New Delhi, Aug. 22 -- Sports Authority of India (SAI) is "critically" under-funded and under-staffed, the parliamentary standing committee on sports has said, recommending a slew of measures to the union sports ministry. The panel, headed by Congress' Rajya Sabha MP Digvijaya Singh, presented a 40-page report to the upper house on Wednesday. The report expresses concern over India's poor returns at the Olympics. "It is extremely painful that we being a country of approximately 1.4 billion population could not win even a single gold medal in the last Olympics in 2024 and most of the Olympics before that. The Committee feels that there is some gap or deficiency at the policy level in this regard," it said. It calls for broad-based talent spotting and holding more age-group domestic competitions. The committee also urged the sports ministry to adopt a targetted approach towards those sports in which India is likely to win more medals. "Countries like Australia, Cuba, Kenya, China, USA are powerhouses in select sports like swimming, boxing, cross country, badminton, table tennis, and track & field events respectively. Each of these countries participates in a few targeted sporting events and win most of the medals in such events. The committee feels that it is worth emulating this model and recommends the ministry to take the concentrated approach in picking up the sports as such in which we have the potential and talent," it said. htc...