Indian sport is in crisis: BCCI's Ratnakar Shetty

The India Sports Forum 36 (ISF36), held in Mumbai for a day and a half, or 36 hours, focused on increasing sports-related activities among the youth. Not surprisingly, the current crisis in Indian cricket, following the spot fixing scandal in the Indian Premier League, also figured in the talks.

Addressing the forum, Ratnakar Shetty, Chief Administrative Officer of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) said: "Indian sport is in crisis. But no amount of debate on television channels is going to make any difference."

He added that the government was doing enough for sports. "It is up to the sports' federations in India to wake up and take the lead in seeing that sports is run in the best possible manner," he added. Mocking armchair analysts, he went on: "Rather than going on to the field and playing the game, we enjoy sitting back in our drawing rooms watching TV and giving comments on how the game should be played."

The ISF36* was organized by former India cricketer Nilesh Kulkarni, Deepak Choudhary of Event Capital and Shail Kapri, a former sports management professional.

"It is my belief that India needs this dedicated platform to have a voice in the sports' business in the country," said Kulkarni.

 The event saw a number of corporate houses also participating, their members playing various games, such as billiards, table tennis, squash and tennis as well.

*An earlier version of this story had a typing error and incorrectly abbreviated the event's name as ISDF36 instead of ISF36. It has now been corrected.