India's road to Olympic Gold: individual events, not teams

A measly four medals is what India is likely to end up with at the just-about-to-conclude London Olympics. Despite all the excess adulation for our bronze medal winners back home — garlands and public processions — the fact is between 2008 and now we have shown no improvement. In 2008, we had one gold and two bronzes; this time we have one silver and three bronzes. We have one more medal in terms of quantity, but less in terms of quality since Abhinav Bindra’s gold in Beijing made up for the lack of more medals. It was the first individual gold ever won by any Indian in history, before or after independence. But the tally this time could have been larger with a little bit of luck in areas like men’s shooting, boxing and wrestling — where we seem to have goofed up. Bindra’s failure was a big miss. However, this is where I want to go off the beaten track of breast-beating about India not being a sporting nation. I would like to hazard a prediction that in forthcoming Olympics (or Commonwealth Games or Asian Games), India will double its medals tally every five-seven years and keep on improving in the years ahead. Another prediction: our medals haul will come less from team events and more from individual effort attempts — which means, not from hockey, but events like shooting (where we are already making small waves), archery, badminton, wrestling and boxing, etc. There are three reasons why I am making these predictions. [caption id=“attachment_414749” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Mary Kom with her bronze medal. PTI[/caption] First, sporting prowess is directly correlated to economic growth and the spread of prosperity. And India has been growing consistently well for nearly two decades now, and, despite the UPA’s attempts to scuttle this plan with stupid policies, the broader growth trajectory is unlikely to be permanently held back by this economic perversion. As Sadanand Dhume notes in The Wall Street Journal , a rising economy has enabled both government and private firms to start funding our sporting medals quest. Says Dhume: “In the 16 months leading up to the London games, India’s government allocated about $48 million to its Olympic effort. Steel baron Lakshmi Mittal’s Mittal Champions Trust chipped in with another $10 million. Other wealthy Indians who have done their bit to support the cause include Mukesh Ambani of Reliance Industries and Rashesh Shah of Edelweiss Capital. The most prominent private entity here is Olympic Gold Quest, a non-profit launched by retired badminton star Prakash Padukone and former billiards champion Geet Sethi in 2001.” Saina Nehwal and Mary Kom are two products of this quest. Second, there is now a big enough catchment area for talent that private wealth or institutional support can fund. While doomsayers have been busy trying to focus on India’s poverty and using that as the reason for predicting permanent failure, the counter-intuitive fact is this: in an India of 1,200 million people there will be at least 400 million who will not be undernourished, or so poverty stricken that they cannot catch someone’s eye with real talent in school or college, especially when sports facilities improve. A 400 million India Shining story is larger than the pool available in almost any country except China. Third, much is made of the so-called lack of killer-instinct in Indians, but this again is a matter of time. Remember, our industry was not considered to be a world-beater in any sphere during the licence-permit raj. Today it is the US and Europe that are busy raising barriers to our software skills and prowess. Indian companies are taking over iconic car companies (Tata), aluminium conglomerates (Birla), pharma companies (Sun, Dr Reddy’s), et al. If killer instincts can come in business, they can come in sports too. In all the medal-counting frenzy (admittedly, there’s not much to count right now), we have forgotten that even though we are still nowhere near the top, we have lifted ourselves up from the bottom. Dhume notes that we were almost “dead last” in the 1984, 1988 and 1992 Olympics. This time we could be ranked in the 50s – nothing to write home about, but we aren’t the Sad Sacks of the 1980s and 1990s anymore. However, there is one problem area that we may not be able to address anytime soon: we are unlikely to win much in team events. Why? Indians are inherently not team players. Thanks to the sheer diversity of our peoples, and the factious nature of our polity that is divided along caste, ethnic, religious or linguistic lines, we have never been good at banding together even to fight common enemies. This has been our history. This is our sporting history as well. Apart from the tell-tale signs from Olympic medals won, look where else India has made a mark: chess, billiards, both individual games. Of course, we can point to past successes in hockey, and current status in cricket to tell prove this statement wrong, but I don’t think so. Our hockey successes of the past were the result of the fact that no one else was playing it when we were reasonably good at it till the 1960s and 1970s. Once the Australians and Europeans started taking to the sport, we were simply tossed out of the field. This time we didn’t win even one match. If Dhyan Chand were playing today, he would be a part of our disaster story. This message came to use subliminally in two Bollywood films – Chak De India and Lagaan – where “our” team scored victories on the screen by bringing forth the team spirit. But in real life this has been missing. Take even a simple team event like tennis doubles. Even before we had selected our teams, Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi — a former world-beating doubles combo — were bickering like kids over a lollipop. Both got their comeuppance and were unceremoniously ousted in the London Olympics. If two people cannot sink their egos and play together for the country, what is the chance that 11 players will do so in hockey or cricket (if it ever comes up at the Olympics)? Once again, one may be tempted to point out the recent successes of the Indian cricket team to show that we can play in a team. But cricket is an unusual game: it is actually as much an individual’s game than a team game. Whether it is Tests or ODIs or T20, one or two superb individual knocks can make all the difference. This is more so in T20, where one inspired bowling spell or a 100 scored breezily can swing a match either way. Cricket as India plays it is really about individual achievement — as our Sachin mania shows. The IPL T20 is a fair success primarily because it plays to our strengths — individual glory. Money is enough to do the trick. The teams that play more like teams – Australia, South Africa, New Zealand and England – tend to do better over the long term. Talent alone is not good enough. In Australia, players can get sacked for doing their own thing. Even good players can be sacrificed in order to build a younger cadre for the future. In India, a player has to comprehensively prove his incompetence for long periods of time before he is chucked out. So, three conclusions: One, there will be enough money coming from wealthy individuals, the state and private non-profits to back Indian medal prospects from here on. So individual events is where we will make our name in Olympics 2016 or later. So players who apply themselves to a task have a reasonable chance of winning. Two, in team events, success will be few and far between, and it can happen only if private long-term funding is used to build a long-term team that lives together, eats together and plays together. This applies as much to cricket or hockey or football. There is little chance of that happening in the near future. Three, if the state wants to back winners, it must pour its money into individuals, not teams.