THE past two weeks have been sweet and sour for Indian women’s sport. The high point was, of course, the rapidly-improving shuttler Saina Nehwal’s remarkable Indonesian Open Super Series triumph and the weekend was made perfect when the hockey team won the Champions Challenge II in Kazan, Russia, on Sunday.
In between the good news, Saina Mirza disappointed by crashing out pretty early at the Wimbledon tennis championship and the women’s football team was delisted from the Fifa ranking list for not playing any international match for one and a half years. It’s hugely embarrassing to find India being thrown out due to this reason.
If you take a quick look at women’s sports in India, you would find sports administrators paying little emphasis in this area, or simply turning a blind eye to it. Women clearly suffer step motherly treatment so far as sport is concerned in the country. So, in this context, if Surinder Kaur’s women’s team won the Champions Challenge II to qualify for the 2011 Champions Challenge I, the entire credit goes to her, the players, the coaches and the support staff. And if they go on to win Champions Challenge I too, to qualify for the 2010 Champions Trophy, there is little reason to add anyone else to give credit to, certainly not the administrators or some great policy.
The current priority for hockey administrators, as everyone knows by now, is to get hold of a seat in the new, unified Hockey India and the similar associations that will, hopefully, soon be formed in the states. These administrators – now in a do-or-die tussle to get into Hockey India – have no time to spare for players and in solving their problems. They don’t even have time to listen to their woes. At times, teams have returned home with their kit bags being lost in transit and the then Indian Women’s Hockey Federation (IWHF) doing precious little to locate them. But the players kept mum, because opening their mouths would have meant a nasty censure for them.
At other times, their thoroughly deserved prize money has taken months to reach the players – and again they dared not protest about the delay. How can they? They have no so-called godfather, no powerful politician, no influential personal coach to back them. They are treated like a pariahs when compared to the men’s game.
But now that the team has won a title, just wait and see how many people would jostle to take credit for the triumph. The erstwhile IWHF secretary Amrit Bose – who has joined hands with opposition against the formation of Hockey India – told me a few days ago that she had stopped going to office, so she can’t really claim credit. Nor does anyone else in the erstwhile IWHF, including its president Vidya Stokes, who is hardly seen or heard.
Similarly, Saina’s Indonesian Open triumph is completely due to her own hard work, perseverance and single-minded pursuit for excellence. And, of course, due to her coach Gopi Chand and her entire support entourage.
Saina’s case is slightly different from the hockey victory as that is a team game. The Hyderabad-based Saina has to slog entirely on her own in an individual sport. A good day or a bad day on the courts depends entirely on how she plays on that particular day. There is no teammate to rely on when things do not go her way. So, the pressure is more on Saina and it is more difficult to sustain that pressure and win at the same time.
Hockey is the people’s eternal sentimental favourite sport. So the pressure on hockey teams – more so the men’s outfit – is more than perhaps in any other sport. In cricket, at times, the pressure is perhaps more. But whenever the men’s hockey team plays at the Olympic Games, the Asian Games or Commonwealth Games, an ordinary Indian, whether he is a die hard sports buff or not, he surely follows the matches. And his deep disappointment at a defeat – or celebrations after a win and the media reaction – clearly shows that hockey has a special place in the hearts and minds of Indians.
The pressure on Sania Mirza is of a different kind but, perhaps, no less than the hockey teams or Saina or the cricket team. She is India’s lone hope in women’s tennis and being a Muslim puts her under extra pressure as all her moves are minutely dissected.
This time, the reason why the media did not get to do an extensive post mortem on her crashing out of Wimbledon is because many big sports events are happening at the same time. Most of the television time and news print is being occupied by the ongoing India-West Indies one-day series, Saina’s Indonesian triumph and now the superb performance by the women’s hockey team.
The case of the women’s football team looks pathetic. It is so embarrassing as an Indian to find out that the national team was delisted from the Fifa’s ranking list due to not playing any international matches for 18 months!! Indian football administrators have hardly ever been professional in their approach or manner of working. But this one takes the cake. Now, don’t tell me that the women’s body did not have enough money – or it cannot be generated – to organise matches. It all boils down to the will power and a desire of doing something for the game. And these qualities have been lacking in our administrators, most of whom are politicians, for a few generations now. In Indian sports, everything happens despite the system.
Hopefully, fans, sports administrators and the media will act and behave in a rational manner while dealing with and dissecting these sports performances by Indian women. Let us give the players their due when they win and not pull them down when they don’t. Let us question the administrators too the next time our sportspersons don’t perform well. For the moment, it’s three cheers for the Indian woman athlete.
