Among the 32 sports listed for admission under sports quota at the University of Delhi, only a handful of them are applied to by thousands of candidates. The rest of the less popular sports like diving, best physique, squash, korfball etc are seldom applied to in such large numbers.
This trend continues to swell despite the fact that all the aforementioned sports are very much sought after at national and international level sporting events like the Olympics, Commonwealth Games etc. Given this, it is also seen that the men to women ratio to application and selection to the university under these less sought after sports is very alarming. Under the list of students shortlisted for these sports, we see that only 1 female candidate is eligible for selection in diving, similarly in squash. In weightlifting, only 5 candidates were deemed eligible and only 13 females make it to the list of candidates shortlisted for Korfball.
The underlying reasons behind lesser ‘foot fall’ in these categories, as compared to popular sports like football, cricket etc, is yet to be deciphered. Lack of proper awareness and resources for training at the school level could be plausible reasons behind the same.
