India - Out in the Gold

Now that the brief moment of euphoria arising from Abhinav Bindra's gold medal has passed, it's back to the usual caterwauling. A nation of 1.2 billion, just one gold, yada yada yada; when will things change, moan, groan, doggone. Of course, it's possible some little-known boxer or athlete could deliver another small dose of delirium before the games are over, but once we are done and dusted in Beijing, it will be back to that familiar addiction, cricket, where, although we have OD'd on ODIs, the national elation at our occasional victories is unsurpassed.

Tomes have been written on why we fare so poorly in Olympic sports, including one facetious explanation in this very column — we are a nation so laden with gold that we don't need all those flimsy medals. While that does not explain, fatuously speaking, why we don't win more silvers and bronzes, Australian cricketer Adam Gilchrist has unwittingly provided another out. The Olympics are stacked with sports outside our current national frame of reference, which consists almost exclusively of cricket, cricket, and more cricket.

The Olympian apartheid against this gentleman's game was brought home in a striking moment when i saw baseball, cricket's poor cousin according to the Indian legions, among the be-medaled sports in Beijing. For heaven's sakes, even beach volleyball makes the cut. So why not cricket, and for that matter indigenous sports like kabaddi, kho-kho, kalari payattu? After all, judo makes the grade. The Indian Olympic Association has a task on its hand as does the Left, the Right and the Centre.

Gilchrist's suggestion that Twenty20 cricket be included in Olympics raises another question — why stop at T20? Why not other versions — like Five5? And separate medals for individual batting, bowling and fielding feats. One reason the US and other nations come out on top is there are a bagful of medals in every sport, depending on distance, weight, and other metrics. Imagine if cricket were to have both team and individual medals, for men and women, including medals for different dimensions of the game, like in gymnastics, boxing, swimming, weightlifting and shooting.

Levity aside, there is one other way we can improve our medal count — legitimately. For a country that rails so much against outsourcing, the US is pretty good at attracting immigrant athletes. Turns out 39 of the 600-strong US Beijing-bound contingent are foreign-born, including its entire women's table tennis team (all Chinese). In fact, the US flagbearer at Beijing was Lopez Lomong, a Sudanese refugee. Trailing him were several other "foreigners" in the US team — Khan Malaythong, Mesinee Mangkalakiri, Sayaka Matsumoto and Abdihakem Abdirahman among them.

Also, in the team are two young men of Indian-origin. Texas gymnast Raj Bhavsar has already won a bronze in team gymnastics, and going by the speed with which our media descended on his kith and kin in Gujarat, we might as well add his medal to our kitty. No word so far about the other Indian — Rajiv Kumar Rai, who made it to the US badminton team. If we can cheer Shane Warne and his Rajasthan Royals, why not adopt foreign athletes?

It's all very depressing. Bindra's gold, admirable as it is, is not salve enough, and the proximity of Beijing and the advances made by China at a time when everyone is talking of Chindia makes it worse. All the talk of infrastructure and physical attributes etc, is so much poppycock given how some of the world's poorest countries end up with more medals. So, let's save the post mortems. The reason for our performance is probably right under us — that sunken hollow in the couch.