Whispers and Tweets, loud threats and court cases have caused such cacophony about selection issues ahead of the coming Asian Games in Indonesia that India’s collective attention has not been on the contingent’s prospects. It has led to the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports getting the jumbo final list of 575 athletes and 215 support staff with only 10 days left for the start in Jakarta.
Had it not been for the hockey teams’ performances — the men finishing runner-up in the FIH Champions Trophy and the women making to the quarter-finals of the FIH World Cup — and badminton star PV Sindhu’s second successive World Championship final, the centerstage would have been taken completely by the behind-the-scenes drama.
Of course, it does not augur well that it has become the norm for the games before the Games — the machinations across various federations — to wrest the focus from the contingent’s state of preparation. It points to poorly thought out criteria and questionably flexible processes when picking the teams for the Games.
IOA’s proactive role
To be fair, the Indian Olympic Association began with noble intentions, taking upon itself the task of filtering the demands by National Sports Federations before sending it to the Sports Ministry for clearance. Instead of playing the usual role of a mere post office like in the past, the Narinder Batra-led IOA sought to play a proactive role.
Yet, after taking the tough and correct stand in not passing the under-23 football team’s claims to be at the Asian Games, the IOA let itself be pushed into a corner with confused decisions across a variety of sport — equestrian, sailing, taekwondo, traditional boat racing and, above all, handball, each of which saw a court case.
The Athletics Federation of India and Badminton Association of India heaved a sigh of relief when courts dismissed petitions against their selection choices. But curiously, the Handball Federation of India took IOA to the Lucknow High Court and succeeded in convincing it that its men’s team ranked fifth in Asia because other teams had withdrawn from the competition.
The Handball Federation and the Indian Kayaking and Canoeing Association take top place in seeking the legal route to ensure that their teams would be cleared by the IOA. First, they slammed the IOA for overruling their claims and then rushed to courts to secure favourable orders, brooking no opposition when making questionable claims of ranking and qualification.
The Handball Federation produced a letter from the Asian Federation to show its men’s team is now ranked seventh as five other countries had pulled out of the Asian Games.
Having finished a lowly 12th out of 14 teams in the last Asian Championships, it is unlikely that this team will significantly alter its record of just four wins in 33 matches in Asia in the past 12 years.
The Kayaking and Canoeing Association sent a Dragon Boat team to an “Asian Championship” in July — well after the last date for entries to the Asian Games was passed — and convinced a court to tell the IOA to send the team to compete in the traditional boat competition in Jakarta. It was akin to selecting a shotgun team on the basis of an air pistol event.
The Taekwondo Federation of India is unique too. Between the IOA and TFI, they managed to select a team without holding any trials as mandated by the Ministry. Nobody knows who picked the 16 names that the TFI recommended for the Asian Games. Nobody knows how the IOA chopped 11 of those names when clearing the Taekwondo contingent.
Indeed, the manner in which some IOA officials have handled issues is not a great advertisement for their crisis management skills. Take, for instance, how they dealt with Equestrian Federation of India and the Yachting Association of India, two disciplines controlled primarily by the Army and Navy, respectively. In both cases, they overruled the choices made by the Federations.
With equestrian sport, the IOA was at first all fire and brimstone, refusing to clear the three-member show-jumping team, but then it allowed itself to be convinced by the EFI to recommend all seven names for participation.
There was no explanation for the flip-flop. Just as there was no explanation for the IOA changing the 49er FX pair after having maintained that it would go by YAI choices.
Look deeper in both cases. These situations have been created by selectors — mostly former athletes who are quite opinionated and interpreted the rules to suit themselves. To make things worse, despite having signed the minutes of the meeting himself the EFI President cancelled the selections made in the first place.
Not to be left behind, the Ministry wrote to the IOA, suggesting in a convoluted manner to revise the selection criteria that it had itself laid down on March 10, 2015, in the wake of the Asian Games in Incheon. The corridors of the IOA were buzzing with how the Ministry had suggested the inclusion of the football and hang-gliding teams.
The way ahead
There is a simple solution to the conundrum. First, the Ministry, the IOA and NSFs must collectively define not only selection norms but also selection procedure. They must stick to it and make no exceptions. Importantly, there must be a better dispute-resolution mechanism — with ample sports component built in — to ensure consistency in the manner in which complaints are dealt with.
Ideally, there should be no selection disputes. But at a time when representing India in the Asian Games fetches pensionable jobs, the stakes are quite massive, and the probability of undeserving athletes slipping past scrutiny and acquiring that tag is higher. It appears to be increasingly difficult to envisage satisfaction all-around. More so in non-measurable sport.
It is, therefore, imperative that the stakeholders — Ministry, IOA and NSFs — come together and publish a document that will ensure that the 2018 Asian Games in Indonesia is veritably the last time that such games before the Games have taken place.
But that seems Utopian at the moment, given that nearly everyone has sought to relax the standards.
The writer is a Delhi-based journalist