Ever wondered why Cricket rules the roost in India?
Here is a fact file on various sports in India and how it fares….
Hockey
Meet a team which can’t even pass properly. Coaches come and go even more than the players. (That is : We see more Coaches than players). You can’t imagine the blame game that’ll go here. The players blame the coach, coaches blame players for not cooperating, the Indian hockey board adds to the confusion…even the referees are not spared.
Indian Hockey + Doordarshan’s Coverage + Hindi commentary = Undisputed show of lousiness on earth.
The tragic comedy here is that this is India’s National Game.
Tennis
We have a teenage sensation called Sania Mirza. She (according to me) has a serious attitude problem. She won’t even move to second round of any major tournament. More on her problems here: Give Sania Mirza a break.
We have two good players (only in doubles) Leander and Mahesh. But they won’t play with each other. And I must admit that it’s singles that’ll interest viewers not doubles. Other players like Harsh Mankad, Rohan Bopanna, Prakash Amritraj are young. But by the time they play well, they’ll become too old.
Formula One
Narain Karthikeyan is India’s sole face in Formula one. I have not seen him drive much. He’s now with Williams second test driver. Yeah he lacks sponsorship and big money but still the bottom line is he is not racing and his future in formula one as a race driver is uncertain. He’s quite old as well.
What about others? We have Karun Chandok and Armaan Ibrahim are promising but I can’t imagine how’ll they get in the money that’s required?
Soccer
I know only two players in the Indian Team. One is Baichung Butia and the other is V T I M Vijayan. Vijayan is retired now. But I know all the players in the England or Brazil squad. That sums up the popularity of soccer in India. I think Soccer is the only game in India where the federation cup or any inter club tournaments are popular and more viewed than the National squad playing elsewhere.
Chess
This is the only sport that India truly shines. Vishy is World’s number 2. He’s not playing not that well in the recent tournaments but still he has a good reputation. There are so many players who are good. I need not list them now. We have the youngest GMs in the world. Chess in India never so good.
But unfortunately Chess can’t have viewers. I have not seen a single tournament shown in the TV (forget live coverage) except in Doordarshan. The players play for a long period of time and you’ll be bored to death if you watch it.
Shooting
Shooting in India was never better. We have a fine bunch of young talented shooting stars. We are starting to perform well in overseas competition. I guess we might win some medals in Olympics as well. But the story ends there. Can you actually watch shooting?
Gymnastics
People in India think Gymnastics is some circus show. (I’m serious and not kidding).
Cricket
We Indians love long sagas, don’t we? Right from the two Epics, Mahabharatha and Ramayan to Bollywood’s 3.5 hours movies to Ekta Kapoor’s “K” TV Shows and serials… the rage continues.
We also love 5 day drama on the field called the “Test” matches.So you can imagine why even this Twenty20 format is also not popular.
We play Cricket better than we play other sports. I don’t want to prove that by quoting some freak ICC rankings.
Now you know why India is Cricket crazy.
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9 comments ↓
Indian Hockey + Doordarshan’s Coverage + Hindi commentary = Undisputed show of lousiness on earth.
What is wrong with Doordarshan’s coverage? And do you understand the technicalities of hockey? If you do, then you will understand that the commentators are very good. If you don’t understand Hindi it isn’t Doordarshan’s problem and Hindi isn’t a ‘lousy’ language. It is a language spoken by many illiterates and ignorants like me who are not that fluent in English. It is my mother-tongue.
The performance of the hockey team hasn’t been that good, but it isn’t too bad either. Ask any team like Holland or Australia, no one takes India lightly. On their day, they are better than the best. The Indian hockey style is like music.. it flows when it flows…
I started writing this post soon after India’s defeat against Australia. And don’t say we are neither good nor bad. The are by and large bad. See the last 10-12 months performance.
All the team of any sport say they don’t take the other team lightly. Ask Dravid what he feels about the Bangladesh tour.
Coming to Doordarshan’s coverage.. he’s not professional. You know what I mean.
I agree that their Hockey commentators is better than their Cricket Counterparts, but still not all ppl in India can understand Hindi.
well if you can learn English, then Hindi isn’t too difficult either
Hmm.. I din’t say I can’t understand hindi. I said : “Not all dudes can understand”.
As you know, ESPN gives Hindi commentary also with the FIFA WC 2006, but as for Tamil Nadu (and states like Kerala), he still has English Commentary as well. Tamil Nadu got the largest viewership (inspite of CAS in Chennai).
Excellent Post! Nice and true observation.
One thing you forgot to mention is Billiards/Snooker. India had world champions in that game and I used watch those in DD for hours (but much won’t find it interesting like me).
And it’s I M Vijayan not V T Vijayan.
ahha..forgot Snooker. I love that game. But I tend to like the green board one rather the one with blue one. I don’t know the difference between Snooker and Billiards but still I like watching it.
But like you already said, many won’t like watching it. But atleast it’s more watchable than Shooting or Chess.
Dinkar already pointed about Vijayan, but I’m little lazy these days. Corrected it now.
ithink u forget one important sport.. which unknowing to others growing at really fast rate than any other sports and they are medal hopes for india at olympics … ARCHERY
if u wonder what iam talking abt . here is the fact..india is place number 2 in th e world in men combined and in 5 in women combined… which v still didnt acheive at cricket….
Hmm.. As I pointed out Archery is a sport that you can’t enjoy watching. Can you? So what’s the point if India plays well?
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