The Commonfan’s Worst Sports Administrator Poll – KPS Gill is the first among equals
Poll – Which sports administrator do you hate most?
Results - KPS Gill – 36%
Can we toss a coin -all of them are equally bad -31%
Suresh Kalmadi -16%
Others who featured in the poll
Priya Ranjan Das Munshi
Sharad Pawar
Jagmohan Dalmiya
Rajeev Shukla
I thought there were no administrators -and things were running on their own
Hey I know someone worse
Others who narrowly missed making the list
Almost everyone who is in charge of running sports in this country.
The State of affairs
I will not bother to get into the details of how sport has been ‘run’ into the ground in this country. A proper analysis will take a book, probably more. We will just mention that ability is not a pre-requisite to become a sports administrator in this country. You need to be an influential politician, businessmen, bureaucrat or a crony of someone influential. In the words of IOA and IAAF president, head of the ad-hoc body of the IHF, Member of Parliament and businessman, Suresh Kalmadi, “it’s imperative that Politicians or industrialists run sports in this country, for only they know how to get more money out of the government”. Golden words indeed. No mention that they are also more capable of diverting this money into their own coffers.
Poll outcome
In light of these facts, it was quite a challenge to pick out a winner from amongst our sports administrators. It was a battle among equals. Things have been bad across the board. And that was well proven by the 31% votes received by ‘Can we toss a coin -all of them are equally bad’.
We had expected that people who run the more popular sports would be at an advantage, their notoriety and ineffectiveness getting more media attention – like the men who have been involved with the cricket board. Also people who have had extremely long tenures – we have a system of getting appointed for a life time in Indian sports – the likes of Priya Ranjan Das Munshi and R.K.Khanna. But surprisingly, this advantage counted for nothing and none of these guys got a significant portion of the votes.
It takes much more than that to separate oneself from the rest of the administrative mediocrity
It takes an extraordinary effort – like ensuring that the sport you rule (that’s the right word) touches its nadir – like hockey did when our men’s team failed to qualify for the Olympics. This led to a national outcry and also the hitherto unseen step of the head of the sports body getting sacked by the sports minister.
I am a proud winner
And that is why KPS Gill – the man who oversaw this great decline – runs away with the poll, getting 36% of the votes. That he is unrepentant and is still making an effort to mobilize the support of the state units to re-capture power makes his case even more convincing.
He is the first among the equals
On a side note, it should be noted that the sports minister at the time of our hockey failure, failed to take any action, referring to the Olympic charter for his impotency. He would have done well in this poll, had he been eligible as the head of a sports body.
Suresh Kalmadi also comes out with flying colours taking a comfortable second behind Gill with 16% of the votes. He takes pride in the fact that he won the Commonwealth Games bid but this event could well become his Waterloo. With the games getting shifted out of Delhi becoming a realistic possibility owing to slack preparation work, Mr Kalmadi could well end up matching KPS Gill in the ‘touching a nadir’ dept. But for now, KPS Gill can bask in the glory all by himself.
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