Daily Times

India’s gold medal tally at recently concluded Gold Coast Commonwealth Games in Australia reached 26; only 25 more than Pakistan. India secured third position on medals table-which is their best outside India – surpassing countries like Canada, New Zealand, Scotland, South Africa, Malaysia and Singapore who can allocate far more resources and facilities for their players than India. It sparked this scribe’s curiosity to discover the driving force behind this monumental achievement thus contacted Ayaz Memon, the ace sports journalist and commentator in India, to shine some light on this accomplishment.

He says India has developed a sporting culture in the country and there are many contributing factors; not just one. But a decent chunk of credit goes to the Indian Sports Minister Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore who himself was a silver medalist at Athens Olympics in 2004 in shooting event and his induction into the office brought about massive improvement to the sporting circle. Then there are sponsors who are committed to uplift Indian sports and athletes making the task easier and simpler for the governing bodies. Memon further recounts that yearning desire to excel in sports and choose it as career amongst the youngsters is ever rising in India. Players are coming even from less-developed areas like Haryana state which produced stars like Saina Nehwal who is regarded as queen of Indian badminton. For this very reason selectors have much larger pool to pick players from; hence are able to form teams which are perfectly capable of challenging virtually any country globally.

He also feels that nepotism which marred Indian sports for so many years is being phased out of sports federations and now selections are more or less merit based – consequently very little or no finger-pointing at all at the selection committees is witnessed. Ayaz is simply enthralled by the fact that women did their part and chipped in with 12 gold medals where men claimed 13 and 01 went to mixed doubles team in badminton.

When asked about Indian dominance in shooting, his observation was very interesting; he believes that people of sub-continent are naturally blessed with higher mental concentration level which helps them attain higher grades in education. Suitably, the art of shooting demands something very similar – capacity to exclude everything from mind except the immediate task at hand; the target to shoot at. But the question is why only Indian shooters shine at the international events and countries like Pakistan are seen just no where? Indian government plays a pivotal part in supporting their shooters through arranging international tours which offer them the opportunity to gain priceless experience. Then there are multiple NGOs who remain on the look out for some gifted talent to sponsor, unlike Pakistan where I have seen dormer Pakistan hockey captain Zeeshan Ashraf struggling to find a job. Memon thinks the role of sports channels in popularising sports in India can’t be over-looked as there are 18 channels which bring miscellaneous sporting activities from all across the globe to their viewers.

Published in Daily Times, April 22^nd 2018.