Strong arm, over the cricket

Market forces have made Indian sports thrive. Using a sledgehammer to fix some ills can cut down a game at its peak.

As I left home reluctantly for airport this late Thursday evening, I may have, in a nutty moment not unusual for sport-lovers, been wishing my Bengaluru flight, already delayed by two hours, was held up further. And no, I wasn’t thinking about cricket, or Supreme Court-appointed Justice Lodha Committee’s surgical strike on the BCCI brass.

I was thinking wrestling, and not the film Dangal but the real thing. I had just seen real-life Babita Phogat lose to Sofia Mattsson in a short, one-sided 46 seconds. Then a familiar-looking figure stepped on the mat, in a red silk wrap. He was Azerbaijan’s Togrul Asgarov, who won the gold in 60-kg category in London Olympics and followed up with a silver at Rio in 65-kg. Challenging him was Vikas Kumar, an Indian unknown. After a first round (5-0 to Asgarov), Kumar, who had looked, attacked almost like Dangal’s Mahavir Phogat had seized him and won the second round 3-2. Match lost, but an unknown, journeyman Indian had taken the fight to the world’s best.

There is serious money and reputations involved in India’s latest Pro-Wrestling League. City and state-based franchises, owned by wealthy entrepreneurs (just like IPL). It attracts the best male and female wrestlers in the world now for money of both kinds: prize, and price. In this particular match, Asgarov appeared for an exotically worded franchise, NCR Punjab Royals, against somewhat more predictable Mumbai Maharathi. Whatever your partisan loyalties, you have the opportunity to now watch world class, proper wrestling (not that Sultan-style mixed martial arts rubbish) on your TV screens, or in a very decent indoor stadium (modernised for 2010 CWG) if you feel more adventurous. More important: you are seeing the rise of a new class of Indian wrestler who can earn a decent living besides fame.

Fine wrestling had competition this evening, however, and the sport-lover was the king with the remote in his hand. On another sports channel, in Premier Badminton League (PBL), the latest Indian star Kidambi Srikanth (whose giant killing wowed us in Rio) was battling reigning world no. 2, Jan Ostergaard Jorgensen of Denmark. Srikanth is ranked 15 but he won clinically. The stadium in Lucknow was full. Srikanth and Jorgensen had turned out for franchises Awadhe Warriors and Delhi Acers. All of the world’s best badminton talent is here now, playing with champions of the rising new power, India.

If you watch PBL, you can’t miss a somewhat familiar figure in the VIP patrons’ front-row: politician Akhilesh Das who, as chief of Badminton Association of India (BAI), runs the game with an iron hand. He is an eduation tycoon, son of late Banarasi Das, a UP chief minister, and served as minister of state for steel in UPA-1, to walk out furious with Rahul Gandhi one day and join BSP. BAI under his watch has had controversies, including litigation by players, notably fiery doubles specialist and CWG gold winner Jwala Gutta. Indian badminton has never been in better shape. Das never played serious badminton.

The Wrestling Federation of India has pretty much been the fiefdom of five-time MP (four times for BJP and once, in 2009, for SP) Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, from Gonda, in eastern Uttar Pradesh. He has earned more notoriety than fame, having been charged under section 307 IPC when 16, jailed for participating in Babri-Ayodhya campaign and later for detention under TADA. For more authentic detail, you can check out his own website. Verbatim: “Since childhood, he love his wellness a lot. He used to do horse-riding, cycling, exercise, yoga and wrestling every morning. This passion increased with time and leads to deep interest in wrestling.” Of course the only wrestling honour he competed for was the leadership of his district, state and then national association. If WFI was BCCI, Brij Bhushan Sharan, as well as Akhilesh would fail the Lodha Committee test right away. But both sports under their watch are flourishing.

Survey some of the other sports in which we have made progress. Boxing had its heyday in 2007-12 when Abhay Chautala (whose appointment as IOA life patron had us outraged just a week ago) “owned” the federation. The Congress government of Bhupinder Singh Hooda was in power when Chautala’s father and brother were convicted and jailed for corruption. But they collaborated brilliantly to make Haryana not just boxing but contact sport capital of India. Haryanvi Vijender Singh, a star of the same age, has emerged as India’s first world-ranked prize-fighter. After Chautala lost out, boxing declined. The federation has now been reconstituted under Ajay Singh, the new owner of Spicejet and old friend of late Pramod Mahajan. Again, kabaddi is flourishing. Players earn upto crores in auctions in India-based international leagues now, even a couple of “world cups”. Janardhan Singh Gehlot, a typical heartland politician who’s played from both sides of the political arena has ruled it for years only to become the head of the world kabaddi federation now, leaving India in the able hands of his wife Dr Mridul Bhadauria.

None of these, at the helm of games which have shown great improvement, would pass the Lodha test, for age, profession or tenure. There is the odd one that might: like athletics. Athletics Federation is headed by a top athlete: Adille Sumariwalla was the fastest Indian for years, ran in Moscow Olympics and later mentored Zenia Ayrton, the fastest Indian woman for years. He is still young, and fully passes the Lodha test. Indian athletics is mostly in a mess. Yet another booming game lately is hockey which defies definitions of good or evil. Indian Hockey Federation (IHF), led by much-admired K P S Gill, was suspended (by Suresh Kalmadi’s IOA, no less) when its officials were caught on camera taking bribes for national election. Kalmadi’s IOA, and sports ministry set up Hockey India until recently led by Narinder Batra, owner of a hospital, under whom we got back to being men and women’s Asian champions, world number 5-6 after 25 years for seniors and now junior world champions. Batra has just become the head of FIH, the body controlling hockey worldwide and he has handed over Hockey India to a woman, a former national player Mariamma Koshy. Hockey India League is now attracting the world’s best players, auctions are yielding prices hockey had never dreamt of, crowds are returning, talent growing. Money will boom further with the arrival of five-a-side game, hockey’s equivalent of cricket’s T20.

Can we draw any conclusion from this very confusing data? Age, politics, riches, sporting record, nor the absence of any of these guarantees success of a sport. How do you then draw criteria, and that too for cricket, India’s most successful sport where we have been at the top, besides being the world’s only financial superpower.

BCCI is opaque, corrupt and arrogant. It also carries many conflicts of interest, sometimes involving officials but not excluding players, current and former (see ‘Conflicts of Cricket’). It’s also a victim of envy, like any elite club. How do the court, and three sincere, retired Supreme Court judges (RV Raveendran and Ashok Bhan, besides Lodha) address this?

The BCCI blundered in defying the court with the most infuriating insolence. But enforcement of Lodha Committee, if I may say with humility, is a shot fired in anger. The court or its committees should never have got into the hands-on mess of “reforming” BCCI by itself. It now risks leaving a patient cut open, but not stitched back. The correct way was to refer the committee report to the government, and seek an action taken report, after due deliberation. Cases of corruption could have been sent to CBI and ED. They’ve chosen an almighty regime change instead.

The judges have worked hard, but they miss a point about modern sport. It is now about glamour, glitz, moolah, noise and colour, endocrinology, physicality. Fireworks, confetti, cheerleaders, trendily dressed TV hostesses and comically clad hosts are all part of sport, even the once gentle game of cricket. Sport succeeds when entrepreneurship commercialise it successfully, IPL being the pioneer in India. All the sports listed earlier have boomed because they followed the IPL playbook.

Paying public gets its joy from Virat Kohli-Ravindra Jadeja kind of aggression, and no longer from Bapu Nadkarni’s 21 consecutive maidens or a Bishen Bedi sportingly applauding as Zaheer Abbas drives him to cover fence. Sport is now as much about the game as money, tamasha and showmanship. I’m not sure the honourable members of the Lodha Committee ever found time to watch Jerry Maguire. Or they would have known.