Ceylon Today Editorial

Do what we can do best in sports

29 October 2016

Recently, the Education Minister was heard saying that the government was going to have more sports schools around the country. This would be immensely helpful for the nation if the programme was planned on some scale to benefit the country as well as those going to pursue sports.

The government has learnt that infrastructure is an immediate need to promote the country internationally. As with roads, airports, harbour building there are many more ways to show the world that a country is advancing and sports is an important aspect of this. Most Asian countries took a long time to realize this. If you look at countries such as Japan when caught in the 2nd World War and crushed by the Americans, they came out of it clinging on to their aggressor with an all-round plan that included embracing the American way of thinking. They also discovered sports the way Americans thought and played it. Soon Americans recognized Japanese sports stars especially their baseball players.

Sports were a very highly regarded activity in Japan and the Samurai, were a clan that were highly skilled riders and archers that happened to be paid handsomely for their favours to various courts that they agreed to serve. It was through them that martial arts became a widespread activity that could be regarded as a sport.

The Western sporting influence hit Japan in the 1870s with baseball, soccer, basketball and many more including cricket being introduced to no avail. But it was soon after the World War II that the Japanese took to professional sports with boxing at the helm. And they soon had many world champions by 1970.

By the 1960s Japanese sports culture had grown steadily to be recognized by world sports governing bodies like the IOC to allow the 1964 Olympics to take place in Japan. Japan was the first non-Western nation to hold the event.
Sri Lanka is an Asian country like Japan, Western sports being introduced there almost simultaneously in the early 19th century. South Korea is another Asian country which began professional sports quite recently but has grown in wide proportions due to the government helping with the sport culture with clubs encouraging sports lovers to join these and do serious sporting activity getting involved in it thoroughly.

South Korea became number three medal winner at the 2012 London Olympics. They first took part in an Olympic games in 1948 and since then have gathered 243 medals up to 2016. Even China who began Olympic activity after Sri Lanka is doing better today and advocates professional sports. All these three Asian giants are doing well due to one thing and that is thinking of sports purely from a professional point of view.

America by far is the place where the standards of any sport they indulge in is taken seriously and played professionally. Even when they play it in a park or on the beach games such as basketball, volleyball etc. they play it for money and that is how they improve their game getting better at skills, doing it with other professionals. America has the best sports infrastructure in the whole world at any level. Most of their schools have no shortages of infrastructure; it is good if the officials read this description given about the way America goes about attending to their sports activity to remain on top.

There is a saying that most professional international sports clubs would kill to have the facilities American Colleges afford. It clearly shows the interest they offer its students to become competitive in sports. A quotation from Quora on line news carrier says, "There's no shortage of sports infrastructure in the US. Everywhere you go, no matter how big or small the community, you'll see basketball courts, baseball and softball fields, football fields, soccer fields. Every middle school has a track and a big open space where you can play anything. Every high school has organized facilities – at the minimum, a big field that hosts football, soccer, field hockey, baseball, at the most, separate fields for each of those sports, with indoor training and practice facilities. And basketball courts, sometimes multiple courts, are a commonality.

The best sports offered by the American schools do not include track and field as with the Sri Lankans inter-house meets. Building athletes is the major issue, first was to have the infrastructure and then knowing their limitations the Asian giants chose the sport they could be competitive in at the Olympics and win medals. Table tennis, gymnastics, badminton etc. were the sports, and especially with their big populations they could easily afford to do this. Australia having a population similar to Sri Lanka, they too do well in events like swimming, team games, especially women's, because they are out to win medals. The programme for building sports schools should necessarily have the basic thinking on these lines to build up athletes as Sri Lanka did with the Susanthika case and got her to get that Olympic achievement, train the minimum best to achieve the maximum possible.