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Posted 2 years ago

Multi Sports General

National Sports Day: How pan-national is Indian sport?

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On National Sports Day – August 29^th – it is worth pondering, how far Indian sport has come in terms of a truly inclusive and pan-national framework. With cricket having the largest presence, India has made large strides in hockey, football, chess, wrestling and boxing.

However, most of the sporting federations are based out of Delhi, and a look at some of the numbers suggests that there is some work to be done to make Indian sport truly national.

A look at wrestling reveals that of the 12 wrestlers at the 2022 Commonwealth Games, 10 were from Haryana, one from Delhi and one from Uttar Pradesh. Similarly, at the Tokyo Olympics, all wrestlers were from Haryana. In fact, since the 90s, there has been no representation in wrestling at the Olympics, from any state other than Haryana and Punjab.

This brings up the question of future prospects for a sport that limits itself to a region historically. While it easy to understand why that has been the case, it can lead the sporting federations to miss out on talented sports people from across the country.

Similarly, the badminton circuit is also concentrated in southern India, with hubs in Hyderabad and Bengaluru. Most well-known players including Saina Nehwal, PV Sindhu, Srikanth Kidambi, and Lakshya Sen, have been trained in one of two academies set up by veterans P Gopichand, and Prakash Padukone.

However, badminton is played across the nation, and with the rise of players such as Chattisgarh’sAakarshi Kashyap, and Kerala’s Treesa Jolly, it clearly needs to develop a cross country presence to harness young talent effectively.

The sport of hockeyhas successfully diversified from its presence in the North-West to the East, but also has room for improvement considering it being India’s unofficial ‘national sport’ and where most of India’s international success has come from, historically.

Athletics also does not fare well in terms of geographical diversity with specific regions associated with each sport, such as long jump – Kerala, sprinters – Odisha, throwers – North India (Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh).

Of the Sports Authority of India centres across the country, only one of the ten regional centres are in South India, along with one academy in Kerala and Punjab. The number of top-level athletes, arising from these facilities is, however, not large, indicating that there is room for improvement in the quality of resources provided.

Hence, India’s training centres need to improve both in quality, and reach. While the centralizing of different sporting disciplines is not surprising at first, harnessing the nation’s sporting potential requires breaching these barriers.