Bangalore Literature Festival: India not a sporting country, shouldn’t be ashamed of admitting it, says Chhetri

Ace Indian footballer Sunil Chhetri has called for inculcating good sportsmanship in children so that India can become a sporting powerhouse.

At the Bangalore Literature Festival, the celebrated footballer took part in a session called ‘Awakening the blue tiger’.

Asked about his experience with football and how we take to other sports, Chhetri said: “I think we do really well in cricket and as per my understanding, in the last 20 years, we’ve always been in the top three in the world and that is why we love cricket so much. The problem lies in when people do not acknowledge good sportsmanship right from childhood. Until that changes, we will always be watching the Olympics and saying why did we not get it?”

Chhetri also spoke about the need to provide the children with the right infrastructure and encouragement. “Whatever we win in any sport, we can have our hand in and say this is the best we could. We hardly tap into that talent and don’t have a huge number to choose from and the number one reason is that India is not a sporting country and we should not be ashamed of admitting that.”

In Chhetri’s opinion, subjects like math, biology and science are important but there’s nothing that can teach a child more holistically than sports. “I don’t know why our country isn’t awakening to the fact that sports should be mandatory. Sports makes an individual physically and mentally strong, teaches him to fail and also celebrates their victory.”

Talking about live or televised matches, Chettri said that whatever is consumed on television, pads or phones, there’s always something that can be anticipated no matter what it is. “There’s something called live sports, you have no clue. All the BFC fans, including me, went there and we thought that the results would be BFC winning easily but we didn’t. So the fun of watching the best game in the world and not knowing the outcome is something the ones who aren’t watching it are missing. Everything else that happens in life you know the outcome already. Live sports are unbelievably unpredictable.”