Big names from the sporting arena including Sania Mirza, Mithali Raj, and Pullela Gopichand raised some valid points on encouraging women players and developing essential infrastructure to promote sports in our country during a session on Sports at the Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES) in Hyderabad.
Indian Women’s Cricket team skipper Mithali Raj while speaking said sports infrastructure should be upgraded in schools so that more and more girl students can get an opportunity to play a game according to her choice.
Justifying her statement, she said after India’s recent success at the Women’s World Cup more girls are taking up sports as a career option, but lack of infrastructure is coming in the way.
“I don’t get to see schools having the infrastructure for sports or the school emphasising on sports… they do not have that right kind of channel,” Raj stated.
At a time when every game has become so competitive, Mithali feels there is a need to have everything in place so that a young girl who aspires to take sports as a profession knows the roadmap.
Tennis star Sania Mirza pointed out the growing interest among girls to play sports citing examples from the past when she was young.
“When I started playing, we used to play on cow dung courts; there was no hard or clay court… Now, for under 14 or 16 years of age, you get at least 1,000 entries, and that shows there is an interest among both girls and guys, but girls, I think, a lot more because of opportunities,” Sania stated.
The 31-year-old Sania further admitted media could play a key role by encouraging sportswomen to create ways to get more women in playing sports.
The highly-rated badminton coach Pullela Gopichand was of the opinion that government should runs sports rather than the industry, as they will run only a few of them when asked who should run sports.
Gopichand further maintained traditional sports like wrestling, kho-kho, kabaddi, archery, and malkhamb do not require expensive equipment and can be played in a small area. He further added that nowadays, people have moved from those spaces to spaces which goes into marketable, advertising expensive equipment.
Gopichand made a vital point stating that sports need to be played, and it is beyond winning.
“We need to celebrate our local players. Sports diplomacy, sports entrepreneurs, sports physiotherapists, sports administration, all of them need to be looked at. We need to celebrate sports by itself,” he concluded highlighting the importance of recognising local players.
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