Don't be surprised by India's loss to Guam, it's just part of the process

India lost to Guam in football. Are you really surprised? Do these kind of results still shock you? They shouldn’t. Why should India have won? Because India is ranked 141 and Guam is ranked 174? Come on. At those levels the difference of 33 ranks means nothing. And please don’t give me the population analogy again. It is the most used or should I say misused analogy when India loses at anything. The development of sport in a country is not co-related to the population. If that were the case India and China should be the only two countries winning every single sports event. So why then? Because the Indian Super League (ISL) was launched last year so now we feel we should qualify for the World Cup? May be in a decade or two. [caption id=“attachment_2299748” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Defender Dhanachandra in action against Oman. AFP[/caption] My apologies to those sports fans who, like me, watch or follow every sport. We are the uber minority in India. India is not a sports country. As an Indian Premier League (IPL) panelist once told me, we don’t even like watching cricket in India, we only like watching batting. And while we all shared Star Sports’ cool Hockey promo on our Facebook pages, how many of us can name five people on the Indian team? Fine, I’ll make it easier, name three? It is indeed a sad state of affairs. There is hope though. India doesn’t need a sports revolution, we still need sports evolution. It begins with leagues. Private leagues modeled after the IPL are emerging in all sports. Some will succeed, some will fail, some will have to re-launch and some will be scammed into obscurity. That is healthy. We need to see enough failures and success and competition and rivalry among the leagues before a good system evolves. Why do you need private leagues? Because that is the only way we are going to find and develop talent. The lines of the glory of playing for your country are great for interviews. What drives sports development is money. The money from and for sponsors, team owners, players, television and digital rights, brands and more. You can’t develop a sport without it. It is the money that clubs in England have which allows them to sign a 14 year-old boy and develop him into David Beckham. Private leagues force the scouting of talent, showcase it and train and develop it to its maximum. If I have invested money in buying a team, then as a team owner I am scouting the country for the best possible talent and I am going to make sure that this talent is developed and groomed. Say what you want about the BCCI (Board of Control for Cricket in India) and its controversies, they run a pretty successful enterprise. The best decision that the All India Football Federation (AIFF) did was to sign a 15-year deal with IMG-Reliance to create the ISL. There is no way the AIFF on its own could create a platform to develop talent. So, it created a professional look and feel to the sport by privatising the tournament. The jury is still out on whether the ISL will succeed, but football in India is better for it. Another interesting example is the Pro-Kabaddi League. The IPL succeeded in a popular sport whereas as the success of kabaddi came as a surprise to most people. Good management, leadership, television production and a fierce marketing campaign lead to success in the inaugural year. One just hopes that the league grows even stronger. We need to find a system to replicate this success in all sports - badminton (the now vanished Indian Badminton League must re-emerge in some form), hockey (needs to be managed better), snooker/billiards, chess, golf, athletics, boxing, weightlifting, shooting and archery or may be even a combined league for all. The list goes on. The intentions and success of organizations like Olympic Gold Quest (OGQ) are fantastic but will have limited reach due to no fault of theirs. Only an organised system that provides athletes the tools, incentives and platform to develop will succeed on a macro level. Privatisation, money, television and the three P’s - patience, patience and patience. The rest will fall into place automatically. If we get this in place India will be a global force in sports. Until then the losses to Guam are part of the process.