SAG and Bangladesh

Let me deviate from our usual subject cricket this week and talk about the 11th South Asian Games (SAG) held in Dhaka Bangladesh. After eight days of competition, on Saturday Sri Lanka is placed fourth with just four gold medals. India is way ahead of the rest with 40 gold medals, followed by Pakistan with 6. Surprisingly hosts Bangladesh is third with five golds.
India and Pakistan running ahead of Sri Lanka is not a big issue. But Bangladesh beating us is simply strange… However all credits to them.
Now Sri Lanka sent a contingent of over 300 for the games. What did we expect? To be beaten by Bangladesh. Let me also add here that with the start of athletics, Sri Lanka may go past Bangladesh in the medal tally. But as things stand now Bangladesh is ahead of us.
This time Bangladesh showed a vast improvement. See, their football team has reached the final.
The huge Sri Lankan contingent and the officials back at home can learn a good lesson from Bangladesh, if they want to. Bangladesh has prepared well for the SAG. Most of their teams have foreign coaches. What about Sri Lanka? We have our medal hopes but they couldn’t bring their own coaches here. Instead some other coaches made the journey.
What are sports where we can win medals? I’m sure our officials didn’t know that. So they just dispatched hundreds of athletes hoping they may win some medals. But look at Bangladesh. They have rightly identified the sports disciplines where they can win medals and trained athletes for them. It is useless if you can’t win medals even if you filed a huge contingent of athletes. Some officials who accompanied the teams here were not seen on grounds, but on roads.
When the SAG was staged in Sri Lanka some time back, the country won admiration for good organizing. But Bangladesh this time has invested on the future. They have built indoor facilities for various sports around the main venue, and they can be made use for future sporting events. But, what about Sri Lanka? We staged SAG and what have we got today? The squash federation doesn’t have a decent court.
That’s how our officials prepared for the SAG. If Sri Lanka gets the chance to stage it again we’ll have to start from scratch. We’ll have to build indoor courts etc.