‘Media - The real killer of sports dreams in India'

In the light of the Cricket World cup, I really have come to see how Cricket-Crazy our nation really is. The previous times it took place I followed it from the safe havens of my home. So, to an extent I never got to see how crazy people can really get. Now, being a student living in a hostel, you really get to see how crazy it can get.

As exams were going on, the TVs were all shut down, but you could still hear people shouting when someone hit a six, or when a wicket fell. And when the match was over, literally everyone in the hostel was screaming. This got me thinking, why do people follow cricket so keenly and go on to neglect other sports. Is it because it’s more exciting? Is it because its more fun to watch? Or is it because its media manipulated?

Before you get up to kick me in the buttocks, have a listen. How many people knew that the Squash World Cup was played from March 8th-12th? It was there in the newspapers, but how many actually bothered to read the article? I don’t think anyone would have wanted to look at the papers on the 13th because India had lost to South Africa the previous day. What could be worse than losing in a WC match? The fact that India failed to even place in the Squash WC didn’t seem to bother anyone. So does that mean the hard work that athletes like Sourav Goshal, Deepika Pallikal or Joshna Chinappa doesn’t matter as much? These players have numerous winners’ medals among them and they don’t get the same amount of fame or money that even some of the lesser known cricketers get. Is that fair?

It is not just squash that is suffering. India played Pakistan in the semi-final. That was a huge game. But nobody knew that India had played against Pakistan in an AFC qualifier football match only a week ago (we won 3-1). Our top-ranked tennis player Somdev Devvarman played against the world no.1 Rafael Nadal recently and well except for purists and tennis fans, none of the general population knew how he performed. Also we had two Indian racers in the season opening F1 race the 27th of the month. Granted they didn’t do well, but is that a justification for no news about it?

The players are underpaid and facilities not well maintained. I Image not recoveredhave seen people play Cricket on Football grounds, which damages the fields. The root level where the talents are grown is diseased. In Cricket, we have tournaments in every level possible. Other that the State Board there are several clubs paying players to play for them, this is excluding IPL clubs. So this proves a good motivation for inspiring youngsters to take up the sport.

What about other sports like Football, Basketball or our supposed National Sport, Hockey? If there was some exposure for these sports, at least half the amount that Cricket got, India would have qualified for the mainstream tournaments.

I doubt there are many people who don’t know Virat Kohli or Piyush Chawla. These are two of the future prospects in cricket and they are famous. What about the bright young star Jeje Lalpekhlua? How many of us know him? At 20, he is one of the youngest players in the current National Football team. He scored 4 goals in 3 appearances in the AFC qualifiers. He did not get any front page pictures. He did not get any endorsement deals. The starting PG for the Indian National Basketball team is a 20 year old Vishesh Bhiriguvanshi. He also plays for the Young Cagers. Not many people know who the ‘Young Cagers’ are. They are one of the few professional basketball clubs in India. Teams like these struggle to stay afloat because of the lack of commercial value in their sport.

The current rankings of the Men’s National teams in Football and Basketball are currently 145/202 and 50/75 respectively. Both the teams had not qualified for their respective World Cups. These are two sports more played around the world than cricket, and this is where India stands amongst them.

Hockey is our national sport. There are 35 National level tournaments held in the country, 35, and how many of those have we heard about? The sport even had a Shah Rukh Khan movie after it and still the professional teams in the Premier Hockey League (PHL) are struggling. The league was founded in 2005 with 2 divisions and by 2007 they scrapped the second division, due to lack of interest. This just goes on to show how much the sport is suffering.

The media have a big hand in our failure to cultivate interest and that is where they have failed. The lack of media coverage other sports get here is just baffling. I did not see any live broadcasting for the Squash WC or the AFC qualifiers or any of the tennis tournaments that our players were playing in at the time. The reruns will be shown later on, but how does it matter when they failed to show it live? We never fail to notice when India is playing a cricket match. Full page articles, advertisements and offers are seen everywhere. But other sports just don’t seem to have that sort of commercial value. How will a person support a game when they cannot follow it? How can you expect people to watch games when channels don’t give them an option?

The blame has to be taken by the media. Even in football, the channels broadcast football matches from cash-rich leagues like the EPL or La Liga, far away from the country, but when it comes to National games every top studio backs off. Again, no commercial value.Image not recovered

Those of you who are still saying we have stars in sports like Badminton or Tennis winning Super Series trophies and Grand Slam trophies, wait for a second and think, have they ever trained using Govt funds? How many of them got any central contracts? All of them were backed by private companies and trained in private facilities. They had to look after themselves.

So we as people should be open enough to admit that we have been ignoring other sports and stand up to the media as one so that such problems shall never happen again. We are only ruining the hopes and dreams of many young boys and girls. Kids admire sport stars for one reason, because they had the guts to follow their dreams. Let us give them more reasons to aspire

Cricket is a religion in India, so in a country where we shout ‘Unity in Diversity’, wouldn’t it be OK if we followed more than one religion?

Achuthan Anil writes for FootballKerala.com Author is a student at Vellore Institute of Technology and maintains a blog http://goonerburgh.blogspot.com/

Photo Courtesy: AFC Asian Cup 2011 India vs Australia - Football Players Association of India Somdev Devvarman and World Cup 2011 Indian Cricket Team  - CNN IBN

From the archive. First published on footballkerala.com on Wednesday 6 April 2011, restored from the site's 2012 database. Text as originally published.