Now that the Olympics are behind us, it’s back to the hard surface of reality. The hype surrounding India at the Games was quite disproportionate to the medal haul (one silver and five bronze). And just over a week after the closing ceremony in the French capital, one of our athletes has decided she has had enough.

Table tennis player Archana Kamat has quit the sport in favour of pursuing higher studies in the United States. A bright student throughout her academic career, Archana aims to be an economist and believes continuing her duels on the TT table is not a feasible option.

In the Indian sporting set-up, athletic pursuit and academics hardly go side by side, unless the sportspersons themselves aim to study concurrently. Once a youngster is marked as promising and inducted into a national camp, academics take a backseat. It’s nothing like the university system in the United States, where the scholars cannot afford to neglect their studies, even if they come on a sports scholarship.

In India, the higher education qualifications for a sportsperson, if they aren’t themselves too keen, ensure that their prospects after their playing days will largely be restricted to the sport they practise. Many of these degrees are on paper only as the athletes had seldom been to the classroom and are devoid of the knowledge or prowess that a degree is expected to bestow. For a country that wins only a handful of medals at the Olympics every four years, the way it deals with its elite sportspersons borders on single-minded obsession, not that it helps too much in the pursuit of success at the highest level.

For this reason, most of the sportspersons that get into the system come from lower and lower-middle income groups and rural backgrounds, for whom sport is a means for their economic advancement. A settled government job with a steady income is quite a satisfactory outcome for most of them. Putting all their eggs in one basket is a risk worth taking, because it’s the best and easiest option for them.

Better option

It seems Archana had the means and ambition for much more. Once she realised, after a frank discussion with her coach that a medal was unlikely, whether at Los Angeles 2028 or beyond, in a sport totally dominated by the Chinese, she decided to focus on academic excellence at an elite American university.  

Education is not just a source of livelihood, but a means to know more about the world around us, to broaden our mindset and thinking. It’s no surprise that most of the sportspersons without a viable means to keep themselves busy after their playing days, tend to find it tough.

They may get into coaching or find a post in the federation or a job in a public sector undertaking under the sports quota, but it hardly provides work satisfaction and they have to be subservient to higher government officials or a politician or ‘sports administrator’ running a national body. Those employed with a PSU hardly ‘work’ during their playing days, but once they retire, they don’t receive any preferential treatment, expected to work like their other colleagues and even liable to be transferred to far-off locations.  

Beijing 2008 Olympic gold medallist Abhinav Bindra comes across as an articulate individual, who has experienced the highest of high as a sportsperson and also sees things from a wider perspective. The former rifle shooter wastes no opportunity to stress on the importance of elite sportspersons having an alternate vocation as a back-up. Bindra believes this would reduce the pressure on them as success and failure in the sports arena won’t necessarily define them as individuals. Thinking 24×7 about their sport and how to meet their target can make one obsessive, which may not be a positive character trait, and could also be counter-productive in a sporting sense.

It also helps in taking an objective, dispassionate view of one’s prospects.  Archana knew that as long as she remained part of the national table tennis set-up, her sporting expenses would be taken care of by the government and the NGOs that have come up to provide various kinds of support. But there is no viable revenue model for her in the long term, once she retires or someone comes up to take her spot. There are a large number of leagues coming up in various sports, providing athletes much more in a financial sense than they could dream of earlier. But that is still limited to the very top level of sportspersons and Archana may have figured out that she would be better off as a highly-qualified economist.

Limited spread

As things stand, people from the aspirational middle class and the affluent upper class are rare in Indian sport, other than in disciplines which have significant entry barriers in terms of equipment and access. There are stories galore of parents having to sell or pawn family silver or other precious belongings to fund a child’s sporting dreams. Such hardship and struggle often results in a single-minded determination where anything outside the limited sphere becomes an unnecessary distraction.

If they don’t quite make it to the top, they suddenly find themselves with nothing much to do. Even if they manage to reach somewhere near the summit, the very nature of sport makes it a temporary phase, often leaving them with an empty feeling with almost their entire life left to live.    

In cricket, it always helps to have two strings to a bow as an all-rounder has a better chance of getting selected and making a contribution. So is the case in life. Sports is an unpredictable domain – injuries, non-selection, poor form, and sheer competitiveness can take a toll on an athlete’s prospects.

Successful sportspersons are showered with awards and rewards in our country, but grass-root facilities are still lacking. All these factors often dissuade parents from encouraging their wards from taking up sports as a career.

However, the trick is to develop a love for sport at a young age and provide facilities to play close by, not necessarily to take it up professionally or to win Olympic medals. That will make better-rounded individuals and also broaden the base from which high-quality talent can come up.

Academics and sports can, and should, go hand in hand. It should not be a case of either-or.