New Delhi: Not just sports fans but even our Parliamentarians are disappointed with India's poor showing in most international sporting contests.
In its report, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Human Resource Development has said that a sports culture is lacking in India.
Hockey is India's national sport but these days players use the stick not to score goals but to injure the rival players. The last time India won a medal in hockey at the Olympics was in the 1980 Moscow Olympics that was the boycotted by most of the hockey powerhouses.
The country's rank at the international level has been falling for a log time and now India are the 11th best hockey-playing nation.
Cricket had given an icon-starved nation something to cheer about.
Now, Indian bowlers are being smashed to boundaries and chasing the cherry as if they are club-level players.
The South African safari has exposed the chinks in Indian armour. Not even the great Rahul 'The Wall' Dravid or the Little Master Sachin Tendulkar's eloquent bat have silenced Graeme Smith's booming guns.
In football, even smaller countries of Africa and Asia tower over India. Tennis grand slams trickle in only in doubles and mixed doubles and in athletics, Indians excel only within the sub continent and there too, the women pick up a few medals.
In peripheral sport like powerlifting, Indians display some prowess, of course, only if they haven't been found doping.
Our shooting stars have only just begun hitting the target but bull's eye is still a distant dream.
A billion people, an annual budget of Rs 466 crore, all kinds of sports federations, huge contingents that goes on a vacation to every games but still little silver ware to show.
Medal percentage have never touched one per cent in any Olympics. The first Olympic committee Baron Pierre de Coubertin once said: "The important thing in sport is not to win but to take part."
Indians have taken his advice rather seriously.
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