The Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna sporting awards list for the year has the world chess champion, D. Gukesh, as well as the double Olympic bronze medallist, Manu Bhaker, besides the hockey captain, Harmanpreet Singh, and para-athlete Praveen Kumar. Sports fans should feel thrilled with the selection this year which included the shooter Bhaker as there was a fear of her being left out because she did not comply properly with the self-nomination process.
Truth to tell, there can only be one outstanding sporting achiever of the year and the conferment of four awards in a year tends to water down the concept of honouring sporting excellence. If two athletes were to win Olympic gold medals or world championships in the same year, there could be two significant performers deserving joint recognition.
However popular it may be, picking four Khel Ratnas in a year is a populist measure to pander to demands from various quarters. Also, the system of awards that also, quite rightly, includes para-athletes for their sheer effort to compete and perform, needs to be revamped if they are to hold true meaning. Let there be 100 Arjuna awardees in a year, but the Khel Ranta should be far more exclusive.
To revamp the system that currently allows sporting federations, Khel Ratna awardees and individual sportspeople to nominate themselves for the honour, the awards panel must put a more data-driven system in place. How difficult would it be to take the services of the sports journalists’ federation to maintain an annual database of sporting achievements and go by it to determine who wins one Khel Ratna and several Arjuna Awards in a year?
The global leader in world sports awards, which is the Laureus foundation, has a fine system by which it picks up to eight outstanding performances in several sports, spells out the reasons why such performances stood out and presents it to the jury who then vote on the most excellent performance of the year in individual, team, extreme sports, etc. There is a reasonably empirical way to measure sporting deeds and honour sportspeople. India must adopt it, too, and make Khel Ratna special.
