kudos to saina nehwal for winning the indonesian open badminton tournament.....and to indian womens hockey team for winning the champions challenge tournament at kazaan russia... congrats to indian wrestler sishil umar for winnning two gold medaks in world series....
all the three success stories have one thing in common.... they were neglected when they arrived home after their respective triumphs......! this is the bitter reality of indian sports... not even the emebers of the respective sports' bodies cared to welcome these champions at the airport when they arrived home after making india proud....
now the other side of the picture.... remeber the indian cricket team's arrival after winning the t 20 world cp in south africa in 2007..... remeber that rainy day in mumbai when literally all the mumbaikars thronged the roads braving the rains to welcome the heroes... the whole city came to a stand still with traffic jam as the team was lead to the stadium in open bus roof.....and the frenzied fans following them all the way...!
the above two contrasting pictures disappoint me as a sports lover .... Why we fail to recognise success in non cricketing sports?we all are responsible partly.... for we give heroes status to cricketers and second class treatment to other sports persons.....there are many great champions who never got their due credit because of the cricket euphoria... leander paes, mahesh bhupathy, Vishwanathan Anand, Jeev Milkha singh,rajyavardhan rathore, abhinav bindra and the list goes on.... This has lead to two phenomena 1. sponsors and corporate houses also neglecting these sports and investing in cricket as it is more lucrative and popular... 2. youngsters also taking cricket as a sporting option as they find other sports less glamourous and lesser money involved in them.....
and this has resulted in our sporting failures as well.... a country with 120 crocre people wins just 3 medals at olympics and fails to qualify for olympics in hockey which is sadly our national sports....! Whereas small countries like Japan, jamaica, korea,win truckloads of medals.... we indians are happy to be just ex olympians rather than olympic medalists as this would guarantee a job somewhere....Adding insult to injury, nearly all the sports bodies are headed by politicians who never played that sport in their entire life.... they use these as a launch pad to their political ambitions and are least bothered about the upliftment of that sport....THats what happened to the Indian Hockey federation which was ruined by the dictatorship of mr. KPS gill .... and the secratary Mr jyotikumaran who was caught on camera accepting bribe for a place in the team.....
that sums up the whole picture......
inspite of all the criticisms against cricket being the spoilsport for other sports,it is also to be accepted that the BCCi and its democratic structure are also responsible for the popularity of the game in India.... so the other boards should take a cue from them.......
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment