Revision as of 14:32, 7 January 2018

TV viewership in India, The Times of India

The business aspect of India's sports leagues as well as the growth of the sports business in India, 2008-13; Graphic courtesy: The Times of India

The business aspect of India's sports leagues as well as the growth of the sports business in India, 2008-13; Graphic courtesy: The Times of India

Controversies in sports

India Today, December 29, 2008

Cricketers vs BCCI

The BCCI has never been a novice when it comes to controversies. Even in 1989, six cricketers—Dilip Vengsarkar, Kapil Dev, Ravi Shastri, Arun Lal, Kiran More and Mohammad Azharuddin—took it to court over contracts. In October 1989, India Today reported,“ The showdown has caused a new rethinking on the board’s structure.”

Padukone vs BAI

Prakash Padukone, India’s greatest badminton player, became the unusual leader of a revolution when he set up the Indian Badminton Confederation as a rival to the Badminton Association of India (BAI), causing a schism in the sport. He wanted to reform the way badminton was played in India. “For a man like Padukone to have behaved so out of character is indicative of the magnitude of the problem,” said India Today in March 1996

Gill drops six senior players

This was the decisive crushing of player power. In 1998, IHF President K.P.S. Gill celebrated the Asian Games hockey gold by sacking the six most senior players. In March 1996, India Today had foretold the game’s death: “Everywhere this pungent smell of decay oozes from Indian hockey. Gill, inheritor of a disintegrating game in 1994, papered over some of the cracks but when an entire edifice is crumbling, a tube of quickfix is inadequate.”

Cricket match-fixing, since 2000

This is one controversy cricket-crazy Indians will never forget. It all started in 2000, with the Delhi Police tapping South African captain Hansie Cronje’s phone and stumbling on names that spelt match-fixing. India Today said in April 2000, “A mortar round has been fired into cricket’s stomach and it’s no good if administrators bring out a box of band-aids.” A number of names tumbled out of the closet including Indian skipper Mohammad Azharuddin. The word bookie entered our everyday vocabulary. There was nothing gentlemanly left in the Gentleman’s Game.

Milkha Singh turns down Arjuna Award

In an interview to India Today in September 2001, the Flying Sikh had said, “the prestigious award has been reduced to a tamasha”. More dirt was dug up. From the unappreciated Kanwaljit Sandhu, the first Indian woman to win an international athletics gold, to the moving plight of Makhan Singh, the only one to break Milkha’s record.

Pratima tests positive for dope at Athens

A shocked country looked on as Pratima Kumari was banned from the event and for life at the Athens Olympics 2004, for testing positive for drugs. While she blamed her coaches, they pointed at her personal trainers and even on her habit of turning up inebriated for training. Since 2004, no less than 113 Indian athletes have been accused of doping. India Today reported in September 2004 that the International Weightlifting Federation president had threatened to suspend the Weightlifting Federation of India, saying: “These positive cases have demolished your country’s prestige.”

Chappell vs Ganguly

It became the clash of the titans, which divided the entire cricket fraternity.Aleaked e-mail to the BCCI exposed coach Greg Chappell’s stance on skipper Sourav Ganguly in which he had doubted the latter’s behaviour, physical form and team spirit. Ganguly accused the coach of pitting players against one another. The result: “Chuck a pebble into the team bus and the chances of it striking a conflicted player are high,” reported India Today inOctober 2005.

Sania’s fatwa controversy

After storming the international tennis circuit in 2003, Sania Mirza has never been left alone. Fatwas were issued against her for her clothes to which she replied, “Some say Muslim girls shouldn’t wear mini-skirts, others say I’ve made the community proud. I hope God forgives me... but you have to do what you have to do.” (India Today, January 2005). Sometimes she bent to the furore and refused to play, but mostly, Mirza just let her racquet do the talking.

India Fails to qualify for Olympics Hockey

Indian hockey has seen it all. Good days, from 1928 to 1956 when it won six Olympic golds in a row, and the worst being its failure to even qualify for the games in 2008. A long history of maladministration and insularity on the IHF’s part led to this shocking elimination. The poor run of the national game made India Today observe in March 2008, “Indian hockey can no longer be pined over like a lost love. It is a sick industry in need of restructuring. Otherwise let’s roll up all the astro turf and lock up the stadiums.” 10. VOLLEY FOLLY

Bhupathi vs Paes

They were India’s best hopes for an Olympic gold in tennis. But then Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi decided they had had enough of each other. “The best way to deal with Bhupathi-Paes these days is to convince yourself that today for each man, the other does not exist” (India Today, June 2008).

Corporate sponsorships

The Times of India, Oct 17, 2011

‘Today, sport is much more than just entertainment or physical exercise’

The Sahara India Pariwar’s foray into the fast and furious world of Formula One – with its purchase of 42.5 % stake in F1 team Force India for a sum of Rs 500 crore — is yet another reminder of the company’s growing presence in the world of sport.

The Sahara Group has emerged as the biggest sponsor and promoter of sport in India. The shirts of the Indian cricket and hockey teams are synonymous with the company’s name. It also owns Pune Warriors, the IPL team which it bought at last year’s auction for Rs 1,800 crore. Add to that Rs 500 crore which the company spends for sponsoring the Indian cricket team and its financial presence cannot be ignored.

This is not all. Sahara is also spending in a big way in its bid to support Indian sportspersons training to win medals at the Olympic Games. It has adopted boxing, wrestling, archery, shooting, athletics and tennis and has under its umbrella 95 sportspersons preparing for the 2012 London Games, quite a few of them being medal prospects.

When the Indian hockey players revolted last year for not being suitably rewarded for their efforts, Sahara moved in with a cash award of Rs 2 lakh each for the players. The company was also instrumental in bringing the prestigious Laureus World Sports Academy Awards to India in 2002 and 2003.

This is not to say that others in the corporate world do not have a connect with sport. Hero, earlier Hero Honda, is one of the major investors. With a budget of Rs 100 crores, they have long-standing forays in golf, cricket and hockey, and like Sahara, also co-sponsored the 2010 Commonwealth Games.

It is a similar case with multinationals like Coca Cola and Pepsi or tyre giants MRF and JK. Coca Cola spends a couple of million dollars on talent-hunting programmes in cricket, while Pepsi does the same though figures are not available. Communication bigwigs Airtel and Nokia spend around Rs 50 crore each annually primarily on cricket, while MRF and JK mainly spend on supporting motorsports in the country.

The Tatas have been among the pioneering big spenders in Indian sport, with others taking the cue from them. They started off by employing several top sportspersons. Their flagship endeavours were the Tata Football Academy, an athletics stadium and the archery academy in Jamshedpur. Figures may not be available but of late their presence in Indian sport seems to have faded a bit.

The United Breweries (UB) Group is another active sports sponsor and promoter in the country, and would come close to Sahara in its spending but figures are not readily available in this case either.

Mention must be made of the Indian Tobacco Company (ITC), a busy cricket sponsor some years ago, which has been forced to pull out due to regulations on tobacco Their withdrawal brought Sawhich make them ineligible to pro- hara to the fore as Indian crickmote or sponsor sports.

Sahara's major buys/sponsorship

Sports business: 2008- 2013, The Times of India

1,800 CRORE for IPL franchisee 'Pune Warrior India'

500 CRORES as Indian cricket team sponsorship till 2013

500 CRORE (approx) on the acquisition of Force India (now Sahara Force India)

TOTAL: 2,800 CRORE

Besides this, Sahara sponsors six other sports and 95 individual sportspersons

Other top sponsors in Indian sport

HERO MOTOCORP: One of the major investors in the sports arena whose annual budget is around Rs 100 crore. The company has exposure in cricket and IPL, golf and hockey.

COKE: The company is believed to be spending a couple of million dollars on U-16 cricket, football tournaments.

PEPSI: Runs a 'pacers' programme, a grassroot-level initiative to identify talent in the sphere of bowling. Selected bowlers are trained by experts. JK TYRE: They have spent Rs 100 crore on sports promotion, primarily motorsports, in the past 10 years.

AIRTEL: Rs 50 crore annually on sports

NOKIA: Rs 50 crore annually on sports

ITC: Used to be a big sponsor but is ineligible for any sports promotion now, because of ban on tobacco advertising.

Foreign clubs

Indian sportsmen in foreign clubs

Indian sportsmen in foreign clubs-I; Graphic courtesy: The Times of India

Indian sportsmen in foreign clubs-II; Graphic courtesy: The Times of India

See graphics, Indian sportsmen in foreign clubs-I

Indian sportsmen in foreign clubs-II

Manisha Keer

Rahul Noronha , Top Gun “India Today” 10/4/2017

Manisha Keer , India Today , April 10,2017

The day is clearly etched in Manisha Keer's memory. She had reached the Shooting Academy in Bhopal for trials for admission riding pillion with her father on his bicycle on a hot July afternoon in 2013. All of 14 then, Manisha had till then never held a gun in her hand and had no idea about a sport she wanted to take up, one that in India has been dominated by those born with the proverbial silver spoon in their mouths. Today, Manisha, the daughter of a fisherman who makes a living selling his daily catch from the Upper Lake in Bhopal, is ranked first among trap shooters in India-a feat she accomplished during the trials for the India team at Patiala in December 2016.

The seventh of Shakuntala and Kailash Keer's five daughters and three sons, Manisha is just back from the Shooting World Cup in Delhi recently-her first big-ticket international event. She didn't do as well as she had expected to, but she has already begun training for the next round of trials for the upcoming junior world cup in the national capital.

Kailash Keer has a bit of Mahaveer Phogat-the character Aamir Khan essayed in blockbuster Dangal-in him. As a youngster, Keer, who hails from the traditional Keer fisherman community-had been keen on sports himself. But the lack of opportunities and awareness ensured that he did well only in donga (traditional fishing boat) races organised by the state fisheries department. Like Phogat, who was driven by the desire to have his daughters attain the sporting excellence he could not, Keer too has five of his eight children engaged in sports. While son Gautam and daughters Poonam and Baby have enlisted for volleyball at the Sports Authority of India's sports centre, another daughter, Sona, is into water sports and won a gold and silver at the recent rowing nationals in Bhopal. "Mehnat aur naseeb bahut badi cheez hain (hard work and luck are big factors)," says Keer, sitting outside his modest home in Gaura village on Bhopal's outskirts. Ask him if he worries about his kids not doing well either in sports or in academics, eventually having neither a job nor a sport to rely on, and he says: "Three of my children took up volleyball, and the facility where they practised shut down. But the fear of failing will not stop me from asking my daughters to focus on sports," he says.

During the trials at the shooting academy, Manisha was tested for hand-eye coordination, physical fitness and mental toughness for the sport. Within three months of starting to shoot, Manisha qualified for the nationals in 2013. Since then, she has qualified for the nationals every year on a trot, but it was this year that she stood first in the country, winning medals at the nationals.

"Manisha's capacity to absorb what is taught and to use it in a match is amazing," says Commonwealth trap shooting gold medallist and Olympian Mansher Singh, who is the chief coach at the MP Shooting Academy. "Her rise in a short span of time has made everyone take note. I wouldn't go as far as to say that she has attained greatness in the sport, but she is definitely on the way."

What made her choose shooting as a sport? "I had absolutely no idea about shooting before I joined the academy," says Manisha. "But now I eat, breathe, sleep shooting." She has just finished her class X boards. "I am only thinking about the trials for the Junior World Cup right now," she says, when asked if she has decided on what stream she will choose in Plus Two, a decision most kids her age fret about.

For Manisha, it has not only been a fight to stay on top of her game but equally to train mentally to take on the competition. Pomp and pageantry are more an integral part of shotgun shooting competitions (trap, skeet and double trap) as compared to competitions of other shooting disciplines like pistol and rifle. This perhaps has something to do with the fact that most athletes at shotgun competitions come from affluent backgrounds, and swagger comes naturally to them. At the nationals in Jaipur, where the most expensive SUVs were parked, Manisha sat in the bus the MP Shooting Academy had provided its athletes, and plotted her fight with her opponents, both on and off the field. "A certain swagger and aggression are a must in shotgun shooting," says Mansher Singh. "The biggest challenge I face as a coach is to address this gap because of the vast difference in backgrounds of many of the kids at the academy and the competition they face. One way to address it is by providing the best equipment, best training infrastructure and exposure to athletes, comparable to what the competition has, which is what is being attempted in MP."

Sure enough, it was match pressure that let Manisha down at the World Cup in Delhi. She was shooting exceptionally well during the practice sessions before the World Cup, but when it came to D Day, the podium finish eluded her by a huge margin. "I don't know what happened. The world cup was my first international tournament. I felt pressured and I didn't do as well as I expected. I have been training to handle the pressure," she said. Mansher will have to work harder on that aspect.

Set up in 2007 by the state government, the MP Shooting Academy is among the several centres set up to promote sporting disciplines such as equestrian sports, water sports, martial arts, badminton, hockey, cricket and boxing. The academy provides perhaps the best facilities in terms of shooting equipment, boarding and lodging to its athletes of any state government-run entity in the country. "Sporting success depends on getting the best coaching and state-of-the-art equipment for talented sportspersons selected through a transparent system based on merit," says Upendra Jain, IPS, ADG and director, sports, MP, on the advantage of the academy-based approach in identifying sporting talent. "The academies under the state government have all of this, which is why MP's now become a sporting state."

The academy trains its athletes in rifle, pistol and shotgun shooting. Thirty-five of its rifle shooters qualified at the nationals of which 21 made it to the stage for the India squad and nine won medals. Another 26 of its athletes qualified at the nationals and 17 made it to the trials for the India squad. In shotgun shooting, 31 athletes qualified at the nationals of which 14 made it to the trials for the India squad, and won 20 medals. Besides Manisha, double trap shooter Sanjay Rathore and pistol shooter Surbhi Pathak, both from the academy, have made it to the World Cup.

Many, however, point out that while the performance of the academy's shooters is spectacular at the junior level, it dips at the senior level. The competition seems to devour them there. "The transformation from junior to senior should take place within 3-4 years but we realise there has been a problem with that," says Mansher Singh. "However, one must realise that we need more infrastructure and while we have been around since 2007, the results are just beginning to come in."

Manisha's achievement-though the most inspiring-is not the only success story at the academy. There is Pooja Vishwakarma who is in the junior India squad and is the daughter of a mason. Gubbu Shankar, Sandhya Yadav and Aman Dayal, all medal holders in team events at the nationals, all first-generation shooters and members of the junior India squad in double trap, skeet and trap respectively, spent their early years in a charity home before moving to the hostel in the academy.

After a gruelling day at the shooting range, where her wiry frame takes the recoil of 125 shotgun rounds, followed by a session at the gym, Manisha drops by at home to say bye to her family before leaving for trials in Delhi. During their conversation, Keer asks his elder daughter Sona to keep an eye on government jobs for sportspersons. "It can wait," says Manisha, asking her sister to focus on her game instead.

Near Misses

1960-2016

The Times of India, Aug 29 2017

Many are already calling PV Sindhu's effort as one of the most enduring in Indian sport. Dhananjay Roy takes a walk down memory lane to pick a few of those special times when the contest left the Indian sportsman and the fan physically and emotionally drained...

PT USHA (1984 Los Angeles Olympics)

PT Usha was at the peak of her powers and was a real hope in the 400m hurdles. Usha clocked 56.81 sec in the heats and 55.54 sec in the semifinals.In the final, she clocked 55.42 sec, finishing fourth, trailing the eventual bronze-medallist by an agonizing 1100th of a second.

MILKHA SINGH (1960 Rome Olympics)

Milkha Singh had been clocking impressive timings in the run up to the Games and had beaten most of the top contenders at various meets. Expectations were sky high, but the Flying Sikh miscalculated his run when it mattered most and finished fourth. That's a memory that still rankles the great sprinter.

LIMBA RAM (1992 Barcelona Olympics)

The archer came closest to Olympic podium at the 1992 Games in Barcelona. Just ahead of Barcelona, Ram had equalled Takayoshi Matsushita's world record in the Beijing Asian Archery Championships in the 30m event with a score of 357360 for gold. Fans were counting on him for a repeat performance in the Olympics.However, he fell short by a single point in the 70m competition, and missed out on the bronze.

LEANDER PAESMAHESH BHUPATHI VS IVAN LJUBICIC MARIO ANCIC (2004 Athens Olympics)

In 2004, the pair of Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi was rated as the finest doubles players in the world. All of India was certain that the duo would return with a medal from Athens. Things did not go as per plan and they were beaten by the wild card Croatian pair of Mario Ancic and Ivan Ljubicic in the bronze-medal play-off. The Indians had numerous opportunities to shut out the match, but were pipped 6-7 (5), 6-4, 14-16 in three hours and 58 minutes in a nerve-racking contest that began on a Friday night and ended in the early hours the next day.

ABHINAV BINDRA (2016 Rio Olympics)

India's only individual gold medallist at the Olympics came extremely close to winning another medal before he ended up finishing fourth in the 10m air rifle event in Rio. Tied on 163.8 points after 16 shots with the eventual silver-medallist Serhiy Kulish of Ukraine, Bindra shot a 10.0 to Kulish's 10.5, depriving the Beijing Games gold winner of a fairytale ending in his fifth Olympics.

INDIA VS KOREA: MEN'S HOCKEY FINAL (2002 Busan Asian Games)

Defending champions India fell to hosts Korea 4-3 in the final despite putting up a courageous display. They were buoyed by a splendid 4-3 win over a strong Pakistan side in the semifinals and young defender Jugraj Singh almost did the star turn for India. But his shoulder-charge of an opponent led to a penalty corner off which the Koreans scored the winner in front of a stadium packed with members of the Indian contingent who had come to see an Indian triumph.