Cricket and Then Some

India’s exploits in cricket were inarguable, but its successes in other sports were sporadic. Tokyo 2020 will be an opportunity to set that record straight

VERY RARELY HAS IT HAPPENED in a country’s history that a decade starts as an opportunity and also ends as one. We blew the opportunity the Commonwealth Games (CWG) offered in 2010, and it is critical for the future of Indian Olympic sport that we make full use of Tokyo 2020 to bring things back on track. India, for the record, won 101 medals at the 2010 Commonwealth Games in New Delhi. Yet what people remember about the Games is a story of mismanagement; it is corruption that takes centre stage in public memory.

The fact that India won three medals at the Beijing Games in 2008 in its traditionally strong disciplines—shooting, boxing and wrestling— meant that a real national sporting turnaround looked possible at the start of the decade. Initially, things seemed on track, when India doubled its Beijing tally of three medals to six (two silver and four bronze) at the London Olympics in 2012. London was India’s best ever performance at the Olympics. There was a palpable sense of optimism around progress in Indian sport then.

Then came the fall at Rio in 2016. More Indian athletes—122 in all—went to Brazil than to any other Olympics before it. The mood was upbeat. So much so that the Mission Olympics cell of the Sports Authority of India (SAI) submitted an official report ahead of the games, predicting between 12 and 19 medals. The SAI detailed assessment report analysed each Indian athlete, benchmarking them with their global competition, with progress charts and estimated predictions. More than anything else, that rosy prediction was a measure of the optimism that preceded Rio among those who run Indian sport. As it turned out, Indian athletes returned with just two medals, and India was ranked #67 in the overall medals tally.