• Investment World
• eWorld
• Catalyst
• Mentor
• Life
• Canvas
• Praxis
• Urban Pulse
• Brand Quest

Timeri N. Murari

FROM zero to 32 is an incredible feat. In fact, it is zero to 72 which is even more incredible. We became part of that elite of Australia and England, and one gold above Canada. The geography and reach of the old British Empire lies in those 38 participating nations.

The achievements by our athletes sent to the Commonwealth Games with the usual reluctance and doubts have obviously come as a surprise to everyone. It is as if we expected the usual haul of no medals at all. We spare little time for these athletes who seem to practice and train in obscurity somewhere or the other. They make a snippet of news in the sports pages of the newspapers but it is hard to follow their progress.

Admittedly, I know little about shooting. I have caught the rare glimpse of our shooters on television and a report about them performing in some country or the other where they have won first or second place. Our wrestlers have, most often as not, won medals at these various games.

We are not a nation of mighty men yet we won three golds, nine silvers and eight bronzes in weightlifting. I did not even know such strong men existed, except as news snippets somewhere at the bottom of a page.

But we have Anju George winning a Bronze in Long Jump and Neelam Singh a Silver at the discus. And for our Women's Hockey team to beat both England and New Zealand for the gold was the feather in our caps. Especially, as the Brits, in their usual fashion, whined about the `golden goal'.

After all the celebration, and rewards from politicians scrambling onto the bandwagon with their cheques, I hope these athletes and those aspirants in their fields will not slide back into our obscurity. We are a people with a very short attention span and forget too quickly our major achievements.

The President of the Indian Olympics Association was naturally delighted that these athletes finally were getting so much attention. But their glory will be all too brief as our attention, like Pavlovian dogs, return to our national obsession — cricket.

These dozen or so men appear to dominate everyone's, man, woman and child, conscious. We see them on the playing field, we see them ad nauseum in our television, print and hoarding commercials. We cannot open a magazine or open a can of whatever without them popping up.

We are, like Brazil, a one-sport nation. At least in Brazil, we have countless rags-to-riches stories, from Pele or Ronaldhino, boys born and raised in poverty who end up playing football for their country.

All our village and urban boys, playing on maidans barefoot, have little chance to become part of this precious elite. Our cricketers are all middle-class, from urban schools and colleges.

We have a couple of world-class tennis players who occasionally pop up in our consciousness when they win a Grand Slam at tennis but they are not national heroes.

We have golfers who have won international tournaments, a great chess player, a great Badminton champion.

They labour away out of the glare of our limelight, only entering it when they win but they are not in our national hero status.

We have good footballers, especially our national captain, who was at least given his chance for us to see him during the

football world cup. Here was an articulate, knowledgeable and charming man.

I only recognised him because he was such a good commentator. Unlike a Beckham, he does not endorse anything I have seen. Yet he should, they all should.

Commercials, whether print, television or hoardings, are a necessary evil of these modern times. It is presumed that linking a famous name to a product will help sell it. The Americans were the first to make this path-breaking discovery and now pay fortunes to their athletes. Venus Williams is paid $40 million by, I think, Nike. But the Americans do have a spread of sports and they do spread the endorsement money around too.

There is baseball, basketball, American football, ice hockey, athletics, tennis, golf.

All these sportsmen and women do get a piece of the advertising pie and in many ways do influence the younger generation, not just to buy the product, but also emulate their sporting heroes and heroines.

Ironically, the endorsements do create the sportsman or sportswoman.

Who is our only icon? Sachin Tendulkar. There can only be one, and he has monopolised nearly every commercial nook and cranny. The kids naturally, seeing no one else, only want to emulate him.

They do not see our other great sportsmen and women up there on the screen or on a hoarding.

For our corporate world, they simply do not exist. Yet they could do with these corporate rupees, they could do with the exposure that will also encourage others to play football, hockey, sprint, swim, jump, wrestle, shoot.

We just have to get out of our national, totally blinkered, obsession with cricket, if we are wanting to win as many golds, silvers and bronzes at the Olympics, the ultimate arena or even the football world cup.

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section
Curing the coffee crisis

Copyright © 2002, The Hindu Business Line. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu Business Line