Hasan Zaidi: I am an average sportsman!

Mere Ghar Aana Zindagi  actor Hasan Zaidi has opened up about his interest in sports on the occasion of National Sports Day, which falls on August 29. “I believe that sports in India apart from cricket, have so much potential. Cricket has become this God of all sports that we have and everything else gets overshadowed, ” he said. “Thanks to Chak De and some other films that we are celebrating our hockey and players a little more. Although we always had a brilliant hockey team and tennis players like Mahesh Bhupathi and the Amritraj brothers. There’s so much more that we can do in terms of having tennis courts everywhere and promoting tennis. There are a lot more sports, and India has so much potential and slowly it’s coming out but it needs to be funded properly. It needs to be curated properly. India is second to none in terms of competing at a world stage in any field,” added the Horror Story actor. 

As for him, he calls himself a “very average sportsman”.  “I used to be the volleyball captain of the school. I was the cricket captain of the school. I am a fairly decent squash player. I play squash almost every day. I’ve been scuba diving a lot because we grew up in Muscat. It has the best beaches in the world. Also, I’ve lived in Cyprus a lot. I’ve also worked as a lifeguard at some point in my life in Cyprus as a summer job,” he said. 

Now, he is having fun teaching his daughter, Naila, all the sports. “She’s an avid horse rider which I have to learn from her. Because of having Christina (wife) in my life and being able to have an access to Austria, skiing is something that I’ve started in the last 10 years. I’ve had a few runs and it’s absolutely wonderful,” he said.  “At school and state level, there should be proper qualified, funded talent scouts who go everywhere and spot talent. These kids should be encouraged and they should be funded and sponsored. Then there would be no looking back in terms of the sports legacy that we create for our country,” he added.