Indian National Sport, Hockey or Cricket?

Today, I witnessed a debate on the topic “Should Cricket be the national sport of India?”

To my utter shock, I found a lot of embarrassingly lame points brought out in support of the fact that Hockey should continue to be the national sport of India. Once the debate was over, I had only one question open in my mind.

“What do you mean by the national sports of a nation?”

Here we go! According to Wiki,

“A national sport is a sport or game that is considered to be a popularly intrinsic part of the culture or is the most popular sport of a country or nation. In American English the term national pastime is often used.

Although there are normally no official parameters towards defining what is a national sport, there are some general characteristics that most national sports share:

• The rules and objectives of the sport or game are known in fairly great detail in the country or nation.
• The game or sport is widely played or watched in the country or nation.
• The game or sport has a long history of popularity or extreme current popularity in the country or nation.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_sport

Pretty clear that this is not even a topic for debate. Today, as per definition, Cricket would win hands down! So then, where did it go wrong today? Let me try my hands on a post mortem.

The team who talked ‘For Cricket’ had a few interesting arguments but then, they forgot to ask one simple question. The same question that I raised at the top “What do you mean by the national sport of a nation?”

Another question namely “Why is Hockey our national sport?” would have definitely helped them too. Hockey being the most popular sport, back when the national sport was identified would be the most obvious answer.

Keeping that aside, most of the answers from the ‘For’ side were not convincing enough for a debate especially to the lame comparisons raised with any word prefixed with ‘National’. Some of the questions raised and my answers are given below.

1. If SRK (or Bill Clinton) is more popular than Abdul Kalaam, why was the latter chosen as ‘National’ President?

This question is as silly as asking

“If Ice-cream is tastier than Idli, then why are having idli for breakfast and not ice-cream?” Self explanatory!

2. Tiger is our national animal. So one day when all the tigers die, will we change it to monkey or Langoor?

Time for another google search and here’s what I found.

Source: http://www.culturalindia.net/national-symbols/national-animal.html

“Tiger (Panthera Tigris, Linnaeus) is the national animal of India. Tiger is also called the lord of Jungles. As the national animal of India, tiger symbolizes India's wildlife wealth. The rare combination of grace, strength, agility and enormous power has earned the tiger great respect and high esteem. India is home to nearly half of the total population of tigers. The government of India launched the Project Tiger in 1973 to protect the royal animal.”

So, my answer is ‘Yes’. If we are not able to save our valuable tigers, we might just have to focus our attention on monkeys or some other animal which are there in plenty here.

3. Why do we not send the more popular ‘Welcome’ or ‘OSO’ for the Oscars instead of something else?

The answer lies in the definition of the word ‘Sports’ and ‘Academy Awards’.

According to Wiki,

"Sport" comes from the old French desport meaning "leisure"

“Academy Awards are for recognizing excellence of professionals in film industry.

For me, leisure is watching ‘OSO’ and not watching ‘Pather Panjali’.

But if there is an Academy award for sports in India, the award would go to the Indian Kabaddi team because Wiki says “India has remained the unbeaten world champion in Kabaddi ever since it was included in Asian Games and South Asian Federation games”. Fits the bill perfectly! Kabaddi should be the national game then...

4. Jana Gana Mana or Dard-e-Disco, which is more popular and which should be the national anthem?

My Dear Wiki says “A national anthem is a generally patriotic musical composition that evokes and eulogizes the history, traditions and struggles of its people, recognized either by a country's government as the official national song, or by convention through use by the people.”

National anthem is not the most popular song in the country

This question was put forward but the answer was so lame being something like “If Dard-e is more popular, then it must take place of the anthem”

The verdict of the competition was almost obvious as far as winning team was concerned. The ‘Team against Cricket’ was the deserving winner just because there wasn’t enough arguments put across against them. The 'For' team used only 'popularity of cricket' for their support.

Many countries have national games like Lacrosse (Canada), Baseball (US’ national pasttime) which are not part of Olympics. So the argument that Cricket is not a part of Olympics and hence not the national game doesn’t hold good anyways.

One question still remains. What did I feel like when the poll was taken towards the end of the exercise and it was found that more than 90% of the audience found that Hockey should continue as the national game?

I felt the same way, Henry Fonda would have felt at the beginning of the movie ’12 angry men’, being one of the jury members trying to convince the other eleven members his point of view, that is ‘Not Guilty!’. Just that there was no talking for me there :)

My objective here is not to recommend passing a bill in the parliament so that cricket is made the national sport. I was genuinely interested to know why 'Hockey' is still being promoted as the national game in all GK books and ignored everywhere else. My intentions were not to prove 'Not guilty'. Instead it was just a reality check. And Still I am not convinced..

Disclaimer : It is very easy to do a post mortem like this. It is quite difficult to sit on a stage and engage in a debate. So full points to the participants :)