Is Cricket Overshadowing All Other Sporting Activities in India.

Yes, the game of cricket overshadows all other sporting activities and achievements in India sadly. There are more sponsors for cricket than for any other sport. As the T20 world cup for cricket in underway in Australia, we also had some jubilant sporting news pouring in other parts of the world when fellow Indian sports(wo)men have made us equally if not even more proud. Indian junior mens’ team went on to win the Sultan Azlan Shah Hockey tournament gold cup in Malaysia. Indian Shooting team has had its best stint winning 15 medals including 5 gold in Changwon ISSF world cup emerging on the top of the table. Former world no.1 Saina Nehwal once again moved into world top 5 in Badminton women. And the icing in the cake is winning the French Open Tennis Men’s double by the Indian duo Chirag Shetty and Swastik Sai Raj Reddy that hardly made waves in the media. Add to that the men’s Badminton laurels and the Chess ratings. India has been having a phenomenal sporting time but none of these seem to catch the attention of the masses or our media which is deplorable. As much as I enjoy cricket I would really want our news channels and sports channels to cover more of Indian sporting taking place not only in India but also in all corners of the world. I can imagine what cricket is to India as I stayed tuned to the India-Zimbabwe T20 match with 90,000 other spectators watching it live in Australia this sunday. If so many thousands of Indians had to spend their sunday at the stadium watching the game of cricket, then clearly cricket is religion to us. The french open tennis men’s double win almost meant nothing to fellow Indians as I observe. Tennis is kind of popular in India with us regularly playing/winning mens doubles etc., with Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathy in the past and not to forget Sania Mirza. There has been a lull ever since our tennis stars retired I know. To rekindle the latent interest in tennis, its going to take a few more wins for the Reddy-Shetty pair. All said, hopefully we have unequivocal coverage for all sporting events in India in future in our media.