Team spirit or organisation?

As 2008 draws to a close, the record in sport shows that Indians continue to do better in individual sports than in team events. The two world champions of the year (Viswanathan Anand in chess and Abhinav Bindra in shooting) have both specialised in events that have to do with long hours of lonely preparatory work by yourself, even if you have the help of coaches and seconds. The bronze medals that the country won in the Beijing Olympics were in wrestling and boxing, where too it is a matter of individual skill and determination. The country’s brightest new sporting promise, Saina Nehwal, has broken into the Top 10 rankings in badminton singles, while Jeev Milkha Singh in golf has had a great year too, winning titles and lots of prize money. In the world billiards championship, there were no fewer than four Indians at the quarter-final stage, while Geet Sethi made it to the finals. In seven different individual sports, therefore, Indians have come up trumps this year.

 

In comparison, the only team sport in which the country has done well during the year is, of course, cricket. With the national team having got the better of both Australia and England in recent months, and improved its ranking as a Test team to No. 2, and having also won the inaugural T20 world championship last year, India’s cricketers have shown that they can function as a team—though it might be legitimate to offer the rider that even as it is a team sport, cricket is essentially a battle between bat and ball, between one batsman and one bowler at a time. It therefore retains some of the key characteristics of individual sports—with the plethora of statistics for each player underlining the point.

As for other team sports (football, field hockey, basketball, volleyball), India steadfastly refuses to make a mark. It is not that there has been no effort—companies have sponsored football teams and set up football academies, and a new national tournament structure has been put in place. The game also attracts strong fan following in quite a few states. Yet, India has no footballer of international stature, with the possible exception of Baichung Bhutia, and in the football world he is certainly second grade. It is possible that the problem is not with players who may or may not know how to function as a team, but with the people who run the organisations that have taken charge of these sports. Mr Gill’s disastrous record at the hockey federation is clear to everyone, and anyone with an iota of recognition of what is owed to the nation would have stepped down by now. Many of the other sports bodies are no better—recall the scandalous case of a player being asked to pay a bribe in order to get into the team. With politicians and civil servants dominating most sports bodies at state and national level, the commitment to developing these sports is clearly not there. Otherwise, the Indian hockey team would not have been missing at the Olympics for the first time since it became an Olympic sport eight decades ago.

In short, India’s sports bodies need a thorough spring cleaning. That does not and should not mean government control. All that these organisations need is a committed core group of people who want to contribute to the game, and ex-players who will bring their own perspective to the issues discussed. Without corrective action on this front, the country will continue to see an absence of champions in team events, while the Anands and Bindras circle the globe.