Sports and national interest seems to be of very low priority in a country that has earned only one Individual Gold Medal in its history at Olympics. For over 60 years now, we have blamed every possible aspect of sports for our failure to mark a presence in international stage, be it economics, society, media, bureaucracy, corruption, politics, infrastructures, educational system, upbringing, culture, our neighbors and if not less even starts and planets. We always believed that everything and everyone under the SUN are against our sports champions and we have too many struggles when compared to other countries.
We always looked at Nordic nations, China, USA, Australia and said that they are lucky to have all that they need to be champion, and if we had those blessings we too would have made it big in international stage. But what we don’t see is Africa and Latin Americas where probably things are even worse than that in India but they still get more medals and perform better than us.
Last few days in Indian tennis has been heartbreaking. For a sport that rouse from dust to sky, received everything thing that other sports just dream of, including media attention, and love of people, it was great shameful to see its stalwarts fighting like street dogs in front of the nation, and in international media. I grew up watching Leander Paes, and for me his Sachin Tendulkar of Indian Tennis. Bhupti, Sania and Rohan came in very late but they continued the legacy of Leander, Ramanathan Krishnan and Amritraj. They became face of Indian Tennis and dream of billion. They carried aspiration of millions on their shoulders and made tri-color proud by performance.
But somehow, the nation and sport seems to have lost importance and individual ego, preferences and priorities have become of higher importance. Neither Sachin (Cricket legend), nor Abhinav bindra (shooting gold medalist at Olympics) or Viwanathan Anand (world chess champion) ever behaved in this manner. They are sport gem, not just on pitch but also off-filed. For the first time in history of sports in India, sports person are reason for bring down the glory and setting up ugly culture. In this unprecedented event wherein players have come out in open and displayed an ugly character, I hope AITA takes stringent action and ensure this was first and last of its kind.
