Indeed, the American job portal has revealed that there has been a rise in searches related to sports jobs by 11 per cent in August. However, there has been a 25 per cent dip in postings in the sports jobs space, indicating a shortfall of sports jobs.

With the shutdown of sports complexes, gyms and stadiums, many trainers and coaches have been rendered jobless in the past few months.

The Indian Premier League (IPL) season, which is poised to start on September 19, will offer little relief as the tournaments are set to take place in the UAE this year. Therefore, officials and groundsmen who worked at the stadiums will still have no work. It is an opportunity lost for vendors too.

However, there is some hope with the Sports Ministry gearing up to set up the Khelo India Centre of Excellence (KISCE) in six more states, under the Khelo India scheme.

Earlier this year, in the first phase, the Ministry had identified eight centres — Kerala, Karnataka, Odisha, Telengana, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Mizoram and Nagaland— to set up KISCE.

In this second phase, the establishment of KISCE will take place in Assam, Dadra & Nagar Haveli, Daman & Diu, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Meghalaya and Sikkim.

The Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) has recently approved the proposal of the Department of Sports to grant the benefit of the sports quota to athletes of 20 new disciplines, including baseball, bodybuilding (earlier part of Gymnastics), cycling polo, deaf sports, fencing, Kudo, mallakhamb, motorsports, netball, para-sports (earlier part of Paralympics and Para Asian Games), Pencak silat, roll ball, rugby, sepak takraw, soft tennis, shooting the ball, tenpin bowling, triathlon, tug-of-war and wushu.