Photo by Antonino Visalli on Unsplash

25^th June 1983. As the midnight hour struck, half of Ahmedabad was on the streets. My friends and I must have walked across the city for a good four hours- but with a spring in our steps and joy in our hearts. We soaked in the bonhomie and the festive atmosphere. The street vendors were running out of their delicacies. There was a hunger for more, as Indians savoured a famous victory. Thousands of miles away, Kapil Dev had lifted the Cricket World Cup at the hallowed Lord’s ground, sending much of urban India into delirious celebrations. We could do it! We had beaten the colonial masters on their own turf in the semi-finals and had triumphed over the great West Indies team in the finals. 36 years after independence we were still finding our own identity and confidence as a country and Kapil’s Devils had played a seminal role in a nation’s awakening.

June 1995. The Rugby World Cup in South Africa. Let’s listen to President Nelson Mandela, “Sport has the power to change the world. It has the power to unite the people as little else has…It is more powerful than governments in breaking down racial barriers.” He should know. It was the genius of Madiba to use the 1995 World Cup as a strategic instrument to reconcile the blacks and whites, and bring peace to a country fractured by five decades of apartheid. Just 5 years earlier when Mandela was released from prison the country seemed to be on the verge of a civil war. Springboks, the national rugby team was for long a hated symbol of white supremacist rule. The African National Congress would have liked nothing better than to marginalise the sport- a passion for white Afrikaners. But when Francois Piennar’s team defied odds to beat the seemingly invincible New Zealand All Blacks in the finals, it became the game that healed and united the Rainbow Nation. This was beautifully captured in the movie ‘Invictus’.

Civil War had been raging in the Ivory Coast for 5 years. Enter Didier Drogba, Chelsea star and Ivory Coast forward and the most famous man in the country. After helping the West African country to qualify for the 2006 World Cup the footballer went down on his knees in the dressing room. Surrounded by his teammates on live television, he begged both the warring factions to lay down their arms. Within a week his fervent appeal was heard and a ceasefire worked out. By 2007 Drogba’s call for peace had become a reality.

On the podium after the 200 mtrs finals at the 1968 Mexico Olympics, Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised a black gloved fist as the US anthem was played. This black power salute was to highlight the racial discrimination and abuses faced by their community back home. They also did not wear shoes to show the poverty and neglect of African Americans. This created headlines around the world. As Smith later said, “We had to be seen because we couldn’t be heard.”

A year earlier the most famous athlete on the planet, Muhammad Ali, had refused to enlist in the brutal war in Vietnam. “Man, I ain’t got no quarrel with them- Viet Cong.” As for going to jail he shrugged it off with, “We ‘ve been in jail for 400 years.” Such acts of defiance not only gave momentum to the Civil Rights struggle but also gave a fillip to the anti-war movement gaining ground in the USA.

Sport is a major force in shaping social consciousness and change. In India till the early 90’s the national cricket team was synonymous with the metros- Bombay, Delhi, Bangalore and Madras. Now the second tier and small towns have stepped up to the crease. Ranchi, Shrirampur, Agra,Roorkee, Vadodara, Amroha are all home-towns of well-known India cricketers, some of the Men in Blue.

Adivasis and tribals, forgotten people for centuries, are now being swept into the mainstream through sports academies and disciplines like hockey and archery. Limba Ram a poor tribal and then Padmi Shri awardee from Rajasthan became a breakout star archer in the early ‘90s. Some of our celebrated hockey players also hail from such alienated and exploited communities.

The Phogat sisters from the deeply masochist and conservative Haryana upended all social norms by winning international medals- in wrestling of all sports. They have become the inspiration for many young girls in the region. Driven by their father Mahavir Phogat their story has been well narrated in ‘Dangal’.

The fabulous Mary Kom has brought the beautiful North East into the national consciousness through her boxing feats. PV Sindhu, the 2019 World badminton champion is not only an inspiration to millions of youngsters but has gate-crashed into the exclusive preserve of a few top cricketers as a media celebrity in her own right.

Across the seas, the inner cities in the UK, France, Italy or the US suffer the plague of unemployment, lack of opportunities and crime. Sport plays a key role in reducing crime. It removes young men, the main perpetrators of random crime, from the streets. Kicking a football or shooting the hoop gives the embittered young to experience a sense of achievement as well as an outlet for their frustrations. It provides a positive channel for their restless energy. In India also it has been harnessed to good effect like the heartening ‘Bridges of Sport’ initiative of Akhilesh in the city of Nagpur, which led to India being represented in the 2010 Homeless World Cup.

Then there is the fairy-tale appeal of sports. Mark Edmundson was ranked 212^th in the world in 1976 when he won the Australian tennis Open. He also worked as a window cleaner and floor polisher at a hospital to make ends meet. His modest take on becoming the champion, “I knew the game of the top seeds, but they had not seen mine.”

The Brian Clough managed Nottingham Forest were a football team’ of outcasts and strays’ who made people believe in miracles in the 1977-78 seasons. Not only did they lift the First Division title but also the European Cup. Leicester City too in 2016 put a smile on millions of faces by doing the impossible- lifting the Premier League title.

Muhammad Ali’s ‘Rumble in the Jungle’ in Zaire in 1974 was one such story. The menacing George Foreman, with a fetish for KO’s, was in prime form. Ali at 32 in decline and many worried about whether he would survive the punishment. The rest is history. The stuff of sporting legends.

Yes, the sporting world has seen its scandals and shown its dark-side from time to time. Ben Johnson and Marion Jones have been outed as drug cheats. The former Soviet bloc countries have been tainted with state sponsored doping. Many baseball stars in the US came under the cloud for using performance enhancing drugs. Lance Armstrong has been stripped of all his Tour de France titles. On a lighter side, his best-selling auto- biography ‘It’s All about the Bike” is now to be found in the Fiction section of bookstores and libraries.

The football and cricket worlds were especially rocked by the match fixing and spot-fixing sagas. The Italian League came into the spotlight for all the wrong reasons and some top teams had to be black-listed. Even the gentleman’s game fought to regain its credibility but it was shocking to see the skeletons tumbling out of the cupboard. The reputations of powerful bodies like FIFA and BCCI have been sullied and tarnished. Exposes have revealed that top FIFA officials were even bribed to allot the World Cup to certain interested nations. There was even a concerted effort to legalise cricket betting in India. After all, it is a huge shadowy business.

Despite all this, the reach and influence of Sports continues to grow. The 2008 Beijing Olympics was watched by an estimated audience of 4.7 billion people over 16 days.  The 2018 Football World Cup final in Russia had an audience of 1.1 billion.

And what about the life lessons and management lessons which playing and watching sports can teach us? Tuning into or reading about Alex Ferguson, Brian Clough, Johann Cyruff, Mike Brearley, Frank Worrell, Phil Jackson and Francois Piennar provides a masterclass in leadership and people skills. Team-work, collaboration, motivation, communication, focus, hard-work and practice, dealing with failure, experimentation, risk-taking, analytics… the entire gamut of things.

In 2018, the world was captivated by the story of the Thai Cave rescue. 13  junior football team players and their 25 year old Assistant Coach were trapped for 18 days in a cave labyrinth after severe monsoon flooding. Let’s listen to a Thai psychiatrist who treated them at the hospital after their miraculous rescue, “One of the major reasons for everyone surviving is that they are part of this football team. They care and look out for each other. Lot of love and respect for their coach. They listen to him.”

No wonder Sport speaks a universal language, and carries the great power to change things for the good.