Being a Sport

I have never been involved to a large extent in sports owing to my limited stamina. In spite of this, I loved playing basketball in school. I was drawn to kabaddi for a while but it turned out to be too violent for my senses because at the end of the sports session in school, we were left with tore skirts, shirts or ties not to mention the innumerable bruises and layers of dirt on our body. Badminton is something I play for fun; I don’t know the rules and I convienently forgot to mention this to my doubles partner during our college sports fest and we lost because I gave away a lot of points due to sheer ignorance of rules. But what is appalling is that sports have never been endorsed as a profession in school and we always were made to think of it as something to freshen up our minds after too much of studies. Not many schools are keen to invest in good grounds and playing equipments to encourage budding sportpersons. I remember my school was the only one in my area to have a basketball court- the other schools were content with their dusty, unkempt grounds which was often rented for hosting marriages and other events.

So it is not surprising that the national level hockey players refused to attend practice sessions since they weren’t given their dues. The callousness of I.H.A. towards the up-keeping of hockey is disturbing. Instead of pacifying the striking players, they have threatened to terminate contracts and get them removed for the World Cup team. Does anyone even remember that our national game is hockey? The level of ignorance amongst the masses regarding this sport is not surprising. How many schools have a field for hockey? I don’t remember holding a hockey stick ever and if I wanted to be a hockey player, I would have to shell out a hefty membership fee of the nearby club. That’s what all aspiring hockey players have to do- break into their savings so that they can play hockey for a few hours. With that kind of investment in their training, it amkes buisness sense to recover the money else they would be left with bad debts. Sadly, the higher authorities are more concerned with hobnobbing with high profile Page Three celebrities to care about the player’s fees. Clearly, they are not concerned about how they will manage their next meal with a paltry sum in their hands.

The prejudice we have for sports will become much stronger if such incidents come to the fore. I am leaving out woman sportspersons here because the opposition faced by them is of a different kind. By the time they battle gender biases, most of them have lost steam to pursue their love for the game. But the recent incident will give a budding hockey player’s parents all the more reasons to wean their child away from his addiction to the national game. He will be shown news reports by his parents saying, “Hockey mein gaya to aise hi hoga.” (Though I believe the resistance would be much less if their son was a bat-wielding, window smashing and Sachin-worshipping cricket playing lad). The fear of a lost livelihood is enough to suppress any ambition.