India looks at sporting life beyond cricket

By Sanjay Rajan

MUMBAI, India (Reuters) - Cricket is not the only sport in India -- that is the message that Olympic officials in the country of 1.1 billion people are trying to get across.

Cricket became a national obsession following India's surprise victory in the 1983 World Cup while interest in other sports dwindled for lack of success in the international arena.

India has the largest global television cricket audience but, with the world's fastest growing major economy after China, is attracting interest from other spectator sports keen to tap into the market, including soccer, Formula One and golf.

Indian Olympic Association president Suresh Kalmadi believes the time has come for India to move on from being a one-sport country and expects the Commonwealth Games in New Delhi in two years' time to be the catalyst for the change.

The 2010 Games will be the first major, multi-discipline event that India has hosted since the Asian Games in 1982.

"This is a great incentive to promote Olympic sports in the country," Kalmadi said. "We want to change (corporate) mindset through the Commonwealth Games.

"Unfortunately (funding from) the industry all goes to cricket. If they get one gold medal for the country, the kind of mileage the company will get will be considerably more than what they get in cricket.

"Hopefully then the private sector will come in a big way to support Olympic sports in the future."

HOCKEY DECLINE

Kalmadi said money was the key to improving India's dismal showing at Olympic Games since the decline of the national hockey team in the 1980s, due in part to a switch to artificial turf which favored power, speed and accuracy rather than deft stick-work.

This year, the eight-times Olympic hockey champions are in danger of missing the Games for the first time and need to win a qualifying tournament in Chile, which starts on Saturday, to get a ticket to Beijing.

Despite being the world's second most populous nation, India has won only four individual medals in Olympic history -- or six according to some record books.

Before a 1952 wrestling bronze, tennis bronze in 1996, weightlifting bronze in 2000 and a shooting silver four years ago, Norman Pritchard won two silvers on the athletics track in 1900.

Pritchard, born in Calcutta of English parents, is listed by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) as Indian but by many record books as English. His feat came 28 years before India officially competed in the Olympics.

Whichever way Indians look at it, the total is paltry for such a big nation.