s cricket crazy India sidelining other achievers?

India is a cricket crazy nation, but has this craze been detrimental to other sports in India? This point has been discussed far too many times, but when India is performing well at other sports, importance should be given where it is due..

CRICKET HAS been a religion in India. Ever since the 1983 World Cup win, it gave India its first major sport post the colonial era. As our national game began to fade away, cricket began dominating. What started from a few cricket zones like Mumbai, Delhi and Karnataka, cricket now has a stranglehold almost all over the country with the current Indian team line up a great example of players coming from remote and unheard of sources. Clearly cricket’s reach, thanks to Doordarshan, has been phenomenal.

But this growth and reach of cricket has meant that other sports have often been sidelined. Earlier the reason cited was that India hasn’t produced enough quality in other sports. But the scene is different now, we have produced world champions in several sports. Take Vishwanathan Anand, who’ll just be returning from Bonn after retaining his world championship by beating Vladimir Kramnik, but will he face the same response as the Indian T20 team did after winning the T20 World Cup in South Africa.

This accomplishment of Anand is as good as winning a world heavy weight boxing title, but does India appreciate his accomplishments?

There have been several other instances, when Indian sportsmen have conquered the world. Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi in Tennis, Saina Nehwal in Badminton who is almost getting to the top, Pankaj Advani in Billiards, Jeev Milkha Singh in Golf, Prakash Padukone and Gopichand in badminton, Abhinav Bindra in shooting now. The list of sportsmen doing well in other sports is indeed high. May be we just haven’t noticed.

Cricket as a sport united the nation and needless to say bring in moolah from all corners of the world. It is no wonder that the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) is by far the richest board of the world. But efforts will have to be taken by the government and the media to allow other sports to flourish as well. All major countries have more than two or three sports, which are out there in the limelight, it is time that we pay attention to other achievers as well. Cricket’s dominance is good for India, for this sport has given us so much, but this should not act as a deterrent to the growth of other sports, else India’s dream of becoming a sporting nation will remain a dream.

Source: merinews.com