Sports leagues across the country are helping improve popularity of the game
Its League time!
It started with Cricket. Soon Hockey, Badminton and even Kabbadi followed in Cricket’s Footsteps. Now India is also getting professional leagues for Football and Tennis. The commercialization of sports in India is finally being seen in sports other than cricket. All of us in India are very fortunate as viewers to be able to see sports persons of international repute come perform on Indian soil.
The Indian Premier League, Hockey India League, Pro-Kabbadi league etc. are just some of the professional leagues that have sprouted in the last few years. All these tournaments play a big role in the development of the sport and especially in providing proper facilities for an international level competition. The soon to be starting Indian Super League has made it mandatory for all football franchise owners to invest heavily into grassroots development program. The League itself will be holding training camps and courses to raise the standard of football in India. The emergence of new talent also is another added advantage and young sports persons are getting the chance to prove themselves on international stage.
As a result, there is tough competition and only the best of the best are finally selected. As an Indian, I am happy as this results in players getting better exposure and thus while representing the country they perform even better. For Example, the Indian Men’s Hockey team just won the Gold Medal at the recently concluded Asian Games in Incheon as well as qualified for the Rio 2016 Olympics.
Change in Sports administrators
But all this only scratches the surface of the problems sports in India face. Right now we have only started to address the needs and development of players. It’s accepted that yes, they are the ones who ultimately perform, but the administrators and officials of the sports also need to understand the need of the sports and players. For a long time now, we have seen people with no experience in sports being at the helm of various sporting bodies and teams. But they have never understood what is it like to be a player, they have never faced the difficulties the players have, and in some cases they hardly even care for what happens with the sport or player. Take the recent incident with Boxer Sarita Devi as an example, not a single Indian official stood by her or supported her when there was clearly prejudice in play.
Take the recent incidence of boxer Sarita Devi as an example, not a single Indian official stood by her or supported her when there was clearly prejudice in play. She was left to take matters into her own hands which were when things got ugly at the medal ceremony and she was blamed of bad sportsman-like behaviour. All this could have been avoided if someone who understood the injustice done to her stood up to the officials.
This again brings up the debate that ex-sports persons should hold posts in sports bodies and teams as opposed to politicians or civil servants. As seen with the Commonwealth games, and also in the IPL, corruption has become a big problem. Hardly any money goes to maintenance of infrastructure. Forget the facilities, the amount of allowance/salaries given to players of sports other than cricket is like peanuts compared to those of cricketers. We seriously need to advocate a change in the system, or at least have a certain number of sports persons, or at least someone with some connection to sport assigned to the helm of sports affairs.
Trained sports officials
Even Mr. Sachin Tendulkar has come out with campaign tag lined “#Sportsforall”. And considering this, and also the grassroots development of players, I have another proposal. Why don’t we have a grassroots development program to develop the state of sports administrators in the country? The reason countries like USA, China and Australia are sports superpowers, is besides caring for their athletes and providing them the best of facilities, they have a set of qualified individuals running these facilities. India needs these sports administrators who sympathize with the sport and do what’s in the best interest of the players and the sport itself. In India, the concept of sports internships is hardly visible. If lawyers and charted accountants can have their training and internships, why can’t sports teams in India have internships to train the young men and women passionate about sports to run a sports business profitably and fairly.
I used to be a footballer. And I loved the game. And not just football, I am passionate about sports in general. When I couldn’t play anymore, I decided I would still want to contribute to sport in some way and thus decided to seek a career in sports administration. But to my disbelief, there aren’t any opportunities available to intern at sports teams even though we have so many professional leagues.
This is just an effort to make sports bodies and authorities realise that there are young people waiting not just to play the sport, but to run it as well and not just sports bodies like SAI, AIFF and BCCI, but even teams from the IPL, ISL and other leagues should take notice and do something about it.