As India frenzies in its biggest annual sporting extravaganza, the Indian Premier League, two parts of the broadcast on the live stream, in particular, caught my attention. Amidst all the drama of the tournament and the crores of views it generated in the nearly 8 weeks the superstars of the cricketing world put on a breathtaking display of sporting excellence, it was an advertisement featuring Yuvraj Singh and Harbhajan Singh that took the cake in pushing the agenda for sports in India. The advertisement featuring the aforementioned legends of Indian cricket acted in a campaign in which they would watch India take on teams in different, oft-ignored sports in this country. Cadbury’s “#CheerForAllSports” couldn’t come at a better time for all of us, it sheds light on the sheer overpowering support for cricket at the cost of virtually every other sport. As the IPL reaches its climax and millions of sports fans in India go searching for something new to entertain themselves in the evenings and weekends that were spent watching cricket, the Cadbury ad’s message could prove to be the change that drives all sports to achieve some level of parity with India’s most popular sport. Yuvraj and Harbhajan celebrating India’s success on the screen might not in itself drive the masses to suddenly develop an interest in the multitude of sporting successes in the country but it certainly pokes and prods at people’s general ignorance of the lack of interest in them and how it translates to their growth and development. In this article, I delve into a few examples which make my point about these sportspersons not getting their deserved plaudits

To start with a more positive situation with respect to general media’s coverage and people’s interest, the recent protests against Indian wrestling’s governing body and its upper management have been extensively in the news. While promising that other sports personalities are warranting a few headlines in mainstream media, it is worth questioning if it is because these medal-winning wrestlers are only in the news because of the nature of the news. The scandal behind a political party’s leaders’ alleged actions might be pushing it more into the limelight than the identity of the victims. If the same were to happen in a completely irrelevant(w.r.t sports) governing body, per se, rural development, it might warrant almost as much attention. All this in the grand scheme of things makes for a very morbid reading.

Sportsmen and women whose achievements are generally ignored unless they win Olympic medals for the country shouldn’t be the normal state of affairs in the country. PV Sindhu might have won medals for India in the Olympics, but her fellow badminton player Kashyap Sen reached the finals of the All England Open, Prakash Padukone and Pullela Gopichand remain the only Indians to have won it, and if you were to ask most people they would blink and shrug at the achievement and put it out of their mind and his achievement would go unrecognized. Sunil Chettri is fifth in the list of most goals scored by a player for their national team in world football and he did this while playing for an Indian team which isn’t anywhere near the pinnacle of the sport, yet it is only brought up to slight Lionel Messi for the brief time Chettri was ahead in the list.

All this is to say, please wake up my fellow countrymen, if we want to celebrate more success in the Olympics, they deserve a lot more followers.

More support and interest generate more revenue by way of sponsorships, stadium income and tv rights, which directly leads to more money circulating in the sport and better facilities and amenities for them. India’s quest for glory often starts when these sportspeople are still toddlers, not when they’re playing in the semi-finals or the finals of the Olympics. They need more from us in the years leading up to the Olympics than the one day they actually take part in it. Let’s cheer them on for a few years and see where it takes us instead of the few days we tend to do it. Signing off, an avid sports fan and a hypocrite trying to live up to his own words.