Golf v cricket: Optimism lost in perspective

THE article, ‘Golf set to be the next big thing in India’ (ST, May 23), sets out hugely optimistic arguments that golf will skyrocket to popularity in India.

Your India Bureau Chief in New Delhi projects that ‘in cricket-mad India, the next big sport could well be golf’, citing ‘by some estimates, 400,000 Indians play the game’.

He seems lost in perspective with regard to the two sports, at least in terms of participation.

At its most basic level, cricket can be played with anything even remotely resembling a bat and ball and in a small confined space.

In an ordinary football field, half a dozen groups can be seen playing their cricket matches simultaneously.

This can hardly be the case with golf, where even a nine-hole course needs a comparatively vast area.

Golf is also by no means a cheap sport and, as your article reveals, it seems to be targeted at the ‘rich and the famous’, unlike cricket which is played by even poor urchins in the streets and by-lanes in India.

A recent article stated that ‘20 per cent of Asians still live on US$1 per day’ and this could easily be said to apply in full measure to India.

It is unlikely therefore that an elitist and expensive game like golf will command mass appeal from a lay public which is poor.

And if, as your writer expresses, ‘the next big sport (in India) could well be golf’, what figure does he have in mind from the present 400,000?

In a population of over a billion, even many times more would still leave it as insignificant as it now is.

Source:
Paper: Straits Times, The (Singapore)
Date: May 26, 2007