I don't know what is it with Indian sports administrations & their hatred for cricket. The only reason we ever get to hear for the failure of our hockey, football, volleyball or any other teams is 'people only want cricket so nobody wants to play other sports'. This is such a lame excuse and more than that it is such an easy way out such an easy way of passing the buck.
Everybody from KPS Gill (hockey), IM Vijayan (football) and Michael Ferreira (Billiards) to Vijay Amritraj (tennis) has towed the same line for just too many years. I wonder what these powerful men are themselves doing to improve their respective sports. And why should Sharad Pawar or Jagmohan Dalmiya be worried? Why should the media and public blame cricket? Its not cricket's mistake that other sports are not popular. Remember, cricket also rose from the dirt a few years ago. Those days are still not forgotten when the national team had to travel in unreserved third class train compartments.
I don't agree that you cannot find a decent number of followers for any sport in this country of a 100 crore. Australia for example has a population of just under 2 crore. It excells at Rugby, Cricket, Footy (Aussie rules football), Hockey, Swimming, Athletics, Tennis, Yachting, Extreme sports, X games and last year they qualified for the football world cup too! On an average any normal Australian fanatically follows at least 2 sports and supports his national teams in any number of them.
I have heard Indians say that this is possible only because Aussies are born sports buffs. Give me a break. Love for sports is a cultural thing and can be manufactured out of nowhere. You make organized concentrated efforts at popularising sports and rest assured it will pay you rich dividents albeit after a decade or two. In Britain, cricket is only the fourth or fifth most popular sport and nobody cared for it till not so long ago. Last season though, the picture was entirely different when cricket stole the show even against the booming opening of EPL & Rugby season. Of course ECB had taken special efforts to promote the Ashes and the English side played well, in turn attracting people to cricket.
At a different level, NFL (American National Football League) made really concerted efforts to popularise its sport. Now American Football is America's 3rd most popular game. Chine began its drive for athletics & gymnastics only after the 80's. And it has risen faster than a phoenix.
The way I see it is that lack of popularity produces poor sportsmen and lack of quality de-popularises the game further. A vicious circle. However, sports administrations can use this very vicious circle to their advantage. If large scale sporting events are organized well they can draw a lot of money which then can be diverted into further popularization of sports and in infrastructure. The Chinese way.
I'm not here to suggest easy solutions. I don't even have enough information on fund raising campaigns. But having all said and done I want our sports administrations to chart out concrete plans for growth rather than make a quiet backdoor exit and do a lot of mudslinging.
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