We envy Stanford University for being home to 59 athletes from 14 countries who competed in the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. We envy it more when we discover that as many as 36 of them won medals for their respective nations. We are amazed by a system that sent student-athletes from 169 universities as part of Team USA to Paris 2024.
It is time to stop and see why we are drooling, envious and amazed when watching American Universities. In fact, it does not need a deep dive within to understand why we put ourselves in that situation. One look at the Association of Indian Universities’ annual Sports Calendar for 2024-25 is all it takes.
The AIU Sports Calendar includes 70 all-India competitions in 33 disciplines, 21 competitions in three disciplines on two-zone basis, 100 competitions in 10 disciplines on four-zone basis, and 20 competitions in two disciplines on eight-zone basis. It lists 211 competitions, including Pithu and Antakshari, but the dates have been announced for a grand total of four competitions.
The AIU, earlier known as Inter-University Board, is in its centenary year and could have done better than post a list of events that have been allocated to specific universities to host. Set up initially as the Inter-University Athletic Board with its headquarters in 1929, AIU’s Sports Division must take up greater responsibility.
The impression you get when you look up the 2024-25 Annual Sports Calendar of the Association of Indian Universities Sports Board is that someone is merely ticking boxes and paying lip service to University Sport. It appears to be a reflection of the deep slumber that University Sport has been in for several decades.
Of course, you can point at the 26 medals, including 11 gold and five silver, won by Indians at the FISU World University Games in Chengdu, China, last year. However, if you look at the medallists, you will realise that these are products of the National Sports Federation and the Sports Authority of India’s efforts rather than those of AIU’s member universities.
With Government launching the Khelo India University Games to give the collegiate sport a boost with an additional event of quality, would it not be imperative for the AIU Sports Division to ensure that it raises the bar for its competitions? And that should start with getting the calendar sorted without any further loss of time.
One of the key reasons school and college sport have lost relevance in the larger context is the poor quality of the conduct of the competitions under the aegis of the School Games Federation of India and the Association of Indian Universities. This led to National Sports Federations staging their own age-group events to identify talent that could compete for India on the global stage.
It may not be possible to aligned the 2024-25 calendars with those of the National Sports Federations, most of whom will have finalised theirs quite some time ago. Yet, AIU can turn a corner by striving to raise the quality of the conduct of its competitions this season and then trying to blend into the larger ecosystem instead of assuming stand-alone positions.
It does not help for the scholastic sports ecosystem to merely go through the motions. It is time Universities step up the plate and contribute to the evolution of Indian sport. AIU must plan a revival of University Sport in India’s collective consciousness. Else, we will keep gawking at Stanford University and envying its position as the home base of so many Olympians.
