Overhaul sports administration to align governance with sporting success

The Indian Men’s Cricket team’s recent performance is being analysed threadbare in drawing-room conversations. As often happens after losses, cricket becomes a game of blame. Players, umpires, grounds, and sometimes even coaches and managers become the unfortunate recipients of the drawing-room analysts’ ire. Poor performance in these conversations is associated more with poor intentions and ineptitude of the same people who were extolled as superhuman a few weeks ago. 

 

How can a brilliant captain in one domain perform so poorly in another? Or, for that matter, how can a great talent known for perseverance and focus suddenly reverse character? Ask these questions — not just in cricket, but across any Indian sport — and many interesting parallels emerge. Why do we rarely see consistency in team sport performance in India? Why are major sporting successes generally associated with an individual who invested that extra effort in training, coaching or administration? And, of course, why do we rarely see globally competitive athletes or teams emerging from India? On top of that, why do we see so many politicians helming or controlling sports bodies? Ask sportspersons such questions and they point to poor facilities, training, resources, nutrition, genes, management, bureaucracy, dependence on government funding, and more. These may be true but are merely symptoms and excuses for a deeper underlying organisational problem. And if we don’t get it right, we may get a good outcome or two, across a sport or two, for a year or two, but the organisational problem will remain, and so will poor performance and inconsistency.

 

The government circulated a Draft National Sports Governance Bill in October 2024. The version that I came across is particularly interesting, as it aims, among other things, to correct the organisational mess and put in fairly transparent processes in place that will be overseen by a sports regulatory board (SRB). The proposed SRB will have control over all sports bodies in the country and will also have the power to suspend or cancel the recognition for any national, state, or district-level sports body that fails to follow the established norms. I believe such control is important, as sports bodies have a responsibility to the country and have been given monopoly rights over their respective sports and the ability of sportspersons to represent India.

 

Unfortunately, many, if not most, sports bodies are run by a coterie, marked by lobbies and pressure groups working against one another. Allegations of corruption and nepotism are common, as are those of ineptitude and sloth. Examples of outcomes of such mismanagement include not just poor performance, but also drug and sexual abuse. At a more mundane level, Olympic athletes have been affected by lack of food, poor sleep and rest, limited time to prepare for key events, and more. While all of this reflects systemic mismanagement, we also have examples of notable success.  India has made significant progress in a range of sports in recent years, including chess, hockey and shooting. In these sports, we can see both the depth of globally competitive talent and global recognition of India as a significant emergent player. In all three cases, the availability of funds has been critical, but there is a more important similarity. A coach in one, an ex-player in another, and a politician in a third have been instrumental in the recent successes in these sports. However, in all three cases, the success also reflects failure, as it has been driven by individuals, not systems. 

 

Indeed there are many routes to success once we can get the underlying model right, and that recognition needs to drive the governance of sports in India. I find that a sports body achieves success in India when individuals take it upon themselves to reach the top. And these individuals then somehow succeed in bringing resources from various quarters and fashion the right environment for sportspersons to flower in. In other words, while processes are essential, it is the incentives facing those involved in the administration of sports that are most critical in achieving long-term success.

 

The Draft SGB, however, focuses largely on processes, and I believe that is symptomatic of how we deal with the administration of sports in India. Take a look at the currently operational National Sports Code as an example. It focuses on whether the administrative norms are met, elections are held, there is appropriate rotation of stakeholders, etc. But what it does not look at is the reward mechanism of not just the athletes but also the administrators governing sports in India.  Whether sports administrators continue in their positions is not dependent on how sportspersons perform during their tenure, but on their ability to manage the politics of their sport. And, of course, politicians are naturally best suited for this role.

 

Many of these administrative positions are voluntary, unpaid or poorly paid, yet they have power over resource allocation and sportspersons’ careers. Take a position, give it power, and don’t pay the person occupying it adequately; this is a classic recipe for ensuring no professional would want to occupy such a position, and only those with other interests, including the well-connected or politicians, will have any interest in helming them. In other words, governance and management is fused and incentives of such sport administrators are not aligned with sporting success. Once in a while, larger-than-life figures reach the helm, and while they are in charge, improvements are observed. However, these changes are short-lived, much like their tenure.

 

Taking a leaf out of the corporate governance book, two things need to be appreciated. Governance of the organisation needs to be separated from its management. And those in sport administration need to be appropriately incentivised. How would incentives work in sports? First, in the case of corporate governance and management, incentives are based on credible measures and data on performance. In sports, performance in the international arena for national sports bodies, and in the national arena for sub-national sports bodies, can and should serve as objective measures of performance. Improvements in such performance need to be rewarded through both monetary and non-monetary mechanisms. Based on these metrics, incentives would include continuance in the position, as well as some monetary or non-monetary reward. I would also strongly encourage the payment of market-based wages to senior sport administrators. 

 

The Khel Ratna and Dronacharya awards could be supplemented with, for example, a Bhishma award for sports administrators. The same principle applies to punishments as well. The continuance of administrators, managers, and coaches should not be acceptable in the face of continued poor performance by sportspersons.

 

The author heads CSEP Research