Izz Aal Well?

In recent times, India’s successes at International Sports events make us believe that it is fast shedding its image of a nation incapable of producing great sportsmen. For the girls practicing boxing at Mary Kom’s academy in Manipur, sprinters at P.T. Usha’s academy in Kinalur, Kerala, the footballers at the rising Lajong Shillong FC club and many more young and aspiring sportsmen of India these results inspire them to chase their dream of making it big in the global sports arena. But behind the glaze and glory of every success there is also another side which doesn’t look as inspiring.

Let’s look at the following cases –

• Indian cricket team becoming the no. 1 test playing nation with all the money and politics involved in the much hyped IPL T20 tournament and India’s exit from the league stage of T20 world cup (only god knows how IPL is helping India to play better T20),
• Indian football team winning Nehru cup with most of the other participating nations not even sending their best playing teams,
• Saina Nehwal breaking into the top 10 of world badminton ranking with not even a single player close to her from India,
• Somdev Devvarman and Yuki Bhambri’s new faces of prominence in tennis with the fall of Sania Mirza.
• Vijendra Singh and Sushil Kumar winning bronze medals at Olympics in individual events and Vijendra Singh ranking as the no. 1 boxer not even getting nominated for the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna award at first (after lot of protests they finally got the award jointly with Mary Kom),

• Vijay Mallya’s Force India doing well in formula-1 with him considering not a single racer from India good enough to drive on F-1 circuit ,
• Pankaj Advani holding five snooker and billiards titles at a time and becoming only the second cueist after Malta’s Paul Mifsud to win both the snooker and billiards world titles with the daily life of a cricket player getting more media coverage than him,
• Shooting which gave India back to back Olympic medals while NRAI (National Rifles Association Of India) treats its best players like toothbrushes-disposable and replaceable,
• HI (Hockey India which was made after dismissing the corrupt Indian Hockey Federation) not even having enough money to satiate the players playing for India or to support a women’s hockey team,

Amidst all this heavy handedness, mismanagement and politics involved in most of the sport governing bodies, not having enough facilities for practicing, not even the money to make a career in many sports and with a small annual budget, the question is “How can the talented but wrongly directed sportsmen from different parts of the country make their presence felt in the world of sports?”