Mumbai’s sports index: down, down

History stops there, almost. The present is so colourless that the followers of the game prefer to drown in nostalgia. It’s not just cricket, a longing for the past is sweeping all sports in Mumbai. Cricket tops the chart of decline, though.

Facts tell the story. After Sachin Tendulkar made his debut in 1988-89, only nine players have made it to the national team. Of them Vinod Kambli, Praveen Amre, Abey Kuruvilla and Ajit Agarkar played more than ten Tests. The first three faded out, Agarkar is not a regular even now and the best prospect, Wasim Jaffer, is waiting, his pads on.

Mumbai’s grip over national cricket has been slackening after the Sunil Gavaskar-led side clinched the Ranji Trophy during the 1984-85 season. Mumbai lived in the security of its glorious archives while other teams learned to play cricket. Improper scheduling of tournaments, shifting of the mass base of the game to the suburbs, lack of training centres in the suburbs, saturation of the traditional bastions, lack of uniformity in coaching methods hit the game hard. Add to it club politics and administrative hassles, the picture of troubles is complete.

Cricket’s story is played out in other fields as well. The reasons cited are more or less the same. Of course they have one more reason which cricket cannot have — no money and career. In football, even in the golden period, the stars were not essentially Mumbaiites but they dominated the national scene in the ’50s and the ’60s. The matches in Cooperage have no spectators today and the only Mumbaiites who get to score in the big league are Uday Konar and Abhishek Yadav. Olympian Dereyk D’Souza blames poor grooming at the grassroots level and the poor quality of grounds.

Mumbai never produced a Krishnan or an Amritraj but it always had a string of top-level players in the national tennis circuit. But that was then. Besides Sonal Phadke or Isha Lakhani in the women section, no youngster knocks the doors of the big league now. The honorary secretary of the Maharashtra State Lawn Tennis Association (MSLTA), Sharad Kannamwar, feels the termination of all-India ranking tournaments like the Hard Court Championship and Western India Championship have affected the game.

Swimming is a nice picture, if the frame is frozen in the ’80s. In the recent nationals, Mumbai returned with a couple of bronze medals. Where is the problem? Tejaswi Shetty, a national swimmer, points to the lack of good coaches and facilities. She also laments lack of corporate sponsorship. ‘‘Most companies prefer to go for cricket and other top sports — even squash but not swimming,’’ she says. The ’80s saw the decline of another popular Mumbai sport — badminton. The city lost the legacy of Nandu Natekar — the first Indian to win a title overseas in 1956. No Mumbai player can claim to be in the top 20 now.

Gandhe, who made 37 international appearances for India and is the president of Maharashtra Badminton Association, feels money — or the lack of it — plays a big role. ‘‘In the old days, money was never a consideration, but today it is the only reason around which everything revolves,’’ he says.

In basketball, the blame for the downslide falls on the coaches. Former internationals Abbas Moontasir and Esmero Figuieredo are unanimous. ‘‘During our time, players were more skillful. But for any sport to flourish you should also have good coaches and good officials. We didn’t have either of those,’’ says Moontasir. Apart from Shahid Quereshi who is now based in the US, there are no class players.

Hockey is perhaps the only sport that still has sparks in the city, mainly thanks to Dhanraj Pillay’s academy. The young Viren Rasquinha is in the national squad, the city league has big players and a band of youngsters is shaping up in Pillay’s school for hockey. Cedric D’Souza, former national selector and coach, looks at the brighter side. ‘‘The sport has changed much from our days. The game has seen a lot of developments. The important thing is that with the enhanced city league and the influx of good players, competition and quality will only increase,’’ says D’Souza.

If the field is bad, the track is worse. There is not even a single athlete of Asian standards. But Olympian Adille Sumariwalla differs: ‘‘Per se the performance has not gone down but it hasn’t improved also. The main reason is the Mumbai University pavilion which decided to impose exorbitant charges which killed the sport.’’

The story outdoors is repeated indoors, several times over. After national champions Vilas Menon and Kamlesh Mehta — and the next generation of S. Sriram and Sujay Ghorpade — table tennis has not produced stars. Former national-level player Gautam Diwan says that the organisers and sports officials determine the progress of any sport. Bad administrators are spoiling even billiards and snooker. Even chess has taken a blow. In the age of young sensations Koneru Hampi and P. Harikrishna, Mumbai’s last International Master is Rahul Shetty, 33.

The string of statistics to show decline in sports doesn’t mean the games are getting unpopular. More and more children are thronging Shivaji Park and Oval Maidan to play cricket. Accompanied by parents, toddlers are waiting for coaches at MSLTA. But in the dynamics of a city in fast-forward mode, they just don’t get shaped for the big show.

(Reported by Jaideep Marar, Vinay Nayudu, Kumar Shyam & Shailendra Awasthi)