Keeping Score: Cricket : 0; Sports: 1

Headlines in India these past few weeks have been dominated by one sports scandal after another. There were the much-publicized trials and tribulations of Indian tennis star Sania Mirza, as she fought community, country and a very persistent first wife, to marry Pakistani cricketer, Shoaib Malik. No sooner than that story threatened to die down, a bigger and more salacious scandal has engulfed the multibillion-dollar Indian Premier League (IPL), a cricket competition initiated by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and modeled after the English Premier League. With a fanatic following in India, IPL is one of the highest-paid leagues in the world, second only to the NBA. With many of the teams owned and promoted by some of India’s biggest movie stars, the league’s intermingling of glamour and sports have made it a moneymaking machine. With just the right ingredients to brew a perfect media storm: movie stars, business magnets, mistresses, corrupt politicians and big money, the story will likely be breathlessly followed by the Indian media for a few more weeks.

For those critical of India’s obsession with cricket, this represents another instance of too much money being poured into the bloated coffers of one sport, as other sports languish for funds. The issue is not just about funding; Indian parents, normally wary of athletics as a suitable career for their children, have become much more encouraging of cricket. Endorsement deals for players have ballooned over the years. Cricket coaching centers have mushroomed in cities around the country. Recently, Australia’s Auckland University introduced a diploma in cricket, and not surprisingly, their main targets are Indian students. A recent profile on India’s booming cricket coaching academies reported that other games like tennis, hockey, football and basketball have taken a backseat:

“Barring Tata Steel, which runs training centers for various games, there are very few centers, which promote these other games in a systematic way. Cricket, very clearly reigns supreme.”

Predictably, this lack of attention has resulted in poor performance in sports other than cricket. Indian athletes, who normally tend to be from poorer families, have long complained of everything from lack of nutrition and proper trainers to outdated equipment and facilities. The country of a billion people won a paltry 3 medals in the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, while Asian rival China brought in a whopping 100, beating even the US in the number of gold medals it won. Often, even the best athletes have to seek employment with public sector companies like the Indian Railways, which “along with the police and the military is one of the big three groups that provide some sort of support system and security for an athlete.” Consider the plight of Shiva Keshavan, the only Indian luger to participate in the 2010 Winter Olympics:

“After becoming the youngest luge participant ever as a 16-year-old at the 1998 Nagano Games in Japan, Keshavan returned home to the Himalayas and went to work waiting tables. When his sled broke down, he repaired it. If he was injured in a competition, opposing teams would let him consult their trainers.”

On its way to becoming the third largest economy in the world, stories like this have finally begun to sting the Indian government. The Washington Post had a great feature yesterday on Indians showing a growing appetite for seeing their athletes succeed in the international arena, with both the government and private corporations boosting support for sports other than cricket. In addition to increasing India’s sports budget by more than twofold, the government has “launched a $300-million, five-year program to create basic sports infrastructure in villages across India, hoping to nurture talent.” Steel titan, Lakshmi Mittal, dismayed by India’s pathetic performance in the 2008 Beijing Olympics, started the Mittal Champions Trust to fund and coach athletes “to put India firmly on the medal grid by the 2012 London Olympics.”

The fact remains that in a country like India, sports still presents a viable path for many to climb out of poverty. For the longest time, India’s best-known Olympic athlete was PT Usha, a sprinter from a small village in the Southern state of Kerala. She may have been unknown to the rest of the world, but in India, she was the “Golden Girl” for becoming the first Indian woman to reach the final of an Olympic event by winning the 400 m hurdles semi finals in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. Similarly, boxer Mary Kom, thought of as India’s best chance for a gold in the 2012 games, initially entered boxing to support her family. In Calcutta’s poverty-stricken Kidderpore area, Indian Muslim girls and their families have embraced boxing as the best way out of the ghetto.  It doesn’t hurt that for a group normally described as the “poorest, educationally disenfranchised, economically vulnerable, politically marginalized,” boxing has finally given them a sense of identity and purpose.

As the Indian government strives to elevate people out of poverty, it should realize that good athletes can serve as more than a way to equal China’s Olympic might. Sports provide big bang for the buck: they keep kids motivated and out of the streets, develops their confidence and opens the door to a whole new world of opportunities. In places like Kidderpore, its the kids who are jumping over hurdles to achieve their dreams; surely, the least the government can do is lend them a helping hand.

And who knows? After a few gold medals, even Bollywood stars and businessmen may be tempted to gravitate towards these athletes, giving a boost to these sports and allowing scandal-ridden cricket to cool its heals and get its game together.