Sports Science and Physiotherapy: Moving In Without a Fresh Degree

Basu Shanker was a state-level sprinter, good enough to be named Best Athlete of his state in 1986, not good enough to make a living from running. In the late 1990s he left a stable bank job to coach instead. By 2004 he was head trainer at the National Cricket Academy in Bangalore. Between 2015 and 2019 he was the Indian cricket team’s head strength and conditioning coach, and for years afterward he held the same role at Royal Challengers Bangalore, training players including Virat Kohli and Ravichandran Ashwin, as recorded on Wikipedia.

Shanker never studied physiotherapy or medicine. That gap, between what “sports science” sounds like it requires and what it actually requires depending on which part of it you mean, is the subject of this article.

Two different careers under one label

Sports science and physiotherapy get talked about as a single route back into sport. In practice they split into two careers that share almost nothing except the name.

Clinical sports medicine and physiotherapy are licensed professions. NSNIS Patiala’s own Post Graduate Diploma in Sports Medicine requires an MBBS degree, a year of compulsory internship and admission through the national NEET Post Graduate entrance exam. Physiotherapy itself needs a Bachelor of Physiotherapy degree, now five years including a one-year internship under the national curriculum that universities are adopting. Neither has a shortcut for a former athlete, however strong the playing record. The academic side, what each degree involves and where it leads, is covered in Sports Science and Physiotherapy: Academic Pathways That Keep You in Sport.

Dr Ravinder Chadha shows what that combination looks like at its fullest. He played 18 Ranji Trophy seasons for Haryana and captained the team in 83 matches, a record that stood until 2015. He also scored more than 5,000 Ranji runs in that time. He was also a qualified doctor, and went on to serve the Indian cricket team in a medical capacity, as recorded on Wikipedia.

Dr Kiran Kulkarni took a different road into the same clinical world. A national-level gymnast who represented India at the 1989 International Acrobatics Championship in Bulgaria, he suffered a lumbar spine injury at age 20 that ended his competitive career. He retrained as a doctor and is now a sports medicine physician with over 21 years of experience and a former national team doctor for the All India Football Federation, according to Deccan Herald.

Neither Chadha’s playing record nor Kulkarni’s injury shortened the degree either of them needed. What their playing background gave them was reputation and access once they were already qualified, not a way around the qualification itself.

The other half: performance and strength coaching

Strength and conditioning, the part of sports science Shanker and Manuel D’Souza both work in, is not a licensed clinical profession the same way. D’Souza played as a forward for Mumbai FC in the I-League before becoming a strength and conditioning coach, and in August 2025 he was appointed to the same role with the India national football team, as reported by Football Counter.

Neither Shanker nor D’Souza needed a physiotherapy or medical degree to reach those roles. What they needed instead was a credible playing record, a recognised strength and conditioning certification and years of hands-on work with real athletes before a national team or franchise trusted them with its players.

A newer, more reachable door

NSNIS Patiala has also started offering Post Graduate Diplomas in Exercise Physiology and Sports Psychology, both launched in 2023. Neither needs a medical degree, only a general graduation degree, with admission by merit and interview.

Separately, SAI’s National Centre of Sports Science and Research hires Strength and Conditioning Experts, Physiologists, Psychologists, Biomechanics specialists and Nutritionists on contract at its National Centres of Excellence, a current government-adjacent hiring channel outside the fully clinical route.

What it costs

If your goal is the clinical side, physiotherapy or sports medicine, budget honestly for a five-year BPT degree or an MBBS followed by NSNIS’s diploma. There is no way around that cost in years and money, whatever your playing record says.

If your goal is the performance side, coaching strength, conditioning or fitness, your playing background is an asset. A certification plus real hands-on experience with an academy or team, even unpaid at first, is a realistic route. It is also faster and cheaper than the clinical path, though less structured. There is no fixed ladder the way NSNIS’s diploma path gives coaching, covered in the previous article in this series, so how far you get depends more on who you work with early on than on qualifications alone.