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In the 1990s Coca Cola had come up with an ad campaign - “Eat Cricket, Sleep Cricket, Drink only Coca Cola”. It was a hugely successful campaign which in few words spoke a lot about the popularity of cricket in India. Who could have then thought that the same cricket crazy nation would one day say “Come on India Let’s Football”? But on 12th of October, defeaning chants of “Let’s Football” rang out from a crowd of 60,000 odd people in the Salt Lake stadium in Kolkata (considered to be the home of Indian football) during the launch of the Indian Super League (ISL).
Dawn of a new era in Indian sports
Although, cricket still remains the undisputed king of sports in the country but as rock star Bob Dylan would have put it – “The times they are a-changin”. Times are indeed changing as far as the sporting scenario in India is concerned. People are beginning to follow other sports as well, rather than just watching cricket. And in my opinion the numerous sports leagues that have sprung up over the past few years deserve some credit for this change.
In recent times, India has seen a sort of revolution of sports leagues. Just keep the two words Indian & league constant and add a sport that comes into your mind. The result will be the name of the numerous leagues like the Indian Cricket League (now defunct ICL), Indian Premier League (IPL), Indian Badminton League (IBL), Hockey India League (HIL) and the latest kid on the block – Indian Super League (ISL) to name a few.
Picking up from cricket revolution
It is no surprise that it needed a cricket league to start this revolution in our country. In fact we have had cricketers and Bollywood stars promoting the different leagues. Lack of stars in these other sports with the potential to attract crowds to the game is the prime reason behind this. And I don’t see any harm if other sport benefits from the star power of Sachin Tendulkar or Amitabh Bachhan. For starters, it will help generate more interest in these sports.
Presence of stars from one’s own country plays an important role in the development of a sports person. In cricket youngsters have always had stars to look up to. Sachin Tendulkar has many times said that how in his formative years he used to look up to Sunil Gavaskar for inspiration. The current Indian cricket team has grown up seeing the heroics of Tendulkar himself.
A sports person looks for icons to emulate. It is not that other sports are absolutely devoid of Indian stars. There are players like Major Dhyan Chand, Vishwanathan Anand, Saina Nehwal, P Gopichand etc. who have been amongst the best in the world in their respective sports. But this list of truly world class Indian players in other sports is definitely less for a nation as big as ours.
Adding glamour to Indian sports
The other thing that these leagues have brought in is the moola. Now I only hope that this money is used to develop the sporting infrastructure and build a system which guarantees financial stability for the budding sports star. The assurance that if I become a successful player, I will be financially well off can work as a great incentive to lure youngsters to a sport.
To sum up, India has definitely moved ahead from the “eat cricket, sleep cricket” mentality. But it is just the beginning and these leagues have to maintain the momentum in order to make India a sporting power. And if at all we lose this momentum as the hockey players from the bolloywood movie ‘Chakde! India’ would say - “Ek hockey doongi main rakh ke”.
