“Oh! That ball could have been easily caught”. “Wow! It’s a sixer”. “Yes! Our team has won”.
Familiar dialogues? We hear them daily when some cricket match is being played on the TV. It’s the most spoken dialogues when any cricket, be it World Cup or IPL or other one day matches is played. Cricket is a favourite game of probably three fourths of Indians. Most of the Indians interested in sports want to be the next Dhoni or Tendulkar. But the funniest part is that our national game is hockey and the next hockey world cup will most probably be held in India next year. Everybody knows that the next cricket world cup might be held in India in 2011.
If we ask somebody why other games are not as popular as cricket in our country people will tell that there are no good players. Why aren’t there any good players? Did India win gold medals in hockey eight times without any good players? Does anybody know that August 29 is celebrated as National Sports day in India as it is Dyan Chand’s birthday? Maybe a few know. The problem is that there is no proper support.
Sania Mirza is occupying the tenth position in the Top ten female Asian singles tennis players as of 20 April 2009. Why can’t she occupy the first position? If she had got enough and proper support from her country she could have at least got the fifth position.
Viswanathan Anand has won the World Chess Championship in three consecutive years. We, Indians have to be proud to get such a good player. A brilliant game, chess is and it does not involve any ball or bat or racket or running practice. It just needs a bit of logical thinking. But people do not know the importance of chess.
Just imagine how it would be if India was an all rounder. How would it be if she excelled in all sports like football, hockey, chess, cricket, swimming and many others? People’s minds are so inclined towards cricket that everybody takes a bat and ball during holidays to play cricket. They all want to be excellent cricketers in future.
So let us do all what we can to support other games. We cannot change the whole India. But we can try our best. So let us put our hands together and start supporting other sort of sports also.
