Independence Day 2023 | State of Indian sports: past, present, future

If sporting federations can run democratically, transparently and include administrators with sincere intentions, it would allow sportspeople to focus only on being better athletes. (Photo by Shvets Production via Pexels)

In the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, P.T. Usha was a celebrated athlete for India. Not because she won a medal, but because she finished fourth in the 400m sprint and came really close to getting a bronze medal. In the 2020/21 Tokyo Olympics, Neeraj Chopra was the toast of the nation. Not because he came really close, but because he won a gold medal in the men’s javelin.

In the 1996 Olympics, Leander Paes won a bronze medal in Atlanta—the first Indian to win an Olympic medal in tennis and India’s first individual Olympic medal winner in 44 years. In 2023, there is no Indian in the top 100 rankings of men’s singles tennis and one in the top 200. The most accomplished active player is a 43-year-old Rohan Bopanna, who continues to defy age and is among the top-10 ranked doubles players in the world.

When Kapil Dev retired in 1994, with a record 434 wickets, he had battled for most of his career as India’s only pace strike bowler. India today has among the best fast bowling attacks in the world, with a steady stream of options. But none from the regular crop, which includes Shardul Thakur, Mohammed Shami, Jasprit Bumrah and Mohammed Siraj, has taken a 10-wicket haul in a Test match.

Wrestler Sushil Kumar is the only Indian, besides badminton’s P.V. Sindhu, to have won two individual Olympic medals, a bronze (Beijing, 2008) and a silver (London, 2012). He is one of the first major successes from the sport, an athlete who inspired a steady stream of medal-winning wrestlers. In 2023, some of India’s most celebrated wrestlers, Vinesh Phogat, Sakshi Malik and Bajrang Punia, sat in protest against alleged sexual misconduct by the Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) president in Delhi. They sat for days, were dragged away by the police on the day when India’s new Parliament building was being inaugurated nearby and largely ignored by the administration. Sushil Kumar’s fall from grace was rapid though—he is currently in prison facing charges of murder.

In Indian sport, much has changed and yet, nothing seems to have changed over the years. While some disciplines (track and field, chess, wrestling, badminton) are spawning champions with a steady stream of young talent, other sports (tennis, football, hockey) have taken marginal steps forward or back. Powerful politicians, like WFI chief Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, and administrations, like the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), continue to work for themselves at the cost of benefitting athletes or audiences. In 76 years of independence, one of the world’s largest economies and it’s most populous nation, manages to lead a dichotomous existence.

The most powerful image that represents sport today is of wrestler Sangeeta Phogat on her back, her face contorted in pain and resistance, being held down by cousin Vinesh as several hands (presumably of the police) try to separate the two. Seen out of context, it’s a classical wrestling image, of one grappler pinning down another on her back. But in reality, this is one wrestler protecting the other from being pried away. On the ground, below the two champion athletes once celebrated as the nation’s pride, lies the tricolour.

A lot of the growth in India sport, excluding cricket, is owed to not-for-profit organizations that have helped athletes find the resources that federations could not. In Chopra, India has an Olympic gold medal winner who continues to grow in strength and is a strong contender for 2024 Paris Olympics as well. P. Gopi Chand spurred a revolution in badminton that culminated in, besides several individual achievements, India’s first ever title in the men’s team competition of the Thomas Cup in 2022. There was a bronze in men’s hockey in Tokyo, a hockey medal at the Olympics that came after four decades.

Viswanathan Anand has inspired a generation of chess players that includes two 17-year-olds, D. Gukesh and R. Praggnanandhaa, ranked 29. Gukesh recently became the highest ranked Indian in FIDE’s ratings, a position that Anand has held more or less for the last 35 years.

New aspirants emerge continuously in boxing, wrestling and weightlifting, new leagues are formed in all kinds of disciplines, including some as obscure as arm wrestling. Endorsement deals are not restricted to cricketers alone—though they get the lions’ share—with talent management companies convincing corporate India to look beyond cricket.

The Thomas Cup-winning team of badminton players believes that Indian players are being taken more seriously now on the world stage. “In our junior days, a lot of our colleagues’ attitude was similar to that, because they would be like, ‘Oh shit, we are playing the Chinese or Korean or Japanese (players) and we don’t really stand a chance against them. So we’ll just enjoy and roam around the city’. But now, as I look back, there’s been a shift,” doubles player Chirag Shetty told the Indian Express last month.

“For us, if we look at the Chinese or Korean or Japanese players, we don’t fear them and be like ‘oh shit, we are playing them’. I think they might be thinking, ‘Oh shit, we are playing Chirag and Satwik (Rankireddy, Shetty’s doubles partner)’... I hope kids in the coming generation don’t fear players from these countries because the performance Indian badminton has had, we are a powerhouse as well. And we shouldn’t think of them being much stronger than we are.”

The future of sport in the country—for it to accelerate growth, to achieve its potential given the surplus of resources in people and finances—depends on its administration. If sporting federations can run democratically, transparently and include administrators with sincere intentions, it would allow sportspeople to focus only on being better athletes. That’s as Utopian a dream as India winning the highest number of medals among all countries in Paris.