Small beginning for Indian sport

For two long decades, a bat and a ball have entrapped the country in their soporific spell. Anand may have triggered a mini chess revolution, Paes and Bhupathi may have caught our imagination and Randhawa and Atwal may have given us hope but nobody has managed to take on the behemoth called cricket.
A few days from now, hockey will aim for precisely that: a tentative shot at regaining its pre-eminent place in our hearts, and its position on top of the popularity charts.Yes, the Premier Hockey League is going where no sport has gone before: new format, exciting colours, modified rules and live television. It couldn''t get better than this.
The big test will, however, come on Thursday when the lights are switched on in Hyderabad; it will face a bigger moment next year when it heads for other cities and everybody is forced to fend for himself. At this moment, of course, a hundred things look wrong with the PHL; a thousand skeptics might also be praying that it''d be a super-flop show. But thankfully, none of them have deterred the men behind the idea.
The Premier Hockey League is the first step in the right direction. It has, of course, taken a long time coming; maybe, it''s already too late. The world has probably gone so far ahead of us on the astro-turf that we might never catch up with them. It should, therefore, not be looked at from that perspective; one shouldn''t expect India to become champions overnight.
This should be seen as just a small beginning for Indian sport; if others try and emulate it, we might finally have a revolution.
For far too long, the country has been so entangled in its own problems that this important element in our lives has been ignored. It''s time for a change; it''s time to demand for a change. We don''t need one-off winners or fly-by-night champions anymore; we need a sports culture.
We need heroes, not villains who masquerade as sports administrators; we need players who can make us smile or cry with them; we need stars who can inspire our children; we need matches that give us hope and promise a better tomorrow.
Sadly, today no family plans to spend an evening watching a match together at the stadium. In fact, a day out at the games is a painful exercise: dirty toilets, no drinking water, uncomfortable seats, obnoxious food and below-quality competition. How can you expect sport to become an integral part of our lives?
Will somebody wake up and do something about this. We are not asking for too much anyway: just a couple of hours of wholesome entertainment. A place where you and I can go, enjoy the ambience, have a good time and come back without feeling that we''ve been taken for a ride.
Spectators at the ground are not a bonus anymore; they are the lifeline of any sport. As we enter an increasingly smaller world, another bigger truth is emerging: television is emperor today; it rules our lives, from morning to night. It also decides which sport should live and which should die.
Until administrators acknowledge and understand this fact, we will continue to survive on a lop-sided diet of mediocre films and over-hyped cricketers.