Soccer Mania on sports pages

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