National Games; Let’s keep our fingers crossed

BY NARAYAN UPADHYAY

Kathmandu, Mar. 20: The Nepalese sports is agog with new-found fervor. The reason: the declaration of fifth national games to be held in Kathmandu from May 6-13 this year. With the 5th national games just round the corner, the once the deadpan faces of sports mandarins and players have gained new radiance. At the National Sports Council (NSC), nine out ten people are talking about the national sports events.

The fifth national games, earlier scheduled to be played in Dhangadi and delayed for one year have been important because it is held as the selection games for the players who will participate in the 9th SAF Games to be organized in Islamabad of Pakistan later this year.

There is no doubt that national games, for which about 450 million rupees have been earmarked, has brought relief to the disconsolate players. The national games will have only 15 events in which about 7676 players nationwide would participate. The games will be played in district level first and the best district players will vie a place in the regional games. And those emerging best in regional games will be able to represent regional teams in the national events to be contested by seven teams—five regional teams and one team each from Nepal Police and Royal Nepalese Army.

There will be about 1420 players, 283 coaches and 256 judges and referees. And all the players contesting in the fifth national games for a total of 741 medals.

But the euphoria of having national games has not brought smile for persons related to other disciplines that have not been included in the National Games. The nation has forty-two sports associations. The inclusion of fifteen events—athletics, swimming, football, kabbadi, men’s volleyball, women’s volleyball, shooting, wrestling, squash, badminton, table-tennis, men’s karate, men’s taekwando, weightlifting and boxing have not helped the causes of 32 sports associations.

The inclusion of 15 events has disheartened those who have been left out. National Games are an occasion of festivities for both players and sports fans and events like national games provide opportunities for players and other sports persons to test their ability and prowess in their related sports discipline and can be an incentive to attain the highest goal through tough competitions.

Moreover, the choices of events for Islamabad edition of SAF Games have been detrimental to our hopes of continuing Nepal’s prodigious performance the last SAF Games in Kathmandu where the nation players gave best performance to lift the country into the third place by winning 32 gold medals, most of them coming from taekwando and karate.

But in Islamabad, there will be no taekwando and karate events for women. It will certainly be detrimental to Nepal’s hopes to repeat her last performance. The blame of failing to include the women’s events falls partly on our officials who certainly failed to convince the hosts country, Pakistan to include these events for our benefit.

Many sports buff believe that the biennial national games which is being organized after a lull of three years should have included as many games as possible for the sake of boosting the morale of our players. Likewise, there are other grudges to be taken care of by our sports officials. There is lingering doubts how our NSC officials, most of whom have not had their months of salaries, will cooperate to run the national sports jamboree smoothly.

Against all odds, Minister of State for Education and Sports Dilendra Prasad Badu, however, has vowed to complete the event without any hitches and hiccups. Even as he hopes to give it nice touch, he also accepted that there is much to be done to bring normalcy in the nation’s apex sports governing body—NSC. The newly appointed Badu seemed to be grasping the tricks of the sports trade of NSC, an institution mired by the corruption and non-performance over some years. Hopefully, he will do something to bring order in NSC.

But, however deep the problems are, the advantages of the national games are many. It will give exposure for our players and condition them to take part in the South Asian Sports events in Pakistan. It is also expected to inject new lease of life to the NSC and its officials. Minister Badu’s expression of deep commitment to complete the games smoothly has raised some hopes. Therefore, let’s keep our finger crossed about the success of national games and athletes who have to compete not only here in Nepal but also in Islamabad.

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