Commonwealth Games losing its sporting soul?

The 2026 Commonwealth Games (CWG) were flagged off on July 23rd. at Glasgow (Scotland) with all 74 Commonwealth nations participating in it. But due to escalating cost projections and lack of time to organise the event, this year will have only 10 sporting categories. This will be the lowest number of sports offered at the Games since 1994. Question arises whether the Games are losing their true wealth. This year Sports and disciplines dropped from the previous Games include Badminton, Hockey, Wrestling, Squash, Table Tennis, Cricket, Rhythmic Gymnastics, Rugby, Diving, Triathlon.

In 2022 in the CWG held at Bir mingham, India finished fourth with 61 medals (22 gold, 16 silver, 23 bronze). This year we are going with 126 athletes, 84 less than the previous edition. India won 12 medals in wrestling in 2022. Badminton, Hockey, Cricket Table Tennis combined bagged 18 medals. And these categories do not exist in the current edition of Commonwealth games. This is worrying as it reduces our chances of winning medals and ives rise to the discussion of relevance of the games.

India’s gold medalist at 2022 CWG Sathiyan Gnanasekaran expressed his views on Table Tennis not being part of this year’s edition. ''When we heard the news that Table Tennis will not be part of the CWG at Glasgow, it was certainly dis-heartening,” admitted Sathiyan. “Table tennis has al- ways done really well. I have myself won like six Com monwealth Games medals. Definitely, you know, it’s a big loss for the Indian table tennis fraternity for not being at the Commonwealth Games,'' he shared.

'' Many other sports like badminton and you know wrestling-a lot of medal-winning sports for India are not there in CWG. This will definitely affect the overall medaltally of India. Hopefully, in 2030 when India will host it, all these sports will be back,'' Sathiyan expressed. Maneyapanda Muthanna Somaya, who was part of Olympic Gold Medal winning Indian men’s team in 1980 shared interesting views on hockey being not part of CWG. ''Yes, as a former hockey player, it’s sad that our team won’t participate this year,” said Somaya.

“How ever, it can turn out to be a blessing in disguise. India will be playing both Men’s and Women’s Hockey World Cup in the month of August. Then in September, we will be participating in the Asian Games, which serves as a qualifying tournament for the Olympics. So both teams will face a lot of challenges ahead.’’ Renowned Badminton Coach Pullela Gopichand also admitted being disappointed because badminton is not a part of the Commonwealth Games. We are hop ing that in our edition in Ahmedabad, we would have badminton featuring back again,'' Gopichand said during an interaction.