Sports Ministry wants NSFs to have robust grading system

Express News Service

CHENNAI: A few events may soon be a regular feature in all sports calendars soon. The sports ministry has suggested to the National Sports Federations (NSFs) to have a proper ranking system in place for their athletes during their Annual Calendar for Training and Competition (ACTC). 

Though some of the NSFs already have their own ranking system and nationals, sports like wrestling don’t. Ranking national tournaments can be part of the ACTC and could be conducted under government grants. Racquet sports like table tennis, badminton and squash have a mechanism that can rank players.

The ministry told NSFs that they should have an appropriate selection policy for athletes so that there is no controversy later. Though uploading appropriate selection policy on the website has been part of the ministry’s earlier directive and also sports code, some of the federations are not following it properly. And ministry had insisted that the selection policy details should be transparent and uploaded on the websites of the NSFs. The Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) feels their selection and trials are transparent enough. 

Selection policy has been an issue that had been irking the ministry for a while. There have been cases when athletes land up in court and this is something that they would want to avoid. Sometimes it gets ugly as it happened before the Rio Olympics when double Olympic medallist Sushil Kumar wanted a trial against Narsingh Yadav. It turned so messy that CBI had to be called in. In the end, nobody represented the country as Narsingh tested positive. 

The recent unwarranted case involving table tennis player Manika Batra and the Table Tennis Federation of India too could have prompted the ministry and the SAI to come up with this policy. The matter is still in court. However, the bone of contention is whether it is mandatory to attend national camp to make one available for selection. Some NSFs feel that if the court says national camp will not be mandatory, it will create a lot of problem for all, including SAI who prefers athletes to be part of the camps.

Another selection issue being heard in court is boxer Arundhati Choudhury’s plea to fight Lovlina Borgohain to decide who can represent India at the women’s Worlds (deferred to next year). The court had been critical about selection policies during hearings. The federation has told court that selection trials would be conducted. 

Some of the federations feel that top players should be exempted from participating in nationals or ranking events. Their argument is that athletes like Olympic champion, Neeraj Chopra, PV Sindhu are already playing a lot of international meets. They should be able to chose their events at home.