Look who is commenting on Football in Indian Media
By Seikholen Thomsong
India is a country hungry for glory in the arena of sports. A country that is a billion strong can no longer win an Olympic gold medal, once the golden era of Indian hockey was over in the late seventies. At best we could obtain a silver or a bronze medal in the world arena.
A long way to go
Here, the fact that certain people get the chance to participate in some world class competition is enough reason for them to become celebrities. Karthikeyan, with due respects to his abilities, has never won any competition in F1 races but you see his pictures plastered all over newspapers. So are Shania Mirza and so many more.
Thus we are bound to extract glory from wherever possible. We have taken pride in the fact that many West Indies, Zimbabwe, and England’s cricketers were of Indian origin. The latest of such foreign sport stars of Indian origin is Vikash Dhorasoo of France. India did not even stand the chance to qualify so the next best thing we could do was to take pride that there is an Indian face in the French national football team for World Cup 2006.
Who should bell the cat?
The malaise that was responsible for the state of sports had been diagnosed and the authorities often had to bear all the blame and the brickbats. However judging the best intentions of the authorities and the sportspersons themselves it would take ages for this country to breed world champions. I mean to say it is a time consuming process to nurture and build budding talents into world class sportsmen. We cannot expect it to happen in a couple of month’s time or couple of years. One feels that the very people who should educate about such a vision themselves lack adequate knowledge themselves.
Cricket as a Religion
Thus the adulation that people have for cricketers in this country is nothing surprising. It is the only sport in which Indians still win from time to time. Gavaskar, Dravid, Tendulkar and the likes are revered next, probably only, to Ram, Shiva and the other pantheons of Indian religion. Cricket in fact has become the only religion in India that does not communalize its people. It unites the people, each time a match is played with Pakistan, irrespective of caste, religion or birth. It perhaps is the only sport that makes Indians proud enough to thump their chest when talking about sports. We almost always have to look the other way and pretend not to hear when other people talk about their achievements in sports.
Look who is commenting on Football in the Indian Media!
The media has a role to play in making a sports event glamourous besides educating and informing about the sport. If at all the state of sports is in an un-enviable state then the media also is to blame in no small part. Media adulation of cricket lowers the status of other sports. Also at times the people in the media themselves do some disservice to various other sports. I would just quote an example. With the world gearing up for the football extravaganza in Germany to kick off, we see so many write ups on the subject in our morning newspapers.
India is a country hungry for glory in the arena of sports. A country that is a billion strong can no longer win an Olympic gold medal, once the golden era of Indian hockey was over in the late seventies. At best we could obtain a silver or a bronze medal in the world arena.
A long way to go
Here, the fact that certain people get the chance to participate in some world class competition is enough reason for them to become celebrities. Karthikeyan, with due respects to his abilities, has never won any competition in F1 races but you see his pictures plastered all over newspapers. So are Shania Mirza and so many more.
Thus we are bound to extract glory from wherever possible. We have taken pride in the fact that many West Indies, Zimbabwe, and England’s cricketers were of Indian origin. The latest of such foreign sport stars of Indian origin is Vikash Dhorasoo of France. India did not even stand the chance to qualify so the next best thing we could do was to take pride that there is an Indian face in the French national football team for World Cup 2006.
Who should bell the cat?
The malaise that was responsible for the state of sports had been diagnosed and the authorities often had to bear all the blame and the brickbats. However judging the best intentions of the authorities and the sportspersons themselves it would take ages for this country to breed world champions. I mean to say it is a time consuming process to nurture and build budding talents into world class sportsmen. We cannot expect it to happen in a couple of month’s time or couple of years. One feels that the very people who should educate about such a vision themselves lack adequate knowledge themselves.
Cricket as a Religion
Thus the adulation that people have for cricketers in this country is nothing surprising. It is the only sport in which Indians still win from time to time. Gavaskar, Dravid, Tendulkar and the likes are revered next, probably only, to Ram, Shiva and the other pantheons of Indian religion. Cricket in fact has become the only religion in India that does not communalize its people. It unites the people, each time a match is played with Pakistan, irrespective of caste, religion or birth. It perhaps is the only sport that makes Indians proud enough to thump their chest when talking about sports. We almost always have to look the other way and pretend not to hear when other people talk about their achievements in sports.
Look who is commenting on Football in the Indian Media!
The media has a role to play in making a sports event glamourous besides educating and informing about the sport. If at all the state of sports is in an un-enviable state then the media also is to blame in no small part. Media adulation of cricket lowers the status of other sports. Also at times the people in the media themselves do some disservice to various other sports. I would just quote an example. With the world gearing up for the football extravaganza in Germany to kick off, we see so many write ups on the subject in our morning newspapers.
One thing so absurd is that the sports’ columns carried so many comments about the game by people who had nothing to do with the sports. Don’t be surprised to find a small time athlete or an obscure tennis player commenting about football. What would you learn about World Cup Football, its galaxy of players, their skills and techniques or simply the records, from reading the comment on football by some page three personality, some smalltime Bollywood starlets or say a sportsman whose chosen field is table tennis or something else.
One thing common to all of them is that they love football as a spectator sport and have no technical expertise or knowledge whatsoever. The point is not that the common people wanted to know the personal tastes of all those sportspersons and famous people by virtue of their being celebrities. The point however is that, the media had not taken enough pains to actually let people with the required technical expertise write. Or at least they should write about the views of people who know the sport well enough professionally. We readers have a lot to gain in terms of knowledge about the particular sport.
One thing common to all of them is that they love football as a spectator sport and have no technical expertise or knowledge whatsoever. The point is not that the common people wanted to know the personal tastes of all those sportspersons and famous people by virtue of their being celebrities. The point however is that, the media had not taken enough pains to actually let people with the required technical expertise write. Or at least they should write about the views of people who know the sport well enough professionally. We readers have a lot to gain in terms of knowledge about the particular sport.
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