Commonwealth Games: Warm, friendly . . . but Delhi short of greatness

Published on Friday 15 October 2010 20:29

COLD here, isn't it? Mind you, Delhi was getting a bit parky by the time we left on Thursday night. Must have been down to 22 Celsius.

That was the first joy of travelling to India's capital city for the Commonwealth Games: the fact that our summer had just been extended for a fortnight. The monsoon season overran this year, further delaying some of the work on stadiums and the athletes' village, but in the 11 days of competition there was hardly a cloud in the sky.

The second joy was the hospitality of Delhi's citizens. Friendly, lighthearted and always eager to help, they were also desperate for visitors to get a good impression. It is always a city, not a country, which is awarded the Games, but even though this event was being held in their own city, Delhi-ites wanted it to succeed for India first and foremost.

"Where are you from?" was invariably the first question asked of visitors. "What do you think of India?" was the second.

It was obvious they wanted to hear that you loved the place, that you were stunned by its beauty and culture and so on. But, being scrupulously honest - either that or completely curmudgeonly, take your pick - this reporter preferred to say that he could not offer an opinion on the whole of India, as he had only been to Delhi. And then to add, before the conversation got too confusing, that Delhi was a great place.

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Because obviously India is vast and culturally diverse, and has around a sixth of the world's population, and many parts of it must be very different from its northern capital. But, like the United States, it has a very strong glue which binds that diversity together. The vast majority of Indians appear to unite in a love of their country and a real yearning for it to be accepted as an equal, above all by the West.

The downside of this yearning is a tendency to become delusional, to suggest that any criticism must be motivated by envy or malice. We saw that in some of the ludicrous denials made by members of the Organising Committee, who did their best to claim that nothing at all had gone wrong in the run-up to the Games.

The positive aspect of it, however, is a mutual supportiveness, and a genuine cherishing of everything Indian. Cynicism does not play big in India, even in situations which merit a healthy dose of it.

That is partly why the booing of Organising Committee chairman Suresh Kalmadi at the opening ceremony provoked screaming, block-capital headlines. That, and the fact that India remains a very hierarchical and deferential society, in which high-ranking politicians still tend to be revered rather than reviled.

The pomposity of Kalmadi and his colleagues would have been amusing but for their blatant disregard for the truth.As the days slipped by, the organisational problems remained and many venues held sparse crowds, it was easy to feel genuine anger on behalf of ordinary Indians, let down by their political leaders.

Many of them voted for Kalmadi, a member of parliament, and his colleagues, and India is far from the only country which has a governing class made up in part of self-inflating charlatans. Even so, it did still seem a minor miracle that he had got to the end of the Games without being run out of town by a righteously irate band of vigilantes.

In the last few days, the crowds did turn out in strength, enthused by some remarkable performances which helped India to the second place in the medals table it had coveted. There were a lot of families, too, many of them including very small children, all turning out to cheer their country on.

Judged overall as a sporting contest, these were not remarkable Games. Every competing nation will have its own favourite memories, but for the wider world there were few, if any moments which will be replayed on TV in the years and decades to come.

But that is often the case with the Commonwealth Games, which have always been about far more than just a minor rerun of the Olympics, for all that 2006 hosts Melbourne put on a Games of Olympian splendour.

Old-fashioned virtues such as friendly competition, virtues which are too often brushed aside as irrelevant, thrived in Delhi. They thrived thanks to the Indian public, who often got behind their team in raucous fashion, but were always courteous to competitors from other nations.

This was the biggest multi-sport event to take place in India since the Asian Games of 1982, also held in Delhi. Breakfast television had already decided it was going to be a success, running the banner headline Great Indian Games every day. And they were great for India, who claimed medals in sports of their traditional strength such as shooting and wrestling, and in others, such as athletics, where they have been far weaker. But will they go down in the record books as great? Almost certainly not. In fact, at the moment it looks likely they will be remembered primarily for the organisational fiasco which threatened for a couple of days to provoke the withdrawal of several countries - a withdrawal which would have threatened the very existence of the Commonwealth Games themselves.

Viewed from that perspective, the biggest triumph of Delhi 2010 was the fact that it began on time and carried on throughout the 11 days without major mishap.