India’s present perfect but future...
REALITY CHECK While the high of Asian Games must be celebrated, athletes will do good to have their feet on ground as they eye Tokyo 2020
hary (air pistol) or the youngest of them all, 15-year-old Shardul Vihan in double trap, are reaping the fruits of a robust youth programme in shooting and the relaxation on import of arms and ammunition to young shooters.
Jaspal Rana, who heads the junior shooting programme puts it succinctly, “Now India has backups, which were not there in our times. Today, if one shooter has an off day, the other is ready to fire.”
“Shooting is one sport where India can hope for not just one but multiple medals at the Tokyo Games,” says senior shotgun coach, Mansher Singh, adding, “the youngsters are carefree today, they play to win; that gives them a high.”
But India could not hold on to traditional bastions. Had those hockey and kabaddi gold medals not ‘slipped away’, India would have been sitting pretty on 19 gold. A gold, perhaps, in women’s team squash could have swelled India’s gold tally to 20, pitchforking it to sixth position from the current eighth.
Unfortunately, the faction-ridden kabaddi federation didn’t see it coming. During the Incheon Asian Games, when the Iranian kabaddi teams lost in the final, the players were inconsolable. But in Jakarta, they had come to beat India, no questions asked.
Former hockey player and son of the legendary Dhyan Chand was so disheartened with the Indian men’s hockey team’s loss in the semi-finals to Malaysia that he said, “I was expecting them to win gold but probably it was a case of expecting too much. Going into the World Cup, we need to plan better. There is no scope for complacency.”
For him, winning 15-16 gold in a country of more than a billion is nothing to rave about. “Winning 15-16 gold is not a big achievement for a country of more than one billion people. We should have won 40-50 gold medals,” said Ashok Kumar.
The time for stock-taking is now — to clean the mess once for all, so that Indian athletes can have the freedom to perform and flourish.