Tags:
Journalism of Courage
It8217;s not cricket. It8217;s shooting, athletics, judo, weightlifting that are bringing home the medals. Barely a week into the Commonwealth Games, Indians are proving to a sporting public back home that even non-cricketers have talent, can win, should matter.
Credit is due all round: the shooters, who have notched up eight golds, went to Manchester with their reputations on the line after failing miserably at the world meet weeks earlier. Kunjarani Devi, who won three golds on Tuesday, has just come off a six-month suspension after testing positive for drugs.
And George, the first Indian woman to win a Commonwealth medal, has overcome several hurdles in her career to establish herself as one of our best athletes. She has been helped by her husband and coach, Bobby George, an athlete who realised long ago he would never make it and therefore devoted his energies to ensuring his wife would.
The results augur well for the Asian Games this autumn. But medals don8217;t come from raw talent, they require nurturing. By our officials, who really should stop banking on medals every time our athletes go abroad 8211; by that criterion, our cricketers shouldn8217;t have gone anywhere in the past 16 years!
By our system, which operates on an open plan of corruption and nepotism from the school level upwards. And, most importantly, by a public that would rather watch half-hearted cricketers earning Rs 2 lakh a match on the field, and 10 times that amount off it, play well below par than watch an athlete running her heart out in relative isolation.
We are not a sports-loving people but one that loves stars and the glamour associated with them; that8217;s why even Test matches here don8217;t draw a full house. The difference in great sporting nations 8211; the US, Australia, Russia 8211; is that they truly love sport, whether it8217;s a Little League match on a Sunday morning or a school athletics meet in St Petersburg. Indeed, what was refreshing about the past three days was the emotions shown by our medal-winners. They care deeply about winning. It8217;s time we did, too.
