Fame and Recognition

The Indian cricket team is in the news for sometime now and unusually, it is not for the wrong reasons. Speechless many were when they pulled off the first ever World Twenty20 championships, as it was the last thing everyone expected them to do. This victory sent millions of fans of the game across the nation to an unprecedented frenzy. Tremors of celebration erupted in every nook and corner of the country as the unrelenting Indian team thrashed opponents such as England, South Africa, Australia and Pakistan on its way to the pinnacle. After all it’s been a couple of decades and more since a world championship made way to the Indian soil. But a minuscule fraction of our population is unable to tolerate such joy expressed by the fans and the accolades bestowed upon the players who have done their nation proud.

These mongers who project themselves as supporters of ‘other sports’ prefer to lie low most of the time but makes it a point to come out of the box whenever our cricket team hogs the much deserved limelight and rewards for their performance. Narrow minded to the core so as to refrain from appreciating the victorious national side and jealous of the adulation going the cricketers’ way, these quintessential opportunists thrive to get into the frame by castigating the game of cricket and the national team. This time around they have found solace in attacking different state governments for the latter’s showering of monetary rewards on the cricketers. In an attempt to satisfy their primal objective of nullifying the efforts of our cricketing heroes, these schmucks got vocal about ‘other sports’ not being paid any dues.

What sports are they talking about anyway? Is it about the national game that hardly evokes any sense of nationalism these days? Or is it about the popular game of Europe and Latin America, whose supporters in India cannot even dream about claiming at least one-tenth of the popularity that cricket enjoys in this billion strong nation? Big deal, if the hockey and the soccer teams won championships playing at home at around the same time. Not only did the Twenty20 team clinch the title the hard way, with an aura of fearlessness and aggression omnipresent around them, they did it in South African soil fighting against teams with more exposure to the comparatively newer format of the game. Majority of the players in this champion side hail from small towns and modest circumstances unlike many of their predecessors and they rightly deserve all the recognition and the money.

The supporters of the so called other sports are probably combating severe mental trauma if they believe that the popularity of any sport can be altered overnight. Even with the kind of financial support that these nincompoops demand, it's almost impossible to gain the fame, adulation and recognition that our cricketers have earned by their merit rather than force unlike those who are into 'other sports'.