Beyond Cricket: How India Is Building a New Generation of Global Athletes For a long time, India’s sporting ecosystem had a slightly peculiar hierarchy. Cricket lived upstairs. Everything else was expected to knock politely before entering. That is changing. Not because cricket has become less important—it hasn’t—but because India is gradually building something that did not exist at comparable scale before: a multi-sport athlete-development ecosystem combining government programmes, private investment, sports science, technology and international competition exposure. The change is visible in athletics, badminton, boxing, wrestling, shooting, weightlifting, hockey and para-sports. And increasingly, the Indian athlete is being trained not simply by a coach with a stopwatch, but by a team of coaches, physiotherapists, nutritionists, psychologists, biomechanists, analysts and medical specialists. That may sound less romantic than the old sporting story. It may also be much more important. The biggest change is happening before the athlete becomes famous India’s new sports strategy is increasingly concerned with the part of sport that spectators never see. Talent identification. Training loads. Recovery. Nutrition. Injury prevention. Biomechanics. Psychological preparation. Performance analytics. And long-term athlete development. The government describes Khelo India as a framework that combines grassroots participation with talent identification, training infrastructure, competitions and