For billions of people across the globe, across ethnicity, across cultures, sports is not just a time-pass or way of recreation. In fact, for many, it is leaving apart their families, the most important part of their lives. What is it in the world of sports that makes people go crazy for the choice of their sport! While most other forms of entertainment are “scripted” sport is an entertainment which is “real” and which is new every time we are involved in it.
Sports is a way of life and like life it is a journey of exploration; of ups and downs; of making important decisions; of getting over our hindrances; of taking risks and avoiding them; and if life can be summed up as “it goes on” sports can be summed up as “it goes along”.
Both sports and life are great levelers and no one on this Earth can claim to have a perfect life with only the good times and no bad times. If we are willing to enjoy the good times it is our obligation to suffer the bad, get over it to enjoy the view from the top and welcome the sun of good times. So is the case with sports, no sportsman ever can claim to have a perfect career. Everyone goes through a lean phase in their career -- some achieve more, some less, some emerge champions, some fail yet the joy of sports is in not surrendering to the adverse circumstances. And the same holds true for life itself.
Arguably Sachin Tendulkar, the greatest batsman the modern cricket has produced, also went through a lean phase when he averaged just 27.52 from 15 Tests, with no hundreds in 24 innings. At the end of 2011, Tendulkar averaged 56, but because of that lean spell, he finished at 53.78. Even Roger Federer, the tennis champion with 17 Grand Slams to his name also suffered from a phase when he couldn’t find a way to win finals and semi-finals. Thus sports levels lows and highs in career. During the course of life, it also levels the ups and downs it has to offer.
Thus sport teaches us so many things that are directly applicable in our lives. This gives us another reason to inculcate sports and its value in our lives. In the locality I live, there is a park but not for playing sports for kids and children but for the sophisticated ways of staying fit of Uncles and Aunties for walking and jogging and what not. I wonder, will I think the same when I will be their age; where will the kids play, not in streets because of the “terror” of neighbors, not in gardens, playgrounds are a rarity nowadays and there isn’t any place left.
Sporting culture is not only about sports cars, bikes and watches etc. it’s just another wonderful way of understanding and looking at life. People in India must wear this perceptual lens as soon as possible for the betterment of the mankind in general and the condition of Indian Sports on the global platform.
