 Ladies and gentlemen, the topic is nurturing India's future stars, for which I would like to invite on stage once again Mr. Pulela Gopichan, Chief National Coach for Indian National Badminton team to join us. Please welcome him with a thunderous round of applause. Mr. Pulela Gopichan, welcome you sir. He is the former Indian Badminton player of course and is currently the Chief National Coach for the Indian National Badminton team. He won the All England Open Badminton Championships in the year 2001, becoming the second Indian to achieve this feat after Prakash Padukone. He received the Arjuna Award in the year 1999 and Dronacharya Award in the year 2009 and the Padma Bhushan India's third highest civilian award in 2014. Please welcome him with a thunderous round of applause. He is already with us on stage. Mr. Pulela Gopichan, it is such a pleasure to have you on stage here with us and we are looking forward to hear your thoughts on this changing dynamic sports ecosystem. And sir will be in conversation with Mr. Aayon Sengupta from SportsStar, the Hindu's multi-sport magazine in 2008, a football enthusiast. He has reported and written on sports extensively for SportsStar and the Hindu. Please welcome him. He is now the editor of SportsStar, both print and online. Welcome you Mr. Aayon and I would now request you to kindly initiate the dialogue. Thank you. It's good to be here in Delhi despite the cold and thank you Gopi to actually braving the cold and the Delhi traffic to be here with us this morning. I know the Indian Open is on and you have a very very busy schedule. A lot of Indians are in the fray today but thank you so much for being here. So I think let's dive into the questions as quickly as possible. Yesterday we saw Sindhu losing a very very close game and then we saw Sainas struggling but managed to win her game. So my first question for the day would be who do you think is going to be India's next big singles open badminton, in women's badminton that is. Very good morning to all of you, it's really nice to be here. Well for me, I think Indian badminton if you look at over the years has done very well. We've had some great performances from the players and I do see a whole bunch of players coming up. The last two years has been bad for the sport not necessarily from a senior perspective, senior player perspective but especially for the juniors because many of them have lost the tournaments which were the transition tournaments between the juniors and the seniors. So you might actually see, take a little bit of time before actually seeing the names. We have about nine players in the top 100 of the world only in women's singles. I think there's a lot of talent there and all of the players are young, they're under the age of 21 so I do hope that a few of them make up the notch. I'm just not taking a name in particular because I risk missing out a few. So for that reason but there are nine in the top 100 so you can imagine there is definitely talent coming in and I do expect some of them to break in and some of them are in the borders of the 100 as well. So I just have a lot of talent and maybe another year or so you can see some names come up there. That's actually very good to know. Producing champions who can be the best takes a collective effort. We all know even you struggle when you set up the GoPitcher and the Academy, even you struggled in terms of funds and all that. So here we are with the best of the corporate world who always talks about return of investment and that to a very quick ROI. So what would be a pitch to corporate India to come and support multiple sports? Well I think to be fair I think there's been a decent amount of support in the last few years for sport in general. We've had in badminton itself, whether it's the Tata's, whether it's the Kotak's, Dalmere's, IDBI Federal, they've actually put in decent amount of money. There's also when we look at foundations which work at grass root level, I see a lot of them. I'm part of one of them, ELMS Foundation, where Jalaj, Bai and Misdani here are there. We've been part of grass root level sport with a lot of emphasis. Reliance has put in some funds there. So I think a lot of corporate India is also looking at sport. I think when we want performances, we have to grow infrastructure. That's one definitely which is important. But also the need to have, parallely, a structure for all of sport. Infrastructure, coaches and support staff, policies, all of them have to go hand in hand. At the moment in some sports, we've built the infrastructure, like in badminton, just to put things in perspective. We in the last, say, five years have improved our infrastructure tremendously. Today, in maybe 2008, 2009, if there were 50 players playing, today there are 10,000 players playing. So the growth in the sport has been enormous in the sense, we can, and I can just give you one, share one example. When I was playing in Hyderabad in 85, and that continued all the way till about 2000. We had less than 10 badminton courts in the entire city. And today, there are no less than 3,000 badminton courts in the entire city. So you're looking at infrastructure which has grown, not gradually over time, but all the 3,000 or 2,900 have come in the last five years. So we've actually grown tremendously. And there are many cities like that, like Bangalore has grown tremendously. Yes, Bombay may be a bit of an issue with the space. But Delhi's also had so many more badminton courts which have come up. Infrastructure has grown. Parallel on that side, we don't produce enough coaches. We haven't grown enough in that. We have 10,000 players playing, but sports authority of India or the NAS program still produces 18 coaches in two years time. And like you literally have, they won't even take one colony. I think five courts will need those. And I think the NAS coaching program is also not very, it's not sport specific. It's, I mean, the first few years you do everything and then you get into a specialization. Yeah, I think, I wouldn't say it's bad. But I think whatever it is, just the numbers are less, too less. Too less for our country at the way we are growing sport. We are not growing that. And the other bigger concern for me is, when I was growing up, we had 50 players playing, we had 20 jobs. And to be honest, I wouldn't have continued playing the sport. I finished my inter or the 12th class. I was a maths, physics, and chemistry student. I was like all Telugu people, we had only two professions, either you're a doctor or an engineer. So I was also in the same boat. I wrote my exams, luckily I failed. And my parents said, you start playing this year. If you get good results and if you get a job, you can continue playing. Because my problem was my brother went to IIT. So the standards at home were very different. So that year I won my junior nationals. More importantly, I got a job in Tata Steel. And I think that was actually the beginning of my badminton career. So in some sense, a lot of us look for a job security as such. Because in sport, we have inspired 10,000 people to play the sport. Sainas, Indu, Srikanth, Satvik, Chirag, Lakshya, Sehndra, Pranay, the people who performed well, India's Thomas Cup win this year has inspired another 1,000, 2,000 players in every city to take up the sport. Everybody is excited. Build stadiums, play the sport. Fantastic. Now, my jobs are 20. And what happens to the 95% of the people who don't make it to the top? And if this generation of people are left like that, the next generation of parents are actually going to say, what's the use of playing sport? Nalaayag banatu. And this is the problem we are actually facing. And we need to address this now. It's not that I will address it later. Because at the moment what's happening is, our entire ecosystem is saying that 1% is important. The department of sport, the people here sitting in the room, everybody says that 1% is important. But yes, these people are also important, because unless the entire ecosystem is taken care of, we are not actually going to do justice, and this whole thing is going to fall flat very soon. So I think it's very important that we address of the coaches and support staff, the address, the other players who don't make it, those equally important. And then what happens to their careers, we need to actually take care of the entire group. And that would be very important. I mean, it's great that you touched upon employment. Even now, I think if you look at hockey, if you look at table tennis and even badminton, someone like Lakshya is employed by an oil PSU. So do you think Indian players are still looking for that post-retirement job security, or they can actually now see sports as a profession, where they only play sports and don't have to think about a job? Have you reached that point for non-cricut sport in the country? Well, not yet, I think. I think we're talking about Lakshya Sen, who's been in the top 10 of the world. Yeah, maybe he can survive without a job. But the guys who are after him and after him don't have a job. And they've invested the best part of their life playing for the sport, playing, representing the state, representing the country, aspiring to make the dreams of a billion Indians into a medal. But if these guys are not getting any jobs, then it's a cause of concern. I think maybe the top guy has the advertisement. He can go to people and figure things out for him. He could probably open an academy, he could find another way to live his life. But what about the rest of them who don't make it? And it's a case of concern. I'm saying just think of it, and numbers-wise. We are excited. Mary Kom plays for 20 years, right? Sushil played for 10, 15 years. We have Leander played for 24 years. We have Sharath now playing in TT, playing for two decades. Some of these categories, Mirabai Chanu is one of them. I could take an example. We only have slot for one person at the Olympics. The number two in the slot is not there. And if that is the way it is, then I think the guy who's number two could be very good, who's invested, who's worked really hard, who's talented, will never see a rupee in his life. He will never see any sunlight in his life. And then he is always depressed saying, I'm not a sportsman. And that's the concern which I have. We need to kind of address that, and that needs to be broad. I'm not saying give everybody jobs. I'm saying skill them. Figure a way out. You need to have universities which need to skill these people. We are not adaptive. And nobody likes to leave sport. We all love sport. We get a lot of good focus and dopamine by playing sport. So we don't want to leave sport. It's not an alternate profession. It's not only sports marketing or sports coaches. I think you could do anything, but give the opportunity. Have universities which have foundation years which teach them. You take them in other professions. You invite them, lower the standards of others. And I'm saying, you're saying railway job is good enough. You're saying, are we not good enough to be an IRS officer? Are we not good enough to be an IRS job? And you're always talking at the lower level. You get these guys jobs. Why can't the sports authority be headed by a sports person? Why are the ministry not headed by it? Why is the state's association not? So that's the point. In the sense, don't say that sportsmen just because they don't have a degree are not intelligent enough to take on any other jobs. Just put them up there. So don't give us those clerical jobs and say, you suffer for life in this. In the next generation, I don't want to. And it's also a case of concern because when I was growing up I lived in a rented apartment and for me to buy a two-bedroom flat and have a tartar steel job was motivation enough. But today, you're looking at middle-class playing sport. You're looking at upper middle-class playing sport. The kid is asking at seven, and I was dumb and that's why I played sport. Because I didn't ask this question, what about my career? But today, my son will ask this question, what will I get if I play? If I am living in a villa which I make enough in my life to actually live this life. And the question for many of us is no. And I think for that reason, I think we need to really relook at sport because there's a middle-class and an upper middle-class and the rich who need to play sport and we need to redefine the way sportspersons are looked at, at least 1%. But at least the top 20%. I think that's important for us to take care of. But as a coach or someone who runs multiple successful academies, I mean this holistic growth of your students, I mean where the sportsman's life is, I mean there are always disappointments. So how do you train an athlete for that? Disappointments which might come, I mean, as you said, only one person or two person will go and be a successful athlete. Not the 98th person who's in the academy. So the reality is when you say the success, you've counted probably I'm very successful in producing maybe 20 players, but there are probably 2,000 who have trained and not succeeded. And in the initial years, my focus was only on the 10% or the 20 people whom I was coaching. But really when you look at the ecosystem and sustainability, I believe you need to go deeper. We cannot have this kind of disparity. We need a deeper system and I'm really happy for what IPL does. It at least grows that pool. We have other leagues which actually grow, whether it's the Kabaddi League or it's the football league, very successful leagues which happen, Badminton, TT, all of these leagues actually grow, but I would really love to see the fastest person in the country, Indian male athlete, the fastest marathon runner in the country, be celebrated more, rewarded more. Not necessarily you compare always to the world standards, but every city starts looking at small ways in funding. I would say best runner of Hyderabad, best runner of Delhi. I think why can't these people earn a decent living? Because they are still, we are still competing against a decent population and these isolated or small, small breakups of the country and say best Gujarati guy, best Andhra guy, the best Kannadi guy, I think just break it up and celebrate those successes and don't always compare world standards to Indian standards. So you are saying that both as advertisers and media, we need to get back and cover more of state sports and national sports which probably in the 80s and 90s used to do much better. Yeah, 100% because you look at the front page, it's all local news. You look at the back page, it's the EPL news. I said boss, it's like all news is local. Sports news, you just want global. When I was young, I would go back and check boss, my name is in the newspaper or not. Today we don't have any local sport being covered at all and that's a big concern because we go back and see the last pages and say it's EPL transfers taking half the page. I said boss, what about our sport? What about our kids who won? I used to have huge motivation for me to see my paper and I would mark it, my mother would underline it and just show it and that's a huge motivation and I really think we want it back. So DMACC spaces for local sport at the back of the space in the front page when you are putting only local news. Why can't it be the same? And that's something which I strongly feel about. So I think that's a message for us and I think for example Leander who grew up in Chennai playing at the Amritraj Academy, you know him well. I think he won the Bertram tournament when he was 14 year old and a cutting of a newspaper is still there in his wallet. I think a one para came in the newspaper that he won the Bertram tournament and he still keeps that. He says that that's his most cherished possession. It's as big for him as the youngster. I think it's a huge motivation if your name appears in a newspaper or if it's shown in a television even for a few seconds. Yeah, I think it's not only for the youngster instance, the parent is motivated because every parent is being told, what are you doing why are you moving? And then the parents actually can show off and say to the relatives that my kid is in the newspaper and that's something good. My school I would remember and teacher would say why didn't you come to class with homework and you get out of class and then at least I can show her I won a tournament. So I think these are small motivations for the society and for the parents and for us. I think all of them it makes a difference and it has to make a difference. It's not just the money which we earn because that's also not a barometer of checking how successful you are but these soft things are important and we need to kind of look at these very objective which you have lost in the last few years and I truly I am with Leander on this. I remember once and I when I won the Austrian Open and I beat the Olympic champion Paul Eric Hoyer last sit and this was the time when ISD used to be there and I rang my mom just to check up did it appear in the newspapers next day. She said yes just to keep me happy but actually it didn't but it actually all you that little recognition does matter. I think right before that we were hearing about hockey the hockey world cup is happening in Orissa and I think Orissa as a state they have taken over hockey and has done wonderfully well since 2018 they have ensured that Indian hockey has regained a bit of its lost glory. Do you think that's the way forward for a lot of Olympic sports to be get adopted by states pushing them forward? I think what Orissa has done is really fantastic and I think today I think there are various organizations and a lot of credit has to go to the government I think Honourable Prime Minister the Home Minister they have been really pushing for sport I think there is your top man is talking about sport so relentlessly if he calls us up after a Thomas Cup and the PMO is like when is the final what is happening we want to talk to the players immediately and he meets you one on one like this for 15 of us who were genuinely interested in sport and because the PM himself is interested nobody takes these things lightly so I think there is a significant difference in the way sports is treated in the government from the way it was in the past so we are looking at this being very very good You have also now moved into sports administration with your role at the with BAI and we have you were just talking about how more athletes are coming to sports administration we have seen now PTO Shah is heading the Indian Olympic Association Kalyan Chaube is there in football Dilip Turkey has just taken over Hockey obviously Saurav and now Rajabini is heading the BCCI so as former players we were also talking about broad basing this fund which comes to sports so as former players who knows the ecosystem better what do you think you guys can do to channelize this fund that comes to sports in a better way that it reaches down to the last layer I think one of the challenges we have in our sport ecosystem is that there is so many people coming into the ecosystem when I was and this is like a 2004, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 when the building stages of the adminton players were nobody used to bother me I never get a media interview we would never have any sponsor coming no manager coming so nobody from SAI would call up so we were like I was in Gachibawadi in Hyderabad with a bunch of players and we would train them we had just enough or we had less than enough but I think sport we could focus on the things which were required so today what's happening and the reason why I even try to venture into a field like administration which is not what I really want to do is that today you have NGOs coming to sport you have sports marketing guys coming to sports you have the leagues coming to sport you have government associations physiologists, psychologists physiotherapists sports medicine doctors all of them coming and there are a bunch of them who have come into sport in the last few years but the system to coordinate each of them is not there and that's the bigger challenge that we have people like everybody wants to do Olympic sport and to do the elite sport we want to have an Olympic medal but how do you coordinate between all of the good attention people is one of the challenges which I think Indian sport really faces there's no leadership to ensure that you're streamlining these things which are very essential each one is on their own path and that's disastrous and it's also not that you can find a common path for all because badminton is has to be dealt very differently than a tennis or a table tennis or a cricket or an athletics and each athlete has to be dealt differently than the others so I think there is a lot of kind of different pathways which are needed but surely there is fixing of accountability which is the key point and I don't think we're still anywhere close to getting that in place and I think if anything I think that will be the biggest challenge we're going to face and I think hopefully with all these sports persons coming together I think we will have to sort these out but democracy also has its own pitfalls so you want to trust people and say you are in charge for the next few years you get me the medals I think that kind of a freedom and accountability is needed for us to go forward I'm not very comfortable with debating and discussing and and same democracy for all because sometimes it just doesn't work you just need quick action and the other point just to mention is that all of them in sport are looking for short term benefits and all of them have a short tenure your bureaucrat, your minister your government the advertiser all of them are saying I want one year, two years sport is long term and we need to have those thinking long term and not short term So do you think when you're talking about long term 10 years also the new sports court which has been there the tenure of sports administrators had been that's a tricky point I don't want to get into it for the last 10, 11, 12 years now I think 2011 the sports court had come till now there's still doubt as to what it really means I think I would rather just skip this but coming into administration do you think you need at least a 10 year or a 12 year window to actually make a difference? Yes I do think it's important and more importantly it's not about India So you want India to be at the global level in world sport you need years for these guys from India to go to the global stage, build relationships and actually be decision makers at the world level and that's what the growth of the sport should be it's not about fighting us and if you keep moving churning people over every few years that you actually risk the problem and get nobody at the highest level so I think that's a problem I don't have an easy solution to it neither am I saying that the way federations were run till today was great but I think there's no easy answer and we need to find the right people, entrust them with the job and then make them accountable for the results that's the way I would look at it but definitely we need to be there at the helm of affairs at the world level and shorter durations don't help I think we obviously are star sports which is the biggest broadcaster in the country we were just discussing in terms of badminton the games are usually short a match is about between 30 to 15 minutes at best sometimes even shorter and there are not gap also between points are very very short so you can't really squeeze in an advertising break which is very very important for television I mean cricket probably is so popular because after every over you get a minute to have as many ads so you think sports, other sports non cricket sports also need to figure out a way how they can make it a little more attractive for broadcasters, for television audience I think badminton has been struggling for this for a very very long time as well at the international level well when Sindhu played the Rio Olympics I think it was bigger viewership than what cricket had for a long time so I would think that you would want to or when hockey played its final I think it was when golf was at the Olympics at 4am in the morning Aditi was playing or we saw lawn bowls this year I think we want Indians winning at the highest stage and we will watch it any which way and I think gaps or no gaps it doesn't make a difference so I think to get the Indians at the highest levels beat the other people in the world I think is what's going to make the sport popular and I do believe that India has enough population which is going to watch all sports mad fanatics and mad Indians in terms of nationality so I do believe that there's a huge hope and I don't think sport has to really tinker with it I do believe that we need to produce top players and stars from India and Indians will watch if Indians are running imagine if Indians were to compete in a marathon I think if we are in the top of the marathon or we are running the 100 meters race of the world I think we definitely have enough people who are crazy about the sport so I do believe yes there is definitely some element but I don't think that's a big hindrance can we take one or two questions for him from the audience if anybody has anything to ask would that be alright do we have time for that actually we are running past the time thank you so much Gopi it was a great conversation thank you for coming here thank you so much Mr. Gopichand and Mr. Sengupta for joining us here alright so I would request Mr. Sengupta to kindly present a token of appreciation a memento to Mr. Pulela Gopichand for joining us here this morning sharing his thoughts on the changing landscape of spotting ecosystem in the country and yes that 1% to 20% translation that he talked about we really hope that we see that in the coming few years ladies and gentlemen a big round of applause Mr. Pulela Gopichand and Mr. Sengupta thank you thank you so much