Indian vs. Australian athletes
| India | Australia | |
| At night |  |
 |
| GDP | $720B | $420B |
| Pop. | 1.1 billion | 20 million |
| 2004 Summer Olympics |
1 medal | 49 medals |
| Football World Cup |
Qualified for round 1 but withdrew |
Got to round 2 |
| Cricket World Cup |
1 win | 3 wins |
| Hockey World Cup |
1 win |
1 win |
Is Australia the Sparta of sports?
on Sunday, March 11th, 2007, 3:22 am in Economics, Sports › 
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Hoarding
Dead tired of hearing excuses, more excuses…almost ascending to the level of being maudlin. Indians are not particularly known for their physical capabilities. Lets accept it. If you want to understand how one gets to Olympic or World Class capabilities…read about Spartak Tennis Club in Moscow.
& Manish…I had been trying to ‘capture’ Assies exploits in sports, which are disproportionate to their population. And “Sparta” is the best coined word that captures it all!!
NYT on the Spartak Tennis Club. Interesting read, thanks.
Theres a massive sports culture here in Oz which is lacking in India.
While indian attitude towards sports is best summarised in - padoge likhoge banoge nawab, kheloge kudoge hovoge kharab.
That piece of statistic regarding football world cup is flawed. India has never qualified to play in the world cup whereas Australia did so in the last edition. India was disqualified in round 1 of the world cup qualifiers itself !
That’s just about the best word Manish. And those are just a few examples of our sporting exploits, there are a lot more collectively and individually.
We pump a lot of money into sport, and have some of, if not the best, sports science in the world at the Australian Institute of Sport, as a result we punch above our weight globally. It’s also a cultural thing, we value performance sport in a way that few countries do, I don’t think that’s a good thing BTW because Australians are becoming fatter and fatter as the years go by. Despite the success, we’re rapidly becoming a nation of spectators and not participants.
I for one would love to see much of the (Govt) money we spend on sport redirected into public health sporting activities that get people off their lounges and out on the sporting fields having fun.
The team qualified in ‘50 but withdrew because FIFA wouldn’t let them play barefoot.
Traditioanlly, sports has been viewed as a means of “recreation” in India. Very few people take it seriously and even fewer people consider it as a career option. When in school, the constant presssure by the parents and peers is aimed towards ‘academics’ and extra-curricular (co-curricular) activities are encouraged only if the child is getting good grades.
Common man’s mentatlity towards cricket is changing slowly and that can be attibuted to the pay packages that these players are guarenteed (even in the domestic circuit). Sadly enough, all the other sports in India have been langusihing far-far behind.
That sounds like an excuse actually. And Manish, since when did you start deleting comments?
shova - i read your comment in the “Sandalwood and Ivory” thread..not this one.
Let me go deeper into the statistics.
Although the population of India is huge close to 50% of the kids are malnourished. Those who do get adequate nourishment and grow up to be healthy have to face the hardship of life.
Sports as a profession in India is close to impossible to sustain.
Let me give you a personal account. Although I come from upper middle class background I never bought the real cricket ball and bat while growing up in India as they were considered TOO EXPENSIVE. The only cricket, with cricket ball that I played, I actually played AFTER coming to the US. I can understand why other families might also be doing that, with some exceptions where the parents find out that the kid has real talent. And cricket is the most popular sport in India, imagine what would happen if you are (start sarcasm)unfortunate (end sarcasm) to be born with talent for some other game.
That’s the difference. It just ’sounds’ like one..but is not. I have made ‘a’ reference.. to the prevailing ‘perception’ .. Not an objective & opinionated statement.
Indians as a country are poor and they see education as a way out, as against African Americans who look to sports and music in a similar fashion.
This explains the over representation of African Americans in sports and Indians in academia and several other jobs that require using the brain.
We, my sepia friends are fostering a culture of nerds and hence have been losing our men(as in a man’s man unlike you and me)in this struggle for survival.
This is exactly opposite to nature’s way of evolving it’s creations, where in the fittest and the strongest pass on the genes.
The irony here is ,we lesser men just don’t wanna shut up and be grateful that we were lucky enough to survive and pass on our genes, we want to go on ranting and raving about our country not producing athletes.
The reason so many people look upto athletes is that ,that is how they themselves wished they were..fit and strong and alpha.
The truth is that ,this breed is dying away are dying away and we lesser men would want to save them for our ENTERTAINMENT and the pride of our sepia motherland.
Hi,
We are not in good in sports because it is simle - We are not sportive !
We are good in Politics because we are politiical minded and litigatious. And being litigatious can help in creating vote banks.
We have a high population growth simply because, we are not acheivement oriented. we do not mind overburden of having more children.
We have over a period of time fine tuned our education system to one in which we can score by mugging up, because we do not value creativity. We are creative, mind you.
We have no good roads because we do not value time.