England and sport – Happily married to each other

Which country invented cricket? Which country invented tennis? Which country invented football? There are many such questions and they all have one answer. England.

Their summer in particular hosts those competitions which are watched all over the world with great passion. The Ashes, which is the oldest and the most revered cricket tournament in the world, takes place once in four years in the country. The Wimbledon Championships begin from the third week of June, and is the most coveted Grand Slam in tennis. And of course, the English Premier League is the most popular club football championship in the world having the best players from different countries playing either with or against each other.

Therefore, there is no doubt that the 2012 Olympic games was awarded to London. And what a spectacle it was indeed! The capital city has such infrastructure which has been there for ages but has withstood change enormously well, still being ‘world-class’.

Players love that sort of environment which are friendly for them to practice and master their skills in, giving them a peace of mind. Its success goes to show how developed England is in the field of sports management, and has certainly set an example for other nations to follow.

The Olympics played catalyst in the English economy earning as much as 20.3 billion pounds per annum just from the sports industry! Yes, you got me right. In a period of another massive global recession, England is one nation which has managed to sustain itself as the country of riches, trying to be at par with USA.

2.3% of the total employment in the country, which comes to 440,000 people, is into sports related jobs or activities. It is also presumed that there is at least one sporting event going on in the country, every 2 minutes! This, irrespective of the season.

The reason England is extremely pleased with this development is not just because it secures their future but also that it saves the common man perhaps the biggest cost of living – health insurance and medical bills.

The statistics are such due to the national culture, which embraces sports as an integral part of a child’s learning about how the world functions. From the age of 5-16, he/she has to be compulsorily proficient in at least one sporting activity. Plus of course the fact that the country has people of different races and subcultures together, so there will be varied sporting interests and perspectives towards running the industry.

This is a marriage which will never face divorce, because a solid platform has been laid in the past for it and the optimism and hunger to be pioneers is in the air always.