Doing Poorly At The Olymipcs - A Cricket Based Excuse

Major international sporting events - and especially the Olympics - bring up the question that every Indian dreads. 'Why do Indians suck so much at sport !?!' The most common responses - we're poor, and we're cricket obsessed - serve to explain only so much of the dearth of medals. Poorer countries than India (like Kenya and Cameroon) routinely take home a few medals. Moreover, India, though poor overall, has a middle class Wikipedia estimates to be around 300 million. Even if that's middle class only by Indian standards and just 10 percent of those 300 million are really wealthy, that's still 30 million. That about the same as Canada's entire population. Yet Canada, which is as mad about hockey as India is about cricket seems to perform respectably at the Olympics. So the cricket craze doesn't fully satisfy either.

But maybe there's more to that craze than meets the eye. Maybe it's not just that we are obsessed with one sport, it's that that sport is what it is - cricket. To get what I'm driving at, it's important to understand that cricket (and it's cousin - baseball) is fundamentally, crucially different from other sports.

Most other sports, whether they're racquet sports, ball sports or martial arts are centrally about directed, purposeful motion. The athelete is always on the go, continually changing position, adjusting balance, shifting weight. Footwork is key - without it, you won't get anywhere. So an athlete who grows up with one of these sports gets a solid grounding in footwork, and once that is learnt, it can then be transferred to other sports. Sure, the nuances will be different, but you won't be starting from scratch.

Cricket just doesn't work that way. You can go through a lifetime of cricket without having to learn much by way of footwork, at least in the way other sports use it. Of course, you have to run - occasionally. And pace bowlers have to run quite a bit. But no one has to do the elaborate dances that other sports demand. Hence, that crucial skill goes undeveloped. Moreover, the cricket obsession means most children won't even try another sport till they're somewhat grown up, thus compounding the problem. The end result is that we end up with athletes who are competing with opponents who have had a massive headstart in learning and perfecting one of the most crucial skills in most sports.

So what does one do !?! Banning cricket is a ridiculous idea - both in practice and in principle. Equally, it's difficult and impractical to get people actively intersted in other sports by merely telling them to like them. That liking for a sport, like love for anything else, can only come from within.

I humbly propose a simple and elegant solution - make Bollywood dancing a competitive sport.



Don't ask.