‘Sports artefacts have hardly been given their due in India’
Acclaimed sports journalist Boria Mazumdar in his new book gives us a brief history of Indian sports through the many artefacts and mementos linked to it. Presented below is an extract.
By Boria Mazumdar Harper Collins Publishers India Pages:228 Price: Rs 1299
Histories of Indian sport continue to be few and far between. While in recent times there has been some quality work done on cricket, attributable to the growing commercial currency and widespread reach of the game, Olympic sports and long-standing national passions like hockey have seen very little documentation. And when it comes to the sensitivity of preservation, India will surely finish at the bottom of the draw. Sports artefacts have hardly been given their due in India, evident in the absence of a proper sports museum in the country. Even the richest cricket board in the world, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), does not have a proper museum to showcase Indian cricket heritage. While it has had a museum committee for over a decade now, little has been accomplished in establishing a quality cricket museum. Contrast this with the existence of museums HY AP GR BIO in every English county and the apathy is well and truly borne out. The Indian Olympic Association (IOA) t too does not have a museum, or even an archive, and the sports memorabilia market in the country is minuscule compared to countries like the USA, Australia or the UK.
In England, sports, and more specifically cricket memorabilia auctions, are established business. Such auctions are held every two months across the country with close to a thousand lots being auctioned over two days. Tim Knights auctioneers alone conduct five to six such auctions a year and some of them are specialised Wisden Cricketer Almanac auctions, raising serious money from collectors and dealers. Individual items often go for as much as 10,000 pounds or more, with the total collection from an auction going up to a quarter of a million pounds.
In India, however, the memorabilia market is still in its infancy. Except for a handful of people who invest in artefacts, Indians are not serious collectors of memorabilia related to the passion they love to consume. Unlike in the case of painting, which is now considered a serious investment, there is a disconnect when it comes to sport. We claim we love cricket and assert that India is the nerve centre of the game, yet there is little regard for the history of the game and its precious artefacts. Private initiatives have been the redeeming feature of late but even these are almost exclusively focused on the contemporary in the absence of historical memorabilia, which continue to be rare and are almost impossible to find. This explains the steep prices of Indian sporting memorabilia in international auctions around the In the span of four months in 2012, Tig Notaro was hospitalised for a debilitating intestinal disease called C. diff, her mother unexpectedly died, she went through a breakup and then she was diagnosed with bilateral breast cancer. Tig took her grief onstage. Days after receiving her cancer diagnosis, she broke new comedic ground, opening an unvarnished set with the words: “Good evening. Hello. I have cancer. How are you?” world. An autograph sheet of the 1932 Indian cricket team touring England is sold for anything between 150-200 pounds and a souvenir of the 1932 tour can fetch the seller a whopping Rs 50,000. A ticket stub to one of India’s games at the 1932 or 1936 hockey competitions at the Los Angeles or Berlin Olympiads goes for anything close to USD 1,000, drawing attention to the rarity of the artefact.
Once obtained, however, every one of these artefacts tells a fascinating story. And each of them plays an important role in reconstructing the history of Indian sport. For example, Abhinav Bindra’s gold medal-winning feat will forever constitute one of the most glorious moments in India’s rather underwhelming Olympic story. The equipment used by Bindra — the Walther rifle, Truttmann gloves and the jacket he wore (which is now framed in the high-performance training facility he has set up for Indian athletes in Chandigarh) — priceless though they undoubtedly are, are more important for their help in documenting the significance of this unique achievement and are constant reminders of the importance of this watershed moment in India’s Olympic encounter. As the Indian tricolour was hoisted in Beijing, the poise and pride on the bespectacled shooter’s visage spoke to a billion Indians, becoming a leitmotif of gung-ho chest-thumping in media commentaries and nationalist iconography. In a country undergoing a media revolution like no other, the Beijing victory created unprecedented national frenzy. In India, where a competitive media industry is constantly on the lookout for new heroes and new stories, the lone gold medal was enough to spark off celebrations worthy of topping the medals’ tally.
For Indian sport, the Beijing Olympics proved to be a landmark. It was much more than a sporting spectacle, not just because India’s performance was its best ever at the Games, but also because it heralded the promise of a new beginning for Indian sport. Bindra was not an aberration. His performance was followed by near-podium finishes in badminton, tennis and archery. Just when it was turning out to be a tale of so near yet so far, Vijender Singh (bronze in boxing, 75kg) and Sushil Kumar (bronze in wrestling, 66-kg freestyle) ensured that the Indian tricolour went up twice more at Beijing. Their achievements, analysed for hours on television, turned them into national celebrities overnight. If the media reaction that followed was any indication, for the first time Olympic sport, apart from hockey, was at the centre stage of what could be termed national consciousness. It was an indication that decades of ill treatment and neglect, which had reduced Olympic sport to a footnote in India, could finally change.
And now, eight years down the line, this change seems to have received another push. P.V. Sindhu, thanks to her badminton silver medalwinning feat in Rio, is now one of the biggest brands in the Indian sports scene, commanding serious money from leading corporate companies as brand ambassador. Sindhu; Sania Mirza, the world’s number one player in lawn tennis doubles till a while back; and Saina Nehwal, India’s other badminton star, all have significant corporate presence. Not to mention Sakshi Malik, who is now a household name thanks to her bronze medal at the 2016 Olympics. India’s Paralympic heroes — Devendra Jhajharia, Mariyappan Thangavelu, Deepa Malik and Varun Bhati — have also been celebrated around the country with aplomb and rewarded handsomely for their heroic exploits at Rio. Extracted with permissions from A History of Indian Sport Through 100 Artefacts by Harper Collins Publishers India