stunned by Akhtar’s amazing transformation and couldn’t even control my urge to praise Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra, the director of the movie, in my typically long Facebook post. While the movie won awards for fun and garnered no less than 164 crores at the box office, people also started celebrating the life of Milkha Singh, something the legend Milkha would have never imagined a decade back. However, in a month, or let’s say two months, when the euphoria of the movie died, we were back in our normal life and started focusing on cricket all over again. The glamorous and dreamlike matrix of the Indian Premier League took over and we soon forget what we promised ourselves a while back.
While it is wrong to assume that cricket is sole cause of the other sports’ failure to capture the attention, you know there is something wrong with this country when a national skipper and the third highest active goal-scorer of the world in a sport as big as football begs people to come and support them in the stadium with folded hands and the underlying reason is nothing other than the lack of sports culture in the country.
To begin with, there is no denying the fact that the Government needs to make systemic changes to the way sports are being organized in this nation, but the truth is there is only so much a Government can do, and there is so much we, the citizens of the nation, have failed our nation in. And very few would argue against the fact that sports have never been given a chance to serve to its true potential in the public domain. However, to initiate that dawn, it needs to be ensured that we, the citizens, take as much responsibility for it as the government or any national sports federations.
In this context, a paragraph from Gideon Haigh’s magnum opus “Sphere of Influence” comes to mind which beautifully summarises the changing dynamics between the live audience and sporting events in the wake of the time when substantially lucrative television rights take the
And there is very little to disagree with in the statement. If you are one of those excited fans to have ever bought a ticket to watch a sport of any kind, you will definitely vouch by the above-mentioned word by Haigh. While it is indeed exciting to spend an hour or three in a stadium to showcase your support for your
Away from the very core of glitz and glamour of league sports or international level competitions, the saddest reality is that there are uncountable athletes who give up sports mid-way. Why? Because they never get the audience they deserve, and the resultant lack of appreciation and opportunities forced them to take the other ways to earn bread and butter for their families. There is nothing called free meal in the world and one puts his or her full energy to achieve what he or she once dreamt of as a young kid and if they won’t get the appreciation they deserve, time will come when they will be forced to do stuff that they shouldn’t have done otherwise.
Without that, how do we expect a sporting culture to flourish? To establish one, there needs to be encouragement, or as Chhetri said for football, go and “abuse, and scream, but have a discussion, and get involved” and that will take it the flag of Indian sports onward and upward. At the same time, imagine a situation like this. If a kid is sitting with his grandfather on the stands of a Hockey match and listening to the magical tales of Dhyan Chand, or Balbir Singh, or the artiste genius of Mohammed Shahid. Will it not create a sense of pride in his heart and inspire to pick up one activity the next day.
To go with that, we also need to allow our kids to pick up a sport from their childhood. Even when a kid does well in sports, he is constantly reminded that he still needs to be in the top ranks because “hey, Sharma
To bring it into effect, we don’t need to look far ahead for inspiration. Haryana, despite its heavily patriarchal society, has a fantastic sports culture for both men and women and it is a no-brainer why most of the successful boxers and wrestlers in the country have come out of the state. While the government has done its bit by establishing SPAT scholarship programs, locals of the state use the already-available “
To conclude, I will again come back to the same movie that I enjoyed to the core - Bhaag Milkha Bhaag. With all due respect to Mehra and Akhtar’s efforts, I believe that if it took a film to resurrect the life of one of India’s all-time sporting greats, it is a shame for all the so-called “internet” sports lovers of this country, whose interest in sport begins and ends with the big-ticket cricket stars, and the Olympic Games once in every four years. The time has come knocking down at us to rethink on where we stand at the moment and there can’t be a better time to flock to the venue to scream at the top of our lungs. Sportspersons need our support, because what is sports without its fans.
