Blame Cricket’s Exclusive Popularity For India’s Debacle at Rio

Rise of cricket at the expense of other sports explains India’s poor show at Rio Olympics, writes Pushyam Kiran.

Watching the Olympics this year has been depressing and a disheartening experience. I religiously switch on the television everyday hoping that India will win a medal; my hopes being dashed slowly and painfully with one loss after another.

This daily dose of depression led me to introspect. Are we right in expecting India to win medals at the Olympics? After all, our track record at the Olympics has been nothing short of pedestrian. Our medals tally at the last eight Olympic Games excluding the present one was 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 3 and 6. Take a look at the medals tally of the United States at the same Olympic Games: 174, 94, 108, 101, 93, 101, 110 and 103. Will we ever be able to scale such high standards? I am fairly certain that it will not happen in my lifetime.

Who’s to be Blamed?

So, who is responsible for this consistently woeful performance by the Indian athletes at the Olympics? A convenient response to this question is – the Government. A quick glance through one’s Facebook page would show that most subscribe to this view, at least on social media. It is all too well to blame the Government for the poor performance of athletes at the games, justifiably so, but are we, the easily outraged ‘9 pm news watchers’, also responsible for this state of affairs?

The honest answer to this question would be an emphatic ‘Yes’. After the advent of television, have we watched any other sport apart from cricket, premier league football and Formula 1 for the longest period of time? Did most of us even know who Dipa Karmakar and Lalita Babar were before the Olympics? The answers to these questions would be an emphatic ‘No’.

Rise of Cricket At the Cost of Other Sports

The popularity of a sport is largely dependent upon the interest that the audience shows in it. Cricket is so popular in India because we watch it, follow it and root for our team passionately. Hockey was the only sport in which India had consistently won medals at the Olympics. But the medals suddenly stopped coming.

The last time the Indian hockey team won a medal at the Olympics was at Moscow in 1980. The subsequent decline in hockey coincides perfectly with the rise of cricket in our country, with India winning the World Cup in 1983. The Indian audience was not the same after that. Cricketers became the darlings of our nation even as hockey and other sports were neglected by the audience.

So, what gives us the right to criticise the athletes, the government or anyone else for our consistent underperformance at the Olympics when the blame lies squarely at our doorstep. Let’s be honest, we never cared enough for Olympic sport. We wake up to it only for two weeks in four year cycles. At other times, we are just happy that India beat Pakistan at the Cricket World Cup or that Kolkata Knight Riders beat Mumbai Indians in the IPL. These are the standards that we set for ourselves. This has resulted in India’s total medals tally in all the Olympic Games that it has participated being equal to the total medals tally of one single individual-Michael Phelps. Our country has been racing ahead in all other fields but as far as sports is concerned, we have successfully managed to maintain status quo.

Taking Responsibility

If we sincerely want India to do well at the Olympics, we need to take responsibility as an audience. Let us watch and encourage sports other than cricket and not just in four year cycles. If our kids want to pursue a career say in gymnastics, let us encourage them and not chide them for having unrealistic dreams.  If ever our country needs a revolution in sport, it is now that the revolution has to start inside our homes.

Let us ensure that athletes like Dipa Karmakar do not have to attempt to win medals against all odds but by having odds in favour, with us doing our bit to create such odds. Unless and until we, as an audience, are honest enough with ourselves to take responsibility for our country’s below par performance at the Olympics, we have no right to expect the athletes to win any medals. It is not the athletes who are the losers at the games. It is we who are the losers.

(The writer is a lawyer practising at the High Court for the States of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. He can be reached at @Pushyam. This is a personal blog and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)

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