Giving something back to the game

Pullela Gopichand and Prakash Padukone are All England Champions. P T Usha is a former Asian Sprint Queen. Other than being great champions they have something else in common. They are also working towards creating more champions like them – future stars who will bring more sporting glory to India.

How are they doing it?

They run full-fledged sports academies, where they identify and nurture young talent. The objective is to realize the full potential of talented youngsters by making future world beaters out of them. In that sense, they are completely different from the hundreds of tennis and cricket academies that have mushroomed all over the country. These academies are more like schools teaching children the basic fundamentals of the game. The academies of Usha or Padukone on the other hand are more like a state-of-the-art computer lab in an IIT or a top US University – one which churns out world-class scientists and technocrats.

Additionally, these academies are non-profit organizations which run on corporate funding and govt granted land. Padukone, Usha and Gopichand didn’t make a lot of money during their playing careers. There was little in terms of prize money and nothing by way of endorsements. Still they are not doing this to make money. They are doing this for purely sporting reasons.

All of them have been victims of what we call the system. They achieved what they did in spite of not having the best training facilities, the best coaching and support staff and the best equipment. They didn’t get enough international exposure and never had financial backing of any kind. They did it the hard way.

And now they want to give the talented youngsters of today, a better chance than what they had. Kids in these academies get the best of everything. Padukone, Usha and Gopichand want their wards to achieve more then what they did. They are just driven by a fierce desire to see more success in their sport. These guys and gal (that is Usha) are completely in love with their sport.

This is what we can actually call ‘giving something back to the sport.’