Mysuru: To improve sports in India we should start promoting sports from the grassroots level, specifically covering the children from five to six years of age, said former international tennis player and India’s finest singles player Somdev Devvaraman who retired from international tennis earlier this year.
Somdev Devvarman, tennis star who proved India can produce world class single players, delivering sports talk organised by Shri Dharmasthala Manjunatheshwara Institute for Management Development (SDMIMD) and Center for Sports and Management Studies (CS&MS) at SDM IMD premise here on Thursday said “China was not having competitive team to take part in the Olympic and had voluntarily walked out of 1984 Olympic. The government got together and chalked out various plans to improve sports in their country. They started hunting sporting talents and even went to villages in search of promising sports children. For each sporting events, they identified 10,000 children especially those below ten years of age and started giving training. Later they shortlisted it to 8000 and at the end they shortlisted 50 outstanding children. After nearly 24 years the plan yielded fruits; in 2008 Beijing Olympics, they won 99 medals”.
“Though we are having 1.3 million population we couldn’t achieve much in Olympics on the other hand Serbia which is having population of Bengaluru had qualified for 3 of the last 4 Football world cups, won silver and bronze medal in men’s and women’s basketball respectively and has 22 former NBA players. They managed to excel far better than India because sports is ingrained in their culture and everyone irrespective of age participates in sports and they also have vast number of sports societies. On the other hand we are lagging in sports because sport and fitness is not a part of our culture,” he opined.
On the occasion he also appreciated tennis coach N Rico. “For me he is finest coach in India. Rico is always eager to learn which is important for a coach because if the game is evolving coach has to evolve. If the players are getting better the coach has to be better. You have to keep up to the times” added Somdev. Students including sports management students and teaching faculties posed few questions to Somdev who had all answers for them.
Enrico, former Indian tennis team coach and founder of the course, Arjit Ghosh, Center for Sports and Management Studies, H Gayathri, Program Director of Sports Management course were also present.
