Playing at home is a huge advantage in sport. Having the crowd behind you and possessing a far superior knowledge of the playing conditions as compared to your opponent, gives the home player a competitive edge.
But is it really an edge when Indian sportspersons play in home conditions?
At the ongoing World Badminton Championships, Indian players failed to cause a single upset. Most of them including Chetan Anand and Aditi Mutatkar lost to players they have beaten recently. Saina Nehwal matched up well against her second seeded Chinese opponent and had home advantage but fell tamely.
Playing in her hometown didn't help Dipika Pallikal
Before this, there was the World Junior Squash Championships. Dipika Pallikal had the top billing but was knocked out of the semi-finals and the second -seeded girls team was beaten by lower ranked Hong Kong. Most of the boys failed to justify their seeding losing to lower ranked opponents.
But are these just isolated examples or do they happen to be the latest chapter of a grim tale – one where we have either failed to create the right home conditions or our players have failed to capitalise on them.
First let’s look at more examples from various sports to see if there is enough proof to validate our hypothesis – that we don’t really make the home conditions count.
We will compare the results achieved at home and overseas and see if there is a significant difference in the two.
Let’s start with tennis. The biggest Davis cup wins have both come abroad – over Australia in 1987 and against France in 1994. We have beaten Switzerland and Yugoslavia at home but there is no reason to believe that our players have thrived in home conditions.
In singles, we don’t have enough data, because we didn’t have any tournaments in India during our glory years. Somdev Dev Varman reached the final at the Chennai Open and Sania Mirza won at Hyderabad but both players have achieved similar success abroad as well.
A partisan crowd saw the home team getting thumped 1-7 in the 1982 Asian Games Final
In Hockey, we have never won a major tournament at home. We have hosted the Asian Games and the World Cup but both times we failed to meet pre-tournament expectations. The last major tournament in India was the Champions Trophy and once again the home advantage hadn’t counted for much. Neighbours Pakistan on the other hand have always raised their game when playing at home winning both the World Cup and the Champions Trophy on home soil.
Cricket is one sport where our home record is significantly better than our overseas record, especially in the five day version. But that has everything to do with the nature of the pitch. We perform better when we get a favourable pitch abroad and struggle on pacy and bouncy wickets at home. We fare better in places like Adelaide, Sydney and Guyana as compared to Mohali and Ahmedabad.
We have won the World Cup in England, the T-20 World Cup in South Africa, the Champions Trophy in Sri Lanka and the Champion of Champions tournament in Australia. In the same period, the Hero Cup and the Titan Cup have been our biggest triumphs at home. India has hosted two World Cups and both times the national side was quite strong but we always came up short.
Crowd support and home conditions count for a lot in football especially at the club level. Even the weakest sides prove quite a handful when playing in front of their fans. The Indian national side have largely failed to raise their game while playing at home but they did make an exception in the AFC Challenge Cup. The club sides have fared better but foreign clubs have not been daunted by the challenge of playing an Indian club in India. All in all we have largely failed to drive home the home advantage.
The only other sport in which we regularly host international tournaments is golf. This is a sport where familiarity with the course is a massive advantage and Indian players have made it count. Foreign players held a stranglehold over the Indian Open for a long time. Then Ali Sher broke their monopoly and local players have dominated the tournament ever since. SSP Chowrasia continued the home domination by winning the inaugural Indian Masters.
Having looked at these various sports, we can say with some measure of confidence that the home conditions or home advantage haven’t been enough of factor in Indian sport.
So the next questions is why
Have we failed to create the right home advantage or is it because our players don’t know how to make it count?
I think it’s a little bit of both.
We are a country steeped in the tradition of ‘Attithi Devo Bhava’, meaning the guest is like god. We have never tried to intimidate the visiting players or indulged in planned psychological warfare like most other countries do. We have often seen how the foreign media gets behind a player’s back. Our media on the other hand pays visiting players to write columns where they criticize the home team and their tactics. Players are often advised not to read the local papers; but visiting don’t need to take such precautions in India.
This is the kind of crowd we need to be
Then there is the role of the fans. Our crowds cheer for our players for sure as we saw during the recent badminton championships and the squash tournament. But there is a long way to go before they can start getting into the heads of the foreign players. We mostly fail to create a charged atmosphere which makes the visiting player feel almost threatened; as if he is surrounded by a vicious enemy from all sides. The same energy drives the adrenalin level of the home player and he or she just takes their game to another level. We need more incessant flag waving, drum beating, wild cheering, singing and booing.
And what about the players themselves – are they able to thrive in the home conditions or do they crumble in the face of heightened expectation?
Most of the evidence points to the latter.
We have a long history of losing close encounters; of failing to give our best in pressure cooker situations. And playing at home definitely creates additional pressure. This additional pressure can get cancelled out if the impact of the other home factors is strong enough. Sadly, that doesn’t seem to be the case in India.
While the negative impact of home conditions gets enhanced in the case of an Indian player because they aren’t good at handling pressure, the favourable conditions are not exploited sufficiently enough.
Together they have ensured that Indian sport in general has failed to make the most of the home advantage.
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