Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Waka Waka..When is the time for India?

The world cup soccer fever is on! 32 countries from across the globe is vying for the top honour in football.It indeed is a spectacular event displaying stamina and skill.But in India,this sport is still restricted to few pockets like Kerala,Punjab,Goa and West Bengal.
Cricket is sometimes described as the game having 22 players on the field and 22000 idiots watching them play.With some people realizing that this game is a cash cow,the reach has spread wide and far through television.The game has been further commercialized with the invent of the Twenty T20.

Let us look at some surprising facts.India has a total population of around 118 crore.The total population of the 32 countries playing in the World Cup football is around 180crore.If you remove 3 countries ( namely USA,Brazil and Mexico),the combined population of the 29 nations would be the same as that of India.
Still India does not have a team worthy enough to play the worldcup? Forget that,it does not have a team to feature in the top 100 FIFA rankings.

As proud Indians,we would take pride in the fact that we are No1 in test rankings and No 3 in One day rankings.But what we should consider is that Cricket is played as a serious sport in around 20 countries,while Football is played in over 100 countries.
A consolation factor would be that Baichung Bhutia has played for a club in England and Chetri is now in UK.Airtel is coming up with a football academy and clubs like Man U and Arsenal are looking at developing players from India.I do hope that the top political brass ( for those who are not aware,Union Ministers are at the helm of AIFF,BCCI,IOA just to name a few) take some steps to see that sports do develop in this country.I hope against hope that in my lifetime I can see India getting over a dozen medals at Olympics and participating in one World Cup Football final round ,not to mention the Cricket team lifting the World Cup at 2011!!Till then let the ball keep rolling..

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