When will India truly discover the art of sport?

Most Indian sports have been on the fringes for far too long

Every art form needs a culture to sustain itself. Without that, it is like a full grown man being put onto a ventilator – just surviving somehow.

And that has been the case of Indian sports since a long time. We are just somehow surviving – through every alternate league and national tournament that is coming about as a by-product of the modest effort that is being put into a specific sport.

But this is on the change now. We are growing; yes, slowly, but we are growing nonetheless. It will take a fairly long time to find ourselves where we seek to be, but we will. With a changing consciousness that comes in through every generation, we shall make progress.

Even though it may take time, an era will come just as an era there was – a time when Indian hockey was the very best in the world; a time when our football was as close to the European game as it has ever been, a great era for Indian sports.

Until our dedication is tested, we are going to be nowhere close to finding the sportsmen in us as a nation. Now is the time to endure, to endure through this transitional phase that symbolises the beginning of a paradigm shift – a fine example being the Indian Badminton League. Way to go!

There will be many more Sainas, many more Ranajan Sodhis, many more feisty Devedro Singhs and many more Bhaichung Bhutias. And they will all coexist, not survive isolated.

The gap between great sporting nations and us lies in our thinking that sport cannot be an art! And that is the reason why we are what we are in terms of sport as a nation. Our approach says it all. Not looking beyond a popular game has cost us for many generations now – just as it has cost us great sportsmen of every generation.

If there is something that we need to change, it is us, and not “the system” or “the infrastructure”; those are just pugmarks on the path we have followed with our sportspeople and our sporting culture. We need to walk the right steps, and all of these factors will put themselves into place, and we shall evolve as a sporting nation.

Then it won’t matter whether we are 1st or the 150th in any sport. That is being a “sporting nation”, what we must aspire to become.

Not until the mummy and papa in each house start discovering sport as a way of life, that the Indian sporting power will rise. Until we learn to see and realise the fine strokes that go into the making of an athlete, we won’t be able to appreciate the contribution of this marvellous practice to the making of an individual, a life.

Because there is nothing like sport that teaches life the way it does.