5 POINT SOMEONE !!!!!!

It is indeed sad to see Indian Hockey ailing at the moment. For people who have grown up on a stapled diet of Cricket,this dismal performance at the Olympic qualifiers may not turn heads. But nevertheless hockey being our national pride with a glorious past,this result would turn old timers even in their grave. For the better part of Eight decades the country has fed off the achievements on the Hockey field. From memory we can recall giants like Dhyan Chand, Pargat Singh,Zafar Iqbal, Mohammed Shahid, Jude felix, Mukesh kumar, Dhanraj pillay etc. Our last Olympic win came in Moscow in 1980 under the leadership of V. Bhaskaran. After 28 years we have for the first time plunged to the depths of sorrow and despair.We have not able to even qualify for OLYMPICS.

In this hour of crisis, questions are being thrown in,opinions are warranted and heads are asking to be guillotined and the proverb"Success has many fathers,Failure is an orphan"holds true. People want the controversial IHF president KPS Gill thrown out. Other's have asked for a complete revamping. Some want Team strategist Rick charles worth at the helm,others want him out and some others want to know why he was not part of the contingent at Chile. Already Joaquim carvalho the Hockey coach has quit. Everyone has an opinion,but not many solutions. Shiv Kera the suave management guru said”If you are not part of the solution,then you become part of the problem”.What is the root cause of this disease that ails the hockey system and how can we stem the rot. I feel the following Five points might make some sense to a few people,

1.For too many years the IHF has been running the sport like a typical government organization with little transparency and virtually zero accountability. We need a more professionally managed system. Take a cue from the working lines of the BCCI. Some things are hard to digest but also equally hard to ignore. Cricket has immensely benefited from Professionalism,Suave marketing and advertising and plenty of money. Try to hype the game without leaving any stone unturned or effort spared. We need Business development managers like a la Lalit Modi,the IPL boss and we can certainly do away with autocrats like KPS Gill.

2.There is a lot of talent lying idle because they have been sidelined for reasons best known to the administrators. Former players of the calibre of Bhaskaran, Jude Felix, Mohammed Shahid, Mukesh kumar, Dhanraj pillay can make a lot of difference. Their hairs may have gone grey but they still have the passion and stomach for a fight and above all they still have plenty of pride.Involve them on professional terms and respect their inputs in motivation and strategy. Presently they are mute spectators hogging the limelight only as critics. We need to turn them around into strategists and coaches.

3.Scan the length and breadth of the country scouting for younger players and nurture them without any regional bias and prejudice which is the present order. When we can find Ishant sharma,RP singh, Joginder singh, Praveen kumar, Munaf patel in a land alien to fast bowlers why can't we find talent from a sport like hockey which is seeped in Indian tradition and history. Search with a soul and you will find plenty.

4.Popularize the game. Easily said than done I guess. But find out from countries like Australia or South Korea where there is a large following for the game. We need to weed out people from the cricket centric citizens that we have become. Again take a leaf out of the working methodologies of the BCCI and try to build a synergy which could galvanize the sport with the youth of this country.

5.It is popular perception that foreign coaches can make a lot of difference. At the same time we must respect our traditional style of play which has its own flavour. But we also understand that the subcontinental game has thrived for long on individual brilliance and technique. Hassan sardar of Pakistan , Mohammed shahid were masters of stick work. But we are yet to work cohesively as a team which is the hallmark of teams like Germany and Australia. Hence we need people at the helm who will ring in the changes modern hockey requires without keeping the natural flavour out of the equation.

For all the above mentioned changes to take any concrete shape,we as the fans,critics and spectators should also take responsibility for this grave situation and feel for our players and the game. We have to pledge ourselves to improving viewer ship of the sport and support the game as a national cause. There is lot of pride still left in Indian Hockey. We should be avid philanthropists and patronize the game to help it overcome its present ills. Let us at least ensure that Santiago will not repeat itself at any time in our future. It is indeed heart breaking.

SO WHAT SHOULD BE DONE!!!!!

1.PROMOTE SPORTS IN SCHOOLS- Sports must be declared compulsary in schools and promoted as culture.

School coaches should double up as talent spotters who help catch talent young.But in the recent news, sadly, official statistics (2004-05) show that 50% schools in india don't even have a playground.

2.IMPROVE INFRASTRUCTURE- Only proper infrastructure at the grassroot level can search young talent. We can see that many playgrounds in the cities being turned up by residential complexes. The future of spectator sports lies in the small towns and villages. which is why it is important to offer decent facilities in small towns as well. Let us not forget that our Beijing Boxing triumph was fashioned in a small Harayana town,Bhiwani. We need to improve existing infrastructure too. India has about 20 astrouturfs for hocky compared to Holland's 400 and Australia's 350.

3. ADMINISTRATION NEEDS PROFESSIONALS-Bjp leader Vijay Kumar Malhotra heads archery fedration of India since 1973. Priya Ranjan Das Munshi presides over AIFF since 1988. When he took over India was ranked around 95 in World Football. Now it is 153. The truth is that politicians heading sports bodies have abysmally failed to deliver. They should make way for professionals professionalising sports bodies is a pre-condition to excelling in any sport.

4.TRAINING FOR COACHES-There is hardly anybody in India with a comprehensive knowledge of training,recovery and rehabilitation.we need to spend on specialists who can train coaches and physiotherapestes. This will make a big deffrence at the grass roots level and these young athelets will go on to win laurels for the country.

5. INCREASE BUDGET ALLOCATION- India's sports budget for the year 2005-06 was Rs. 292 crores. That was just 0.06 % of the natinal budget. Australia spends roughly four times more than us with a population sixty time less. The goverment can surely spent a little more on sports.

6.CORPORATE SUPPORT- Whenever athelets or teams do well , it is common for corporate groups to announce huge cash awards or offer life time free air tickets. All that is welcome but with exceptions-the private sector has seldom offered planned support. There is a need for corporates to seriously incourage sports at the grassroot levels.

It is thus time to stop thinking and debating much more and to just get on with the action!Rimember that thinking can happen from even a rocking chair but doing must happen on your feet.

Thinking may be a great way to get things started but doing is the only way to get things done.So take the right step, reach the right direction and seek the right guidence.

INDIA'S MEDAL PERFORMANCE AT OLYMPICS

India first participated at the Olympic Games in 1900, with a lone athlete (Norman Pritchard) winning two medals in athletics. The nation first sent a team to the Summer Olympic Games in 1920, and has participated in every Summer Games since then. India has also competed at several Winter Olympic Games since 1964.

Indian athletes have won a total of 20 medals, mostly in field hockey. For a period of time, India's men's field hockey team was dominant in Olympic competition, winning eleven medals in twelve Olympiads between 1928 and 1980, including six successive gold medals from 1928–1956]

Games	Gold	Silver	Bronze	Total
1900 Paris	0	2	0	2
1904 St. Louis	did not participate
1908 London	did not participate
1912 Stockholm	did not participate
1920 Antwerp	0	0	0	0
1924 Paris	0	0	0	0
1928 Amsterdam	1	0	0	1
1932 Los Angeles	1	0	0	1
1936 Berlin	1	0	0	1
1948 London	1	0	0	1
1952 Helsinki	1	0	1	2
1956 Melbourne	1	0	0	1
1960 Rome	0	1	0	1
1964 Tokyo	1	0	0	1
1968 Mexico City	0	0	1	1
1972 Munich	0	0	1	1
1976 Montreal	0	0	0	0
1980 Moscow	1	0	0	1
1984 Los Angeles	0	0	0	0
1988 Seoul	0	0	0	0
1992 Barcelona	0	0	0	0
1996 Atlanta	0	0	1	1
2000 Sydney	0	0	1	1
2004 Athens	0	1	0	1
2008 Beijing	1	0	2	3
Total	9	4	7	20

Medals by sport

Sport	Gold	Silver	Bronze	Total
Field hockey	8	1	2	11
Shooting	1	1	0	2
Athletics	0	2	0	2
Wrestling	0	0	2	2
Weightlifting	0	0	1	1
Tennis	0	0	1	1
Boxing	0	0	1	1
Total	9	4	7	20

india is remarkable among nations for having won very few Olympic medals despite a population exceeding a billion, around half of them under the age of 25. Numerous explanations have been offered for the dearth, including poverty, malnutrition, neglected infrastructure, the lack of sponsorship, the theft of money and equipment, political corruption, institutional disorganization, social immobility, the predominance of cricket and other cultural factors. According to several informal statistics, India is the country in the world with the lowest number of total Olympic medals per capita (of those countries that have actually won at least one medal).According to another calculation, however, India ranks last but one, above Vietnam, in this statistic.

SLEEPING TIGER, FLYING DRAGON !~!

"HOW does India compare with Australia?" In India, the media and the public frequently debate this topic. Unfortunately, such discussions seldom go beyond cricket (a game in which up to 22 players do different things to a ball at different points of time... it usually continues for about a month until the Aussies are declared the winners).
Let me give you a comparison between India and Australia that has nothing to do with cricket, but is nevertheless exciting. In the 2002 Commonwealth Games held in Manchester (U.K.), Australia won 144 gold/silver medals. India bagged a third as many — 52 gold/silver medals — twenty of which were Commonwealth records (Table I). India was thus placed in the fourth position behind Australia, the U.K. and Canada.
Here is another comparison that is not exciting at all. Australia successfully converted its Commonwealth glory into Olympic medals (see Figure A). Its combined tally in Sydney 2000 and Athens 2004 was an impressive 107 medals. India did not win a third as many as the Aussies this time — it only managed one bronze in Sydney and one silver in Athens. Although twenty Commonwealth records were set in 2002 (Table I), only Rathore got a silver medal in Athens.

It might be a bit unfair to compare India and Australia — the Australians are crazy about sports, enjoy better training and infrastructure, and also had the home crowd advantage in Sydney (where they bagged 9 more medals than in Athens). So let us look at a different country, say Jamaica. India fared five times better than Jamaica in the 2002 Commonwealth Games, but Jamaica fared five times better than India in Sydney and in Athens... how strange!

India also put up a commendable performance in the 2002 Asian Games held in Busan (Korea). It won 23 gold/silver medals compared to Iran's 22. India actually fared better with 11 gold medals compared to Iran's 8. What is Iran's combined tally in Sydney and Athens? 10 medals. And India's tally? 2 medals.
Maybe Iran has better facilities. After all, its GDP per capita is $7000 (ppp-adjusted) as opposed to $3000 for India. So let us choose a large Asian country, say Indonesia, whose GDP per capita is similar to India. Indonesia only won 4 gold and 7 silver medals in Busan, as opposed to India's 11 gold and 12 silver medals. However, Indonesia bagged a total of 10 medals in Sydney and Athens.

Where did India's Asiad gold and silver medallists go? As P.T. Usha wonders: "Does that mean our athletes were content after reaching the finals and lost the fire within them to do better?"
The number of gold/silver medals won by a country in the Asiad/Commonwealth Games is a good indicator of how well it would perform in the Olympics. The logic is that you at least need to have won a silver medal in the regional games to have a chance of winning an Olympic medal. This, by the way, is factually accurate — countries that did not even win a silver in the 2002 Games drew a blank in Sydney as well as in Athens.
Figure C shows the performance of all the countries which participated in the 2002 Asiad/Commonwealth Games. We see that most countries bagged an Olympic medal in Sydney or in Athens for every two gold/silver medals (2.2 to be precise) won in the 2002 Games. If we ignore the major exceptions, namely Australia and India, this correlation has a coefficient of 0.98 (a `perfect correlation' would have a value of 1) — which is actually good, given that the different games are not strictly comparable.

On the basis of this correlation, India (which won 52 gold/silver medals in the 2002 Commonwealth Games) would be expected to win 23-24 medals in Sydney and Athens (combined). In other words, 11-12 medals for India in Athens — not just the lone silver that it actually managed.


Interestingly, our analysis agrees well with the prediction of at least 10 medals for India in Athens by the consulting firm PriceWaterhouse Coopers (PWC). The PWC study analysed how medal performance in Sydney was related to economic and political factors, and included data from the four Olympic Games since 1988 in order to produce some benchmarks against which performance in Athens could be judged.

A COMPARISON

When i look at the people like the star shooter Abhinav Bindra, tennis sensation Sania Mirza, Ace chess player Vishwanathan Anand, Boxer Vijendra , Anju Bobby George &
the list is ever ending......
I sometimes wonder whether our government or the competent authorities have done the required homework for our sports personnel to perform at the international level. .The laurels which our country gets at the international sports meets is unquestionably won mostly by the players who without taking the help from the govt. seeks either corporate sponsors or personal finances. This uncovers the real face of indian sports ....... .

For saying our country has won 3 medals at the olympics , but actually the credit is not of sports authorities, the credit goes to the players & their luck also b'coz they have excelled inspite of all the odds.

INDIAN FOOTBALL: 58 YEARS & A NATION STRUGGLES TO RISE

They need motivation...but where does it come from? It comes if we, the fans, loyally follow our national team's progress through wins and losses, through ups and downs...just the way we follow cricket.

Imagine, we have the third-oldest football tournament in the world, the Durand Cup. The oldest is the FA Cup, and the second-oldest is the Scottish FA Cup.

However, have the seeds been sown? With India securing a place in the AFC Asian Championship, Asia's equivalent of the Euros, will we see a resurgence in the number of football fans in the country?

I mean, we have no lack of supporters for United, Arsenal and Chelsea? However, when the national team plays, we see empty stands. Why is this?

Then again, perhaps it has nothing to do with football at all. What do I mean? Allow me to explain, please. As most of us in the subcontinent and other cricketing nations know, cricket is a religion in India, and cricketers are gods. No two ways about it.

However, when the local state teams play in what is called Ranji Trophy, India's equivalent of the County Championships, how many ardent viewers do we have, glued to the TVs, going to see the games? Not many. However, let the national team take to stage, the atmosphere is festive and at times chaotic.

I mean, for people here, football is not about a World Cup or a once-in-four-years feast; it's week-in, week-out passion....That's what we need; that's how we need to start...we have to start somewhere...in India, football needs to be given its due status.

I am attributing this to what we called situational patriotism. We Indians, as a nation, are only ready to back our success stories. We are not ready to resurrect our fallen angels.

"If you are a loser, sod off; if you are a winner, our doors are open," is what our message is to sporting teams.

What needs to change here is the attitude and mentality of our people. A billion people and not being able to produce a reasonably good football team is a shame, and I am not ashamed to admit it.

WHY ONLY JUNIORS ? ? ?...

The reason why i am writing this review is that, our country has a lot of potential in sports. If you see the rankings of our junior teams or in the Individual rankings at the junior level, they are the
BEST in the WORLD. There is no Sport where Indian’s have not left their mark of their own or made the country proud. May it be junior world cup in Cricket, Hockey, Badminton, Table Tennis, Tennis, Chess or any other Sport. U name it & we have been there in the TOP rankings. Now lets come the Senior levels, Cricket we are at the 7th Rank in the ten or eleven playing nations, Hockey we are at no.6th in the World, Badminton we are in some 34th Position, Table Tennis we are on some odd ranking, Tennis though we reach World group in Davis cup, but have been in Final’s only twice & have lost on both occasions. As far as football is concerned we are at 131st Ranking, which means that if every year the Soccer world cup takes place & the winning country quits playing football, then we will the world champions after 131

INDIAN SPORTS : A DUMB LION

Sport in India is like a dumb lion ,which promises to gulp the world with its size and (man)power,but the irony is that the 'LION IS NOT ROARING'.we Indians are one-dimensional thinkers we only follow and build them(football,hockey,badminton.....)and it is only worsening as the day passes,the recent simultaneous success for cricket(t20 world cup),hockey(asia cup) and football(nehru cup) has no doubt done the nation proud,but it is only a tide in the river with the country going ’gaa-gaa’ over the criketeers drowning them in millions ,not realising the importance of victories in hockey and football the administrators virtually gave nothing .

This shows that we are still not ready to accept other sports even though they show glimpses of brilliance more frequently than cricket
****** THE 7TH LARGEST NATION OF THE WORLD ***
***** HAS NOT EVEN MANAGED 7 TH PLACE IN 100****
**** YEARS OF OYLMPIC GAMES ******

HOPING FOR LUCK,

ak

CHANGE THE PRESENT,FUTURE WILL FOLLOW!

Many continentals think life is a game; the English think cricket is a game. ~George Mikes

A sport is human life in microcosm. ~Howard Cosell

And probable culprit candidates could be only two.

1.players who doesn’t attracts fans
2.fans who don’t have any interest beyond cricket.

Talk about Australia they are not only world champions in cricket,
They have not only hosted SIDNEY 2000 but have excellent record in OLYMPICS.
They are gold medallists and world champions in HOCKEY, They have won Davis cup in TENNIS last few seasons, they have produced IAN THORPE, they host F-1 race for a long time.

This is just one example. same can be said about England, Germany, U.S.A etc.

WHERE DOES WE STAND?

Our media also produce false pictures, they were busy pushing ANJALI BHAGWAT as premium candidate for medal winner in ATHENS 2004 but nobody knows she had to waste lot of money of her own and lot of time for TRAINING AND FACILITIES.

Yes sport needs heroes, but we, our media only want big heroes.

What about encouragements for others?

Media also get critical with our OLYMPIC contestants how badly they have been performing forever, but that’s they all do in once in 4 years, other time they are busy in covering sponsored interviews of cricketers wherever they go.

Nobody knew who was Major Rathore before that historic day, (he did win many major championships before it), in 3 years time we will remember him again!

And I don’t think success stories are only thing that get you attracted towards particular sport.

Take England, they don’t have their own world champions in any sport probably, but for a long time, every year they host competitions successfully which are most coveted to be won in that sport. Take WIMBLEDONE, British open golf/badminton/chess/snooker everything of it!

And spectators turn up for it every year even if they don’t have their own players winning.

And if winning is only benchmark what’s our performance in cricket?

Given coverage, infrastructure, all the facilities, India should been performing like Aussies but what is our performance?

:->We have not won any test series for 20 years
:->We have lost about 14 finals out of 15 in ODI”S except NATWEST.
:->We rank 7th out of 8 good teams in the rankings.

What about us?

And our performers in other sports are not bad, as someone would imagine except soccer.


So end of it all, these days there is lack of culture, lack of interest in other sports, no motivation, no encouragement for us for players, dirty politics of sport and then we judge them on judgment day saying that they lack killer instinct, lack of hunger etc.

And that’s not justified!

So lets face it! We don’t have good sporting culture.

Its time to bring change.

The future is only the past again, entered through another gate.

We keep the past going, future will be nothing different.

I want your response.
Comments, criticism is welcomed.

CRICKET IN INDIA.....OBSTACLE FOR OTHER SPORTS???

Our hockey coach Cravalho was the first one to come out of the closet . He lamented the plight of Hockey players who have came back after a stunning victory in the Asian Cup held in Chennai. He urged the players to go on hunger strikes for rewards and accolades. (Yes the Gandhian way) So the debate is back; do we recognize other sports in India other than cricket? we don’t and would not mind saying that we don’t bother about nay other sports. So is there a need to improve other sports than cricket? I am trying to figure out some answers to these questions.

Football, Hockey and Cricket – India won a cup each in three of these games in the past 3 months. Nehru Cup, Asian Cup and the 20-20 world cup. With the sheer interest of people in cricket – they grabbed the highlight. The monetary power of BCCI allowed them to give huge rewards to the cricket players and there it started. From all the corners came money for them – state governments, sponsors and the list go on. A player like Joginder Sharma is going to receive 21 lakhs from his state government. He should probably give up cricket and put the money in some FD so that his life is secure. Prabjot Singh who was instrumental in India’s win in the Asian Hockey championship went unnoticed, N.P. Pradeepan the midfielder of Indian football team who scored the single goal of the final against Syria in Nehru Cup also went unnoticed. Prabjot and Pradeepan failed to have a lasting imprint on the short memory of media. Many like Prabjot and Pradeep exist in India – badminton, Table Tennis, Chess, Fencing, there a lot of athletes and sports persons who wants to cut a career through different sports. We are not doing justice to them by ignoring them and showering prizes on the 20-20 team.

Cricket through it mass appeal has created lot of revenues for BCCI through TV rights, endorsements and so on. Not every sport can achieve all those but the undue importance given to cricket by our government, the ruling class and politicians is disgusting. People get attracted to different sports depending upon their physique and interest, it is very important for a country like India to promote its players and aspiring youngsters than inculcating a drab feeling that; you can only prosper or cut a career if you play cricket in India. Though the inefficiency of other sporting bodies were easily taken as an advantage by BCCI as cricket had mass appeal, the rest of the sporting bodies simply enjoyed the drift as they never gathered any attention. According to me, this media frenzy which was created around cricket helped many an associations to get away with their spurious method of working. In the license Raj times we pushed in as many bureaucrats as possible, who never had any prior experience in sports to govern these organisations which was headed by a politician. Irony is that, BCCI the supreme body of cricket in India still has a minister at its helm, but the constant media scrutiny rarely gives a hope for malfunctioning. These organisations which failed to work for 60 years still exist. It is hard to break those structures and reform the way of functioning but they have to be immediately demolished as the people at helm rarely hold any commitment towards the sport. For around 60 years went on making sports hostels and colleges all across the nations but ended up nurturing losers. Athletes, archers, badminton players, footballers all them never reached anywhere they wanted to. It is not because of their fault, it was the sheer incapability of the bureaucracy that worked behind them. Sports hostels right from Ladkah to Kanyakumari were failures and the players were treated with contempt and as a nation we could never repay for the immense talent they show cased. (Many of them have ended their lives too) The argument turns filthy; if you mean to say a nation with a population of a billion can’t win a single gold medal in the Olympics. Cricket, thank god is not there in Olympics, otherwise we would have been very happy and content in winning the gold medal for cricket.

ARE WE DONE!!!!!!

At present the Indian sports condition though seems to be improving is not yet satisfactory .
In our country there is tradition to take the people on seventh sky.... & getting satisfied with whatever little good that has happened...... A country of 1 billion population has got 1 gold is nothing to cheer about...... . Most stricking feature of our country is that our national game "hockey" .....is in such a pity condition that even the charges of bribery has been proved on its official. We the people of India feels ashamed seeing the dejected faces of our talented players being trapped in the vicious circles of corruption , lack of facilities & several other factors that seems to be not getting addressed in the near future to come. GOD!! SAVE THE INDIAN SPORTS!!!!!

INDIA'S PERFORMANCE AT OLYMPICS.......

India is remarkable among nations for having won very few Olympic medals despite a population exceeding a billion, around half of them under the age of 25. Numerous explanations have been offered for the dearth, including poverty, malnutrition, neglected infrastructure, the lack of sponsorship, the theft of money and equipment, political corruption, institutional disorganization, social immobility, the predominance of cricket and other cultural factors.

According to several informal statistics, India is the country in the world with the lowest number of total Olympic medals per capita (of those countries that have actually won at least one medal). According to another calculation, however, India ranks last but one, above Vietnam, in this statistic.

OUR FIRST POST.........

This blog is an attempt to highlight the pity conditions of indian sports....... . A country with a 1 billion people can't even get more than 1 gold medal..... in the mega event of olympics is the main thrust of our initiative...... . We hope that this blog will provide useful stats & information about the present indian sports scenario.......