Soccer
Mania on sports pages
Why do Indian newspapers
devote so much space to European soccer ?
When
Indians readers turn to the sports page of their daily newspapers, what do they
expect to find? Cricket. And more cricket.
The
expectation is based on years of habit. Cricket has dominated the Indian press
much in the way it has overwhelmed every other sport in the arena. In the past,
individual personalities like athlete P.T.Usha, shuttler Prakash Padukone, or
tennis stars Vijay Amrithraj and more recently Leander Paes/Mahesh Bhupathi,
managed to corner some coverage, through outstanding performances. But cricket
alone, as a game, has received consistent in depth coverage.
If
you turn to the sports page of today’s daily newspapers, what can you expect to
find? Soccer. Formula One Motor-racing. Golf. Tennis. Cricket no longer steals
all the headlines the way it used to. If there is an international cricket
match in progress, it is now, one of several lead stories on other sports.
Which
is a curious phenomenon if you consider that most of this coverage is devoted
to international events in which the number of Indian contestants can be
counted on your smallest finger. Curious because, traditionally, the popularity
of sports has been largely based on pride: national, regional, local. We, as
spectators, support our local club, our school or college team, our state and
national teams or individual players who represent any of these and we need
them to win _ for us. Without this participatory angle, sports would not enjoy
the following it does. The Olympics, the Davis Cup, the soccer and cricket
World Cups derive their meaning from patriotism, even jingoism.
Patriotism
goes a long way towards explaining the dominance of cricket in sports coverage.
It is the only game, since the early eighties, which has hoisted our national
pride and seen it flutter as proudly as our flag. The 1983 World Cup victory
was the defining moment: before that cricketers were simply well-known sports
men. After 1983, they were national heroes and media stars.
In
almost every other discipline, patriotism has taken a beating on the field _
hockey being the most famous instance: our interest in the game has declined
along with its fortunes in international competition. When was the last time
the Indian hockey team won any major international event? Today’s children can
name a Gavaskar or a Kapil Dev, but do they know who is Pargat Singh?
Till
recently, one assumed that coverage of sports in the Press was based on the
stature of the game in the country. However, that no longer is the case. The
media is now dominated by coverage of sports in which we are very poor players
or in which we’re not players at all. Formula One Car Racing is the best
example of the latter: we have no Formula One racing in India. Never have done.
Yet Michael Schumacher is splashed across the front and back pages of all our
national English dailies whenever he wins yet another race.
Much
the same goes for golf. Admittedly, the game is played in India but it is
restricted to a minority. The coverage Tiger Woods receives is out of
proportion to the popularity of the game in the country.
That brings us to soccer. Indians do like their soccer. Especially in the coastline areas of West Bengal, Kerala, Goa. There has been tremendous local support for teams like Mohan Bagan or Mohammedan Sporting. However, the Press coverage these teams now receive is paltry